The Obstacle Course

by JF Freedman

  “I’m gonna want details,” Ruthie bargained.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. Anything to get her to leave me alone with the phone.

  “I’m holding you to it.” She danced away.

  I scrunched down in the corner against the wall, my back to the room, the most privacy I could manage. “Hi. You still there?”

  “Yes.”

  She was quiet. I could hear her breathing.

  “How’d you get my number?”

  “I started calling Pooles in Ravensburg. This was the fifth one.”

  I smiled; she didn’t give up easy. “Smart thinking.”

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” she said.

  “Me, too.”

  “I felt awful about what happened.”

  I didn’t say anything to that. She had something to say, and it was her nickel.

  “I still like you, Roy.”

  I could hear her breathing. The kind of breathing where she would’ve heard it, too.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asked finally.

  “Yeah, well, I like you, too, but, you know …”

  “Yes.”

  There was a pause.

  “I’d like to see you again, Roy. I’d really like to.”

  Now I could hear my own breathing. This girl was so uncool it was great.

  “Yeah, well, me too, but you know …”

  Down the hall I could hear my sister still singing that bullshit song. I stuck a finger in my ear so I wouldn’t be distracted.

  “My grandmother was lying, Roy.”

  “What?”

  “She took that statue, not you.”

  Oh, Jesus. I had an immediate case of cottonmouth, I had to lick my lips to speak. “How do you know?”

  “You said so.”

  “You didn’t believe me. Nobody did.”

  “I did. Really. I did, but I was afraid to say anything.” She started crying, I could hear her sobs coming over the phone. “I wanted to.”

  “Yeah, well …” I didn’t know what to say. “Come on, don’t cry. Stop crying.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to.” She kept sniffling. “Give me a second, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  I heard a loud “honk,” right in my ear, then the kind of breathing you do when you’re trying to control your breathing.

  “I’m all right now.”

  “Good. I don’t want you crying, especially over me.”

  “We caught her.”

  “You what?”

  “Stealing something. From another house.” I could hear the tears starting to come again. “She’s been doing it for years and nobody knew. My own grandmother!”

  The faucet was on now, full blast.

  “Melanie. Melanie, come on.”

  “And you got blamed and nobody believed you and everything got so messed up!”

  No shit, baby.

  “Roy.” The sobs were slowing down, coming in gasps; I could imagine her face, all red and teary and blotchy. “Roy?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “I want to see you again. I mean really.”

  “Yeah, me too. Really.” It wasn’t bullshit, I did want to see her. There wasn’t anything phony about her, not a thing.

  “You do? Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, God, I’m so glad, I thought you’d tell me to … go jump in a lake.”

  “No, I do.”

  She stopped crying. “Roy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Admiral Wells knows.”

  My chest got tight, hearing his name.

  “Knows what?”

  “About my grandmother.”

  Fuck. “So?”

  “He feels terrible about it. I heard him talking to my grandfather.”

  Big fucking deal, now. Like he hadn’t known before.

  “I think he’d like to see you again,” she said. “To apologize.”

  I slumped deeper against the wall. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Anyway, I’m not building models anymore.”

  “They were talking about seeing if they could still get you into Farrington. Admiral Wells and Grandfather. They know they did badly by you. I’m sure they’d like to make it up to you, Admiral Wells especially.”

  Now it was my own breathing I was hearing.

  “Roy?”

  “Yeah, I’m still here.”

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t you think that’s great?”

  My mind was racing, going in a million different directions.

  “I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. Make it up to me. The way to make it up to me would’ve been to stand up for me then when it was hard, not now when it was easy.

  “If you went to Farrington I could go to Agnes Walker,” she said, her voice full of excitement. She didn’t have a clue to where I was inside my head, all she knew was she might see me again. It made me feel good in one way, but shitty in another. “I’ve already filled out an application.”

  “Yeah?” I was numb, I had no answers.

  “Roy?” she asked again.

