Marsha was a real classy dancer and hardly seemed to touch the floor, she was so light on her feet, but she touched plenty in other places, namely all up and down the front of me, and she kept whispering things to me about how marvelous it was I could pick up the steps so quick and how strange it was she had never noticed me around before, and her lips kept brushing the side of my neck, and it may not seem like much to happen, but it was better than a tussle with old Mopsy on her lousy sofa anytime. We kept on dancing for a long time to the nickels other guys fed the juke box, and when we finally got back to the booth, old Tizzy and his girls were standing up ready to go.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I’d better pay the check,” but Tizzy said, “Oh, never mind, I’ve already paid it,” and I said, “You didn’t have to do that,” and he said, “That’s all right,” and the truth is, I’d seen him pay it, and that’s why I’d come back to the booth.
Outside on the street, old Tizzy said, “Sorry I don’t have the old man’s car tonight, Scaggs, or I’d drive you home.”
I said, “Oh, that’s all right,” and it was too, because to tell the truth, I didn’t much want them to see the crummy dump I lived in, and besides, if the old man and the old lady happened to be in one of their brawls, you could hear them all over the God-damn neighborhood, even with all the doors and windows closed. Anyhow, Marsha spoke up and said, “It’s a wonderful night for walking. You go on with Marion, Tizzy, and Skimmer will see I get home. You wouldn’t object to walking me home, would you, Skimmer?” She said it with this sly look through her lashes and the kind of little laugh in her voice, like she knew God-damn well no guy with all his marbles would object to walkingherhome, and I wondered for a second what she’d say if I said Hell, yes, I’d object to taking her shank’s mare clear the hell across the lousy town, but you can bet I didn’t say it, but said instead, “It would be my pleasure,” which was pretty damn corny, I admit, but true, nevertheless.
Old Tizzy said all right and went off with his girl Marion, who wasn’t a bad piece herself, except she had the kind of teeth you could use to eat roasting ears through a picket fence, and I started off with Marsha across town, not east toward the crummy section where I lived, but north toward the section where the people lived who were lousy with dough, and she held onto my arm and kept running her hand up and down the inside of it like she did before on the way to Tompkins’. She said again she simply couldn’t understand how she’d missed me so long around school and asked me to tell her all about myself, because she simply had to know every little detail about a guy who was bound to be a big basketball star and famous as all hell, and I thought, Anytime you think I’m going to louse up the works by telling you about my crummy family, baby, you’re a hell of a lot crazier than I think you are, so instead I told her a lot of God-damn lies about how my old man was pretty poor, even though he’d once been on the way to becoming a damn millionaire or something, and this was because he had a very bad disease of some kind that he never talked about and the doctors couldn’t do anything about, and it was just a damn crying shame all around. I told her, besides, that my older brother had been killed in the war, which was the only true thing I told her, and that my old lady had been heart-broken ever since and just seemed to keep on wasting away over the grief of it, but as a matter of fact, my old lady never felt any grief in her life that she couldn’t cure with a few cans of beer. Anyhow, I got warmed up to it pretty well and laid it on pretty thick, and she kept hanging onto my arm tighter and tighter and rubbing harder and harder on the inside, and every once in a while she’d make this little cooing sound that was like a doll makes when she’s working up to a tumble, and by the time I’d finished, damned if we hadn’t walked all the way across to her neighborhood and down to her house on the very street she lived on.
