The Homecoming Queen (Fiction)

October, 1996

Machine guns and claymore mines were the farthest things from my mind, for all that I hate crowds.
I allowed the wave of humanity inside Lenox Square to carry me along, opting to drift as aimlessly and passively as flotsam, for once. I floated, observed, and did little else.

Three hundred bucks were burning a hole in my pocket, the result of having done well at dice the day before, and I was anxious to offload a few. It’s not that I have any great skill or luck at the game, mind you, but when I shoved a .38 into the face of one of the other players, took his dice and rolled sevens five times in a row, he was more than happy to return his “winnings” to the rest of us, along with such punitive damages as we saw fit to award ourselves.

There’s nothing quite like six hollowpoints, winking at a man from inside the cylinder, to inspire honesty and good faith.

I was both bored and horny as a three-balled billygoat, so I decided to get in a little “people-watching,” both to amuse myself and to stay sharp, before attending to the other matter. I continued to drift, watching faces and behaviors, trying to spot shoplifters, plainclothes cops and unhappily married couples. As I moved my head slowly and methodically from side to side, I found myself dropping and fixing my sights. At the entrance of a department store, I spotted a familiar mane of golden-blond hair, the owner thereof standing head and shoulders above the crowd.

Switching from "driftwood" to "powerboat" mode, I shouldered my was through the throng until I’d reached her side.

“Dawn!” I said, handing her a copy of G.K. Chesterton’s The Napoleon of Notting Hill, “I got that book you wanted.” Inside the book, of course, were four fifty-dollar bills. She glanced down at her hands and then back at me, with a look that said, “What are you, some kind of retard?”

Oops! She had a box under each arm, and two or more bags in each hand.

Feeling every bit the total dipshit, I stammered : “Uh, lemme help you with those.” I took one armload from her and accompanied her to the parking deck.

“I was just about to track you down,” I said. “I’m not used to seeing you this far north, though. What gives? Special occasion?”
“I’m not working today, Billy,” she said. “I’m taking a day off and buying myself a present or two.”

Shit. There she goes with that “Billy” bit again. What is your fucking problem, woman? How many times must I tell you that my name is Will or William?. Not Bill, not Billy and if ever you dare to call me Willy, I’ll shove you in front of a moving train!

Day off? Man, did this suck! Now I’d have to hunt Tina down, and I hadn’t seen her in ages. Still, I had to admit that in Dawn’s line of work, the occasional day off was probably a necessity. And with what she charged, she could certainly afford one. I’ve heard of hookers who charged five hundred or even a grand a night, but never actually met one. Dawn might not have been in that league, but she was close. I was peeling off two hundred every time I banged her, and had heard that other guys were paying her more. She was certainly beautiful enough to charge that much, so I occasionally wondered why she charged me less than the other Johns. Then again, I was still young in those days, -- twenty nine-- and still good-looking, so maybe that had something to do with it. Well, perhaps the situation could be salvaged. It was worth a try, at any rate.

“More like you bought yourself a present or two dozen, from the look of it,” I corrected her.
“Yes,” she said. “Very special presents.”
She had a strange look on her face, one I wasn’t used to seeing. I was at a loss to interpret it, so I opted to tag along and try to get her to change her mind.
“Special presents for a special lady,” I said, as we approached her car. She was parked on the top deck, and the late afternoon sun and brisk breeze combined to transform her hair into a sparkling, metallic flame.
“Oh, but I’m not a lady, Billy,” she said, as she bent down to unlock the trunk of her Lexus. “I’m a whore. You said so yourself.”

Great. Now I felt like rat shit stacked all of two inches tall.

“Uh, yeah,”I said, leaning against the open trunk lid with one arm, “about that. Well, that was just the booze talking.”

She rose to her full height and gave me a look that was almost sweet, although tinged with that strangeness I’d noticed earlier. I’m no giant -- 5’ 11” and some change, and with a light bone structure, to boot -- so if I hadn‘t been wearing boots, she‘d have been taller than I was, in her heels. Even without them, she was only an inch or two shorter than I was, with “child-bearing hips”, large breasts and a robust, athletic-looking frame. Not an ounce of fat on her, mind you, and exquisitely graceful in her own way. You could tell she was a Midwestern “farm girl” who’d received a bit of “grind and polish” just by looking at her, and I suppose that’s the best way to describe her.

“Isn’t it always, Billy? Isn’t it always?” she asked. She gave me that weird look again, and said: “In vino veritas, right?”

