by Thom Whalen
* * *
Nothing much happened over the weekend. I was waiting until Wednesday – Randal and Gwen’s day off – to make my big move with Katie.
Once again, after a dead slow lunch, I contrived to take my break at the same time as her. She wanted a BLT so I loaded it up with double bacon. There’s no such thing as too much bacon. I made a cheeseburger for myself.
At the table around the back, I opened the conversation by commenting, “I think you’d like San Diego better than San Francisco.” I’d spent an hour in the public library, getting my facts straight so that I could make sure that she didn’t hitchhike to the wrong part of California. San Diego wasn’t exactly the radical center of the country but I did find a magazine article that said that one part of town, Ocean Beach, was the Haight-Ashbury of San Diego. That sounded like what Katie was looking for.
“San Diego?” she said, looking disinterested.
“Yes,” I replied, trying to inject some enthusiasm into her. “You said that you wanted to move to California and drop out.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “That doesn’t sound like much fun. I was thinking that maybe I should be an artist. I saw on TV that there’s some guy who just drips paint onto canvases and sells it for millions of dollars. I could do that.”
“Jackson Pollock,” I said.
“What?”
“Jackson Pollock was the artist who made drip paintings.”
“That’s the guy?”
“Yes. He’s dead. He died in the fifties. Drunk driving.”
“Good. If he’s dead, then he’s not making any more paintings. I don’t have to worry about him taking my customers.” She looked thoughtful. “I know that I won’t be able to sell my paintings for as much as he does, but if people will pay a million dollars for one of his, they should pay a thousand dollars for one of mine, right?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“I’d only have to sell one every month or two and I’d be rich. Even if I have to buy the paint myself.”
“Sure. Pollock used house paint. You can buy it by the gallon. It doesn’t cost much if you buy the cheap stuff.”
She smiled happily at me.
That was good. I was looking for a happy smile.
“I was wondering if you’d like to see The French Connection?” I almost stuttered, I was so nervous asking her out.
“The French what?”
I took a deep breath. “The French Connection. It’s a movie. It’s playing at the Paramount this week.”
“I never heard of it.” She looked suspicious. “What kind of connection is French?”
“It’s a movie about smuggling drugs.”
“From Columbia?”
“From France. That’s why it’s called The French Connection.”
“I didn’t know that they grew drugs in France.”
“They didn’t grow them there. They just smuggle them through there.”
“Oh. Aren’t drugs against the law in France?”
“I think so.”
“So, instead of just smuggling the drugs directly here, they’d rather smuggle them through an extra country?”
“Right.”
“Oh.” She frowned, trying to understand that.
“It’s a good movie. It’s getting great reviews. Gene Hackman’s in it.”
“Oh. I guess I’d like to see it sometime, then. I should ask my sister.”
“Your sister?” That confused me.
“If she’d like to go to the movie with me.”
“What about me?”
“What about you?” She raised her lovely eyebrows at me.
“Would you like to go with me?”
“You want to come with Mary and me?”
“No. Just with you. Not with Mary. Just you and me going to the movie.”
“Oh.” Comprehension dawning across her face. “You’re asking me on a date.”
“Yes.”
She studied my face. “No. I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“I see.” My heart fell to the bottom of my chest. It showed on my face.
“No,” she said. “It’s not like that. I’m sure that you’re a great guy and all. But we’re working together now and then you’re going to university and I don’t think that I’d want to move to New York with you. It wouldn’t work out. We’d just end up broken up and mad at each other.”
I was asking for a first date and she was already talking about getting a divorce. I wanted a girl who moved fast but I didn’t exactly have this in mind.
My mistake was beginning this conversation by asking her about her long-term plans. It put her in the wrong frame of mind.
She finished her double-bacon BLT and smacked her lips. “I don’t think you put enough lettuce and tomato in it. It tasted too much like bacon. Break’s over. Time to get back to work.”
She left me at the table, a broken man. It wasn’t only that I could see no end to my virgin status; it was hard to hear that a girl didn’t like me well enough to want to break up with me in a few months.
That rejection was hard to take.