It was a big God-damn place, built like one of these old colonial mansions you see in pictures about the Civil War and stuff, and it was set back of a big front yard with a lot of trees and bushes growing around and a curved driveway going up one side and around in front of the house. We stopped along the drive under a tree, and she said, “I’m sorry I can’t ask you to come in tonight. You understand, don’t you?” and I thought, Sure, I understand. I understand your old man would probably throw me out on my butt if you did, but I said, “That’s all right. It’s getting pretty late, anyhow, and I’d better be getting home.” Then she turned and put her arms up around my God-damn neck and said, “Here’s a kiss for the hero, anyhow,” and that’s when I found out for sure what I’d been suspecting already, that this little old Marsha was a real worker, and that it didn’t make any God-damn difference which side of town you were on when you got down to business, it was the same wherever you were, only a little better some places than others, depending on who you were doing business with. I don’t mind telling you that kiss would have blistered the paint on a new automobile, and she may have been pretty good at it and all that, but no doll is that good naturally, and the only way she gets that good is by a hell of a lot of experience. I sneaked in a feel or two upstairs, and she didn’t seem to mind, but pretty soon she pulled away and skipped up the driveway laughing and said over her shoulder, “Goodnight, Skimmer. See you at school.” I watched her go up between the big columns on the porch and through the door, and then I turned and started shank’s mare for home, and as you can see, there hadn’t really been much to it, just a kiss and a couple of feels where they didn’t count much, and that’s the way she worked on me.
I went on home and to bed, and I lay there listening to the old man snoring like a hog in the next room, and I thought, Hell’s fire and save matches, was old Bugs right! Was old Bugs ever right! Then I began to think that one thing was sure as hell-fire, that I couldn’t be running around with my God-damn pockets empty if I was going to get anywhere with a classy doll like Marsha Davis, and what the hell would have happened if I hadn’t been able to jockey old Tizzy into picking up the check at Tompkins’, and I tried like hell to think of some way to pick up some easy dough, but I couldn’t think of any, except shooting rotation at Beegie’s, and I didn’t have time for Beegie’s any more, now that I was on the basketball team, and besides, rotation Beegie’s was just for crummy nickels that wouldn’t get you to first base with a classy doll whose old man was president of a bank unless you had a God-damn barrel of them.
The next day at school everyone kept coming up to me and slapping me on the back and saying things like, “Boy, what a game, Scaggs! Man, were you hot!” and a lot of other crap like that, and it wasn’t bad at first, being different from anything that had ever happened to me at school before, but after a while it got to giving me a pain and that’s no lie. I kept on looking out for Marsha, but I didn’t see her at all until school was almost over in the afternoon, and then it was in the hall with a lot of jerks between us, and she just waved and yelled, “Hi, Skimmer,” over their heads, and that’s all there was to it. I went to practice feeling pretty sore, and I thought more than once that just as soon as basketball season was over I was going to poke old buller Mulloy right in his fat mouth. Jesus, that guy was a pain. He was a pain up to here if I ever saw one.
Well, as it turned out I didn’t see Marsha at school again that week, and I got to thinking it was just a God-damn one-night stand, and not much of a stand at that, and I told myself that I was a damn fool, anyhow, to think a snotty bitch like her would have any time for a guy like me who came from the wrong side of town and didn’t have a cent but then I got to thinking about that kiss under the tree by the drive, and it sure as hell didn’t seem like the kind of kiss a girl would give a guy if she didn’t figure on having some time for him afterward, but of course some girls will kiss anyone who’s handy, and that’s just a cheap way to get their kicks. I got to thinking to hell with her, she wasn’t the only pebble on the lousy beach, and to hell with basketball, the God-damn crazy game, you ran your guts out and threw a damn silly ball around for no damn reason except so a lot of clowns could jump up and down
and yell fifteen rahs for this and that, and I was going to turn in my suit at the end of the week, and the last thing I was going to do was poke old Mulloy in the mouth and slap the b’jeesus out of Tizzy Davis. Then, would you believe it, on Friday, the day I was going to do it, old Tizzy came up to me in the locker room and said, “Oh, by the way, Scaggs, Marsha told me to tell you that she had to go out of town with Mother for a few days, in case you might wonder where she was, and I forgot all about it until right now.” He said it just like that, the skinny bastard, just as calm and cool as a Goddamn prince or something, and the worst part was, it changed everything again, and I couldn’t afford to hit him.
So I didn’t quit the team, and we made a trip out of town for a game the next night, which was Saturday, and we won the game, and I made twenty-six points. We rode on a bus that the school chartered, and we got back to town after midnight, and the next afternoon I went uptown to Beegie’s and shot rotation, which was the first time I’d done it for a long time. When I got back home, the old lady was having a can of beer at the kitchen table, and she said, “Someone called you on the telephone,” and I said, “Who the hell you mean, someone?”
