Флетчер Флора - The Hot Shot

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.