He waited for her to walk away. She didn’t. So he said something else. A second later, he’d forgotten what it was. He was sure it had been inane.
“I’m here with my folks,” she said.
“Where are they?”
“They went out to eat with some friends and play bridge. They won’t return before midnight.”
Was he making that up or had Tammy just said she was alone for the evening? Blondie shook his head to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. Tammy gave him a curious look.
“Just clearing my head,” he said.
“Do you have a cold?”
“No. I just have something in my head.”
Good Christ, what was he saying?
“Did the rest of your group come?”
She knew about his group. That had to mean something.
“Isn’t Paul Feller one of your friends?” she asked.
Did she have the hots for Feller?
“Why do you ask?”
“No reason.”
He stood motionless for years. He could feel himself aging before her eyes, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“I was on my way to have some dinner,” she said, turning to leave.
“Yeah, there’s a nice little Mexican place not far from here.”
A miracle. His tongue had come unstuck. Was it too late?
“I don’t know it.”
“I could take you.”
“Okay.”
That he was walking with Tammy, talking with her, going to dinner with her … it was beyond comprehension. Night after night, Blondie had fantasized being with her and now it was happening. He found it even more incredible, moments later, to be eating refried beans and enchiladas with her. It was as if they were a regular couple.
He wondered if she had any idea how she affected him? Her dark hair, her sloe eyes and crimson lips … no woman could ever have been this lovely. Not Helen of Troy. Not Elizabeth Taylor. Not even Sandra Dee. He was coming unglued.
Overhead, a wooden fan turned slowly, stirring the sultry air. Don’t pass out, he told himself. Remember where you are. Remember who you are, he added. A college guy. Well, almost.
To hide his nervousness, Blondie asked Tammy about herself. He was surprised to observe that she, like he, was choosing her words with care. For a while, they spoke of high school and mutual acquaintances. She teased him about Phyllis but backed away when she noticed his sour expression.
“She’s not very pretty, is she?” Tammy said. “Not much personality either. She’s pretty dull.”
Wasn’t that what Phyllis had said about Tammy?
“I thought she was your friend.”
Tammy shrugged.
Blondie mentioned he’d signed up for the draft.
“Do boys have to sign up?”
“There’s a war going on,” Blondie explained.
She’d never heard of Vietnam.
She told Blondie she was miffed at her parents for not buying her a car.
“I don’t have a car of my own either and I’m a senior,” Blondie said.
Tammy laughed.
“No. I’m a senior. You’re a graduate.”
“You’re right, of course,” Blondie agreed, laughing too.
She was appropriately impressed when he told her he was going to college, although she admitted she’d never heard of Smith-Reid.
“Are you planning to go?” he asked.
“I guess.”
“You’re not sure?”
“My folks want me to,” she said.
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. Get a car.”
A car? That was her goal?
“You know what I’d like?” Tammy said.
“What’s that?”
“A beer. I haven’t had one since I got here.”
“I’ve got some beer,” Blondie said, “but it’s kinda flat.”
“That’s okay. I don’t have much taste for it anyway. I just want to get a buzz on. You wouldn’t believe how boring my folks are.”
Outside, the sun had dropped below the rooftops. A firefly flitted past Blondie’s eyes and disappeared among the new stars of the night. He took Tammy’s arm and led her to the Georgian.
“I shouldn’t go in,” she told him. “It wouldn’t look right. Me there with a room full of guys.”
The room was still empty, although there were two more cases of beer stashed under the bed. Dispatch must have returned from the other side of the bay and left again. Blondie changed into jeans and a long-sleeved cotton shirt. He grabbed a can opener and a six-pack.
“Let’s have one now,” Tammy urged when he got back outside.
“Where?”
“Down the alley. Behind the hotel.”
This wasn’t the way he’d expected her to be, sneaking behind a building for a beer. But what the hell? Blondie pulled the church key from his pocket and opened the beer for her. It sprayed his shirt and she laughed. She took the beer and emptied it in three swigs.
