And-?
There was a stern reproach in his eyes. He said, “When you come here, learn to pick your kicks.”
“I . . .” She swallowed hard. “I didn’t think they . . .”
“Yea, yea,” he cut in. “But-shit! None of them three looked twice at a girl in their lives, ‘cep maybe to peel her down!”
She looked miserably at her empty glass and nodded.
He gave his crooked smile again and patted her hand. “So okay, no harm done. Just don’t make the same mistake twice. By the way, my name’s Danty.”
“Mine’s Lora,” she said distractedly. “Lora Turpin. Uh-”
But Danty had tensed. He leaned forward. “Not Turpin of Energetics General?”
“Why . . . why, yes. Do you-?”
“Know him? Shit, no. Heard of him, though.” And in the manner of an afterthought: “Friends of mine work at EG.”
Which she had imagined to be all of Cowville, the building to incorporate the city. She touched her bosom where the point of Josh’s knife had rested, and a shiver racked her.
“You not? No? What do you do?”
“My best to be myself,” Danty murmured, and sipped beer.
Recognition signals. Landmarks. Like knowing (because a TV program had said so with authority) that only queer blacks close to farming stock called white teenage girls “addle cocks.” She said explosively, “Are you a reb?”
“I guess I wouldn’t cross the road to contradict you.”
She stared at him, and went on staring. Now and then, the other side of New Lake, the son or daughter of some wealthy family put on the reb-style pose. and that was where it stopped-just a pose. According to the social history she had been drilled through in school. every generation for centuries had had its rebs, clear back to the wandering students of the Middle Ages. But something kept on going, fed from a source she couldn’t understand. Once, in an essay, she’d spoken of a humanistic counterpart of divine discontent-the phrase borrowed from a book not on the curriculum-and she’d been marked down two grades for saying it.
“You?” he was asking. “You in college?”
“Uh . . .” Remembering with an effort. “I go to college in the fall. Just finished school.”
And what would it be like, there at Bennington?
An odd feeling, as though she were two people at once. At home she had been allowed to drink since she was fourteen, so it couldn’t be the brandy that had hit her. It must be shock. She half wanted to cry, and half wanted to laugh hysterically.
“And what brought you here?” Danty said.
So she told him: words flooding out, tumbling over each other, confusing the argument she wanted to frame, until she was certain he must think her mentally deranged. Yet he sat there, and nodded now and then, and heard her out.
He said eventually, “You like to night-ride, I guess.”
“Oh, yes!” (Black sky, black road, the universe condensed to a pattern of lights, the ever-present expectation -hope?-of “instant death”: just add blood.)
“Yes.” Nodding. “It’s the idea of going somewhere. To look for something you might not recognize if you found it. Only the places you most want to go, they won’t let you.”
She was about to say that was exactly what she felt,
when she realized with a pang of shame that she’d clean forgotten to tell him something very important.
“Danty! Oh, Jesus! I didn’t thank you.”
“Not to worry.”
“But-1” Now she was shaking all over again, from a different cause. “But you must think I’m awful! And it was fantastic what you did, really incredible Danty, you’re kind of a terrific personal”
“I’m myself,” he said, and drained his glass.
“But–oh, shit!” Well, it was the only way she knew to say thanks properly, so with her hand hovering over her crotch-zip: “Do you have somewhere we could . . . ? You know!”
“Place but not time. Thanks all the same. Shall I show you to a hoverhalt?” Making to rise.
No, it can’t stop here! 1 mean: SAVED MY LIFE! “No, wait” Mind racing. And then inspiration. Oh, yes! lust the right bit to blow the minds, turn up with a black reb! “Hey, look! We have this big party for tomorrow night, this real stand-up-and-grin-if-it-chokes-you affair Can I send you an invitation? I mean-oh, Danty, I do want to see you again!”