I must have shown some sign of extreme discomfiture, as she simply stepped forward, laid her index finger across my lips and said: “Just forget about it.”

Forget about it.

Yeah, right.

Leave it to William Wallace McVann to be the only bastard out there who could manage to get into a shouting match with a high-priced hooker, but Dawn and I had been there, done that and got the T-shirts on more than one occasion.

Forget?

Like hell.

In our bi-weekly ritual of: get drunk/fuck/wipe off/zip up/go home, we’d actually gotten into a number of screaming arguments, during the course of which we both said things neither of us could ever take back, and neither of us could ever forget. So we’d opted to forgive, instead. If it seems odd that I’d have learned more about forgiveness from a prostitute than from any preacher, all I can say is this: You don’t get out much, do you?

“Look, Dawn, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I said those things.”

For once, I actually meant it.

“I told you to forget it, Billy,” she said, spreading her arms as if they were wings and executing a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree pirouette of which any ballerina would have been envious. She took a deep breath and exhaled, closing her eyes in the process. “Just look out there!” she said, with an all-encompassing sweep of her arm. “Today is a very special day.”

I looked around me. It was a beautiful day, to be sure. The sky was a deep and cloudless blue, the sun a molten swirl of bronze and gold, trickling slowly towards the horizon. The leaves on the trees -- such as I could see from the parking deck -- were a riot of red and yellow. To reiterate, it was indeed a beautiful day. I conceded as much, and then added:

“Fall is one of my favorite seasons, too, Dawn. But what’s so special about today?”

She put her hands on her knees and leaned in towards me, mimicking my accent:

“Fawl’s wun’ mah fav’rit seaserns tew, Daown. B’ whuss suh spesh’l ‘bout terday?” With an exaggerated and exasperated sigh, she -- as rare is it was for her to do this -- swung back into her own broad, flat Midwestern accent. “It’s the last Friday in October, silly! The homecoming dance is tonight!”

Do what?

What the hell? Homecoming dance? Shitfire and save matches! I hadn’t gone to a single one, nor a Prom, nor a Sadie Hawkins, nor any other dance. I didn’t even know how to dance, having been raised in largely Baptist family. As a matter of fact, my daddy had shown up at my school when I was in the third grade -- half lit and threatening the principal with lawsuits and grievous bodily harm -- when he learned that I’d been made to dance during a P.E. class. He would not, he informed the cowering administrator, have his son’s immortal soul put in danger of eternal hellfire for the sake of physical fitness. If they wanted me fit and trim, they could have me play football or something along those lines, but dancing was out of the question. Confronted with the demands of the Department of Education on one hand and six feet and two-hundred pounds of vaguely beer-smelling Scots-Irish rage on the other, the principal had wisely opted to exempt me from dancing, and have me do calisthenics for the duration of the winter.

I’m not sure what intimidated the poor soul more: Daddy’s imposing appearance and behavior, or the fact that he said: “Do you know, good sir, that under chapter blah-blah of title yadda-yadda of the laws of this great state, abusive or opprobrious language -- at the discretion of the court -- may be seen as justification for simple assault or simple battery? Did you know, good sir, that whereas you may forbid my son to pray in this school, you may not --under the same First Amendment guarantee -- compel him to abandon the free exercise of his faith, which includes abstention from dancing?”

My faith? Hell, I was eight years old! To me, “faith” was summed up in the sing-songy words:

“Jesus loves me
This I know,
For the Bible
Tells me so.

Little ones
To Him belong,
They are weak
But He is strong.”

I was just happy to see Daddy take on an “authority figure” and then “stomp a mudhole in his ass and walk it dry” as to know that I was saved by faith and grace.

The P.E. “coach” had voiced an objection or two, but when Daddy -- after a three-drink “business lunch” -- kicked the gym door open and strode in wearing his dress uniform, pointed a lit cigarette in the confused gent’s face and snarled: “I hear you got something to say to me about the way I raise my boy!”, the matter was quickly -- and conveniently -- forgotten. The “coach” -- hard as nails with kids, but considerably “softer” when confronted by angry ex-marines, now officers in the United States Army -- apparently had an abrupt religious experience and repented of the sin of leading the young astray.

In record time, at that.

I never danced another step afterwards. As for going to dances?

