Where the Kissing Never Stops

by Ron Koertge

  “Just a minute. Remember this?” She held the lawyer’s letter at arm’s length, head back, nose in the air. “I want you to look this land over, and I want you to do it tomorrow.”

  “God, what do I know about —”

  “Go look at it. Make sure there’s not an oil well out there that we don’t know about. Just do what your father used to do.”

  Well, I thought, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all. I could call Rachel; maybe she’d ride out with me.

  “And don’t call your little girlfriend, either, at least not now. It’s late and you’ll wake up her parents.”

  “She doesn’t have parents,” I said. “She’s like me.”

  “Half an orphan? Poor baby. When do I get to meet this foundling?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not like you’re home all the time, is it?”

  Boy, who knows where those crappy sentences come from? Right out of nowhere. And then they’re out and it’s too late.

  Mom took a swallow of her wine, stared out the window, and sighed again, heavier this time. I just stood there feeling like a lot less than two cents. Then I turned and went up the hall to my room.

  After a few minutes I thought that I should just go back out to the kitchen and tell Mom I was sorry, but I didn’t. So I hoped that she would come to the door, knock softly, and tell me that she was quitting to become the manager of a candy plant.

  I lay there waiting for the obviously impossible. All I heard was the water running, the toilet flushing, the ghostly crawl of her slippers on the green carpet, and the sound of her door closing.

  “We saw you at the concert, Walkman. Are you getting into that new girl’s designer jeans?”

  It was Tommy Thompson, lurking outside the cafeteria with his henchmen. Tommy was good looking, if you like those Hitler Youth types. And his father was rich. So girls just naturally ran after him.

  But he could be a real jerk, too, as Peggy could have testified. Seeing him with his buddies was like looking at an exhibition in the natural history museum: The Stages of Man. At the top was Tommy — blond and clear-eyed, the ultimate predator. Then there were the intermediate stages: Vince Babbit and Tony DeLong, guys who slumped a lot and sometimes had trouble getting the wrapper off a Snickers. And at the bottom was Art Forney. Built like a big toe, he always breathed through his mouth and looked like he cut his own hair with broken glass.

  “Chain your bodyguards,” I said. “Let’s just you and me, Thompson.”

  I knew he’d never do it.

  “Where’s your boyfriend Sully, you fat faggot?”

  Sticks and stones. In one sentence I’m plundering Rachel and in the next bisexual, at least. What an all-round guy.

  Tommy and I naturally gave each other the finger and that was that. I began to look for Rachel, but didn’t run into her until after sixth period. We saw each other at the same time and both of us waved big slow waves like we were underwater. As usual, she was dressed up and then some. If we’d been Indians, her name would have been Many Clothes. And mine? He Who Lives In Pantry.

  “I had a nice time the other night,” she said, hugging her books to her breasts, or where her breasts probably were. Her sweater was decorated with a noughts and crosses grid and there were two huge O’s in just about the right place.

  “I was wondering,” I began, but stopped short when she turned to wave at someone and shout, “C-plus if I’m lucky.” Then she apologized immediately.

  “I’m sorry, Walker, I’m a little hyper. School can make me really nervous.”

  “I was going to ask if you’d drive out and look at this land my dad left me. You being a developer’s daughter and all, I thought maybe you could give me some advice.”

  “About what?”

  “Whatever,” I said lamely.

  “Today?” She leaned, looking for her watch, which was partly lost among books and folders.

  “It wouldn’t take long. I mean, what’s out there? Dirt, right?”

  “I was sort of planning to go to the mall. And then I’ve got to run some errands for my dad.”

  “What if we went to the mall together first and then on out to the other side of town?”

  “You’d go to Westgate with me?” she asked happily. “I thought you didn’t like malls.”

  “I haven’t been in a long time. Maybe it’s changed. Or maybe I was wrong.”

  It’s funny how people can’t simply tell each other the truth. I just wanted to see Rachel and be with her. Why didn’t I say that?

