by Ron Koertge
And I felt such tenderness for everybody who had brought his mortality out of the house and into this silly club. I knew that I was suffering needlessly. I looked at my mother, half buried in suds, and I loved her so much; but then I loved the bartender, too, and the woman with the artificial pearls, and her husband with the worst hairpiece in the world; I loved the thugs with their scruffy beards and the waitress whose feet I could have kissed. I saw my hands fall away from my eyes. I saw myself smile and applaud.
Then, just like I had evaporated through the ceiling, I was outside, hovering above the broken shingles, just to one side of my car parked by the side door.
Slowly I floated upward. There was Kansas City and the land I had worked on; beyond was the Mississippi, dividing the republic; there were the Great Plains, the Rockies, the two oceans sloping toward the east and west just like the blue globe at school.
Then there was the earth itself, resting in space; and I knew if I wanted to, I could open my arms and somehow embrace everything: all the weirdness and folly and beauty and bliss.
So I did. I opened my arms and the earth came rushing at me, eager as a pup.
“She’s great,” someone shouted, getting to his feet to applaud. “God, she’s great.”
Mom came out of the wings wrapped in a plushy towel, and took a few bows. She looked terrific: flushed and happy. She opened her arms just like I’d done, welcoming it all; then giving it back, blowing kisses everywhere.
Then it was over. Everyone sat down, pleased and exhilarated. The MC urged us to wait through the intermission. There was a triple finale, three dancers from France.
“Excuse me,” I said to the blond cashier, who was, unbelievably, nearly finished with her book. “I’d like to see Virginia LaRue.”
“You and twenty other guys.”
“It’s not like that,” I assured her. “I’m her son.” I smiled proudly.
“You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“She said she had a kid. So you’re the farmer.”
“Just forty acres. It’s not like —”
“I was brought up on a farm. I hated it. I could never keep my shoes clean.”
She swung one silver pump out from behind the counter. I tried to picture her anywhere but Ye Olde Burlesque and failed.
“So could I see my mom?”
“Sure, cutie. But go around the side, okay?”
I guess I half expected a crusty old watchman in braces to ask me what I wanted, but there was nobody inside the back door at all, just a water cooler, a small bathroom, and of all things, a bowling ball inside an alligator bag. Which one, I wondered, tassels packed away safely for the night, relaxed with a cold beer at the nearest alley?
Down the narrow hall was a half-open door, and when I knocked, it swung open. A woman dressed in three leaves was hauling her boa constrictor out of its box.
“Whadayawant?” she asked, beginning to wipe the snake down with a paper towel.
“To see Virginia if I can, Virginia LaRue.”
“Yeah? Who shall I say is calling, Matt Damon?”
“Just say a fan.”
She didn’t go “Harumph,” but she looked it. “Hey, Virginia, there’s some kid here who looks like an undertaker’s apprentice.”
I heard chairs shift and squeak, a muttered “Watch it,” and then, “Walker?” She reached for the top buttons of her robe. “What are you doing here?”
I leaned in the doorway. “Seeing the show. I thought it’d be a shame to never see you dance.”
“Well.” She looked around helplessly. “Well. I don’t know what to say.”
“You were pretty good. Really.”
“Thanks.” She began to blush. “I mean it, thanks.” She gestured behind her, a modified umpire’s Yer out! “Listen, come in for a minute. I want you to meet everybody.”
It was probably a cruddy little room with peeling paint and no toilet, but the prospect of half a dozen women with most of their clothes off seemed like heaven to me.
“Listen up,” she said, tapping on a steam pipe with a nail polish bottle. “This is my son.”
Most of them gave me the once-over, then returned to their toes or nails or eyes or whatever part of their bodies they were polishing.
“Uh, this is Eve,” Mom said, pointing to the woman with the snake. “I mean it’s Doris, but —”
“Whoever heard of Adam and Doris?” She squinted at me through her cigarette smoke.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I nodded or said hello to everyone, even Wanda, who was sitting in a corner with a ball of yarn in her lap.
“If she knits as fast as she dances,” I said, “we’re all liable to be swallowed up in a sweater.”
Wanda didn’t laugh, but Mom did. She put her hand up to my forehead like she was checking for fever, then let it slide down to my cheek in a caress.
“I’m very glad to see you, Walker.”
“Hi.” It was a man’s voice and it came from behind me.
“Oh, hi.” Mom got a little flustered as Porter squeezed past. “You remember —”
“Walker, sure. Hi. You saw the show?”
“Yeah, I uh…”
“Got in and everything?”
Eve put some of her snake in my hands. “Hold this for a minute, will ya, kid?”
“Look,” Porter began, “we were going…”
But my mom began, too, “Look, we were…”
They both laughed; Mom put her arm around his waist. That got me a little. I’d never seen her do that except with Dad, and then only when they were having their picture taken.
I handed my part of the snake to Porter. “I better get home,” I said.
“We were going out to eat,” he said. “Come along.”
“No, really.” I started to back away.
“Pizza,” he said seductively, holding out about a yard of boa constrictor.
“Thanks,” I said, waving from the safety of the hall. “Really, thanks.”
Outside I leaned my forehead against the cool plastic of the steering wheel. Just then Mom tapped on the window and I rolled it all the way down.
“Are you okay?”
I said that I was. “Things got a little weird there for a minute.”
“Porter just wants you to like him, that’s all.”
“I know. He’s okay.”
“Why don’t you come along, then? We both want you to.”
“I would, honest, but I want to call Rachel. I saw her before and…”
“Everything’s okay?” she said hopefully.
“A lot better.”
She leaned into the car then and kissed me twice. Once on each cheek, like a French hero. “You go on. I’ll see you at home.”
I eased the car onto the narrow tarmac. Above me the neon dress blinked and fell away. Behind me stood my mom. She was wearing see-through shoes, and a robe with a dragon on it, and I loved her. Ahead of me Rachel waited. I loved her, too, and she might have to move tomorrow or next month or never.
Nothing was like I had ever imagined it would be, but — can you believe it? — I’d never been happier in my life.
Ron Koertge is the author of several acclaimed novels for young adults, including The Brimstone Journals, Margaux with an X and Stoner and Spaz, which won the 2003 PEN Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Nasen & TES Special Education Needs Book Award.
Where the Kissing Never Stops was Ron Koertge’s first novel for young adults. “A friend of mine who wrote Young Adult novels suggested I try writing one as I was so chronically immature,” he says. “Instead of being insulted, I went to the local library and did some research. I’d been home to see my parents in Collinsville, Illinois, and saw what a mall had done to the downtown of that little community. So that was that. All I needed was three or four characters, some snappy dialogue, and a story! About three months later, I had a rough draft; it sold right out of the gate, and I’ve never looked back.”
An avid movie buf
f, Ron Koertge lives in South Pasadena, California, in the house featured in John Carpenter’s film Halloween. He lectures in writing for children at Vermont College in the USA.
Other books by Ron Koertge
The Arizona Kid
The Brimstone Journals
Margaux with an X
Stoner & Spaz
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
First published in Great Britain 2006 by Walker Books Ltd
87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ
This edition published 2013
© 1986, 2005 Ron Koertge
Cover photograph © 2006 Sarkis Images/Alamy
The right of Ron Koertge to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:
a catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-4063-5029-6 (ePub)
www.walker.co.uk