I’d spent all the aforementioned social occasions well away from the proceedings. Down at the riverbank, as a matter of fact, cranking up Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Molly Hatchet, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and ZZ top -- among others -- while passing beers and joints back and forth with my friends.

What the hell did I know about homecoming dances?

“Aren’t those kinds of dances usually held in November?” I asked. It was all I could remember about them.
“Billy, do you assume that every school on earth is like the one you went to?”
School? Try schools, baby. Eight of ’em, to be exact.
“Mine was a little different,” she continued.
“Uh, be true to your school!” I said weakly. Rah rah rah rah, sis boom bah!
“Billy,” she said -- irritating me yet again -- “tonight, I’m going to do just that. I don’t usually do this with ‘clients’, but would you like to come over? This is a special occasion, after all.”
“You gonna drive?” I asked. “I did leave my car at Brookhaven, for the record. They have free overnight, but I…”
She cut me off.

“I’ll drive. And don’t get ahead of yourself. Get in.” The flat, Midwest accent cut through again: “And if you’re gonna smoke, hang it out the window. You drop ashes all over the place.”
I did as I was told. “Little Elvis” had ideas of his own, but something about the oddness of this situation put the hook in me, bigtime. She got us out of the mall parking deck, hit Lenox Road, and 75/85 from there. This was a “first”, for me. I was about to see a hooker’s apartment. Leave it to the pragmatist in me to blow it. Or so I thought…

“Have you eaten yet?” I asked her.
“Shit! I knew I forgot something!” she said, slapping her palm to her forehead. “Mom always told me that if I was gonna dance, I needed some energy! Oh, but the fridge is empty!”
“Got any decent cookware?” I asked her.
“Well, I’m running low on firewood, hollowed gourds and Bowie knives” she said, throwing my hillbilly habits and heritage into my face, “but the kitchen meets my needs.”
I snickered, lightly squeezed one silk-stockinged knee, and was -- quite literally -- rewarded with a slap in the face for my efforts.
“Fresh!” she said.

OK, so fuck me dead. Or so I hoped… I really wasn’t sure what had gotten into her today, but I seemed to be doing well, so I let it go.

“I can cook, you know,” I told her, rubbing my cheek. “And there’s a supermarket at the next exit. What say we get really adventurous and go grocery shopping together?”
“Good idea!” she said. “We need some cake mix!”
Truth be told, I didn’t give a shit about cakes or dances or any other such thing. But it looked like I’d be getting laid if I played my cards right, so cake mix it was. Besides, with the exceptions of my attempts to impress Nadia with my culinary skills three years before, and a foray or two into Cub Foods with ‘Stasia, I’d never gone shopping with a woman I’d screwed. Hell, I’d only woken up with one two years before, and if my life was a steaming heap of shit and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, at least I had the chance to pretend it was otherwise as well and as heartily as the more “respectable” people around me seemed to do. If tonight was “Homecoming” for Dawn, then it was “Honeymoon” for me. If I'd never be able to marry Elaine now, and didn't want anyone else, then at least I could construct a fantasy of my own.

As we walked through the automatic doors of the supermarket, I linked my arm through hers at the elbow, slid my fingers through hers, and didn’t care what an incongruous pair we made. And what an incongruous pair we were. A transplanted ridge runner-cum-bush-league-hood and a farm girl/high-priced hooker from someplace called Payne, Ohio, both stalking the streets of Atlanta. She didn’t push me off or pull away, and this I took as a good sign. We stood equally tall, she in her two-hundred dollar heels, and I in my twenty-dollar jungle boots. Silk stockings shimmered over her perfect calves, while gray woolen socks lurked beneath the legs of my ripped and frayed jeans. She wore a waist-length coat that appeared to be genuine fox fur over a form-fitting, short, black dress trimmed in silver, while I wore a black leather jacket over a British DPM smock. Incongruous? Shee-yut. We gave the word entirely new meaning. One or two people stared at us for a moment, and I’m not sure whether it was she, I or the both of us returning their stares -- with compound interest -- that led them to look down and go about their business.

“I’m not in the mood for hog jowls and turnips, Billy,” she said with an impish expression on her face. “What’s for dinner tonight?”
I ignored the deliberate “redneck” potshot and ran through a veritable litany of European, American, and Asian recipes with which I was familiar.
We settled on a good, fat roasting chicken, some cod fillets, potatoes, yams, a few apples and lemons, with plain ol’ dill and cracked black pepper as seasonings. And her cake mix, of course. German chocolate.

