Evan Hunter - Sons

Insanely.

Try that on your old deuce-and-a-half, baby.

You remember my telling you that for Intro to Fine Arts (a real crap course) I had to make these charts graphically illustrating the various periods of architecture, sculpture and painting? Like, you know, Hellenistic and Renaissance and 17th Century and all that jazz, with examples of each type, a very hairy project, Wat, considering how few credits the course is worth. Anyway, it was due Friday, and when I carried it over to the school, it was naturally pouring bullets, so I had to wrap it in the plastic cloth from our kitchen table. The architecture chart got a little messy, but I think I’ll get a good grade, anyway. I’d better get a good grade, after all that work. I’ve been at it steadily since the beginning of April, almost two months, I guess. You have no idea how great it feels to be finished with the damn thing.

Carol turned in an English paper at the same time, so we both went out to celebrate. Her boyfriend is in the Navy, and we are known far and wide as The Celebrating Celebrated Celibates, which is not a bad name for a rock group, what do you think? (Never mind, I know what you think.) Anyway, we went over to the North End for a great Italian meal, and it was too beautiful outside to go to a movie afterwards, so we wandered over to the docks and bought a six-pack and sat smoking cigarettes and drinking beer and looking out over the harbor and at Logan Airport across the way, and just talking. She’s a really decent kid, Wat, even though she leaves the apartment looking like a boonie, if you take my meaning. We went shopping afterwards, each of us deciding that we deserved a reward for turning in our respective projects on time, and for having done such a hootch job, besides.

1st Soldier: What do you call a hootch in a town eighteen miles northwest of Saigon?

2nd Soldier: A Cu Chi hootch.

Carol is a nut for rings. I think she got the idea from Ringo, she’s an absolute Beatlemaniac, plays their albums day and night and drives me out of my flak jacket. (I know what that means, smartie.) She bought this beautiful old ring that fits on her pinky and has a tiny snippet of braided hair behind its glass face. The woman in the store told us it was a mourning ring, you know, with the hair being from a corpse — enough to make the blood run cold, Wat, mine anyway. Carol didn’t seem to care at all, though. She’s going to take out the hair that’s in the ring now. and replace it with a lock from her boyfriend’s head, which seems terribly morbid to me, and also somewhat like tempting the fates, though he’s not in any particular danger stationed as he is on Treasure Island.

I have to study now.

I love you, Wat. Be careful, darling.

June 6, 1966

Wat, my darling,

I am absolutely limp.

I just got back to the apartment after the most awful exam I’ve ever taken in my entire life, bar none. I was up cramming half the night, figuring it would be either multiple choice or true-false because that’s what he gave his other section. I got there with my head full of facts, certain that if anyone accidentally jostled me in the hallway I’d start spilling campaigns and elections, bills and laws, state legislatures, and government finance all over the floor, and I sat down, and he handed out the exam, and it was a discussion -type question! He wanted to know all about the House of Representatives, structure and organization, officers, party leaders, committees, procedure, etc. I’m sure I flunked it, and I’m sure it’s because I lost my study hat.

Wat, I feel totally and hopelessly miserable.

I’m going to take a hot bath, and wash my hair and put it up in rollers so I can enjoy being a girl. Then I’m going to eat a full pound box of chocolates and read The Magus, which was my present to myself for having turned in the Art project. Still no grade on that, by the way. I’m entitled to a rest, don’t you think? Tell me I’m entitled to a rest, Wat.

Wat: You’re entitled to a rest, Dana.

Thank you, darling.

I have a late nomination for the Tyler-Castelli Award for April, having picked up a back issue of Vogue Magazine in the dentist’s office last week. Trumpets. The envelope, please. Nominated for the Tyler-Castelli Award for Cramming Two Commercials Into A Single Sentence While Managing Besides to Spell “Colors” With Vast Affectation — Vogue Magazine for April 1, 1966, in its PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT feature: “People are talking about... The Bleached-out girls of The Group, the new movie of Mary McCarthy’s novel so Cloroxed that it took out all the author’s grit and hard colours, leaving the design so faded that there is little to watch except Shirley Knight who has crammed a portrait into the gesture of reaching for a Kleenex.”

