by Tom Perrotta
It was just my luck to get Coach Bielski for driver's ed. Even when I played football, he hadn't been that crazy about me. He didn't like my attitude, the way I'd shrug when he asked me why I'd thrown a bad pass or missed a tackle. And he didn't like the way my hair stuck out from the back of my helmet or sometimes curled out the earholes. He'd tug on it at practice and say, “Cut that fucking hair, Garfunkel, or I'll cut it for you. I just got a chainsaw for my birthday.” (He always called me Garfunkel, because of my hair and because he'd once seen me in the hallway, strumming someone's guitar. To Bielski, Simon and Garfunkel represented the outer limits of hippiedom.)
He was late for our first meeting. It was January and cold in the gym, but Bielski was dressed, as usual, in tight blue shorts and a gray T-shirt, the uniform that had made him a legend among Harding High football fans. He wore it every year to the Thanksgiving Day game, even if there was snow on the ground or a temperature in the single digits. People loved to see him standing on the rock-hard field, breathing smoke, dressed like it was the middle of summer.
He stopped at the edge of the basketball court to watch some guys shooting hoops, then continued over to the bleachers, where I sat waiting for him in the second row, wearing my blue suede coat.
“Well, well,” he said. “Looks like Art Garfunkel wants to drive.”
“You start to live when you learn to drive,” I said, quoting from a late-night TV commercial.
Bielski shook his head. “Do yourself a favor, Garfunkel. Lay off the wacky weed. It's not doing wonders for your IQ.” He glanced at his clipboard. “Is Laura Daly here?”
I joined him in scanning the empty bleachers. “Doesn't look like it.”
“Thanks for the input, Garfunkel.”
He handed me the clipboard, then dove to the floor and started doing marine push-ups. He always did push-ups when there was time to kill, partly because he was a show-off, and partly because he was a genuine fanatic. He did a hundred without breaking rhythm—I counted the hand claps—and was breathing more or less normally when he stood up. I gave him back the clipboard.
“Do me a favor, Garfunkel. Go see if Daly's in the hallway.”
I didn't have to go far. Laura and her boyfriend were right outside the gym door, making a spectacle of themselves. Keith was backed up against a locker, cupping Laura's ass with both hands. She was on tiptoes, wearing the white nurse's dress that was mandatory for girls in the Beauty Culture program, licking his ear with an odd thoroughness, like a mother cat cleaning one of her kittens. I watched them for a while, then went back in the gym.
“She's right outside,” I said to Bielski.
“Did you tell her to get her butt in here?”
“Not really.”
Bielski tapped my head a few times, like he was knocking on a door. “You know what your problem is, Garfunkel? You're a spectator. You're happy to just stand around and watch. You don't take charge of a situation.”
He strode out to the hallway and blew three shrill blasts on his whistle. “Break it up,” he shouted. “Or take it to the Holiday Inn. No sex in the hall.”
Laura followed him inside. Her blond hair was messed, but she didn't seem the least bit embarrassed. I noticed a couple of greasy fingerprints on her dress when she sat down. Keith's hands must have been dirty from auto shop.
Bielski stuck his finger in her face. “Listen up,” he said. “I don't care what you do on your own time, but this class is my time. When that bell rings, you're mine, understand?”
He started a speech about how seriously he took driver's ed, but was interrupted almost immediately when Tammi Phillips tapped him on the shoulder. Tammi was a cheerleader who spent a lot of time around the coaches’ office. She was small and had a cute upturned nose. Everything about her was girlish except her breasts, which were huge, way too big for her body.
“Coach,” she said. “Telephone.”
“Thanks, sweetheart.”
Without a word, Bielski turned and jogged across the gym to the coaches’ office. Tammi walked back in the same direction. The guys in gym class stopped playing basketball and exchanged glances as she passed.
Laura and I sat together without speaking. After about ten minutes she stood and stretched; her dress moved way up her thighs. She caught me staring, but only raised her eyebrows when she finished yawning.