Simple, I guess. Kraut and Squarehead, too. Not that I gave a shit. It was alien, but not that far beyond the pale, for me. To be sure, I’d have preferred my chicken fried and my fish pan-fried and battered with beer, egg and cornmeal --and two kinds of animal flesh at the same meal was all but unknown to me, save for holidays, very special occasions, and daddy’s Brunswick stew, in which he’d mix squirrel, rabbit and chicken, and whatever else either of us managed to shoot with reckless abandon -- but life ain’t perfect.

It was all rather sick, as I suppose. She purchased our supper with the money I’d paid her to bang her later that evening, even though she hadn‘t been “working“ that day. I’m still not entirely sure why I did it, but I moseyed over to a cooler and bought us each a Coke while she stood in the checkout line.

“Here,” I said, as she carried the groceries to the car. “Want one?”
I don’t know why, but some element of the overall situation reminded me of a line from Liz Phair’s “Fuck and Run”:

I want a boyfriend/
I want a boyfriend/
I want all that stupid old shit/
Like letters and sodas…

She stared right through me with that weird look she’d had on her face since first I saw her that day.
“Why thank you, Billy! That is so sweet of you!”
So it’s “Billy” again, is it? Why don’t you just call me “Sherman”, bitch?
I bit back on the anger and braced myself for my first visit to a hooker’s apartment. What was I to expect? Given her profession and my warehouse job as a forklift operator, I had visions of bare, stained mattresses and entire pallets of condoms, Listerine and K-Y jelly dancing through my head.

So much for expectations. Even plooking one John a day, five days a week, she had to be pulling down fifty-plus grand a year -- tax free-- and I should have thought of that. As it happened, she lived on the top floor of a Midtown apartment building, and a nice one at that. What I'd expected sure as hell wasn’t what I saw when we entered the apartment.

The walls and ceiling were white, the furniture in rich earth tones. No bent Venetian blinds, bare bulbs or yellowed curtains. She had drapes, shaded lamps, and clean lace curtains. The beautifully polished hardwood floor was overlain with Persian and Turkish carpets, while the walls were decorated with the most eclectic assortment of expression I’ve ever seen outside my own skull. Framed and under glass, what appeared to be an original Robert Crumb “Keep on Truckin’
poster hung next to a Breughel print, followed by a Vermeer print, a few Rockwells, and what -- to all appearances -- was a bootlegged Peter Bagge “Buddy Bradley”. Elfin faces whittled from driftwood and logs hung from the walls, while the shelves featured Lladro and Coburg figurines, and even a Holly Hobby doll.

What got me next was the bookshelf and the CD rack.

“What does a whore read and listen to, anyway?” I asked myself, not realizing at the time that the question was as stupid as “What does a cop/doctor/dentist/garbage man/forklift operator read and listen to?”
Milton. Shakespeare. Chesterton. Yeats. Shelley. Eliot. Garrison Keillor. Anne of Green Gables sat beside all umpteen volumes of Little House on the Prairie, and Alcott’s Little Women and Little Men. Three shelves worth of books on agriculture and stock rearing. I was in a whore’s apartment, and yet suddenly, I felt as if I were a contaminant.

“What do you have on your shelves, Billy?” she asked.
More of that “Billy” shit!
“Vachss? Rex Miller? Sam Spade? Penthouse Letters? Army manuals? Robert Anton Wilson?”
“All the above” I muttered. “But I still have Huckleberry Finn and Tom Brown’s School Days", I said absently. "And a good bit of what you’ve got here. Read Alcott, too.”
“You read Little Women, Billy?” she asked, with an amused cocking of her eyebrows.
“Hell no”, I said. “Read Little Men. Other one didn’t much interest me.”

I felt so small and so stupid that I didn’t even want to look over her music collection, but curiosity soundly trounced self-esteem once again. About half my own collection (minus the country and Celtic music), plus an incredible selection of “oldies”.
“See something you like, Billy?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah”, I said. “Damn near all of it.”

I can’t say that I remember much of cooking or eating dinner, save that it was good. Dawn may not have had any food in her refrigerator, but she had beer and wine aplenty, and our glasses were in no danger of running dry the entire evening. I still wasn’t sure what the hell was going on, but after we’d washed the dishes and put them away, she threw her arms around my neck, leaned back, and damn near dragged us both over before I braced myself, opening my “gear” to a potential knee in the process.