“A girl,” she said, and I said, “What girl?”
“How would I know what girl?” she said.
“God damn it to hell, didn’t you even ask who she was?” I said.
“Why the hell should I ask her who she was?” she said. “She didn’t want to talk to me.”
“What the hell makes you so God-damn ignorant?” I said. “Anyone knows you’re supposed to ask anyone’s name when they call on the damn telephone.”
Then she began to blubber and say that I wouldn’t talk to my old mother that way if only Eddie was here, and I said that was a lot of bull and she knew it, and even if Eddie hadn’t got killed in the war he probably wouldn’t be around, anyhow, because he’d probably be in jail, and that tore it for sure, and she began to bawl and howl about what a terrible sin it was for me to talk that way about my poor dead brother, so I got the hell out of there. I walked up the street a few blocks to a crummy neighborhood drug store and screwed up my courage and called Marsha, and sure enough, it had been her on the phone, just like I’d suspected.
She said, “Is that you, Skimmer?” and I said it was, and she said, “I just called you this afternoon.”
I said, “I thought maybe it was you. That’s why I called back,” and she said, “Did you miss me around school?” and I said, “Well, I sort of looked around for you, but you didn’t seem to be there,” and then she let out this little squeal and asked me if Tizzy hadn’t told me what she’d told him to tell me, and I said he’d forgot all about it until Friday, and she said, “Oh, that damn Tizzy! I’ll fix him!” and I thought, I hope she fixes you good, you son of a bitch.
“Well,” she said, “I’ve simply had a deadly time all week. You know how it is when you have to go somewhere with your mother.”
I said sure, I knew, but I didn’t, as a matter of fact, because my old lady never went anywhere, and even if she’d run all over the God-damn place, she wouldn’t have taken me with her. Anyhow, Marsha kept going on about how deadly it had been, and how she simply had to have something interesting and exciting to do or she’d go right out of her mind, and after a while it turned out that what she wanted with me was, she could have her old man’s car for a couple of hours and would I like to take a ride? I said I didn’t mind, which was the God-damnedest understatement of the year, and she said she’d drive by and pick me up if I’d give her my address, and I said it just happened I was calling from a drug store and she could pick me up there, and I gave her the address of the drug store and hung up.
I had fifteen lousy cents in my pocket, and I wondered what the hell I’d do if Marsha wanted to stop somewhere for a coke or something, and I was thinking that maybe I could get away with that old dodge of putting your hand in your pocket and feeling around and saying, “Well, Jesus Christ, what could’ve happened to the money I had? Do you suppose I could’ve left it in my other pants?” but just then who do you think I saw but old Bugs dropping a nickel in a pin ball machine at the end of the soda fountain. There was an outside chance that Bugs might have some dough, even if it was a damn slim one, so I went up to him and said, “Hi, Bugs, old boy. You happen to have an extra buck on you?” and to tell the truth, I never had any God-damn idea he had anything like that much, if any at all except the nickel he’d just dropped in the machine, but I could tell right away by the sneaky look that got on his face that he really had it.
“Hi, Skimmer,” he said. “Where the hell would I get that kind of dough?”
“Same place you always get it,” I said. “Out of your grandmother’s purse.”
It was a pretty good shot, and it was plain enough from the way old Bugs got all red in the face that I’d hit it right on the nose. Old Bugs had this grandmother who was about a million years old and got a pension from the government because Bugs’s grandfather had been in some God-damn war back in the Middle Ages or sometime. Every month after she got her pension, she’d put part of it in the bank and put the rest of it in this little black purse she carried around with her. The way she carried the purse, she’d wrap it in a handkerchief and pin it to her long underwear under about six inches of other underclothes and stuff, and the only way Bugs could get to it was to wait until she’d undressed and gone to bed. She kept pieces of hoarhound candy in the purse with the money, and you could always tell when old Bugs had swiped some money from his grandmother because it always smelled like this God-damn hoarhound.