“I'm going,” she said. “See you Thursday.”
I stayed put until the end of the period. Bielski never showed up.
I had a hard time learning to drive. Bielski said I thought too much, and he was probably right. I hadn't expected to have to think at all and was startled by the complexity of driving, the need to calculate risks and make snap decisions while moving. I expected the car to make decisions for me, and when it didn't, I panicked.
“Change lanes,” Bielski said.
In the mirror, I saw a van bearing down in the left lane; my hands tightened on the wheel. Should I accelerate and cut in front of it? Or should I slow down and let it pass? I had to think fast, but my mind was blank, humming like a refrigerator. I followed my gut instinct and slammed on the brakes in the middle of St. George Avenue. The tires squealed; Bielski and I snapped forward and back in our seatbelts.
“Sorry,” I said.
His eyes were wide, frightened. Laura giggled in the back seat, and I spent the rest of the day running stop signs and missing turns. When we finally got back to school, Bielski took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead.
“Land ho,” he said.
Laura drove one-handed, like an old pro. She was such a natural that Bielski let her take us on the Parkway our third week out.
“Don't worry,” he told her. “It's a piece of cake. Just get in your lane and stay there.”
It was a sunny day, the first in weeks, and we were heading south. Traffic was light. Laura and Bielski were discussing a TV movie that I hadn't seen. From what I could gather, it was about a woman who suffers from amnesia after a car accident and fails in love with her doctor. Laura liked the movie, but Bielski thought it was unrealistic.
“Come on,” he said. “If all you did was watch movies, you'd think amnesia was a common thing. It's ridiculous. When was the last time you met someone with amnesia?”
“I can't remember,” Laura said, and they both laughed.
While they talked, I gazed out the window at the other drivers. J saw a woman screaming over her shoulder at her kids, who were pounding each other in the back seat, and a guy in a business suit singing into an invisible microphone. I saw a nun eating a McDonald's hamburger in a station wagon. There was even a man who was reading a book. He was holding it up with one hand and moving his eyes rapidly from the page to the road.
One day in February, Bielski didn't show up for class. Laura and I sat in the bleachers for about twenty minutes, watching the guys in fourth-period gym play their usual lethargic game of basketball while the jayvee wrestling coach, Mr. Guido, looked on in disgust. I nudged Laura. “You wanna go smoke a joint?” Her face perked up. “You got one?” It was the early lunch period, so we didn't have to use any elaborate maneuvers to get outside. We just walked through the cafeteria and out the door. We crossed Fillmore to Seventeenth Street, a dead end where students parked when the school lot was full. We sat on the curb in a narrow space between two cars. There was a leafless hedge at our backs, a rundown house across the street.
We had trouble lighting the joint. It was a windy day and the matches kept going out. I crouched in front of her to block the wind. She had the joint in her mouth with both hands cupped around one end. Our heads were close together, and she smiled at me as I struck the match.
Until driver's ed, we hadn't known each other at all. We came from different towns—Harding was a regional school—and took different classes. I was College Prep; she was Beauty Culture and Distributive Education, which was another term for work-study. She got out of school an hour early every day to work at Marcel's Beauty Chateau. Mostly she swept hair off the floor and st
uffed it into plastic bags. She said Marcel sold it to a wig factory.
“I'm freezing,” she said. “It's a good thing I put these pants on.”
In the past couple of weeks she'd taken to wearing jeans under her white dress. At first I thought it looked strange, but I was beginning to get used to it. She wore the same pair of Levi's every day. They had patches on the knees and “Laura + Keith 4 Ever” written in Magic Marker on both thighs.
“I'm cold, too.” I shifted position so our knees were touching.
“Keith wants me to marry him,” she said.
“Wow.”
“I know. It's pretty intense.”
“I can't imagine being married until I'm about thirty.”
“Really?” she said. “I can't imagine being thirty.”
“It's like driving,” I said. “Remember when you thought you'd never be old enough to drive?”