“What now?” Blondie asked when she’d finished.
“Let’s go back to my room and drink the rest of them,” Tammy suggested.
Blondie was beginning to think he was making up the whole scene. She was inviting him to go with her alone to her room? To drink beer? His mind was doing cartwheels.
The sky was roseate by the time they reached her motel. At the door, Blondie leaned over and kissed her.
“I always figured you for shy,” Tammy said.
“I am.”
“You don’t act it.”
Tammy pulled a key from her shorts and let them in. The room was chilly from the air conditioner. She turned it off and jumped onto the double bed. Blondie popped open a beer for each of them and sat down beside her.
Tammy began talking about growing up in Fenton and the people she’d known. Blondie was interested at first. Her life was so different from his. She’d known the same people all her life. But, as she kept talking, Blondie began to wonder if the people in Fenton were all she knew or cared about.
“Don’t you have a dream?” he asked after a while.
“Sure. I’d like to have a cherry red Corvette.”
“I mean, don’t you sometimes lie awake at night and picture yourself doing something extraordinary?”
“You mean like running around at the school picnic wearing a tee shirt with an obscene picture on it?”
Blondie blushed, then laughed. He’d asked for that. He was being awfully serious.
After another beer, Tammy rested her hand on his leg. Blondie felt like a warm drug had entered his blood stream. He began to feel amorous. He pulled Tammy to him and kissed her. She didn’t resist. He did it again, longer.
“Do you like kissing me?” he asked her.
“Yeah. It feels good.”
Blondie rubbed her back, pressing her against him. He could feel she was a little flat chested, but she was soft. Growing bold from the alcohol, Blondie ran his hands over her breasts. Tammy shivered but didn’t stop him. Her kisses grew more passionate.
When was she going to stop him? Nice girls were supposed to make a guy work for it. He didn’t want her to hold out too long, of course, but she was supposed to show some resistance.
She never did.
Soon, they were making love with each other — passionately, even wildly. She thrust herself back at him with a willfulness that surprised him. Brick would have loved it. Dispatch would have loved it. Perhaps Feller would have loved it. Blondie didn’t. Their lovemaking was more energetic than tender, more purposeful than spontaneous, more self-conscious than intimate. It was the last thing he would have expected. He’d fucked his dream girl and he still felt incomplete. He felt gypped.
“You don’t seem happy,” she said. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
What could he say? It wasn’t her fault. She’d been trying to please him. She caught the
look he was trying to hide. Her eyes flashed.
“I don’t understand guys,” she said. “They always expect something more.”
“You mean there’ve been others?”
“Are you serious? You thought you were the first?”
She wasn’t trying to be snotty, but her answer grated on him.
“Who?” He suddenly felt possessive.
“Why do you want to know?”
Blondie realized he’d put her on the defensive.
“I guess it’s pretty dumb,” he sighed. “I just thought you’d be a virgin.”
Tammy put her arm across his chest and rubbed his side.
“Why is that so important to guys?”
It was a fair question. Was it an ego thing? Like being the first to scale a mountain? He knew that wasn’t it for him. He just wanted sex to be special — and the only way it could be was if it were parceled out sparingly. And, whether it was fair or not, girls were the ones who had to do the rationing. For sure, guys never would.
“There’ve only been two others,” Tammy said after a few moments, trying to cheer him.
Blondie waited. He didn’t want to ask, but he wanted to know.
“Bobby Clements … ” Her chest heaved.
Of course, Bobby would have had her before him. Bobby would have always had things before Blondie. That didn’t bother him. Perhaps if Bobby were still around ….
” … and Merwin Fester.”
So Barnwell had been telling the truth.
“How could you make love to a creep like Fester?” Blondie asked. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s okay. He is a creep.”
“Then why …. ?”
“Because my parents detested him.”
“You made love with someone to get at your parents?”