“Time to go to the dance!” she said. Her blue eyes were still hazed over with that dreamy, unfocused look, and I was a bit nervous, to say the least. She was wasted on something, to be sure, but whether Riesling or reverie, I couldn’t say at the time.

“Oh, darnn, baby!” I said. “I forgot something. Lemme run down to my --uh -- truck and get it! I’ll be right back! Close your eyes and sit tight, will you?” It was lame, but I was trying to play along. "...with a pink carnation and a pickup truck..."

I hit the elevator and rode down to the ground floor. I needed to be alone for a few minutes. This situation was just entirely too weird for me. I ran across the street, sagged against the wall of another apartment building, and lit a cigarette.
No. This was fucked. I wanted the "ride" I paid for. This shit wasn't fair. This was just…

I looked around the corner of the building, and up. Night was falling, and I could see Dawn’s silhouette against the lace curtains. She was looking out the window and combing her hair. At the time, I had no idea why I did what I did, but I did it all the same. Maybe it was the booze, but at that moment, she didn’t look like a twenty-nine-year-old hooker. That shadow looked like a high school girl, and suddenly, I wasn’t a twenty-nine-year-old loser who drove a forklift, shook down hustlers, and ran guns. I was a high school boy all over again, awkward, shy and painfully sincere.

Muttering: “Fuck it, anyway!” I headed back across the street, yanking whatever flowers I could find from planters and window boxes, and cutting the roots away with my switchblade. Shit, what I got wouldn’t have made an ikebana master jealous -- pansies, carnations, marigolds, and a few Shasta daisies-- but it was the best I could do. When I let myself back into the apartment, I clumsily shoved them into her face and said, “Got this for you, baby. We gon’ need some water for ‘em, though.”

She clapped her hands to her cheeks.

“Oh, Billy!”, she said ---
How many fucking times do I have tell you not to call me that…
“They’re so beautiful!”
She rummaged around the kitchen, found an empty carafe, filled it with water and carefully placed the flowers into the neck. Only then did I notice that she was wearing a blue satin dress. Knee length, pleated skirt -- I don’t know shit about women’s clothes, so I’ll say that there was a “cummerbund” of the same material around the waist -- strapless upper that revealed a good bit of enticing cleavage, what have you. Looked like a bride’s maid’s dress to me, but it certainly was pretty, especially on her.

Suddenly, her eyes grew as wide as pelican turds.
“Billy!” She squealed.
I gritted my teeth and resisted the urge to “pull” on her.
“You can’t go to the dance like that! The first half has an ‘oldies’ theme!”
A themed homecoming? Weren’t they supposed to be formal or something like that? Man, these Yankees and their weird-ass ways… I didn’t know what was up, but I figured I had nothing to lose by playing along.

“That camouflage,” she said, “simply has to go. The leather jacket can stay, though. It has a nice 50’s-60’s look to it. Those boots have to go, too”. She rummaged through one of the bags she’d brought in from her shopping spree and tossed me a box. “Here. Put these on” she said. I opened it. Inside were a pair of brand-new, size ten motorcycle boots.
“Hmm,” I said. “Very ‘Leader of the Pack’.”
She giggled.
“They’re really you.”
I didn’t think so, but I didn’t argue, either. It was her party.
“Now for the shirt. You get your choice.” She tossed me two packs of Hane’s t-shirts, one black, one white. I tore one of the white ones out the plastic and began unbuttoning my DPMs.
“Go change in the bathroom, Billy!” she exclaimed. “What’s the matter with you?”

Favoring her with a grin and a shrug, I said: “I’m a rebel and I’ll never be any good…” She got a kick out of that, and damn if it wasn’t the next song she played over the stereo.

When I returned from the bathroom, she stood there with her chin in her hand and a something’s-still-not-quite-right frown on her face.
“Oh! I know!” she exclaimed. She began rooting around in my jacket, pulled out my pack of cigarettes and said: “Here. Let’s roll them up in the sleeve of your t-shirt.” Having done this, she took a long, hard look at my legs.
“Those jeans are too short,” she said. “Back to the bathroom and put these on.”

She tossed me another bag.
With a groan, I adjourned to the bathroom again. Inside the bag was a pair of Levi’s. 32 inch waist, but the legs were so long that the cuffs were halfway down to my toes.
“Hey Dawn,” I yelled over my shoulder, “why is everything almost exactly my size?”
“Because when you sleep with a man a hundred or more times, you kinda get a sense for what size clothes he wears,” she said through the space between the door and the jamb.
Great. The Midwest accent again. “Curiouser and curiouser”, as Alice said… I was beginning to wonder just what kind of rabbit hole I’d fallen into.