Well, he swore up and down that he didn’t have any, but I knew he was a damn liar and just didn’t want to come across for a buddy, so I said, “Look, Bugs, don’t give me any crap now, because I’ve got to have some lousy dough, and I’ll tell you why. I got this date with Marsha Davis, and I’m stony, and she’s going to be here any minute to pick me up in her old man’s car.”
He looked at me and said, “Oh, bull, you haven’t any more got a date with Marsha Davis than I have,” and I said, “The hell I haven’t. You just stand up inside the window and see if she doesn’t pick me up, and if you’ll let me have a buck I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll try to fix you up with one of Marsha’s friends.”
That was a God-damn laugh, because no classy doll was going to have any time for old Bugs, even if he’d played on a dozen lousy basketball teams, and besides he was only a stinking substitute who hardly ever got to play in a real game, but it worked just the same, Bugs being pretty God-damn stupid when you got right down to it, and he said, “No bull, Skimmer? You really think you could fix me up?”
I said sure, it was a cinch, and he forked over a buck, and sure enough, it smelled just like this stinking hoarhound. I took the money and started for the door, and Bugs followed me up past the soda fountain saying, “Don’t forget now, Skimmer. You promised to fix me up,” and I said, “Sure, sure, I’ll fix it, Bugs,” even though I didn’t really have any idea of doing any such damn thing, and I went on outside and stood by the curb and waited. It was quite a while before she got there, and I began to think how maybe she wasn’t coming after all, and how old Bugs would hoot if she didn’t, and how I’d knock his God-damn teeth out if he did, and that’s for damn sure the trouble with having a classy doll like Marsha on the string, she always keeps your lousy guts in an uproar. Pretty soon she came, though, in this black Buick about a mile long. She pulled up to the curb and said, “Hop in, Skimmer,” and I hopped in beside her and looked back through the window of the drug store, and there was old Bugs with his teeth hanging out, and I could see that he was just about to wet his drawers, he was so God-damn jealous.
We went buzzing along in this big Buick that was like riding on the damn air, it took the bumps in the crummy street so easy, and Marsha said, “Sorry I was so long picking you up, Skimmer, but Dad always has to go through this deadly routine of giving me simplyhoursof instructions when I take the car out, and it’s just too sickening for words.
” and I said, “I was just fooling around killing time anyhow. Would you like to go over to Tompkins’ for something?” and she said, “No, I don’t think I’d better go to Tompkins’, because I’m supposed to be over at Marion’s, and if I went to Tompkins’, Dad would be sure to hear of it. Honestly, I think that man has paid spies or something, and besides I only have the car for an hour, instead of two hours like I thought, and I know we can find something better to do than sit around in Tompkins’ with a lot of juveniles. Honestly, Skimmer, don’t you sometimes find them just too juvenile?”
I said I sure as hell did, and by that time we’d got out to the edge of town, not on a highway but on a little farm-to-market road, and she said, “What are you sitting way over on that side of the seat for, Skimmer?” Well, I may be a little slow on the uptake sometimes, but I don’t have to be kicked in the teeth before I get the God-damn point, so I eased across the seat until I was right up against her, and she said, “You wouldn’t bother me if you put your arm around me,” so I did.
We kept on going out the gravel road until we got to the river, and we kept talking about how she’d missed me, and I’d missed her, and how the past week had been longer than a damn year, and how strange it was how something had just gone bang like a God-damn bomb the minute we first looked at each other, and when we got to the river she turned off at the end of the bridge onto another little road that went along the bank down past some cabins. Pretty soon we came to one that was bigger than the rest, set in under some trees, and she stopped the Buick beside the cabin and said, “This is the old man’s shack, in case you’re interested. He comes out here fishing in the summers, and sometimes he brings his friends out here when they want to have a brawl that might corrupt their dear children if they had it at home. Isn’t it just too disgusting how transparent fathers are?” I said sure, fathers were for the book, and I could have backed that up with some stories about my old man that would probably have made her think hers was practically a plaster saint or something, but I didn’t and she slipped out of the seat on her side and said, “Let’s walk down and look at the river.”
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