  “Yeah, Melanie?”

  “Do you really want to see me?”

  “I said it, didn’t I?”

  “You’re not just saying it to be polite?”

  She was starting to piss me off a little. Calling me out of the blue, the stuff about her grandmother, then the admiral. It was too much to handle all at once.

  “No.” I separated the being pissed-off from how I felt. “I really want to see you.”

  “Will you take me to my prom, then?”

  “What …” Jesus, what was going on?

  “It’s next week. I know it’s short notice but say you will, please, there’s no other boy I want to go with.”

  Like every boy in the world was dying to take her. I didn’t say that. What the hell, she was a nice girl and next time she was going to go all the way with me, if I could get past my goddamn conscience.

  “Well …”

  I drew it out a little, to tease her. She’d just put me through a ton of shit, I deserved five seconds of payback.

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  “Oh, God!” she screamed over the phone, so loud I had to pull it away from my ear. “That’s great!”

  “When is it?” This was happening awfully fast.

  “Next week. Saturday night. It’s at the Shoreham.”

  The Shoreham’s the fanciest hotel in Washington. I’ve driven by it, but I’ve never been inside.

  “The Shoreham. Saturday night. Okay.” Everything was going so fast, my head felt like it was spinning. “Listen, what do you wear?”

  “It’s formal.”

  “Formal?”

  “You know, a tuxedo.”

  I almost laughed out loud. One of those monkey suits, like the admiral wore. She really thought I had those kind of clothes? She probably thought the clothes I’d worn to the party had been my own, not something the admiral had bought for me for the occasion.

  “You rent it,” she giggled, reading my thoughts. “No boy owns one, not even the morons I know. They’re stupid, but you have to wear it. I’ll rent it for you,” she went on before I could protest, assuming I would, “I’ll pay for everything, it’s my prom, I’m doing the asking, all you have to do is come.”

  My heart was pounding like a tom-tom. That part of my life was over, finished, I’d put it behind me—now here it was again, right in my face.

  “Roy?”

  “Yeah, Melanie?”

  “You’re not thinking of changing your mind, are you?” Her voice was quivering.

  I didn’t answer right off.

  “I mean … I know you just said you would but you have every right to back out. I would have understood if you hadn’t even talked to me, after what happened.”

  “Yeah, I know, I mean this is a lot …” “to ask,” I left unsaid, “of someone all of you fucked over.” She must’ve realiz
ed that, so she was giving me a chance to back out. Maybe I’d better take it, I thought, I don’t need getting my teeth kicked in again by those assholes.

  “Oh please, Roy, please!” She had felt what I was thinking, it was coming over the wire, as clear as if I’d actually said it. She hadn’t meant it, she didn’t want me to say “no” to the prom. Say “no” to her.

  She had no shame. She wanted me and she wasn’t embarrassed to admit it. I pictured her in that big house of hers, all alone. Any second now the tears would be starting up again, I could hear it in her voice. Goddamn, but I felt sorry for this poor girl.

  It wasn’t her fault, what had happened.

  “I love you, Roy,” she whispered, barely loud enough for me to hear.

  You don’t hurt a girl this innocent.

  “Sure, Melanie,” I promised, hearing the words come out of my mouth, how calm I sounded. “I’ll come.”

  Friday night. Date night at the Ravensburg Fire House, except I wasn’t dating. It’s always packed, mostly with high school kids, but some junior high kids come, too, ninth-graders, the cooler ones. They’ve got a good band, the Key-Tones, a bunch of guys from Ravensburg High who play rock ’n’ roll to knock your socks off, which is what everybody wears; you check your shoes at the door, so the firehouse floor doesn’t get all scuffed up. That’s why they call it a sock hop, although a lot of the girls wear stockings—they get all dolled up, putting on stuff they’re not allowed to wear to school, heavy makeup and perfume, pushup bras and falsies, skirts so tight on their asses you can see the line of their panty girdles. Lots of close dancing, dry-fucking right out on the floor.