“I thought you weren’t working today,” I said as I left the bathroom.
“I wasn’t,” she replied, inserting another CD into the player.
I brushed her hair aside and kissed the back of her neck.
“And I suppose you were just waiting for some Jo-” -- I caught myself -- “ ‘client’ pretty much the same size as me to come along and play dress-up with you?”

“No,” she said, pressing the “play” button. “I figured you’d be around.”
“How’d you figure that?” I asked.
Little Caesar and the Romans’ “Those Oldies But Goodies” began playing.
“Give me a cigarette,” she said.
I handed her the one I was smoking. She took a drag, handed it back to me, and said: “I was up at the Saloon last night, and a mutual acquaintance told me about you robbing that guy at the warehouse on your lunch break.”
I heaved an exasperated sigh.

“I didn’t ‘rob’ nobody, Dawn. Baby, I may be a whole lot of bad things, but I ain’t no damn thief. The sumbitch was a cheat. He was playing with loaded dice, trying to rip me and the other boys off. I just set his ass straight.” I caught her by the shoulder and gently turned her around. “Dawn, look at me. I’m dead serious. I didn’t rob the bastard. I was seeing justice done. He had it coming. I even passed the haul out evenly among all of us.”
“Are you the one who defines ‘justice’, Billy? Are you the one who decides who ‘has it coming’?”

A moment’s silence.

“Sometimes. When I have to be.”
“So how’s that working for you?”
“As well as anything else ever has,” I said. This was beginning not to be fun. “These pants are too long”, I told her. “Look.”
She looked down and burst out laughing.
“Put your boots on!” she said.
I did so. Better, but still way too long.
“Sorry, babe,” I said. “They’re still too long.”
“Billyyyyyy!” She groaned. “Sit down!”

I flopped back on the sofa. She bent her knees, keeping them both together -- every bit the lady-- and crouched in front of me. “Give me your foot”, she said. I extended a leg, blue denim flopping over black leather. She began rolling the cuff of the jeans up. At this point, I could see straight down the front of her dress, and it was a bit much to take.

“Uh, you’d better let me do the other one”, I said. “It still early, and ‘Little Elvis’ already wants to ‘get real, real gone for a change’.” She giggled, and I bent forward and rolled up the other cuff. Standing up, I said: “There. So how’s that?”
She gave me another critical look, and then snapped her fingers.
“One last thing!” she said. “Sit down in that chair.”

I was dreading whatever was coming, but played along once again. She darted into the bathroom and then came back with a tube of hair gel and a comb.
“Oh, no!”, I said, raising a hand. “No way in hell! You ain’t messin’ with my hair!”
She walked around the front of the chair, and pouted for a second, before giving me the most doe-eyed look I’d ever seen.
“Please, Billy? Just this once? For me?”
I heaved yet another exasperated sigh.
“Alright. What the hell. Just this once. That stuff damn-sight better wash out though, woman.”
She went to work, and came back with a hand-held mirror.
“So what do you think?” she asked.
I gazed at my reflection and groaned.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, baby! I look like one of them fags from the Stray Cats.”

She burst out laughing, a loud, throaty one.
“I figured you’d like rockabilly,” she said.
“I do,” I told her. “The real stuff, though. Not that eighties 'neo' shit. I mean, I like the Blasters and whatnot, but the Stray Cats were really neither here nor there. Sonsofbitches were even from New York or somewhere like that, as I recall. Not a one of ‘em fit to snort the toe jam out of Carl Perkins‘s blue suede shoes, to my mind.”
“That’s really funny,” she said. “Every time I hear that song ‘Stray Cat Strut’, I think of you.”
I could have told her that every time I heard the Rolling Stones’ ‘Stray Cat Blues’ I thought of her, but she wasn’t being at all malicious when she said it, so I let it go.
“You really know your oldies,” she said. “How’s that?”
I hesitated for a moment. One of our “rules” was that I wasn’t allowed to discuss old lovers with her, and she wasn’t allowed to discuss other “clients” with me. I shrugged.
“I dunno. For whatever reason, I took a liking to FOX97 after that whole mess with Elaine.”
“I hear Gordy Hamilton likes that station, too,” she said.
“Dawn, I don’t want to talk about Gordy Hamilton. I don’t even want to think about the son of a bitch. He’s crazy. Dangerous, too”.
She put her hands on my shoulders and began gently massaging the back of my neck with her thumbs.
“So maybe I have a ‘thing’ for dangerous men.”

