Dan Wakefield - Going All the Way - A Novel

“Are you sure they’ll let us in?” he asked Gunner on the way down.

“Sure they will, it’s a mu seum , for God sake.”

“I thought maybe you had to be a student at Herron or something. To get in.”

“It’s for the public,” Gunner explained. “All you have to be is one of the public.”

“Oh.”

Gunner was right. You just walked in and moseyed around, going from one room to another, looking at the paintings and pieces of sculpture they had. But it wasn’t as easy as it sounded. For Sonny, at least. There was a certain technique for standing and looking, for tilting your head in just the right way, for shifting around to get another angle on the thing, moving in closer and then farther back, squinting a little bit, and knowing the right time for leaving one painting and going on to the next. Gunner, of course, got the hang of it right off, as if it were a new kind of sport and he picked up the moves with his natural ability. Sonny felt awkward as hell and was sure that anyone could tell he didn’t know a damn thing about art and was just pretending. One of the hardest parts for him was sticking with one picture for the right length of time. After he had looked at the damn thing for five or ten seconds, he figured he had seen it, and yet he knew that if you moved on that quickly it meant you weren’t serious. You had to hang around and keep ogling the damn thing.

Gunner even knew how to make the whispered comments. Rubbing reflectively at his chin, he would squint at a picture and say something like “Interesting, yeh, I think he’s on to something,” or “I’m not sure he got what he wanted there.” Sonny just nodded agreement to everything.

Some of the paintings were by native Indiana artists who showed pictures of hills and trees and brooks and the usual crap in pretty places like Brown County. Then there were others by people from New York that didn’t have anything you could make out exactly, but consisted of lines and splotches and bursts of color, without any actual thing you could identify like a house or a cow.

It was in the room of some of these paintings without any actual pictures in them that both guys found something of genuine interest to view. It was an art object all right, but a living one, dressed in hip-hugging tomato-colored toreadors and a tight silk blouse, contemplating the paintings with absorbed intensity. Of course, in a case like this, when there was something you would really like to clap your eyeballs on for a long time, from all different angles and distances, you had to pretend not to really be looking at it—or her—at all. She carried a pair of big sunglasses and gnawed at the stems as she stared at the paintings, making Sonny want to gnaw on something himself. Every so often her tongue would come out and move speculatively over her lips in a slow, lolling sort of way. She wore no lipstick, and somehow that seemed even sexier. There are certain kinds of girls who can get themselves up in a way that is opposite from what is supposed to be sexy and come out looking even sexier. Maybe it’s because they weren’t supposed to do it that way but obviously didn’t give a damn, or maybe because there was something offbeat about it, Sonny wasn’t sure. The girl wasn’t what you’d call pretty; her nose was long and had a kind of bump in the bridge of it, her lips were very thin, and her eyes were set a little too close together, but the whole effect was somehow attractive, exceedingly sexy. Maybe it was the aura about her, the stuck-up air that she didn’t give a damn what anyone thought, she knew she was pretty hot stuff.

Sonny saw the girl catch Gunner giving her the onceover, and she shot him a glance that would have staggered a charging bull. Then she strolled out, sliding on her sunglasses, her tight little ass twitching sassily.

Talk about Art.

Gunner was watching her with the studied appreciation of a connoisseur, and as she went out of sight, he started moving after her, as naturally and unhesitatingly as if he already had a date to meet her. Sonny drifted along behind, digging his fingernails into his palms. It not only terrified him to try to pick up a girl himself, it even made him nervous to see another guy try. If the other guy failed, it somehow seemed to Sonny like a slap in the face of all men, himself included, and he cringed to see it.

Gunner was halfway to the sidewalk, pursuing his prey, but Sonny stopped as soon as he got outside. He leaned back against the door, looking down at his feet and trying to blank out his mind. In moments like that he was tempted to pray, but since he had lost his belief he resorted to repeating scraps of nursery rhymes, which was almost as good. If you didn’s really think about the words they sounded a little like prayers, their rhythm supplying the comfort of incantation.

Taking a deep breath he sneaked a glance toward the sidwalk and saw Gunner casually standing with the girl, talking, as if it was the natural thing. He motioned to Sonny, impatiently, as if Sonny should have known all along it would be all right. Feeling his heart accelerate to high, Sonny walked up to them, not looking directly at the girl. Gunner introduced Sonny and said he had just asked Marty—that was the girl, Marty Pilcher—to have a cup of coffee with them over at the drugstore across the street. Sonny fell in on the other side of the girl, but a little behind her and Gunner, like a kid who was tagging along.

The drugstore was one of the old-fashioned kind that had big wooden booths and was sort of dark and musty inside, with an odor of camphor and cough syrup. There was a tall electric fan that buzzed complacently but didn’t affect the temperature. It was hot as blazes, and Sonny didn’t feel like drinking any coffee, but he knew that was what to order. You didn’t invite a sophisticated girl to go have an icecream soda with you. Coffee sounded more mature and worldly.

Marty scooched into one side of the booth, next to the wall, and Gunner moved in opposite from her. Sonny sat down next to Gunner, sort of on the edge of things. It really was discouraging being so nervous when it wasn’t even him who was trying to operate with the girl.

“I thought you looked familiar,” Gunner said to the girl and explained to Sonny, “She went to Shortley, too. Couple years behind us.”

“Oh,” Sonny said, adding his sparkling bit to the conversation.

“I don’t think we actually met,” the girl said pointedly to Gunner, “but then we wouldn’t have. You were a Big Rod.”

She blew a stream of smoke from her nostrils and with a mocking sort of smile said, “Isn’t that what they called you Golden Boys?”

Gunner shifted uncomfortably and stared into his coffee. “That was high school,” he said, like it didn’t really mean anything.

“And college, too,” the girl said in the same mocking tone. “DePauw, wasn’t it? Football star. Big Man on Campus.”

Gunner winced, and scratched at the back of his head.

“B.M.O.C.” the girl said with a grin.

“Come on,” Gunner said, sounding like a kid who was being picked on. Marty just smiled and delicately picked a little fleck of tobacco off her bottom lip.

It really was something. There was Gunner having to be embarrassed about all the stuff that had made him a hero, a star, a rod. But it was obvious that those things were the opposite ones to anything that would impress this particular girl. She was playing it cool and a little bit mean. Sonny thought how great it would be to fuck her, and he suddenly felt dizzy and weak.

“Weren’t you in the Annual Varieties at Shortley?” Gunner asked, desperately trying to throw some prestige thing back at her . The Annual Varieties, an elaborate, original show put on by the students, was pretty big stuff at Shortley. It was said that you never could tell when scouts from Broadway or Hollywood might be in the audience.