‘I’m sorry,’ Ronnie said. ‘Whatever has got your panties in a bunch, I’m sorry. I’m sorry as hell, sorry as shit, I’m so sorry my ass hurts. Okay?’
Dearie took a step back. I had been able to feel the adrenaline; I suspected Dearie could feel the waves of dislike rolling in his direction just as clearly. Even Ashley Rice, who looked like a roly-poly bear in a kid’s cartoon, was looking at Dearie in a flat-eyed, unfriendly way.
It was a case of what the poet Gary Snyder might have called bad-karma baseball. Dearie was the proctor — strike one. He tried to run our floor as though it were an adjunct to his beloved ROTC program — strike two. And he was a jerkwad sophomore at a time when sophomores still believed that harassing freshmen was part of their bounden duty. Strike three, Dearie, you’re out.
‘Spread the word that I’m not going to put up with a lot of high-school crap on my floor,’
Dearie said (his floor, if you could dig it). He stood ramrod-straight in his U of M sweatshirt and khaki pants — pressed khaki pants, although it was Saturday. ‘This is not high school, gentlemen; this is Chamberlain Hall at the University of Maine. Your bra-snapping days are over. The time has come for you to behave like college men.’
I guess there was a reason I was voted Class Clown in the ’66 Gates Falls yearbook. I clicked my heels together and snapped off a pretty fair British-style salute, the kind with the palm turned mostly outward. ‘Yes sirl’ I cried. There was nervous laughter from the gallery, a dirty guffaw from Ronnie, a grin from Skip. Skip gave Dearie a shrug, eyebrows lifted, hands up to the sky. See what you get? it said. Act like an asshole and that’s how people treat you.
Perfect eloquence is, I think, almost always mute.
Dearie looked at Skip, also mute. Then he looked at me. His face was expressionless, almost dead, but I wished I had for once forgone the smartass impulse. The trouble is, for the born smartass, the impulse has nine times out of ten been acted upon before the brain can even engage first gear. I bet that in days of old when knights were bold, more than one court jester was hung upside down by his balls. You don’t read about it in the Morte D’Arthur, but I think it must be true — laugh this one off, ya motley motherfucker. In any case, I knew I had just made an enemy.
Dearie spun in a nearly perfect about-face and went marching out of the lounge. Ronnie’s mouth drew down in a grimace that made his ugly face even uglier; the leer of the villain in a stage melodrama. He made a jacking-off gesture at Dearie’s stiff retreating back. Hugh Brennan giggled a little, but no one really laughed. Stoke Jones had disappeared, apparently disgusted with the lot of us.
Ronnie looked around, eyes bright. ‘So,’ he said. ‘I’m still up for it. Nickel a point, who wants to play?’
‘I will,’ Skip said.
‘I will, too,’ I said, never once glancing in the direction of my geology book.
‘Hearts?’ Kirby McClendon asked. He was the tallest boy on the floor, maybe one of the tallest boys at school — six-seven at least, and possessed of a long, mournful bloodhound’s face. ‘Sure. Good choice.’
‘What about us?’ Ashley squeaked.
‘Yeah!’ Hugh said. Talk about your gluttons for punishment.
‘You’re outclassed at this table,’ Ronnie said, speaking with what was for him almost kindness. ‘Why don’t you start up your own?’
Ashley and Hugh did just that. By four o’clock all of the lounge tables were occupied by quartets of third-floor freshmen, ragtag scholarship boys who had to buy their texts in the
Used section of the bookstore playing Hearts at a nickel a point. In our dorm, the mad season had begun.
8
Saturday night was another of my meals on the Holyoke dishline. In spite of my awakening interest in Carol Gerber, I tried to get Brad Witherspoon to switch for me — Brad had Sunday breakfast and he hated to get up early almost as badly as Skip did — but Brad refused. By then he was playing, too, and two bucks out of pocket. He was crazy to catch up.