  I moped around, sticking to the sidelines. My sister was dancing her ass off, drawing plenty of attention. She’s a great dancer, Ruthie, she knows how to shake that thing and she does it with any boy that’ll ask her, any cool one, that is. I watched her slow-dance a couple with Rufus Marlowe, a senior who was captain of the football team, this year’s rock supreme. He’s a smart guy, too, he’s going to Duke on a football scholarship. They moved around the floor to “The Great Pretender,” grinding each other’s pelvis against the other. I could see she was all hot and flushed. She probably dreams of him at night, Mrs. Rufus Marlowe, that kind of shit. The sad truth is, the day ol’ Rufus graduates RHS is the last day Ruthie’ll ever see him, unless they run across each other accidentally. Guys like Rufus aren’t interested in girls like my sister, girls with no ambition beyond marriage and babies.

  Right now, though, she’s in heaven. She can still dream.

  Tomorrow at eleven in the morning I had an appointment to meet Melanie at Shapiro’s Tux Shoppe on 8th Street in Washington, to get my tuxedo. I knew exactly the kind of jacket I wanted—a blue-green-black plaid with peaked satin lapels. All the neat guys in high school had worn that style to their prom this spring. If they didn’t have one of those left I’d go for a straight white dinner jacket and black pants. Melanie would cream in her jeans and so would her stuck-up girlfriends.

  None of my friends came near me. Former friends. I was an outcast, starting from the day I’d gotten into the fight with Burt out front of the school. It bugged me, I can’t say it didn’t, you don’t run with a bunch of guys your whole life and then stop without feeling left out. But that’s the way it had to be; for now. Tomorrow, as the saying goes, was another day, and I’d be spending it with a rich girl at her fancy prom, and then screwing her afterwards. And who knew, maybe it would lead to other things, maybe I’d see her regularly, maybe I’d even run across Admiral Wells, and he’d apologize for being a chickenshit, and I’d wind up at Farrington after all.

  The band struck up another slow tune, “My Prayer,” one of the all-time greats as far as I’m concerned. For that one brief moment when me and Darlene were secret boyfriend-girlfriend that was our song; we’d heard it on the radio and she’d claimed it for us.

  Now she was dancing to it—with Burt. They slow-danced around the floor cheek to cheek, his chest to her titties, his leg between hers, flattening her skirt tight against her body. As they did a turn Burt caught me staring, and he looked at me for a moment, then smiled smugly, look what I’ve got, the smile said. He knew how I felt about her, the bastard, and she’d undoubtedly filled in the blanks for the rest of it.

  I couldn’t stand the sight of the two of them together. I turned away and walked to the back, where they sell the Cokes.

  “Want to dance, Roy?”

  I turned. Ginger Huntwell had come up from behind. She’d been dancing with different high school boys, pushing up against them, letting them rub their hands all over her ass. She looked up at me, a thin line of sweat on her top lip, her lipstick glowing brightly.

  Nothing wrong with a free feel. You dance with Ginger, you’ve got her titties right up against you, no extra charge.

  “Sure, Ginger. Come on.”

  She didn’t waste a second, she grabbed my hand and led me onto the dance floor, pulled me into a super-tight embrace, and started grinding away at me while we shuffled our feet, her head resting on my shoulder. I could smell her cheap perfume mixed with her shampoo mixed with her own bodily smells, it almost seemed like I could smell her pussy, the smells of her sexuality were that strong.

  Burt wasn’t with Darlene now, she’d left him for a high-schooler. He and Joe stood on the sidelines with their Cokes, watching Ginger and me. I flashed them a wicked grin as I slid my hand down to Ginger’s ass. It was nice and soft, kind of squishy.

  “You dance real nice, Roy,” she said, snuggling even closer.

  “So do you, Ginger.”

  We danced like that for a little while. Her hand went to my neck, stroking it softly.

