Betty didn’t know the right words to use either. She and Abe had acknowledged their relationship and their immediate connection, but it wasn’t like he’d pinned her or asked her to go steady.
“Don’t you want to know if Abe has taken off with Eleanor for the night?”
“He’s not ‘off with Eleanor.’” And certainly not for the night.
“How do you know?”
“He just wouldn’t.”
Marv shrugged, and started walking again. “Then his car will be in the parking lot, and when we go over toward the Palace he’ll be playing poker with the guys or sound asleep like an angel.” Marv drew a halo in the air above his head.
Betty skittered and kept up this time, shuffling through the grass, glad she’d worn her old saddle shoes. “I didn’t say he was an angel. I just mean, I trust him. I was much later than I said I’d be.” Betty felt the same jolt of tension in her neck as when Nannie announced Tillie and Joe’s annual visits.
Marv stopped and skimmed the group of cars with the flashlight.
The patchy, unkempt grass of the staff parking lot was in stark contrast to the resort’s pristine front lawn. This area wasn’t even raked gravel like she’d seen at other resorts, or the pale, cracked tar of the loading areas. This wasn’t a parking lot. It was a forgotten lot.
“What kind of car does he have?” Marv asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“We’re here, it’s not a big deal to just look.”
Betty turned left, west, toward the lake, even though she couldn’t see it. They were a block or two away by now. She leaned back on a blue car and pushed herself up to sit on the hood. The cold steel shocked her hands and the backs of her shins, but it wasn’t half as chilly as the rushing breeze that seemed to pass through her, though the air was motionless. This close to the lake, that usually meant a storm threatened to drop in unannounced, but copious twinkling stars filled the sky like spatter dots on draped black fabric, and the South Haven Herald had called for sunshine tomorrow. It was rarely wrong.
“It doesn’t matter because his car isn’t here,” Betty said.
Marv leaned on the car and looked away from Betty toward the abyss of vehicles she didn’t care about. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“No, you’re not.”
Marv turned to Betty. “You think you know me. But you don’t. I am sorry. For your sake, I wanted to be wrong.”
“This proves nothing.”
“Okay, you’re right. Your boyfriend said he’d meet you, he ditched you, and now you can’t find him or a girl we know would be happy to do what you won’t do.”
“You are quite presumptuous.”
Marv turned away. Betty was glad not to see his face and imagined his smug grin. Her cheeks grew warm, but she shivered. “If that’s what you think of Eleanor, why are you dating her?”
Marv said nothing and confirmed what she suspected. She wasn’t naive . . . well, maybe a little. But she was a lot optimistic.
“I bet she’ll fall in love with you by the end of the summer.”
Marv guffawed. “I don’t think Eleanor is the ‘in-love’ type.”
“Every girl is the in-love type.”
It sounded like something Doris would say as Betty scoffed, but the words had come out of Betty’s mouth. And she believed them.
“Is that so? I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You should.”
“Are you in love with Barsky?”
She hopped off the car and ground her toe into a lonely patch of grass. “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
Marv walked the length of the row of cars and back again. “It doesn’t mean anything, you know, that his car isn’t here,” he said. “He could be out with some of the guys, even over in one of the meadows. Your grandparents would have a cow if they caught anyone drinking, and no one wants to lose their job.”
“You should look for Eleanor. Girls like to be pursued.”
Marv smirked.
“What’s that look for?”
“You surprise me, Betty Boop—oh, I’m sorry—Betty. You have very conventional notions of what girls and boys should do, don’t you? I thought of you as modern and sophisticated, maybe even a bit of a rebel, but I was wrong. You’re a nice girl through and through. Barsky doesn’t know what he’s in for.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that nice girls break your heart, and because you don’t see it coming, it hurts like hell. Excuse my language.”
“Is that why you don’t have a girlfriend? Besides Eleanor, I mean? Did a nice girl break your heart?”
Marv looked away and Betty regretted her accusation. She hadn’t meant her words to be hurtful, even if she was hurting. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s none of my business.”
He stepped closer to Betty but didn’t touch her or look at her. “If you must know, I don’t have a girlfriend because until a month ago, I had a fiancée.”
Betty gasped. She didn’t know as much about Marv Peck as she’d thought.
They retraced their steps in a courteous silence without dipping or ducking from anyone.
At the corner of Lakeshore and Avery, they stopped. Betty turned to Marv. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Marv shrugged. “No reason not to. Her name was Debbie. We were together for a year and engaged for two months. Until last month.”
“What happened? I mean, if you want to tell me.”
“She said she didn’t love me enough to marry me, gave me back the ring, and I never saw her again. I called her parents a week later to see if she’d changed her mind. I told them I’d wait for her to love me. That I was patient and we’d make it work.”
“She didn’t buy it.”
Marv shook his head. “I don’t know what I did wrong. My father gave me plenty of ideas, though.”
Betty found she felt sorry for Marv, even disbelieving he’d done anything wrong at all.
“Don’t listen to him. You didn’t do anything wrong. You lucked out.”
“What are you talking about? Debbie was the only girl I ever