“Dumb, huh?”
Blondie didn’t answer. He wanted to go. He told Tammy he needed to check in on Shakes, who’d gotten sick at the beach.
“Don’t you want to split the last beer?” she asked him.
“Nah,” he said, walking to the door. “You take it.”
“I’m sorry it wasn’t better for you,” she said. “You’re a nice guy.”
“I’m sure we’ll see each other again,” Blondie said as he walked out the door. He knew it was a lie. He couldn’t see her again. He had to retain some memory of the way she’d been when he’d first held her at that CYO dance — when she’d been perfect, the way only dreams can be.
It was dark now. Stars flickered like faraway torches. Blondie felt confused. He didn’t know whether to be happy or sad. He’d gotten what he’d wanted, but it wasn’t what he’d expected.
Halfway down the boardwalk, he ran into Shakes. He was the color of a tomato. His skin was peeling.
“I’ve b-been l-looking for you,” he said.
“For me? Where have you guys been?”
“Tommy J-Jordan is h-having a p-party in his room.”
“Who’s Tommy Jordan?”
“He graduated l-last y-year. H-he’s got l-lots of b-beer.”
Why not get wasted? His brain was approaching meltdown anyway. Nothing that had happened since they arrived in Ocean City seemed to feel right. He felt like an alien interacting with earthlings, unable to connect.
Jordan’s room turned out to be a small suite in a seedy hotel, the sitting area dimly lit by a bulb from the adjoining kitchenette. A Freddy Cannon album was blasted away on a portable phonograph, while shadow figures meandered through the murk. After his eyes adjusted Blondie was able to make out Feller, Brick, and Dispatch in one corner talking to a couple girls he’d never seen before.
Dispatch was pressing his cause with one of the girls. Blondie could tell because a look of alarm began to spread across her face. Brick sat cross-legged and shirtless on the sofa. He was shit-faced.
“Some fun,” Blondie gibed when he got Feller alone.
“It’s all we could find. There were some other girls here for a while, but they left.”
Feller gave Blondie an inquisitive look.
“You have a strange look on your face.”
“I ran into Tammy.”
Feller arched his eyebrows.
“And?”
“She took me to her room.”
Feller whistled.
“You must’ve gotten lucky,” he said.
“No. Not lucky.”
Blondie opened a beer. He’d just about finished it when Frank Purdy appeared. He was wearing a tattered tee shirt, ragged shorts, and a New York Yankees baseball hat.
“What’s he doing here?” Blondie asked Feller.
“Oh yeah, I meant to tell you. Can you believe it? Ocean City is where he and Barnwell got their jobs.”
A wave of anger washed over him. Purdy was invading his space. Blondie downed his beer and strode over to him.
“What rock did you crawl out from under?” he asked him.
“Fuck off, giraffe,” Purdy retorted. “School’s out. Let it rest.”
Purdy wandered into the kitchen and took a beer from the fridge. Blondie followed him. “Are you a friend of Jordan’s?” Blondie challenged, as if he were a bouncer.
“What’s it to you?”
Blondie straightened his back. He was three or four inches taller than Purdy. He could tell his aggressive behavior was making him nervous.
“You want some laughs?” Purdy said in an ingratiating tone.
Blondie stared at him.
“We’ve got Delores Clitoris down the hall naked.”
“Who’s we?”
“Me and Barnwell. He’s making her right now. You want to see?”
Watching Buford Barnwell screw Delores was the last thing Blondie wanted to see, but something in Purdy’s tone alarmed him. When Feller walked past, Blondie grabbed him.
“Purdy wants to show us something,” he said. “I think we better take a look.”
Purdy led them out of the suite and down the dark hallway. He knocked twice on the metal door, then turned the knob and pushed his way in.
The only light came from a flickering candle. Delores was lying naked on the bed, face down. Barnwell stood over her in his underwear, his hard, skinny body like knotted rawhide.