  Were we already like my mom and dad, who didn’t communicate unless they were cooking? Or was this communication, after all, like in English class where you looked underneath the cold words on the page to find the warm ones?

  When we got to the Saturn, Rachel patted the dashboard and said, “This is okay.”

  “What is?”

  “Your car.”

  “My mom’s car, you mean.”

  “It’s nice.”

  “Your nose is going to grow.”

  “Well, I’ve never been in one like it.”

  “You could say that about a wheelbarrow.”

  “I don’t care about cars and stuff like that.”

  I was glad for that bit of news.

  “Give me a minute by myself, okay?” Immediately she started doing some kind of breathing exercises, huffing and puffing. I looked around, grateful that none of the other kids could see. Maybe Debbie hadn’t been the most stimulating companion in history, but she at least breathed like a normal person and not the Big Bad Wolf.

  “I went to a stress clinic once,” she explained. “I guess almost nobody gets enough oxygen.”

  “Too bad you can’t just eat oxygen; I’d always have enough.”

  She grinned and began to pant again, then stopped abruptly. “Sully’s pretty smart, isn’t he?”

  “Brilliant, I guess. When we started high school, we took all these tests and he did some unheard-of thing like getting everything right. The teachers all but put up a shrine.”

  “I feel really out of it in these accelerated classes.”

  “It must be hard going from school to school like you do.”

  “I didn’t mind moving, at least not at first.” She turned to me, pressing one invisible breast against the torn upholstery. “Did I tell you how my mom died?”

  I shook my head.

  “Shopping. Can you believe it? It turns out she had this congenital heart problem that nobody knew about. It made me think that if she had it, maybe I had it, too, and I’d just die sometime without ever being sick or anything. It made me want to not wait for anything, so after Mom passed away, Dad started his own company and we traveled. I’m sixteen and I’ve been to London and Rome and I’ve lived in New York and Miami and Santa Barbara. I’ve done just about everything a girl my age can do.”

  “Okay,” I said soothingly. “I believe you.”

  “Sorry. Look, would it be okay if we didn’t talk for a little bit? I can calm myself down sometimes if I just sit still and imagine some really pretty place.”

  Had just talking made her that nervous or was it something I’d done? Jesus, at this rate I’d have to call the 24-Hour Crisis Hot line.

  “I can’t decide,” she said, opening her eyes and frowning, “whether to vizualize Peachtree Plaza or Ghirardelli.” She turned to me eagerly. “Dad and I were in San Francisco last year, and we got to go to Ghirardelli way before it opened. God, Walker, it was gorgeous.” Then she nodded her head decisively. “That’s it, then. California, here I come.”

  As I drove and she breathed evenly beside me, I had a little meditation of my own. She’d said, “I’ve done just about everything a girl my age can do.” Did that mean she wasn’t a virgin? And what if she wasn’t? And what if she was? Would I like her less? More?

  I knew how Sully felt. He had to marry a beautiful girl who had been reared by nuns, one stamped for approval by his father. She also had to be sexy out of her mind but attracted only to him, like a la
ser that scorched his bedroom, leaving the rest of the neighborhood intact.

  I wasn’t exactly sure how I felt. Everyone knew it was okay for girls to want to make love and even to want to as much as boys. Everyone said so: Oprah, Dr. Ruth, even Dear Abby.

  So it was okay, but was Rachel like that? Just because it was okay didn’t mean everybody had to be that way.

  Was I like that? I was horny all the time, but with Debbie, neither of us had seriously considered going to bed together. We’d just kissed for a few weeks and then, with her gripping my one hand with both of hers like she was holding back a poisoned dagger, I’d touched her breast. But that was it; that was the little dance we did.

  Still, that was a long time ago, almost a year. I’d only been fifteen then. For adults, a year or two can’t mean that much. At thirty-seven a person is just about the same as he was at thirty-five. But at sixteen, a kid is nothing like the fourteen-year-old he was. He’s outgrown all his clothes again, cut his hair five different ways, and changed his mind a thousand times.

