Lawrence Block: Chip Harrison Scores Again

“Oh.”

“I was never married,” she said.

“Oh.”

“It started when I was twelve. He came to my room and told me I was a big girl and it was time I learned how to fuck. I hope you don’t mind my using that word.”

“Not at all.”

“And then he fucked me. I didn’t like it, but my mother said it was my duty because he was my father. She read from the Bible. About Lot and his daughters. I didn’t like it at all for the first few years, but then I got to enjoy it pretty well.”

“Oh.”

“What I didn’t like was he would always pull it out just before the end. And when he couldn’t in time I was always lucky, until one time when I was twenty-six years old and I found out I was pregnant and he shot himself.” She thought for a moment. “I don’t see why he shot himself,” she said reasonably. “There was no need.”

“Oh.”

“I went to Kansas City, and then mother told everyone that I was married, and I had the baby, and then mother told everyone that Mr. Cooper was killed in an airplane crash and I would be coming back to live with her. But I think everybody knows. Wouldn’t you think so?”

“Maybe.”

“I think they must. Especially with the baby being an idiot and all. I wish they had told me right away he was an idiot. I would have drowned him. But by the time I knew about it I was attached to him and I couldn’t do it. That happens, you know. You get attached to them, even if they are.”

She went silent then. Thank God. After a while I said, “Uh, I’m kind of exhausted. I have to get to sleep, and you probably ought to go to your own room. I mean, you wouldn’t want your mother to find out about this.”

“Why not?”

“Well,” I said, “I would be embarrassed.”

“Oh,” she said. She thought about it, then nodded. “All right,” she said, and off she went, her dress over her arm.

I was just falling asleep when the door opened again. There she was, carrying a cup and saucer. No dress this time. She was still naked.

“I brought you a surprise,” she said gaily.

“If that’s my tea, I don’t really want it.”

“It’s not,” she said.

“I still don’t want it.”

“Well, it’s not for you.”

“Huh?”

“Lie down and shut up,” she said. “It’s for the surprise.”

“What surprise?”

“You’ll see. You’ll like it.”

“Look, all I really want is to go to sleep.”

“You can go to sleep in a minute. Lie down.”

“What’s in the cup?”

“Just warm water,” she said, and filled her mouth with it, and leaned over me.

Oh, the hell with it. I wasn’t going to mention it but it’s too perfect, and if it ruins her reputation that’s just the way it goes. I don’t think she’ll mind, anyway.

It was Waterloo, Iowa. I swear to God.

There were some other girls during the rest of the summer. Some I got to and some I struck out with. None of them were very important.

I drove into Madison a couple of weeks after the fall term started. I would have gotten there earlier but I kept putting it off until finally I knew it was time. The old Cadillac got me there in good shape. I started looking around for a tourist home like the ones I had been staying in for the past half a year, and I drove around for a long time without seeing any of the usual signs. Then I remembered that Madison was a university town, and that people with rooms to rent would take in college students by the year.

And I also remembered, just about the same time, that if Hallie was here and stuck in some dormitory it might be pretty stupid to room with some widow. So I got a room at a motel. Sixteen bucks, and payable in advance, and it wasn’t even all that much of a room.

I didn’t care. I was in pretty good shape financially, with almost two hundred and fifty dollars, which was more than I had had when I left Bordentown. Even with all the gas that the old car burned, I had been earning money faster than I spent it.

I unpacked in my motel room and put my clothes away. I took a shower and shaved, although I had already shaved and showered in the morning. Then I got dressed and noticed I was sweating, and I took another shower and put on a clean shirt and made myself stretch out on the bed and calm down so I would stop sweating.

The campus was huge. It sprawled all over the place. There were a lot of kids sitting in groups under trees and other groups of kids hurrying here and there. I couldn’t understand how they could possibly find their way around. It was immense.

I asked a lot of people various dumb questions until someone told me where you could find out where a student was staying, and somebody there told me what dorm she was in, and various other people pointed me toward it.

I went and stood in front of it. I didn’t know whether it was all right for me to go in or not. I thought of stopping some girl on the way out and asking her to find Hallie for me, but instead I just waited.

And then two girls came out, and one of them was Hallie.

She looked exactly the way she had looked a year ago. Exactly. She was wearing dungarees and a sweatshirt and sandals, and her granny glasses made her brown eyes look even bigger than they were. Her hair, straight and glossy brown, was a year longer than it had been.

I said, “Hallie?”

She looked at me, and stared, and said, “Chip?”

I nodded, waiting for her to run up and throw herself into my arms. (I had rehearsed this scene a lot.) She didn’t exactly do this. What she did was say something to the other girl about seeing her in class, and then she walked slowly toward me, a smile spreading on her lips, and reached out her hands for mine.

Her hands felt small and very soft.

“I can’t believe it,” she said. “When did you get here?”

“About an hour ago.”

“Are you going to be studying here?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“I was in the area,” I said, “and I thought I would drop in and see you.”

“Wow, that’s really great. Oh, wow. Like I can’t really believe all this.”

“Yeah.”

“I got your cards. I was going to write to you, but there was never a return address.”

“Well, I never stayed in one place very long.”

“Oh.”

“I wrote you a couple of letters, too.”

“I never got them.”

“I never mailed them.”

“Oh.”

“You look fantastic.”

“So do you. You filled out a lot, didn’t you? You were thinner. You didn’t used to be so big in the shoulders, did you?”

“I guess not. Hallie—”

“Could we sort of walk this way, Chip? I have this class.”

“Oh, sure.”

“I suppose I could cut it.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Well, I really shouldn’t. They keep a record of cuts. It’s pretty idiotic but they do.”

“I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

“It wouldn’t be trouble, exactly—”

“I mean, it’s not as if I have to be on the road in an hour or anything. I mean, I could meet you after class.”

“That would be great.”

“What is it, an hour?”

“Uh-huh. If you could meet me out in front? By the step over there?”

“In an hour. Sure.”

“Great.”

You want to know something? I wasn’t going to write all this shit. I had it planned differently. The last chapter, Chapter Sixteen, only has twenty-seven words in it. (In case you forgot: There were some other girls during the rest of the summer. Some I got to and some I struck out with. Paragraph. None of them were very important.)

Well, it wouldn’t have been a hell of a lot of trouble to take those twenty-seven words and make twenty-seven pages out of them. Or even more. Because whether what happened for the rest of the summer was important or not, it might have been mildly interesting. One time I double-dated with this farmhand. We took out two sisters and each screwed one of them and then traded girls and screwed them again. I had never done anything like that before, and it would have been interesting enough to make a scene out of. It would have made a damned good scene, as a matter of fact.