“Clubs are important, too,” he says. “It’s important that a person belongs to a group.”
“Exactly!” She opens her car door and steps out. “I was so hot sitting there. I hope it’s okay for me to get out.” She is wearing this short little white thing, looks like a bathrobe. “Oh, I forgot that I’m still wearing my bathing suit.”
“No problem,” Bob says. “This is some kind of car you’ve got!” He pulls out his flashlight. “Mind if I look at it?”
“Oh, not at all.” She sniffs a few times and then lets out with another big sob. Bob shines the flashlight first at her and then inside the front seat. This car is something, almost as pretty as that girl. He checks out all of the instruments on the dash, fine leather seats, enough room probably for a suitcase back there. Good God! “Hey, uh, do you know that there’s a dead cat in your car?” Boy, if this girl turns out to be crazy, too, Bob will be convinced that all women that look good are insane.
“Oh, I forgot!” She presses her hands against her cheeks and cries that much harder. “Will you get him out?”
“Sure thing.” Bob reaches into the car, gets that stiff cat and hurls it into the vacant lot. “What was it doing there?”
“I killed it,” she says. “Right on this very street, I killed it this morning.”
“God, and you’ve carted it around all day?”
“I couldn’t help it, officer, honest, I couldn’t!”
“It’s okay, it’s okay. You can call me Bob, name’s Bob Bobbin.”
“Oh, Bob, I’m so glad that you stopped me,” she says and she does not even make one crack about the red, red robin like most people on first meeting. “Oh, I hate to tell my parents that the wedding is off. They were so pleased!” She shakes her head. “I know they’ll be upset!”
“I bet they wouldn’t want you to marry someone that you didn’t want to marry.” Bob looks her in the face now. This girl may be prettier than Corky Revels.
“I guess you’re right,” she says and dries her eyes, blows her nose in his handkerchief and hands it back to him. He puts it in his back pocket this time.
“Hey, why don’t we go have ourselves a drink so that you can unwind before you go home.”
“Aren’t you working?” she asks.
“Not right now I’m not.” He smiles at her and he is cute. She thinks he’s getting cuter all the time. “How about it? You can follow me and then you’ll be closer to home.”
“I didn’t know there was any place in this town to get a drink!”
“I have some champagne at my place.” He leans against the car. “If you like champagne, that is.”
“Oh I do but I really don’t know,” she stops and stares at him again, those large innocent looking eyes, that moustache. “Well, sure Bob. I’d love to.”
“Great!” Bob runs back to the police car. He can’t believe that this is happening to him. “You follow me, okay?” She nods and gets in her car. “Don’t get lost,” he yells and cranks up his car. He watches her pull out behind him and he goes fifteen miles an hour so that he won’t lose her. He passes by the diner and there’s Sandra sitting in the window, reading a magazine, that Elvis Presley lamp right in front of her. She lifts her hand and smiles great big but Bob just nods. He keeps looking behind him all the way, forgetting the way his heart had raced when he heard Corky’s voice on the phone, when he thought she was calling to say that she was sorry, forgetting what happened down at the station and how he’s got to face them all again in the morning. He is planning just how hell pour the champagne, planning just how hell dim the lights and turn on some slow easy-listening music, how hell tell her about the way that he saved that man’s life. Frances Miller does not even stop to think and ask herself what she is doing. She will do that later, time and time again, in years to come when she thinks of past lovers, this one-night stand.
Juanita Weeks is just about asleep when she sees a shadow in the doorway, hears the floor creak, and then feels the bed slope off to the other side. She doesn’t move a muscle, just lies there, and then she feels those big hairy arms reach around her middle, feels Harold’s manhood pressing against her thigh.
“Is that you, Harold?” she whispers.
“Now, who the hell were you expecting?” His arms get tighter around her waist and he presses closer.
“I just couldn’t believe it was you.”
“Does a wild bear shit in the woods?” he asks, and now his face is nuzzled into her neck under all that curly hair.
“Oh, Harold.” She rolls over and presses herself against him. “I love you, Harold. It was all my fault, every bit of it and I’m so sorry. I know you can’t forgive and forget right off but I’m willing to do anything, honey, anything that I can to make up for it.”
“I reckon there’s probably a pony close by,” he whispers and twists her nipple. “You reckon so, cooter clam?”
“Yes, yes, I know it.” Juanita can’t help but get a little tearful when he hugs her so close and rolls her over on her back.
“I rinsed, Nita,” he whispers.
Sam Swett wakes to the darkened room and at first he thinks that he is in the small studio apartment in New York. Then he sees Corky in the slight glow from the corner streetlight, her head on his chest, the small hand resting on his stomach. Now, he remembers. He remembers everything. He lifts a strand of her hair and rubs it between his thumb and forefinger, lets it slip back down on his chest. He watches her sleeping, her chest and stomach moving up and down slightly with her breath, the slight jerks and twitches of her hands and feet. It is as if everything is clearing up now and he has not felt so good and safe, so sure of himself in ages. Slowly he lifts her head and slips out from under her, kneels by the side of the bed and gently places her head back on the pillow.