“I've been driving since I was twelve,” she said. “My dad taught me.”
We sat quietly and concentrated on passing the joint.
“So what do you think?” she said.
“About what?”
“About me and Keith.”
“I don't know. Do you love him?”
“Sometimes. We have really great sex.”
I dropped the roach and watched it smolder. Then I stepped on it and smeared it across the pavement. She touched my hand. “I hope I didn't embarrass you.”
I shook my head. Out of nowhere a tingling rush traveled up from my feet and branched out through my body. I looked at Laura and started to laugh.
“You know what?” she said. “You need a haircut.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“I didn't mean it like that. I just think you'd look really cute with short hair. Long hair's out.”
“I don't know,” I said. “I don't wanna look like a disco boy.”
“I could do it for you. We give free haircuts on Friday mornings. You could come tomorrow.”
“No way. I heard about those free haircuts. Didn't Phyllis Lavetti go bald from one of them?”
“That was a perm,” she said. “You'd just be getting a trim.” She put her hand on my knee. “You'd look really cute, Buddy. The girls wouldn't be able to resist you.”
“They'd find a way.”
The school bell rang, and I felt cheated. Laura put her arm around my shoulder and kissed me on the lips.
“Thanks for getting me stoned. It was fun.”
I helped her up and we started back to school. My body felt bouncy and light, like I was walking on the moon. The driver's ed car drove by just as we reached the corner of Fillmore.
“Oh shit,” Laura said. “We're busted.”
But Bielski drove right by. He pretended not to see us. Tammi Phillips was sitting in the front seat, but she ducked down as soon as we saw her.
* * *
I woke up the next morning and looked in the mirror. My hair was flat on one side, frizzy on the other. Laura was right: I needed a trim. It was a kind of defeat, admitting that to myself, a surrender of principle. I hadn't volunteered for a haircut since seventh grade.
I got a pass out of second-period study hall and went upstairs to the Beauty Culture room. I had never been inside and was surprised to see how closely it resembled a real beauty parlor. There was a row of four barber chairs facing a mirrored wall, a row of overhead hairdryers, even a waiting area up front, with women's magazines scattered on a table. There was a pungent chemical smell in the air.
At the far end of the room, a group of girls— most of them wearing jeans under white dresses— stood in a semicircle and watched their instructor, Mrs. Frankel, take bobby pins out of her mouth and jab them into the muddy hair of a middle-aged woman who appeared to be fast asleep in the chair. Closer to me, a lady crossing guard sat beneath a humming dryer, smoking a cigarette and paging through a magazine. I hesitated in the doorway, intimidated by the sight of so many females in one room.
Mrs. Frankel noticed me first. She was a hefty woman in a pale green smock, with a black beehive hairdo and slashes of purple makeup on both cheeks.
“Come on in, honey,” she called out. “We won't bite.”
Laura rushed across the room. “I'm so glad you came. You're gonna get the works.”
She began by washing my hair. I leaned back in a reclining chair, my neck resting comfortably in a grooved sink. She sprayed my hair with jets of warm water, then massaged apple-smelling shampoo into my scalp. Her hip pressed firmly into my shoulder.
“Does this feel good?” she asked.
I closed my eyes and smiled at the ceiling. After the rinse, she rubbed my head with a towel and led me to a barber chair in the main room. Before she started cutting, she spun the chair around so it faced away from the mirror. Instead of looking at myself, I was staring at the crossing guard, who glanced up from her magazine to give me a friendly smile.
It was the slowest haircut I ever got. Laura would make a tentative snip with her scissors, then step back to consider her next move. After a while, she settled into a steady, thoughtful pace. I didn't mind. All I was conscious of was her physical presence. Her fingers on my jaw. Her breasts against my arm. I had an erection the whole time.
“Damn,” she said. “You have some weird cowlicks.”
I didn't start to worry until the second time she said, “Oops.” Twice after that she called some friends over for whispered conferences; once she crossed the room to talk to Mrs. Frankel. She was still cutting when the bell rang for third period.