I’d be damned before I’d ask her if she’d screwed Hamilton, but I did wonder. I was a little less than a year shy of thirty at the time, but I was beginning to realize that the entire “dangerous” game was very much a “rock, scissors, paper” affair. One could spend hours a day lifting weights, shooting, and practicing Karate, Kung Fu, and any number of codified fighting systems from parts unknown, and still go down when a pissed-off CPA with zits, greasy hair and pigeon chest --and a cheap .32 or a letter opener -- blindsided him over a “stolen” girlfriend. I’d seen it happen before, and it provided much food for thought.

“Dawn,” I said, “the goofy fucker actually claims to have seen the Doo-Wop Avenger, and frankly, I believe him. There’s something ‘off’ about that guy. He just ain’t right. He’s so weird that at times, I don’t doubt that he could materialize the Doo-Wop Avenger, even if there were no such person. I don’t like him. Not a whit. And I’d really prefer that we not discuss him.”

“Billy, I think you’re afraid of him.”
“Damn right I am. He’s the only person who’s ever scared me worse than Daddy.”
“Did you ever think that maybe your dad scared you because you were so much alike?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “We were as different as night and day. I still love him -- God rest him, and vive la difference and all that-- but we were not at all alike.” Even as I said it, I knew it was a lie. So did she.

“Is he why you know your oldies so well?” she asked.
“Yeah," I said. “He sure as hell is.”
I took her hand, pulled her towards me and sat her in my lap.
“Wasn’t long after daddy made captain. We was livin’ up to Pennsylvania, just him and Mama and Larry and me. He done just got his promotion, and was happy as a pig in shit for nigh on a month. Happiest I ever seen the old bastard, truth be told. He come home one day, when I was sittin’ in a forsythia bush. To me -- and I was just a little shit at the time-- it was tree-sized, and I was pretendin’ to be every kind of animal I knew of. He saw me sittin’ there, and said: 'What you doin’ there, you little monkey?'
I said: 'I ain’t no monkey, daddy! I’m a tiger! I’m waitin’ on a deer!' He done laughed and picked me out of the bush. He smelt of beer, so I knowed he’d had him a few on the way home.”

I paused for a second. I wasn’t raised to speak that way, and I certainly had enough education to know better, but at times, I simply do so. Dawn didn’t bust my balls over it, for once. I found that I really was speaking like daddy. The accent was definitely Southern, but the delivery was quicker. Additionally, I caught myself using the strange, sing-song tones he himself employed at times. When daddy got to talking -- especially one-on-one -- he could damn-near hypnotize people, and whereas my voice was raspier and more nasal than his, it seemed I was having the same effect on Dawn. I continued.

“He said: ‘I don’t want no boy of mine bein’ no tiger. Seen plenty of them in the ‘Nam. I want my boy to be a hawk, flyin’ above it all! Want to fly, bubba?’ ‘Yessir, daddy! I want to fly!’, I said. He reached out with his huge hands, and I took them in mine. He then commenced to spinnin’ me around high and low, all in circles. We was both laughin‘, Dawn, both of us. Fit to beat the band. He done spun me ‘round ’til we was both of us too dizzy to stand, and then he fell over, in his dress greens and everything.

"Greens?" She asked. "I thought your dad was a marine."
"Oh, he was, way back when. Got out, got antsy and then joined the Army. But back to the story. Right before we hit the ground, though, he pulled me in close to his chest. I reckon he hit hard, but I just landed right on top of him. Didn’t feel nothing’ myself. We just laid there for a minute, laughin’ like a pair of retards. He was a bit drunk on beer, and I was a bit drunk on him, as I suppose. He was my daddy, after all. Dawn, he might have knocked one of my teeth out or busted me upside the head with a whiskey bottle twelve years later, and I may have ‘pulled’ on him, but that was all yet to come. Understand?”

She nodded.

“So there we was, the both of us. Just laughin’ and whatnot. Me? I didn’t think there was nothin’ stronger nor more wonderful than daddy. Hawk nose, strong chin, hair so dark it was nearly black, showing grey even at his age. ’Got a kiss for us, m’ bairn?’ he asked, tapping his jaw with a finger. Of course I did, Dawn. I planted one on his jaw, and pulled back. ’You smell of beer and got skritchy whiskers, daddy!’