“Hey, no hard feelings, huh?” he said when he saw Blondie. He leaned to his left and nearly lost his balance.
“Buford drank nearly a whole fifth of brandy,” Purdy boasted.
“What happened to her?” Blondie asked.
“She passed out a while ago.”
“Hey, Blondie, you want to see something funny?” Buford asked.
Why was Barnwell being so friendly? Did he think he was cute? Was he trying to make peace with him?
Barnwell grabbed the brandy bottle from the floor. He lurched back toward the bed, held it over Delores and then tipped it so a small trickle of brandy ran down the small of Delore’s back and into the dark cleft between her cheeks.
What was he up to? Blondie felt a worm of apprehension inch down his spine.
“Watch this…” Barnwell said. Before anyone could move, Barnwell pulled a book of matches from his pocket, struck one, and dropped it on Delores. A blue-and-orange flame flickered from the small of her back to her buttocks. An unearthly scream burst from her lips. Feller ran to her and smothered the flames with the bedspread.
Blondie flew at Barnwell. The last thing he remembered was the startled look on Buford’s face. For a long time — it seemed like a long time — Blondie was aware of nothing but his intense rage and his flying fists and legs. It was a fury such as he’d never experienced before. A dam had burst inside.
Feller grabbed Blondie’s arm and pulled him away.
“Stop, man, you’re gonna kill him,” he said.
Blondie was vaguely aware of Feller leading him back to the hotel and talking him into bed. Then, oblivion.
When he awoke, the Georgian was quiet and the room w
as dark. His face hurt, his body hurt, but his mind was still and clear, clearer than he could ever remember. More than clear — alert, expectant, as if awaiting some searing insight, some form of psychic surgery. But when the revelation came, it was more like a tap on the back of the head than the slice of a scalpel: He wasn’t having fun anymore.
He wasn’t having fun although the Ocean City caper was already primo. Donald Duck and Gross George. Marianne and Patty. The Green Fog. The Long Run. Blondie knew the group would be regaling each other with stories about this trip for a long time to come. Yet the feeling the accompanied his thoughts about it was a tedium bordering on revulsion. He’d done it all before. He was burned out.
Looking back, it struck him that almost the entire past year had been devoted to entertaining himself — either through participating in the group’s aimless escapades, or by diverting himself with romantic fantasies and heroic conceits. The conclusion was inescapable: He’d been afraid to face himself alone. Now that he felt he might be ready he didn’t know who he was. All he could say for sure was that he wasn’t the same person he’d been the night before. That realization wasn’t as frightening as he might have expected. After all, someone — or some thing — was inside his head looking out. But whatever that person or thing was, it lay beneath the personality he’d come to define as himself. It was both him and not him — a detached observer, clear-sighted, dispassionate. Was he really that free of his past? If so, perhaps he could choose who he wanted to be. But how did one go about that?
Blondie pondered the question until the first light of day unzipped the night. Then he felt a compulsion to flee the Georgian’s confining walls. He to up and dressed without a sound.
Outside, ripples of pink gathered in the morning clouds as the sun struggled to lift itself from the sea. There was a chill in the air that raised the hairs on his legs and tickled his nose. A fine mist hung over the deserted boardwalk which, along with the lack of strollers, made it seem a long-abandoned trail through a jungle of shops, cafes and arcades. All was silent save for the slapping of his sandals against the planks and the sighing of the sea.
Blondie wandered with no destination in mind. He’d reached the end of a journey. The old lodestars — a girl, a gang, a good time — were useless. He would be going a new direction.
He began to see how completely focused he’d been upon himself. Because of it, he’d unintentionally hurt the people he cared most about — Flossie, Tammy, even Grouper. He’d treated them like cardboard cutouts from a little girl’s book of dolls — dressing them and fitting them into the script of his life he was so busy creating. He’d viewed them as two-dimensional, with no depth, and when he’d finally seen them as they were, he’d abandoned them.
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