  I guess I’d known who I was back in the Dark Ages of Early Adolescence, but who was I now? And who was this girl beside me?

  We crossed the crowded parking lot hand in hand like Jack and Jill, strolling along like the asphalt was a country road and the concrete steps a grassy slope. Once inside the big doors, Rachel took a deep breath, opening her arms like someone greeting the sunrise. She had on a mostly black outfit and looked like a Druid.

  “Isn’t it great?” she asked.

  “Who builds these things, anyway?”

  “Developers.” She’d wandered over to the railing and was looking down on the first level. “You and I could build if we had the money and the concept and the zoning. C’mon.”

  She held out one hand but when I reached, she’d moved, so she caught my wrist. We walked that way for a few yards, acting, I guess, like we’d planned it. I wondered if anybody would think I’d been nabbed for shoplifting, or worse, that I needed to be led everywhere because my IQ was smaller than my waist size.

  She inhaled deeply. “Doesn’t it smell just great?”

  “If you like caramel corn and polyester.”

  “I know. And perfume and leather and…”

  “You really like this place, don’t you?”

  “Walker, I swear to God, I love it. Don’t you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “All I know is, a mall can really mellow me out. Who needs Valium when you’ve got all this?”

  “I took Valium once,” I said. “Right after my dad died. I couldn’t seem to get to sleep, so my mom started giving me some of hers.”

  “I know; me too.” She let go of my wrist so that she could use her hands to cover her face for an instant.

  “C’mon,” I said. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  She nodded bravely. “Are you hungry?”

  “No,” I lied.

  “Me neither. Let’s sit a minute.”

  “Don’t you want to buy something?”

  “No.” She looked surprised. “Do you?”

  “You mean you just come out here…”

  She finished for me. “To be here? Sure.”

  Below us was a sea of hats, bald spots, and hair. We leaned over the railing, our elbows touching.

  “People don’t look kind of dead to you?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “And you don’t feel claustrophobic?”

  She pointed up. “Skylights.”

  “Well, it all just makes me want to get my hands dirty.”

  “You know,” she said thoughtfully, “when I finally saw Disneyland a few years ago, I was really disappointed. I mean, I’ve walked up perfect streets all my life. What did Sleeping Beauty’s castle mean to me compared to Lord & Taylor?”

  Right on cue a maintenance man in pressed coveralls stopped nearby to pick up a gum wrapper.

  “Can you wait,” she said abruptly, “while I go to the bathroom?”

  I watched her walk away, wondering, frankly, what her legs looked like under those enormous pants. It was almost summer and she was completely covered up. I had better undress her soon; once winter came it would take hours just to get all her clothes off.

  A lot of kids were with their parents, and I couldn’t help but think about being here with my dad. He was shopping for the running shoes that would carry him into the path of that Pontiac. I couldn’t look at some kid with his dad’s arm around his shoulders without feeling lonely and a little weird. Not that my dad had put his arm around my shoulders that day. Or any day, actually. He wasn’t touchy-feely like my mom. But we’d walked side by side and talked about the mall and about how it’d been built on land that he had once worked on, driving a tractor for some old farmer and getting paid two dollars an hour.

  Thinking about that made me so hungry I got a stomach cramp. I stood up and stretched, trying to concentrate on something else so that Rachel didn’t find me doubled up on the spotless tiles alternately weeping and calling for a double cheeseburger.

  Right below me four or five employees, dressed in jeans, straw hats, and checkered shirts, were handing out free pieces of sausage. They had straw in their socks and cuffs, like scarecrows. From the store right behind them came square-dance music, but the Muzak was oozing either Mozart or Three Dog Night. I began to feel strange again.

  Turning, I spotted Rachel talking to a salesgirl. They wore the exact same outfit, and in the store window stood their catatonic sister. That didn’t help my emotional state either.

