Now They Call Me Gunner

by Thom Whalen

  * * *

  “Look, Randal, I got to be back in Wemsley by six. Okay?”

  “Yeah, sure, man,” he said to me. “No problem.”

  He seemed distracted. I couldn’t tell if he was actually processing what I said or if he was just saying whatever to shut me up.

  “I mean it. I’ve got a date tonight. I need to get back to Wemsley by six.” I didn’t add that my virginity was at stake but surely he could figure that out. It had been a topic of conversation since I stated working at Elsa’s.

  “I told, you, man. No problem.” He kept driving toward Canada.

  It wasn’t yet noon – we’d started early – so it shouldn’t be a problem. But I had no idea what we were going to find when we talked to Billy’s brother in Russo, so I had no guarantee that we wouldn’t be driving somewhere else and then somewhere else after that, chasing a trail of breadcrumbs around New York State for the rest of the night.

  Randal’s freedom was at stake. I had no illusions about my ability to distract him from our quest.

  “Where am I going to take her?”

  “Take who?”

  “Katie. I have a date with Katie tonight. At seven.”

  “In Wemsley?” Randal said.

  “Of course, in Wemsley.”

  “No place. There’s no place to take a date in Wemsley. You got the movie theater showing some flick that’s probably in black and white and was made before the war. You got Elsa’s Grill. Even you can figure out that Elsa’s is off the radar, right? And you got the A&W out on the highway. That’s good for twenty minutes, half an hour at the most. Besides that, you got basically nothing happening in Wemsley.”

  “The movie theater isn’t that bad. They show first run films.”

  “What are they showing this week?”

  I knew that because I’d done my homework. “The Last Picture Show.”

  “What’s that about?”

  “It’s a black and white movie about a town in Texas that’s about the same size as Wemsley.”

  “Black and white. Right. Like that’s going to fly. Why’s it called The Last Picture Show?”

  “The town movie theater is closing. It’s a metaphor for the death of dreams in small towns in America.”

  Randal took his eyes off the road for long enough to bang his forehead against the steering wheel. Then he looked across at me with the same pity that you’d give to the dorky little kid who wanted bad to play but never got picked for either team. The kid who got told that they already had too many guys because they got street rules about the number of players allowed on a team. “Don’t tell me that you think that a movie about the death of dreams is going to get you laid. Don’t even think it aloud.”

  “It’s a good movie. Maybe a great movie. The critics love it.”

  “Yeah? I bet they didn’t get laid after seeing it, either.”

  I had no reply to that. He was probably right. I saw Manny Farber, the critic for the Times, get interviewed on TV last year and couldn’t imagine him getting laid after going to a movie. Or before, either.

  “So where am I going to take her?” I asked.

  “What’s your place like?”

  “I live with my parents.”

  “What’s her place like?”

  “I think she lives with her parents.”

  “Call her and cancel the date. That’s your best option. Believe me.”

  I didn’t speak to Randal all the rest of the way to Russo.

  It was a quiet ride. Randal’s little pickup didn’t have a radio.