John Sayles - The Anarchist's Convention and Other Stories

When they did it she seemed in a hurry to get her clothes back on. They went to the shack only once, a freezing night when Wotan was on duty. The dog crept out from a dark corner and stood blocking their way. A deep growl rumbled inside him, his black coat glistened in the moonlight.

"Wotan, sitl"

He held his head up and to the side to fix them with his good eye. He pulled his lip back to show his teeth.

"Sit!" Brian took a step forward and raised his hand. If he was alone he would have gone to get a board or a piece of iron. Ditty stood behind him, waiting.

Wotan didn't sit, but he moved slightly to the side, enough to let them slide by.

Ditty liked doing it well enough when they were inside but said the shack gave her the creeps. Brian hadn't even told her about the old man. He tried to explain how safe it was there, how no one would ever bother them, but she said the shack was out, it gave her the creeps. So the shack was out.

They didn't get to do it much. When the time and place were right she wasn't in the mood. When she was in the mood the time and place weren't right. He took her to parties she told him they had been invited to and introduced him to her friends. They did it in the bathroom at a party in Barbara Fazzone's house while Barbara's mother rattled the doorknob and asked if whoever was inside was all right. He took Ditty on double and triple movie dates she arranged. They did it in the back row of the Palace Theater during the eight o'clock show and got everything tucked back in just as the lights came up and the audience came streaming by. He took her out on joyriding double and triple dates in cars she borrowed from her girlfriends or from the boyfriends of her girlfriends. They did it in somebody's Falcon, sitting where she told him to park in front of an all-night Laundromat, where Brian could hear snow crunching under tires and feet of late-night laundry-doers. He went to dinner at her house and said thank you every time her parents moved and explained in detail why he hadn't yet applied to college though he himself didn't know the reason. And though Ditty had refused to use her house when her family was away or his place when his mother was out and Mrs. Casilli was at the chiropractor, refused because she said she'd feel guilty, although she wouldn't go to Brian's safe, cozy shack, she did it with him on her living-room couch a few minutes after she said be right up, Mom, and a few minutes before Brian called good night Mrs. Stack, Mr. Stack, slammed the door behind him and zipped his fly. That was the first time she ever made noises doing it.

Ditty cheered extra loud when Brian made one of his few, careful baskets, her straight blond hair flying, her real-McCoy breasts swaying and bouncing and bobbling. Once when they were horsing around in the shack Serena had pretended to be a cheerleader. Gimme an F, she yelled in a whisper, jumping up with Brian's undershirt over her little flat body. Brian gave her an F, gave her the U-C-K she asked for and they laughed and did it again. They had done it on the cot for hours with only an occasional lonely whine from Loki outside to hurry them.

"Sometimes it's too big," Ditty told Brian. "Not that it's that big, I mean you're not — you know. But sometimes the way I am and the way you are, it's too big. It hurts. Then other times, for some reason I'm all loose and it's too small. I mean it seems too small. I think it has to do with my period. That kind of thing usually does."

Brian wondered if people made do with whoever came along first or if they kept shopping around for a perfect fit. Or if there were other girls like Serena who would adjust to any size.

Brian spent French class trying not to look at the back of Serena's head. It meant staring at the ceiling a lot and Mrs. Peletier got on his case for daydreaming. Serena had made a friend, a heavy, red-haired girl who Brian remembered vaguely from junior high. She had been good at making fart noises with her hands. Serena and the red-haired girl were always together, in the halls, in the cafeteria, up in the bleachers at basketball games. He heard them talking and laughing together. Serena wasn't so quiet. He wasn't jealous exactly, it wasn't like she had found another guy and was doing it. It was just that she seemed to be having such a good time without him.

One lunch period Ditty whispered to Brian that she really wanted to do it and led him out to the parking lot. She picked a customized Chevy Impala, the old kind with the huge manta-ray fins. Though there were roomier cars and cars parked farther away from the windows of the school Brian didn't argue. Ditty Stack wanted it in the parking lot during lunch hour — Russ Palumbo on his best day never dreamed up anything close to that. Brian had never felt bigger, he hoped it wasn't one of Ditty's tight days.

He had her panties off and was trying to twist around to get his fly untangled when he saw someone coming, a boy with car keys jingling in his fingers.

"What is it?" asked Ditty, on her back. Her head was crammed down by the armrest, her legs bent and splayed apart like a dog waiting to have its belly scratched.

The boy saw Brian, saw Ditty's feet sticking up in the air, and stopped. The boy was an All-State wrestler, though wrestling was not a popular sport. He had been fullback on the football team. Brian remembered now that the boy owned a customized Chevy Impala.

"What is it?"

"Nothing," said Brian. "Just a guy I know."

The boy turned and went back inside the school.

"Who is it?"

"Carter E. Green," said Brian.

"Carter who?"

Brian zipped up and reminded her there was only a few minutes till fifth-period bell. He left the door open when he hopped out, Ditty gaping in confusion between her legs.

In the team picture for the yearbook, Brian's left arm is in a heavy bandage. He had just done the trick with Wotan's food dish, pretending to give it to Loki, and was reaching it back into Wotan's cage when the dog clamped ahold of his wrist. No snarl, no display, just a quick, silent pounce that brought Brian to his knees. Brian tried to command him to stop, but the voice wouldn't come, he couldn't work a sound past his throat. He banged on the cage with his free hand till Mr. Pettit came out. Wotan held on like a bulldog, blood running down his clamped jaws, looking Brian in the eye. He didn't listen to Mr. Pettit, not even when he shouted, and he chomped even harder when Pettit kicked him in the ribs. It took a double dose of Nembutal to put him out.

"You'd been inside the cage," said Mr. Pettit as he poured antiseptic on Brian's puncture wounds, "it would of been your throat."

Sometime later in the year, when Brian hadn't had a girl for months, Russ Palumbo approached him in metal shop.

"Wanna buy a balloon, kid?" he said, and flashed his wallet rubber. Brian ignored him.

"Listen, McNeil," said Russ Palumbo, "I hear that Ditty Stack is strictly a cockteaser."

Brian ignored him.

"That so? McNeil?"

"No, Russ," said Brian in the dry, disinterested style he had almost perfected, "she's not a cockteaser at all."

Palumbo's face brightened. "Yeah?"

"She's a cliff-hanger."

Thoroughly confused, Russ Palumbo walked away with a knowing laugh.

ULE NUMBER ONE," Jockey would only have to bend a little to line up his shots, "Never Show Your Speed." Five-seven-two, corner pocket. Jockey liked to punctuate his lectures with combination shots. Anybody at the Hibernian could tell you Jockey Conn would pass up a half-dozen straight chippies for a three-ball combination.

"You show your speed and they got you pegged. They know just what you can do and what you can't do. They know where to hurt you, Sport. Am I right?"