Thrill Kids

by Packer, Vin

  “It’ll be all right,” she managed to say, leaning against the wall, holding her foot up from the floor slightly as she stood on the other.

  “I didn’t mean it, Lynn. Does it — ” He moved toward her and said, “I feel terrible. I knew I couldn’t dance.”

  “You were doing swell. It’s all right. It’s nothing.” She pushed herself away from the wall and put weight on the foot. She tested it, and she could walk, and she smiled up at Johnny. “See? It’s all right.”

  The music blared in the background.

  Johnny said, “Are you sure?”

  “It’s fine,” she said. “It’s like new.”

  “I’m so clumsy,” Johnny said.

  “No, you’re not,” she answered, and she looked into his eyes then. “Johnny?”

  Impulsively he took her arms, pulling her to him, and he kissed her on the mouth. He did it in an impatient, rough way, so that their faces came together awkwardly, and their noses bumped. Both of them laughed, and stood apart.

  “Our noses got in the way,” she said. “Yours is so darn big!” he said. “No, yours is!”

  “Mrs. Jimmy Durante,” he teased.

  Then they stopped laughing and looked at each other with faces that were puzzled and afraid. Their arms found each other’s body, and their lips met, and they kissed for a long time. While he was kissing her, his hand came once again to her breast, and he knew then why she had made a noise like that.

  She said, “It’s bright in here.” He could feel her mouth make the words against his lips.

  He said, “Let’s turn off some of the lights or something.”

  She left his arms and walked to the bridge lamp, pulling the light chain. She went to the table and fixed the lamp there so that only one light burned, a soft one that did not give off much illumination. Neither spoke. He followed her to the couch and sat beside her, and they thrust themselves into each other’s arms in a sudden hurried moment, as though they feared they would have to talk. He put his hand into the dip of her dress and felt the satin of her bra, and she said his name. He tried to push his hand inside the bra, but it was too tight, and so he just cupped her breast from outside. She said, “The other light, Johnny. Turn it off.”

  He squeezed her hard, his lips boring into hers, the feeling of her breast unbelievable to him.

  “Gee,” he said. “Gee, gee …”

  She said, “The other light.”

  He got up, crossed the room, and turned it off. In the darkness she said, “Don’t stumble, Johnny.” “I’m O.K.”

  He had never said “I love you” to anyone before, and when he said it he didn’t believe it, but she believed it. He said it because he was scared. They were lying side by side; he had unbuttoned her dress; and his hands fumbled with the hooks on her brassiere. He couldn’t get them undone.

  She said, “Let me do it,” and her voice sounded a long way off from that room. She squirmed and he heard the hooks unsnap, and then he reached out for her.

  He moaned, “Oh, my God! Oh — my God, Lynn!”

  He had never thought of touching a girl anywhere but on the breasts, and when he did, it nearly drove him out of his mind with excitement.

  She said, “Oh, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny,” and he wanted to cry.

  He said, “Lynn Leonard,” in a strange, thick, amazed tone.

  The same record played over and over and they did not hear it. Cozy Cole was on the drums, and it was “Bugle Call Rag,” Louis Armstrong’s All Stars. It just kept repeating. Neither Johnny nor the girl knew how much time had elapsed before she said, “No! No, Johnny!”

  “Lynn, for God’s sake! For God’s sake!”

  “No, no, no! No, please.”

  “W-why?”

  “Not here. Not here. I couldn’t. My folks’ll be — ” “Gee, Lynn — oh, my gosh.” “No, Johnny. No, let’s get up.”

  “Yeah,” he said. He was shaking; his voice shook too. “Yeah.”

  Then she sat up and he did too. His hair was mussed and he smoothed it with the palms of his hands, and he heard her fumbling with her clothes, and a bugle was playing.

  She said, “I guess we ought to turn a light on.”

  “Cripes,” he said. “No.”

  “I don’t know what time it is.”

  He sat forward on the couch, cradling his head in his hands. He said, “Wow!”

  She stood up and turned on a light. Their eyes blinked and squinted in the brightness, and Johnny sighed.

