Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

But a gray car is a gray cat, and at night I went places that had nothing to do with school kids or Margaret. I’d clean up my algebra around eight or eight thirty, begin to yawn and say I’d just as well take in the picture show. But once out of the house, where I went was an uncertain proposition. Sometimes I’d go to a bowling alley, or maybe I’d slip over to Washington. It wasn’t new to me, as my father had taken me there, to sit in the gallery and look at Congress, or go to the top of the Monument, so I knew my way around. But sliding in Rhode Island Avenue, finding a place to park near the Treasury, maybe taking in a Washington movie, all that was a kick, even if it didn’t mean much. At the same time I was getting a feeling I’d never had before, and it meant business. I began to notice girls. I didn’t notice them the way I noticed Margaret, if I noticed her, like she was a friend in a girl’s dress, but nothing to have ideas about. I had ideas about them, plenty. How to get them, I didn’t know. But getting them was the idea. When Denny hit town that summer, it turned out he’d been thinking along the same line, but he’d learned more tricks than I could have dreamed up in a lifetime.

Not that I’d call him original, or in any way refined. If he could pull some gag and get started with them in a soda fountain, he’d do that, and we’d all four walk out together. Outside, if the best he could think of was to fall in step behind them and fire some crack past their ears, he’d do that. But if he had to, he’d whistle at them, right from the car, and get me to slow down, so we were rolling right beside them. I didn’t enjoy that much, but I’d do it. Whatever we did, a half hour later it was always the same. One of them would be on the front seat with me, and the other back in the rumble with him. He was always trying to sell me the rumble, on account of the “stuff you can get away with back there,” but I figured if it was all that chummy he wouldn’t be so hot to come up front. Nothing ever came of it. We’d go to some picture show, or to some dump on the edge of town, where Denny thought he could get beer but couldn’t, or past East Baltimore, to the beach. The beach, somehow, always seemed as though it was going to work, because at least there were the bay and the sand and the moon. With some of those girls we picked up and another pair of guys I think it might have. Our trouble was we were fifteen years old — or I was, and Denny, though he was nearly sixteen, looked younger.

But Labor Day we got ambitious, and ran down to Annapolis to see what we could see. We kept on over Spa Creek to Eastport, and there we decided to get some gas. And across the street was this pair arguing with a guy in blue jeans. One of them, the one that was doing most of the talking, was dark, I suppose eighteen or nineteen, with a pretty snappy shape, and dressed in pink sweater, white skirt, and red shoes. The other was a fat girl, maybe seventeen, with frizzled blond hair, a striped blue-and-white jumper, and a blue skirt. By then, Denny took a gander at them all, but I don’t think we’d have paid much attention to them if the dark one hadn’t ripped out a cussword: “That’s a hell of a note. I’ll say it is. One hell of a hell of a note.”

The fat girl kind of looked at us and made a face. Denny went over and helped himself to some of her gum, and we stood around while the argument went on. It was about the delivery of ice. “I’m sorry, Miss, but I’ve got no way to deliver to the bay. It’s like I told you: my truck’s in the shop. Right around the neighborhood, where I deliver by barrow, I can accommodate you. But the shore is out of the question.”

She turned away and started up the street, the fat girl after her, but of course Denny got in it: “Hey, hey, hey! Wait a minute! What is this?”

They stopped then, and Denny said: “We haul ice. Naturally we do. We love to haul ice. But we don’t haul it unless people act friendly and say please and work on us.”

The fat girl came over and stuck another piece of chewing gum in his mouth. He put his arm around her and didn’t exactly stop at the fifth rib. The other one came over and shot her eyes first at them and then at me. “What’s he talking about?”

“Hauling ice. For friendly people.”

“How would he haul it?”

“How would you?”

“... I’d need a car.”

“So might we.”

“You mean he’s got one?”

“I mean I have.”

“Say, that’s different.”

She took the last piece of gum Fats had, stuck it in my mouth, and patted my cheek. “Is that friendly?”

“For a start, that’s fine.”

I put my arm around her, and I didn’t stop at the fifth rib either. She said I had a nerve, but didn’t pull away, and I could feel the blood pound in my mouth. Denny said pull the car over, he’ll get the ice. So next thing, she and I were crossing the street. She hooked little fingers with me. “Now look, big boy, you act friendly.”

“Me? I am acting friendly.”

“How old are you?”

“... Nineteen.”

The guy loaded the ice, a fifty-pound cake, on the floor in front, so she had to sit close beside me. It turned out her name was Lina, but Fat’s I never found out. I gave my real name. Denny said his was Randall, Randy Thomas, he said. “I thought you was Calvin Coolidge,” said Lina. But Fats did plenty of squealing as he helped her in the rumble, so it looked like she didn’t much care. It was a hot day, and going through the scrub woods toward the bay it seemed to get hotter, not cooler. Lina began flapping her dress to give herself air. Then she got the cutes and asked if that was allowed. I raised one foot and kicked open the hood vent, so her dress blew up, clear to her waist. She kept looking at me as she pulled it down. “You’re over nineteen, my handsome young friend. Considerably. What’s the big idea, telling me lies?”

It turned out she was from Glen Burnie, and her family had some kind of hot-dog stand up there, but her brother had taken over this place beyond Eastport, not because it was much of a place, but because it had a big icebox, and they could use it for storage. And today, with the brother away and a lot of dogs, butter, ground meat, pop and stuff on hand, there was plenty to spoil if we didn’t get the ice there quick. So when we pulled up outside I piled that ice in the box, and she made sure everything was all right. Then she began to clown and ask if we’d have something cold. So while she and Fats were getting bottles Denny and I had a look around. It was just a soft-drink joint, with a front room that had a counter in it, and two back rooms, one a bedroom, the other a combination kitchen and pantry. Pretty soon Lina came out with soft drinks and sandwiches, and Fats passed them out. Denny suddenly seemed awful hot. After he got down some ham and ginger ale, he said: “You know what I’d like to do?”

“What’s that, Mr. Coolidge?”

“Go swimming.”

“And ruin all those clothes?”

“Oh, we got suits.”

“You have?”

“In the car. Right in the dashboard.”

“But we girls, we’re to swim in our birthday clothes?”

“Well, we could take turns on the suits—”

“How you know we haven’t got suits?”

So they dug in a closet and came up with Lina’s brother’s suit, which was blue flannel shorts and a white woolen shirt, and her sister-in-law’s suit, which was a one-piece job with the little short skirt they wore at that time. Then Denny and I got our suits from the car. Then an argument started as to where we’d put them on. Denny said one locker room for the four of us, and Fats acted like she had no objection. But Lina took her in the bedroom, and he and I put on our suits by the counter. Pretty soon both girls ran by outside, on the catwalk that ran around the place, and skipped on down to the water, giggling.