  “How come you’ve never asked me to go out with you?” she asked, out of the blue.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Somebody told me you were going with Darlene Mast,” she said, shifting her weight slightly so her pussy was pressed right up against my leg through her skirt.

  “Somebody was wrong,” I told her. “She’s too stuck-up, I wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole.”

  “Good,” she whispered, her hand still stroking my neck. I was getting the feeling-up of my life as we ground it out to the beat.

  “Hey, Roy?”

  “What, Ginger?”

  “Do you have a hard-on?”

  I almost choked. “How’d you guess?”

  “I can feel it. It sure feels good. And big.”

  “That’s what my nigger-whore girlfriend down in the District tells me,” I boasted.

  As soon as the words popped out of my mouth I was mad at myself for having said them. I’d only done it to boast, which was petty and chickenshit. Ruby had kept me from having my ass tossed out of that bar into the pouring rain, taken me home and fed me dinner, and most important of all, popped my cherry. And here I was saying she was just another nigger. I didn’t even like hearing that word anymore, not after what they’d done for me down in Chattanooga.

  “Have you screwed a colored person?” Ginger asked, wide-eyed.

  “Sure, lots of times,” I lied. I was in the shit now, I might as well make it a whopper.

  “Is it true they’re better than white girls?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied casually, like it was no big thing. “It depends.”

  “Well, I bet she ain’t as good as me,” Ginger informed me defiantly.

  That tore it. We were still out there on the dance floor, cheek to cheek, chest to tits, cock to pussy. My shirt was stained clear through with sweat I was so hot for her.

  “Well, Ginger, there’s only one way to find out.”

  She smiled up at me. “Guess so.”

  Home run.

  I led her off the dance floor towards the exit. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Burt and Joe watching me, the envy burning in their eyes. Serves them right, I thought, feeling as smug as the cat that ate the canary.

  As she was standing by the door, holding onto my arm for balance while
she slipped into her moccasins, she turned to face me. “Listen, Roy, you got any money?”

  I had less than a buck left in my wallet. “Not on me. Why?”

  “Well damn, Roy, you don’t think I give it away for free, do you?”

  “Shit, Ginger, I didn’t think you were a whore.” Nobody will ever accuse this girl of beating around the bush.

  “I’m not.” A practiced pout. “But I like to go out and get a hamburger and a milkshake afterwards.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s right.” Women always want something—money, love, whatever, there’s no such thing as plain, regular fucking.

  “Could you get any money? I sure would like to.” She bit on a fingernail, looking at me sideways. “Five dollars would be enough.”

  I thought about where I could get five bucks. I still had eight or ten dollars in my jar in the closet, but if I went home my old man might decide to not let me back out, just to be a perverse prick. I wasn’t grounded or anything, he’d been pretty low-key about the entire affair, it had been so past his understanding, all that I’d done, that he basically made out like I didn’t exist—which suited me fine.

  Besides, what little cash was left I was saving to use tomorrow night. Even with Melanie covering the expenses, paying for going to eat afterwards and anything else, I still had to get her a nice corsage and have some walking-around money.

  All in all, it would be easier to go straight to the bank and make a withdrawal.

  “Wait here,” I told Ginger, “I’ll be back in a half-hour. Less.”

  She wet her lips. “Make sure you’ve got a rubber.”

  Talk about luck. I’d bought a pack this very afternoon, for tomorrow night with Melanie.

  “I’ve always got one,” I boasted.

  It was darker than I remembered down in the basement, under the apartments. Some of the bulbs were burned out and hadn’t been replaced. That was fine with me—the darker the safer.

  I hadn’t been back here since the time we’d almost been caught. We’d laid low after that, figuring the manager would have somebody patrolling for a couple weeks; you get extra-cautious after an incident like that. By the time it was safe to go back into business I’d met the admiral, and boosting coin boxes seemed like petty shit. Anyway, if I was going to Annapolis I needed a clean record.