  “We’ve worn out the record,” she said, laughing a little unsurely.

  “Who cares? Gee.” She said, “I — feel funny.” “So do I.” “I never — ”

  She did not have to elaborate. Johnny said, “Me neither.”

  “I guess we shouldn’t have done all that. Huh?”

  “We didn’t do anything,” Johnny said.

  “Almost, though.” She ran over to where he sat on the couch, and, sinking to her knees, she put her head in his lap. “I was scared, Johnny. Johnny, were you?”

  “Naw,” Johnny lied.

  “Men don’t get scared, I guess.”

  His hand reached out tenderly for a lock of her black hair. He smoothed it back from her forehead. “Men are stronger,” he said.

  “D-do you really love me, Johnny?”

  “Sure,” he said. “What do you think?”

  Johnny left the apartment shortly after that. Before he left they had arranged the matter between them.

  “See you next Saturday, then,” he said. “I was supposed to go to this dumb party, but I wouldn’t of anyway.”

  “Where can we go, Johnny?”

  “I’ll think of something,” he said. “I’ll meet you on the roof.”

  “Should we?”

  “We’re in love, aren’t we?” She said, “Yes, but — ” “Besides,” he said, “you promised.” “You won’t — think less of me, will you, Johnny? I mean — ”

  “Oh, for Christmas’ sake!” Johnny muttered. “Christmas and Easter anyhow, Lynn. I love you.” Maybe he really did.

  11

  “He will hew to the line of right, let the chips fly where they may.”

  — Inscription under the picture of Bardo Raleigh in the academy annual, The Sands

  BARDO CLOSED his copy of The Sands and sat back with his feet propped up on the desk in his room. It was drizzling out that Friday afternoon, and whenever it rained, Bardo became moody. Whenever he became moody, he would glance through his old annual and read the long list of activities under his name:

  BARDO ROBERT RALEIGH

  New York, N. Y.

  President, Sword & Shield; Colonel of Cadets; President, Drill Team; Secretary-Treasurer, Blue & Gold Honor Society; Member, E.L.A., The Gold Key, The Blue Masque, Scroll Staff; Honor Freshman Cadet ‘50; Honor Sophomore Cadet ‘51; Honor Senior Cadet ‘53; Clean-up Committee.

  He would study his picture. It was a good likeness, the only photograph in the book shot in profile. He would sit and think and remember back, plucking incidents from the past and realizing the sudden shock of nostalgia for sundry things like the bugle blowing out taps at ten P.M., inspection of arms in the quadrangle, and the curt bark of a platoon sergeant commanding, “P’toon … ten-chht!”

  He would stare at walls and window sills and see the soot of the immense city of New York there, and he would recall the way he had run his white-gloved fingers along other walls and sills and said, “I’m pulling you for dirt, mister! This is a pigsty!” And he would feel immediately sorry for himself, and a little sad.

  Sometimes he would remember what General Baird had said to him: “You have more responsibility than the average man, Raleigh. You’re a leader!”

  Other times he would just recall random masculine voices shouting random words that spelled out a way of life:

  “Put a ‘sir’ on that, mister!” “A-dease!”

  “Attention. General leave will begin in ten minutes. Repeat. General leave will — “

  “Pull that chi
n in! Drop those shoulders! Get a wrinkle in that neck!”

  This was the myriad music of his musings.

  Ivy Raleigh was working in her room that afternoon. He could hear the clatter of her typewriter. She had brought work home from the office, and he had not seen her since lunch.

  At lunch she had asked him suddenly, “Bar, dear?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Have you by any chance seen my ring?” “What ring?”

  “You know, honey — my old wedding ring. I can’t find it.”

  “That’s a pity, Ivy.” “Then you haven’t seen it?” “No.”

  “You were poking around in my bureau drawers the other night, remember? Last week? Was it there then?” “Good Lord, Ivy! Why would I want that ring?” “No, I just wondered if it was there then.” “I haven’t the vaguest memory.” “Peculiar.”

