PART TWO:
THE LEAGUE OF VIRGINS
I
The girls went down to the water twice. The first time was the day after the rainstorm that had broken over Ventura County, shedding more water on the small town of Palomo Grove in a single night than its inhabitants might have reasonably expected in a year. The downpour, however monsoonal, had not mellowed the heat. With what Me wind there was coming off the desert, the town baked in the high nineties. Children who’d exhausted themselves playing in the heat through the morning wailed away the afternoon indoors. Dogs cursed their coats; birds declined to make music. Old folks took to their beds. Adulterers did the same, dressed in sweat. Those unfortunates with tasks to per-form that couldn’t be delayed until evening, when (God wiling) the temperature dropped, went about their labors with their eyes to the shimmering sidewalks, every step a trial, every breath sticky in their lungs.
But the four girls were used to heat; it was at their age the condition of the blood. Between them, they had seventy years’ life on the planet, though when Arleen turned nineteen the following Tuesday, it would be seventy-one. Today she felt her age; that vital few months that separated her from her closest friend, Joyce, and even further from Carolyn and Trudi, whose mere seventeen was an age away for a mature woman like herself. She had much to tell on the subject of experience that day, as they sauntered through the empty streets of Palomo Grove. It was good to be out on a day like this, without being ogled by the men in the town—they knew them all by name—whose wives had taken to sleeping in the spare room; or their sexual banter being overheard by one of their mothers’ friends. They wandered, like Amazons in shorts, through a town taken by some invisible fire which blistered the air and turned brick into mirage but did not kill. It merely laid the inhabitants stricken beside their open fridges.
“Is it love?” Joyce asked Arleen.
The older girl had a swift answer.
“Hell no,” she said. “You are so dumb sometimes.”
“I just thought…with you talking about him that way.”
“What do you mean: that way?”
“Talking about his eyes and stuff.”
“Randy’s got nice eyes,” Arleen conceded. “But so’s Marty, and Jim, and Adam—”
“Oh stop,” said Trudi, with more than a trace of irritation. “You’re such a slut.”
“I am not.”
“So stop it with the names. We all know that boys like you. And we all know why.”
Arleen threw her a look which went unread given that all but Carolyn were wearing sunglasses. They walked on a few yards in silence.
“Anyone want a Coke?” Carolyn said. “Or ice cream?” They’d come to the bottom of the hill. The Mall was ahead, its air-conditioned stores tempting.
“Sure,” said Trudi, “I’ll come with you.” She turned to Arleen. “You want something?”
“Nope.”
“Are you sulking?”
“Nope.”
“Good,” said Trudi. ” ‘Cause it’s too hot to argue.” The two girls headed into Marvin’s Food and Drug, leaving Arleen and Joyce on the street corner.
“I’m sorry…” Joyce said.
“What about?”
“Asking you about Randy. I thought maybe you…you know…maybe it was serious.”
“There’s no one in the Grove that’s worth two cents,” Arleen murmured. “I can’t wait to get out.”
“Where will you go? Los Angeles?”
Arleen pulled her sunglasses down her nose and peered at Joyce.
“Why would I want to do that?” she said. “I’ve got more sense than to join the line there. No. I’m going to New York. It’s better to study there. Then work on Broadway. If they want me they can come and get me.”
“Who can?”
“Joyce, ” Arleen said, mock-exasperated. “Hollywood.”
“Oh. Yeah. Hollywood.”
She nodded appreciatively at the completedness of Ar-leen’s plan. She had nothing in her own head anywhere near so coherent. But it was easy for Arleen. She was California Beautiful, blonde, blue-eyed and the envied possessor of a smile that brought the opposite sex to their knees. If that weren’t advantage enough she had a mother who’d been an actress, and already treated her daughter like a Star.