A few minutes later she spun me around. I almost didn't recognize myself. My ears and nose looked immense, like I had borrowed them from one of my uncles, and my head seemed slightly off center—no matter how I held it, it seemed to tilt to the right. Laura stood behind me with her hands on my shoulders, trying gamely to smile.
“So,” she said. “What do you think?”
“It's short,” I said. There was a strange hollow feeling in my chest.
“Don't worry,” she said. “You'll look great when it grows in.”
When I walked into history class, the girls stared at me and the guys in the back of the room shrieked in mock horror. After class, I asked my friend Ed if I really looked that bad. He opened his locker and gave me his black winter cap, the kind burglars wear on television.
“Keep this for as long as you want,” he said.
On Saturday morning my mother gave me a twenty-dollar bill and sent me to the Head Shed to see if Mario couldn't make me “look like a human being again.” Mario got angry when I told him what happened.
“Beauty Culture,” he said, shaking his head.
“Just because they have scissors doesn't mean they know how to cut hair.”
“She was my friend,” I said.
“Big deal,” he said. “I got lots of friends. But when I had to get my appendix out, I went to see a doctor, capice?”
There was a party that night at Valerie Mc-Donough's house. Valerie was the Harding Hawk mascot; she wore a bird suit and danced around the sidelines at football games. She also sold pot. Through these activities, she knew a wide variety of people.
It was a pretty good party—her parents were in Florida—but I wasn't in a very sociable mood. It happened to be Valentine's Day, a stupid holiday, and a miserable one if you're alone and have a bad haircut. On Friday, the Harding Herald had put out a spécial issue in which people wrote messages proclaiming their love or secret admiration. I read the whole thing, but my name wasn't mentioned.
I stood in a doorway near the keg and watched the girls dancing in the living room. Most of them looked thoughtful and repeated a few simple movements over and over, while others whirled across the floor, all flying hair and arms. For about the tenth time, someone came up behind me and yanked off my hat. Now that I was a little drunk, it didn't bother me so much. I didn't even turn around. A hand moved slowly through the stubble on the back of my head. Somehow, I knew it was Laura before I heard her voice.
“It d
oesn't look so bad,” she said. “Who fixed it?”
“Some guy at the Head Shed.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
“Good.” She slipped the hat back on my head and smoothed it over my ears. “I need to talk to you.”
“Okay.”
“I have my father's car. You want to take a ride?”
“Yeah. Just let me get my coat.”
She followed me upstairs to the master bedroom. The coats were scattered on the bed, a tangled heap of them several layers high. Mine was the only blue suede coat in the bunch.
“Okay,” I said. “Let's go.”
She shook her head and pushed the door shut with her foot. She stepped forward and put her arms around my neck.
“Do you like me?”
I nodded.
“Do you really like me?”
I nodded again.
“I want you,” she whispered.
It struck me as a corny thing to say, totally unlike her, and I almost laughed. But before I could, she put her tongue in my ear. My whole body shivered.
“Me too,” I said, and we kissed, mashing our mouths so hard our teeth clacked together.
When we opened the door, Valerie was standing patiently in the hall with an armful of coats. She seemed surprised to see us but didn't say anything as she slipped past us into the bedroom.
Laura's father's car was a big old Impala with ice-cold seats and a bad muffler. We kissed some more while the engine warmed up, then cruised down North Avenue into Cranwood, past the strip of fast food places glowing bright and empty in the night. We drove past a theater just as the movie was letting out. Young couples streamed out of the door as if on a conveyor belt and scattered on the sidewalk.
“I'm sorry about your hair,” she said. “I still think you're cute.”
“Where are we going?”
“I'm not sure. You wanna go to my house?”
“I don't know. Do you?”
She bit her bottom lip and nodded.
“Okay,” I said.
We turned off Orange Avenue into a section of Springdale known as the spaghetti streets. It felt like we were moving through a maze.