  “Maybe Claude took it.” “Don’t be silly, Bar.” “He may have.”

  “Why would he want it?” She’d laughed. “Bar, you are silly!”

  “For the size. Perhaps he wants to present you with a diamond, dear.”

  “Oh, Bar! He knows my ring size.”

  “Does he?”

  “Of course, darling.”

  “Oh,” Bardo had answered flatly. “I didn’t realize. ‘Scuse?”

  Bardo had an idea he had been nursing all afternoon.

  It was an idea to organize the three boys he had been with last week end; to incorporate the foursome into a sort of police corps. Their business would be to police the parks of the city to rid them of vagrants and vandals. He had even invented a little song they might adopt as their hymn of allegiance and purpose. He had printed it out carefully on a piece of white paper. It could be sung to the tune of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”:

  Mine eyes have seen the vagrants on the benches in the park.

  And the bums that haunt the pathways while they’re roaming in the dark.

  We’ll attack them, and we’ll beat them, and upon them leave our mark,

  Then we’ll go marching on.

  Glory, glory, hallelujah!

  Glory, glory, hallelujah!

  Glory, glory, hallelujah!

  Then we’ll go marching on.

  There could be three or four more verses to it, about the lovers and the vandals and the juvenile delinquents. He had written only the one. Whenever people were organized it was good to have a song. It gave spirit to the organization. Flip and Manny and Wylie could use some training along these lines. They were too haphazard in their leisure pursuits. Infinitely haphazard.

  Another thing that occurred to Raleigh was the fact that the foursome should have a name and a motto. These too he had taken time to invent and print out carefully on a separate piece of white paper:

  Name: THE DEFENDERS

  Motto: THE BEST DEFENSE IS TO ATTACK.

  Bardo tossed his gold pencil on the desk blotter and got up slowly, stretching. He felt groggy; his eyelids were heavy, and he did not try to resist the impulse to sleep any longer. All summer he had been sleeping twelve to fourteen hours a day, intermittently, napping after lunch and dinner and often in the morning after Ivy had left for the office. Carefully he unlaced his shoes, slipped the trees into them, and snapped them secure. His tie he placed on the rack and his shirt on a hanger, along with his pants. In his undershorts he went to the window and pulled the blind, darkening the room; and he opened the window wider for more air. Then he pulled the cover back on the bed and crawled between the sheets. Curling up there, he closed his eyes, and to the persistent tapping of the rain and of the typewriter in Ivy’s room Bardo dreamed:

  The play was about a king and queen, and from his seat in the theater, Bardo could see the queen’s face very clearly. He said to Manny, who was sitting with him, “That’s Ivy, you know,” and then Manny was not sitting there at all, but his snake was there, and Bardo couldn’t get it to come to him. The king had no face, but he was kissing Ivy on the stage. Bardo decided to go backstage when the performance was over. Then when he looked at his clothes he saw they had turned to rags; and his legs and arms were encrusted with filth. Horrified, he began to scream….

  “Darling?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “I thought I heard you calling.”

  He sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Bar. I woke you up.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference,” he said.

  She sat near his desk, pulling the blind a bit; the rain splashed against the window. “You know, honey, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about something.”

  Bardo wrapped the sheets around his legs, covering his shorts.

  He said, “Sure.”

  “Sometimes I think you’re intuitive, Bar.” “Why so?”

  “Well … do you remember what we talked about this noon?”

  “I’m not that intuitive. You probably just misplaced the ring.”

  “No, darling. I mean, about what you said with regard to Claude? Do you remember? You said perhaps he wants to give me a ring.”

  “And?”

  “And — ” She smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “He does.”

  “Oh,” Bardo said flatly.

  “Bar, Claude is being reassigned. He’s been offered a very fine new position on the West Coast.” “Bright fellow, Mr. McCoy.” “In San Francisco.” “The Golden Gate.”

  “He wouldn’t go until sometime in late October.”

  “Really?”

  “Bar?”

  He didn’t look at her. “What?”

  “Can’t you guess what I’m trying to tell you?”

