Sheldon Lord - So Willing

Vince parked his father’s car in front of Betty’s house, checked in the glove compartment to be sure he hadn’t forgotten the “necessary equipment,” smoothed his hair on the left side, where the wind coming in the window had mussed it, and stepped out of the car.

Betty’s father was sitting on the porch in his undershirt. It was seven-thirty of an evening late in June, and just twilight. Betty’s father was an indistinct figure seen from the street, an expanse of white undershirt and a glowing cigarette, that was all.

Vince frowned. Betty’d told him her parents were going to be out tonight, and he’d planned to bring her back here after the movies. A bed had it all over a backseat any day, particularly with a virgin. Well, the hell with it. The backseat would have to do.

Erasing the frown and replacing it with an easy, deferential smile, Vince walked around the car, across the sidewalk and up the walk. “Hi, Mister Baxter,” he said, as he went up the stoop.

“Good evening, Vince.”

“Betty ready yet?”

“I don’t suppose so. You know how women are.”

Mister Baxter chuckled. He had an asinine habit of trying to get on a pals relationship with Betty’s dates. It made Vince uncomfortable, but he managed not to show it. If you wanted to get anywhere with a girl you had to get along with her parents. That was rule number one.

Mister Baxter motioned at the screen door. “You might just go on in and see,” he said.

“Thanks, Mister Baxter,” Vince said. It hadn’t taken long with the Baxters, not long at all. He’d taken Betty out three times, and already he was at the stage with her parents where he could just walk into the house. The fact that Mister Baxter worked so damn hard to make everybody like him had helped, of course. Mister Baxter was a sales manager for Modnoc Products, the local plastic company. He’d started as a commission salesman and learned to treat everybody like a long-lost buddy. He still had the habit, combined with an obsession to get along with the younger generation just to prove he wasn’t old yet. So Vince hadn’t had to work hard to make Mister Baxter like him at all. He’d just shown up that first evening, three weeks ago, smiling politely, a conservatively dressed, good-looking young man of seventeen, and Mister Baxter had fallen all over himself to be chums.

As for Mrs. Baxter, it didn’t matter a bit what she thought. Mrs. Baxter was the closest thing to being invisible of anyone Vince had ever met. Not physically invisible — she was about five foot four and weighed nearly two hundred pounds, topped by stringy tight-curled, gray hair and a simpering fat face — but her personality was invisible. Her voice was so faint it was almost non-existent, and if she had any opinions or beliefs or thoughts about anything, she kept them to herself. She inevitably stood around in the background somewhere, smiling her please-don’t-hurt-me smile and fumbling with her faded apron. Vince had given her about thirty seconds worth of charm the first time he’d come to the house, and had ignored her ever since.

He ignored her now. He opened the screen door and stepped into the foyer of the house. The stairs to the second floor bedrooms were straight ahead, the living room off to the left. Mrs. Baxter was in the living room, watching some stupid television program, and when she heard the screen door close she looked over, smiling as usual, and in her faded voice said, “Good evening, Vince.”

“Hi, Mrs. Baxter,” Vince said. He returned her smile for a tenth of a second, and then went forward to the foot of the stairs. “Hey, Betty!” he shouted.

“In a minute!” came the answering shout.

“Sure,” Vince said, under his breath. Betty, in her own sweet way, was as bad as her parents.

Mrs. Baxter leaned forward in her chair to say, “Why don’t you come in and watch television with me while you wait, Vince?”

The prospect sickened. Vince thought it over for a second. If he went back out on the porch, Mister Baxter, who was convinced that everybody in the whole United States of America was as psycho about baseball as he was, would start jabbering about who did what on the ballfield this afternoon, and Vince couldn’t have named three major league ballplayers if his life depended on it. He might even have had trouble naming three major league teams. At least there wouldn’t be any conversation with invisible Mrs. Baxter.

“Sure,” he said politely. “Thanks a lot.”

He went into the living room and sat down facing the television set. His eyes were aimed at the set, but he didn’t pay any attention to the blue-gray shadows flitting back and forth across the screen. He spent his time thinking about Betty, who was sixteen and good-looking and well-built and a virgin. His first virgin, by God!

Vince had been fifteen when he had first discovered how easy it was for him to get a girl to go the limit with him. He’d made another discovery at the same time. He discovered why it was that people spent so much of their time thinking about sex and talking about sex and planning for sex and having sex and chasing after sex. It was because sex was the greatest thing since rings with secret compartments. Girls, he had discovered, had secret compartments, too, and they contained a map to paradise. It was farewell Captain Marvel, a new marvel has been found.

Sex was great. Sex was great before, when you were leading up to it, working around like the coolest strategist who ever lived, like a band of Indians sneaking up on the fort, ready to crash through the wall the minute they were close enough. And it was great during, which went without saying. And it was great after, when the girl would look at you like you were God and you knew she’d give anything to have you do it to her again. And it was great even later, when you got together with the other guys, and everybody has sex on the mind, trying to figure out how to get some for themselves, and you could tell them you’ve had it, and this is what it was like.

For some guys it was tough to get some. For Vince it was the easiest thing in the world. You just had to have the right attitude for it, that was all. You had to see it as a kind of war, with the girl and her parents and adults everywhere as the enemy. First, you had to play sheepdog and break the girl loose from the pack, get her off by herself. Then you had to play the strategist, and that was where Vince had a natural talent.

The thing was, every girl had a Dream Man. Usually, he was some movie star, or maybe a combination of movie stars, or singers, or something like that. You found out who the Dream Man was, what his qualities were, what he was like — and the girl never got tired of talking about her Dream Man, once you got her started — and then you simply showed her you had the exact same qualities the Dream Man had, plus one more quality: You were flesh and blood, and available. And she’d be on her back before you could say, “Unzip.”

For two years now, Vince had been sharpening his form, going with girl after girl, and he hadn’t grown bored with the game yet. Nor did he think he ever would grow bored with it. But tonight was the first time with a virgin. Every other girl he’d ever had had come to him at least second. And a girl who already knew what sex was all about would naturally be more eager than a girl who’d never had any at all.

He’d tried a couple of virgins, two years ago, shortly after losing his own virginity, and had gotten nowhere. So he’d given up virgins as being more trouble than they were worth, and this was the first time he’d purposely gone after a virgin since.

A virgin, by God, a certified virgin. He’d noticed Betty in school, and had talked with a few guys who had taken her out. According to them, it was impossible to get anywhere at all with Betty. You couldn’t even cop a feel without her getting all upset and mad.