Эд Макбейн - Love, Dad

Except for the two of them, the locker room was empty. A shower dripped interminably in one of the stalls. They talked ramblingly about their game — Lissie felt that Jenny’s backhand was improving — and then about the guest violinist who was scheduled to play that night at the arts center, and then, as it invariably did, the conversation switched to the injustice of their punishment; by then, Jenny had convinced herself she was truly innocent, and that the sentence levied upon the three nonsmoking girls was enormously extravagant. Lissie, who had seen her father more often during the three weeks of restriction than she had in any previous three weeks of the school term, nonetheless agreed that these were hard times, and began toweling her hair again. When she took the towel away from her head, the first thing she saw was the joint in Jenny’s hand.

“What the hell is that?” she said, knowing full well what it was. “Come on, put that away, are you crazy? Where’d you get that?”

“From a boy at Rogers House,” Jenny said, the joint bobbing between her lips, her dark head bent over her open handbag.

“Hey, come on,” Lissie said. “For Christ’s sake, we’ll get kicked out! If somebody walks in here...”

“Everybody’s over at the rink, watching the Taft game,” Jenny said, and found the matchbook she was looking for.

“Then wait till I’m gone, okay?” Lissie said. “I’m getting the fuck out of here, you just wait till—”

“Why?” Jenny said. “You chicken?”

“That’s right, I’m chicken, right, that’s it,” Lissie said, pulling on her jeans.

“You ever try it?”

“Nope, and I don’t intend to,” Lissie said. She reached for her sweater, pulled it on over her wet hair, and then sat on the bench again to put on her socks and shoes. She left the laces untied, grabbed her squash racket, and was starting for the door when Jenny’s voice stopped her.

“Who are you running to tell?” she said.

“What?” Lissie said, turning to her.

“You heard me.”

“Nobody. Why would I...?”

“Then stay here with me.”

“No.”

“You don’t have to smoke, if you don’t want to. Just stay with me and—”

“No. Jenny, you’ve got to be out of your—”

“Some friend,” Jenny said, and struck the match.

“Jesus, are you going to smoke it right here in the locker room?” Lissie said.

“The john then, okay?”

“Jenny...”

“Come with me, okay? Just to stand watch, okay?”

“Jenny, I’m scared shitless.”

“Just to stand watch.”

“Okay, but...”

“Thanks,” Jenny said, and blew out the match, and picked up her handbag.

The toilets were on the other side of the shower room. Jenny went into one of the stalls and closed the door. Lissie heard her striking another match, and then smelled the burning marijuana. If somebody walks in here , she thought, they’ll know in a minute ...

“Hurry up, will you?” she said.

“It’s not something you can hurry,” Jenny said. “You want a drag?”

“No.”

“Little goody two-shoes,” Jenny said from behind the closed door.

“I’m not,” Lissie said. “You know I’m not.”

“Then what are you afraid of?”

“I don’t want to become a fucking goddamn drug addict, okay?” Lissie said. “Will you please...?”

Behind the closed door, Jenny began laughing. A cloud of smoke was swirling up toward the ceiling. Lissie listened to the gentle laughter and thought again, She’s crazy , and suddenly the door to the stall opened.

“Here,” Jenny said, extending the joint to her. “Have a little toke.”

“No.”

“For me,” Jenny said.

“For you? What?”

“For our friendship.”

“No.”

“Come on.”

“No!”

“Fucking little goody two-shoes,” Jenny said. She was still wearing only her bra and panties, and Lissie suddenly remembered that the rest of her clothes were out there on the locker-room bench. If somebody came in and saw the clothes, they’d wonder...

“Come on, are you finished?” she said.

“Not till you try it,” Jenny said, and again extended the joint.

“Let’s just get out of here, okay?”

“Try it,” Jenny said.

“Why?”

“It won’t kill you.”

“Shit, all I...”

“Try it,” Jenny said.

“Shit, all right, give it to me. Let’s just... Jesus,” she said, and took the joint.

“Draw in deep on it,” Jenny said.

“I know how to do it.”

“Keep the smoke in.”

Lissie coughed.

“Take another hit.”

Lissie sucked on the joint again, swallowing the smoke, holding it back deep in her throat.

“One more toke,” Jenny said.

“I’m burning my fingers.”

“It’s down to the roach,” Jenny said. “Let’s light a fresh one.” She grinned suddenly. “Is it getting to you?”

“I feel...”

“Yeah?”

“A little woozy.”

“Mm, yeah, baby,” Jenny said, and reached for her handbag where it rested on the tiled floor near the toilet bowl.

When they came out onto the campus again at 4:00 P.M., a crowd of students was working its way over the hill from the hockey rink. They all seemed very tiny to Lissie, like little mechanical boy-and-girl dolls dressed in brightly colored teeny-weeny clothes, waving itty-bitty Henderson School pennants. One of the kids said, “We won, Liss!” and Lissie grinned at her foolishly and said, “Terrif,” and then floated beside Jenny through the labyrinthine path that separated the girls’ side of the campus from the boys’, noticing for the first time the thousands upon thousands of pine needles carpeting the forest floor, each separate pine needle clearly etched, noticing too the sculpted beauty of the rocks edging the path, each glistening facet of each rock, the pines standing in sharp silhouette against a sky more vibrantly blue than any she had ever seen. It took them forever to float through the forest, the path winding endlessly toward an Alice-in-Wonderland rabbit hole opening at the farthest end of the forest... the world... the universe. When at last they got back to their room in Leavenworth Dorm, they closed and locked the door, and collapsed on their separate beds and repeated “Presbyterian Episcopalian” over and over again, giggling furiously all the while.

It was raining on Friday, March 14, the last day of their detention period. Their senior workload was light, they were both through with classes by midmorning, but they could not leave the campus till noon, at which time the Intermediate Discipline officially ended. They played a listless game of squash, dropped in on a choir practice to hear Francie Bowles — a friend of theirs from Ossining Dorm — and then began counting the hours. For reasons neither of them quite understood, and despite the fact that they’d been somewhat reckless about it during their disciplinary period, each of them felt it would be enormously dangerous to smoke anywhere on campus during this last day of their long incarceration.

The hours dragged.

They wandered over to the library to see if there were any boys they knew there, but Pee Wee Rawles was the only one who paid them any attention, and he was a terrifying creep who asked every girl he danced with if she’d like to have oral sex with him. At a little before twelve, they went back to the dorm to dress, both of them putting on blouses, skirts and heels, Jenny sweeping her long black hair up on top of her head in a sophisticated coiffe, and then putting on a pair of dangling gold earrings that had been a birthday present last year. They spent a goodly amount of time putting on eye liner and shadow, touched their lips with gloss and their cheeks with a faint blush of rouge, and were finally ready to go out on the town. Jenny was carrying four joints in her handbag. They signed out on the first-floor hall, did a little jig together out onto the sidewalk, and walked to the main gate where the taxi they’d called was waiting for them.