  “Of course!”

  There was a pause and Ivy Raleigh looked out of the window at the rain. Then she said, “You like Claude, don’t you, Bar?”

  “It’s Claude that doesn’t like me.”

  “He’s immensely fond of you, Bar. I want you to believe that, because it’s true.”

  “Are you going to marry him, then?”

  “After you go away, it’ll be — well, Bar, you’ll start growing away from me and — “

  “And you’re going to marry him.”

  “I’m considering it, Bar … yes.”

  “What do you want to do about it?” he said, “I want you to be happy about it.”

  “Very well,” Bardo said. “Bardo Robert Raleigh takes pleasure in announcing the fact that he is infinitely happy at the fact that you are considering marriage with one McCoy, name of Claude.”

  She looked at him for a moment, puzzled; then she laughed. He was sitting up in bed there with the sheet around him, an eyebrow cocked, a quizzical grin tipping his lips.

  “Oh, darling,” she said, getting up and going over to him. “You’re a tease!” She bent and hugged him. “For a moment you had me thinking that I was going to have a problem.”

  12

  He never cared how we felt. He disgraced us before friends and neighbors. And now he has disgraced us again.

  — Statement made to reporters by Peter Heine

  BEHIND HIS HORN-RIMMED GLASSES, Leemie’s eyes were sympathetic that Saturday morning, and he said, “You got a right to be a blue boy every now and then, man. You got that right.”

  “I’m cutting out,” Flip Heine told him. “And I’m going to cut out wide. Out of this stinking city! Away from this place!”

  He was sitting on the edge of the iron bed in Leemie’s room, the cap pulled down on his head. His eyes were bloodshot from crying, and the handkerchief Leemie had lent him was balled up in his hand.

  “Where you gonna go, man?”

  “I’m never going back.”

  “You had it!”

  “Jesus, Leem, did your old man ever pull anything like this on you?”

  “He raised me right,” Leemie said. “I goofed. I didn’t go for the readin’, writin’, ‘rithmetic routine. You know? Like, I didn’t dig the stuff. I had eyes for the numbers outside books.”

  Flip wadded the handkerchief into his pocket. “My ol
d man thinks the place is all I got to know about, all I got to think about. I’d just as soon gone to college. You know? Yale. Class!”

  “Mine raised me right,” Leemie repeated.

  “Be a lawyer or something big deal. Friend of mine’s going to be a lawyer. My old man thinks Yale’s the name of a lock.”

  “He had you under lock and key, didn’t he, man?” “No more,” Flip said, pulling the cap down farther toward his ears. “I checked out for final this time.”

  Leemie walked over to the old maple bureau and pulled out a drawer. He fumbled for an envelope and a small square package of tissue. “Yeah,” he said, “but the break ain’t all that easy to make. You got to have moola, man! Everything costs.”

  “Why couldn’t I work for you, Leem? Till I got enough?”

  “No dice,” Leemie said. He sat down in the rocker near the window and began to roll some of the ground-up weed he took from the envelope into the tissue. “Runaway kid around, I’d get hung, man. A few days you can stay, O.K., but I can’t use a permanent roommate.”

  “Who’d know, Leem?”

  “Some wise dick. No dice.” Leemie brought the tissue to his mouth, licked an end, and rolled it up tight to make a cigarette.

  “You smoking tea?” Flip asked him.

  “Yeah. A little pot now and then picks up the pieces.”

  “I never had any of the stuff. Once in school they give us this big lecture, see, all about how it makes you squirrely.”

  “Makes squirrels out squirrels,” Leemie said. He struck a match and lit up, sucking the smoke into his nostrils and sniffing it up into his head.

  “What’s it make you feel like, anyhow?”

  “No way. That’s the kick.”

  “You just sail, huh, Leem?”

  “Man, you don’t go no place. You stay.”

  “Can I have a drag?”

  “No dice. It costs. Can’t hardly make a strike these days with all the Fridays out smellin’ the air.” “What’s it cost?” Flip asked. “A packet like this? Four fin.” “Man!”