Please cast your vote early.

Oh my God, I almost forgot to tell you about the kitten! We’re not supposed to keep pets, you know, our landlady would throw a fit if she found out. But do you remember that terrible rainy Friday when I delivered my tablecloth-wrapped masterpiece? Well, on the same day, Carol found this bedraggled, half-drowned kitten cringing and mewing under the front steps, and she hid it under her raincoat and brought it upstairs. It is a piebald cat, which doesn’t mean having very little hair, Wat, as I’m sure you know with a hootch intelligence like yours. Nor does piebald apply only to horses, as I’m sure you also know with your boonie education and your big deuce-and-a-half, not to mention your M-16 — which reminds me, what is an M-16? Piebald is having black and white patches, which the kitten has. Because of her distinctive coloration, we call her Rusty. I think she’s cross-eyed, and I also think I’m allergic to her fur, but she’s so adorable you could die from her. She peed all over Carol’s bed last night. Carol did not find it too amusing.

Off to my tub! I’m going to soak for an hour and a half, and then go read my fat book. Oooooh, what a marvelous time I have ahead of me! You’ve cheered me up already, my darling, and I adore you.

P. S. Why are the people in Vogue always talking about things nobody I know is ever talking about?

June 9, 1966

Darling Wat,

You figure my grades.

Fine Arts project, on which I worked my kishkas to the bone for close to two months: C minus.

Intro to Modern Government, for which I studied all the wrong things: B plus.

English Lit, casual studying, no sweat: A.

French Lit, full night’s cramming, much Dex: C.

Haven’t yet received a grade in Renaissance Lit, but I’m fearing the worst because I studied hardest for that one. Do you think I’m paranoid? (That’s what they keep whispering all the time, Wat, following me in the street and watching every move I make. I know they’re after me, and wouldn’t be surprised if they’d reached all my instructors and faked up all those cockamamie grades.)

Bumper Sticker of the Week: USE EROGENOUS ZONE NUMBERS

I don’t want you to think that bumper stickers are becoming a fad here in Boston, but a lady got hit by a Cadillac the other day at the top of Beacon Hill where Joy crosses Myrtle, and imprinted backwards on her behind they found the words:

Hilarious?

Ho-ho.

Rusty the cat just looked up at me appreciatively, so I guess she thought it was pretty good.

Wat, I don’t know what to do. Because of the big snowstorm we had back in February, with classes being canceled and all that, the semester’s been extended almost two weeks beyond what’s usual. But in spite of the grace period (school ends this Saturday), Carol and I still haven’t found an apartment for next semester, and she’s beginning to kvetch now about “Do we have to move, it’s so nice here, etc?” She’s got a point, in that we do have a lovely apartment in a nice old building, and close to the school besides. But she’s such a slob, really. I love her dearly and all that, but I’m getting tired of tripping over her panties and books and records on the bedroom floor, and I thought I’d convinced her at last that it would be nice if we could find an apartment with a larger bedroom so that we wouldn’t constantly be getting in each other’s way. At first she said she didn’t think her father would spring for the possibly higher rent, but she finally got the message, and we’ve been actively looking since the beginning of May. But now she’s starting to waver, especially since it appears we’ll have to stay over to keep looking past the 11th. I’m not too happy about that prospect, Wat. I’ve already arranged a lift down with a girl from Brooklyn who has a beat-up old Buick station wagon with lots of room in the back, and I’ve begun packing my clothes and things, and I honestly don’t feel like hanging around Boston for however long it takes to find a new place, especially when Carol no longer has her heart in it. What to do, what to do. I’m sure this is all terribly fascinating to you out there waiting for somebody to say at least I love you.