My mouth felt very dry, but that must have been an illusion, because when I kissed her our mouths were wet; they slipped all around, tongues and lips and nipping teeth. When I could talk I said, ‘I’ll do my best to share my college education.’
‘Put on the radio,’ she said, unbuckling my belt and unsnapping my jeans. ‘Put on the radio, Pete, I like the oldies.’
So I put on the radio and I kissed her and there was a spot, a certain spot, her fingers guided me to it and there was a moment when I was the same old same old and then there was a new place to be. She was very warm in there. Very warm and very tight. She whispered in my ear, her lips tickling against the skin: ‘Slow. Eat every one of your vegetables and maybe you’ll get dessert.’
Jackie Wilson sang ‘Lonely Teardrops’ and I went slow. Roy Orbison sang ‘Only the Lonely’ and I went slow. Wanda Jackson sang ‘Let’s Have a Party’ and I went slow. Mighty John did an ad for Brannigan’s, Derry’s hottest bottle club, and I went slow. Then she began to moan and it wasn’t her fingers on my neck but her nails digging into it, and when she began to move her hips up against me in short hard thrusts I couldn’t go slow and then The Platters were on the radio, The Platters were singing ‘Twilight Time’ and she began to moan that she hadn’t known, hadn’t had a clue, oh gee, oh Pete, oh gee, oh Jesus, Jesus Christ, Pete, and her lips were all over my mouth and my chin and my jaw, she was frantic with kisses. I could hear the seat creaking, I could smell cigarette smoke and the pine air-freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, and by then / was moaning, too, I don’t know what, The Platters were singing ‘Each day I pray for evening just to be with you,’ and then it started to happen.
The pump turns on in ecstasy. I closed my eyes, I held her with my eyes closed and went into her that way, that way you do, shaking all over, hearing the heel of my shoe drumming against the driver’s-side door in a spastic tattoo, thinking that I could do this even if I was dying, even if I was dying, even if I was dying; thinking also that it was information. The pump turns on in ecstasy, the cards fall where they fall, the world never misses a beat, the queen hides, the queen is found, and it was all information.
25
The next morning I had a brief meeting with my Geology instructor, who told me I was
‘edging into a grave situation.’ That is not exactly new information, Number Six, I thought of telling him, but didn’t. The world looked different this morning — both better and worse.
When I got back to Chamberlain I found Nate getting ready to leave for home. He had his suitcase in one hand. There was a sticker on it that said i CLIMBED MT WASHINGTON. Slung over his shoulder was a duffel full of dirty clothes. Like everything else, Nate looked different now.
‘Have a good Thanksgiving, Nate,’ I said, opening my closet and starting to yank out pants and shirts at random. ‘Eat lots of stuffing. You’re too fuckin skinny.’
‘I will. Cranberry dressing, too. When I was at my most homesick that first week, my mom’s dressing was practically all I could think about.’
I filled my own suitcase, thinking that I could take Carol to the bus depot in Deny and then just keep on going. If the traffic on Route 136 wasn’t too heavy, I could be home before dark.
Maybe even stop in Frank’s Fountain for a mug of rootbeer before heading up Sabbatus Road
to the house. Suddenly being out of this place — away from Chamberlain Hall and Holyoke Commons, away from the whole damned University — was my number-one priority. You’re confused, Pete, Carol had said in the car last night. You don’t know what you want or what you think, and you won’t as long as you keep running those cards.