He can barely find his clothes in that dim light but he does, at the end of the bed, and he dresses there in the darkness while he watches her sleep. There is a part of him that wants to crawl back in beside her, a part of him that would like to be there when the sun comes up. He goes over now and strokes her hair, kisses those full lips lightly, a slight brush, but enough to cause her eyes to open.
“What are you doing?” she whispers in a voice so childlike that he would like to wrap her up in that quilt and rock her back and forth in his arms.
“I’ve got to go.” He kisses her again and she sits up.
“To the hotel?”
“Yeah, gotta get my stuff.” He shifts from one foot to the other. He had wanted to slip away, or so he thought, but he never could have done that, never could have left her without a word. “I need to be getting home,” he says. “My folks are going to start worrying probably. You know they may have tried to call me.”
“Yeah,” she whispers and reaches for her robe, throws it around her shoulders. His eyes have adjusted now and he can see the blank open expression on her face. Then she laughs softly. “Bet they’ll really like your hairdo.”
“Yeah.” He laughs again and steps away from the bed. “I sure have enjoyed being with you.”
“Same here.” She gets up and walks toward him, her hands holding the robe around her. “You know if you’re ever around, of course, who in the hell is ever around Marshboro?” She laughs again, though he can hear the crack in her voice. “But I mean if you ever do come back and you’d like to call…”
“I’ll be back,” he says and kisses her forehead.
“I’ll walk with you.”
“No, go back to bed. No telling what time a bus pulls out.” He grips her hands and then lets them go limp in his own. “If the bus is too late, I may just get on the highway. That’s how I came, you know?”
“Be careful,” she whispers and the tone in her voice is such a frightening and foreboding one.
“I may just call my Dad.” He goes over to the door and she follows him. “I meant what I said,” he says. “You are one of the nicest people that I’ve ever known, ever.”
“You too,” she whispers and watches
him walk away, down the stairwell. She runs back over to her bed and sits, staring out the window. He is walking down the sidewalk and he turns around once but she ducks down behind the doll that she had placed back on the window sill. He walks around the corner and then disappears and she gets back under the sheet, her arms wrapped around her waist just as his had been. She closes her eyes and tries to sleep but there is that impulse to jump up and run out into the street, to run to the hotel, the bus station, the highway, just to tell him good-bye again, but she talks herself out of it, turns her thoughts to the possibility that he may come back some time soon, the faceless stranger of her dream replaced by Sam Swett, shaved head, dirty green shirt and blue jeans: Sam Swett.
He doesn’t even check the bus schedule. He gets his things and walks straight to the highway. He walks to Howard Johnson’s and sits in the lounge area while he waits for his father to arrive. His parents sounded so frightened at first, his mother’s hello after that long distant ring, and then there was relief. He doesn’t talk to the night clerk who is sitting there watching some old movie on the small black and white T.V., though it is obvious that the clerk would like to talk. Sam supposes that man would be talking to himself if he weren’t sitting here. He is tempted to go over to the phone, to call Corky, to hear that sleepy child’s voice answer, but he’s not sure what he would say. He feels like he has time now, time to let his hair grow, to get cleaned up, to decide what he wants to do. He thinks of her standing under the streetlight in front of that house that she likes to go see, the distant look, the lull of her voice when she described why she likes that house, that big front window and front porch, and he asked her if she ever thought of settling down, and yes, she nodded, but then looked away. He had had to ask why. “I reckon it’s something to look forward to,” she had said. Now, he can’t help thinking about that, remembering everything about her, that blue cotton robe, freckled shoulder, wide gray eyes, her room decorated in corn husks, while she pours coffee, while she wishes herself into that yellow house. He feels now that he will always have her to turn to when something spurs his memory, an Uncle Sam hat, a miserably hot July afternoon, the smell of pancakes, and if he ever finds himself seated in front of his typewriter with world-solving words somewhere in the back of his mind, it will be her image that comes to him, an unchanged face. But, what if he wants for someone to really be there, a real person with a life of their own? It has all come to him so slowly, so simply; he can go anywhere and see the Howard Johnsons and familiar service stations and restaurants that line the highway at every stop, and it will all seem the same at first glance, though when given the chance will prove to be so different. It’s knowing that makes it count, settling and accepting that makes it different; it’s something to look forward to.
The lines from Louden Wainwright s “Talking Big Apple - ’75” are used by permission of Snowden Music, Inc. © 1975, Snowden Music, Inc.
© 1984 by Jill McCorkle.
Except for brief quotation in critical articles and reviews, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher.
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
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WORKMAN PUBLISHING
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E-book ISBN 978-1-56512-761-6
Also by JILL McCORKLE
NOVELS
The Cheer Leader
Tending to Virginia
Ferris Beach
Carolina Moon
STORIES
Crash Diet
Final Vinyl Days
Creatures of Habit
Going Away Shoes
July 7th Page 32