  “The Garden of Gardner,” Rachel said, slipping in beside me, “is going to have three thousand bathrooms if I have anything to say about it.”

  “Can we go?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Sure,” I said, like all real men when they’re only shot through the brain. “I just have to get the car home, and I want to get to the other side of town first, and…”

  “Yeah, me too. I told my dad I’d eat with him tonight for sure.”

  We drove slowly along the frontage road, trying to make sense of the map that lawyer had given my mother. Everything was rich and green, all the farmland in every direction, even the ditches and the sides of the road had things coming up with all their might.

  Then we came to a big section with hardly anything growing at all. I checked the map. Sure enough.

  Rachel and I climbed out and surveyed the place.

  “Gee,” I said. “This looks awful.”

  She eyed it shrewdly. “You’ve got access; that’s what counts.”

  “Access to what?”

  “Your place borders the highway. It’s like riverfront property; it’s the best, that’s all.”

  “But why is it so sad-looking? If this was a person I’d just inherited, I’d buy him a new suit and a hot meal.”

  Just then someone across the way wearing overalls and an honest-to-God straw hat cut the engine on his tractor, climbed down, stepped over the broken-down barbed wire that separated our two fields, and began to slowly make his way toward us.

  Rachel eyed the uneven ground. “Do you think he needs help or something?”

  “Probably, but I’ll bet he wouldn’t take it.”

  “Name’s Kramer,” he said, taking off his hat for Rachel’s sake.

  We introduced ourselves, and I explained what we were doing out there. Then I asked what had happened to my land.

  “Mostly it got leased to some chuckleheaded bastards who read the stock market page once and if soybeans was up, they planted soybeans first thing in the morning. Then they planted them next time and the time after that, too. Pretty soon the ground gets tired, like if somebody came along every night for a week and took a pint or so of your blood, you’d get tired, too. Probably your daddy didn’t know what was going on, but maybe that ain’t much of an excuse, either.”

  I pointed. “What are you growing over there?”

  “Nothing. It’s called green manure. You just let it grow, then plow it bac
k under. You have to put back what you took out — that’s all there is to it. It’s just good business.”

  “You mean all that green stuff isn’t anything?” Rachel asked.

  “No, it’s oats. I only meant it wasn’t no crop to harvest and sell.”

  “So what goes in there next year that you can harvest and sell?”

  “Not a blessed thing. By the time next year comes that land might be miles of asphalt and women with fat ankles and nothing to do all day but go into stores and say, ‘My, but ain’t the air-conditioning nice.’”

  “So what are you going to do?” I asked.

  “Sell. Probably can’t afford not to.”

  “Did they offer you a lot of money for your land?”

  “Not a thing yet. But they will, sooner or later. Everybody knows this is where the new mall’s going to go. Don’t you worry about the price, either. They’ve got to come to you; you’ve got access. You’re sittin’ in the catbird seat, son.”

  I said that I didn’t know why, exactly, but I felt bad about my property and in a funny way I wished there was something I could do.

  Kramer pounced right on me. “There is,” he said, “unless you’re just moving your lips to hear yourself talk. I’ve got more seed than I can ever use and it won’t be much use once they get serious about building out here. So I’ll give it to you.”

  “What seed?” But he wasn’t about to slow down.

  “You can use that little Farmall Cub of mine, too, if you’ll just pay for the gas, and that goes for just about anything else I’ve got that you might need, including an old Oliver Sixty with a seven-foot double disc if you get to feeling high and mighty.”

  He was pretty fired up, and Rachel took a step closer to me.

  “What would I need all that for?”

  “To plant yourself some oats, that’s what. Make this place look like something.”

  “Oats?” I said.

  “Like Quaker oats?” asked Rachel, and I pictured the round package with the happy fat man on the front.

  “The very same. It wouldn’t take long, neither.”

  “Planting wouldn’t?”

  “Plowing, planting, cultivating. Hell, it’s only forty acres. I used to do ten times that with two field hands and a horse-drawn plow.”