‘Beer and whiskers be damned!’ he shouted, leaping to his feet.
’Would y’ care to fly, wee li’l bird?’
I nodded enthusiastically. He picked me up then, just like something you’d see in a ballet or the ’Ice-capades’, and commenced to running towards the kitchen door.
’What does Superman say, boy?’ he shouted. ’Up, up and away’, I giggled.
’I can’t hear you!’ he roared. ’Up, up and away!’ I said, giggling even harder than before. ’Bullshit! I still can’t hear you! Sound off like you’ -- he caught himself, beer or no beer -- ’like you mean it!’
Dawn, I was still laughing my ass off, especially because daddy wasn’t supposed to use that kind of language around Larry or me. Somehow, though, I managed to pull it off. ‘Up, up and away!’ I yelled. ‘Hell yeah! Now that’s what I want to hear!’ he shouted. He made ’airplane noises’ as he swung us through the kitchen door, bringing me just close enough to the jamb to make me cover my head with both hands.”

I paused to light a cigarette, then continued.
“So we done gone inside the house, at any rate. He’d wanted to watch some game or the other on the TV, but it was rained out”. I laughed as I remembered. “Must have had some money ridin’ on it, as he usually didn’t cotton to sports. Said they was for faggots as was too cowardly for real war. I reckon he got bored, ‘cause he said to me: ‘Want a horsey-ride, boy?’
I said: ’Sure, daddy!’, so he put me on his knee and done give me one, ’giddiyaps’ an’ all. Finally, he done got up and got his guitar. He set me on his lap with that guitar in front of the both of us, and strummed him a chord. Don’t know what it was about it, but it like to gone right through me, that sound. He commenced to singin’ Elvis Presley’s ’Hound Dog’, in D, Dawn. Not all fast or nothin’, though. Real slow like. Wish you could have heard him sing, baby. He had such a voice. A voice…”

She took the cigarette from between my lips and helped herself to a puff.

“ We done spent the rest of the afternoon listening to his old records, him playing along on his guitar and showing me how.” I laughed as I told her the story. “Said that if he hadn’t runned away from home and joint the Marine Corps when he was seventeen, he’d have started him a rock’n’roll band, just to piss Granddaddy McVann off. I still believe it, honey. He was good enough, and that ain‘t no shit, neither.”

After that, we spent the rest of the evening listening to one CD or another, while Dawn taught me how to do this or that old dance. Normally, I’d rather staple my nuts to a moving boxcar than dance, but for some reason, I actually enjoyed myself that night.
Finally, around 11:00, she insisted that we change clothes again.
OK. The woman was clearly off her rocker.
“Here, Billy,” she said, opening one of the boxes we’d lugged in from Lenox. “Put this on!”

Man, I oughtta get on the horn and call my aunt, a shrink, and Reverend MacMillan or something, I thought. This shit simply was not happening! But it was. A tux. A friggin’ tuxedo. Feeling oddly self-conscious in the presence of a woman with whom I’d “unloaded” many’s the time before, I excused myself to the bathroom and changed.

When I returned, she’d dimmed the lights. She put some silly crown on my head and handed me a tiara. Looked to be older than dirt, and I gathered she’d kept it since high school. I put it on her, just as the first strains of “Goodnight Sweetheart” began to play on the stereo.

“Now the king has to dance with the queen,” she said, pulling me close. We swayed slowly back and forth to rhythm of the song, and then it was over.
“Well,” I said, “I guess that’s it.”
“Aren’t you going to take me out for a soda, Billy?” she asked. “It’s a special night, after all. I can stay out late.”
“Sure,” I said with a sigh. “Why not?”

I had an unpleasant feeling that I wasn’t going to get laid tonight, and since I’d already paid my money, I wasn’t exactly what you’d call “a happy camper.” The next phase of the game required yet another change of clothes, to which I resigned myself. We sat there in the kitchen, with two root beer floats.

When we’d finished them, she took my hand and led me into her bedroom. Now things were looking up. So there we were, I in a white T-shirt, jeans and a leather jacket, she in a plaid button-down and jeans. Her golden hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and for whatever reason, I wanted her more than ever I’d wanted her before. We ended up sitting on the bed, with the lights off, the glow from the readout of her stereo and VCR providing the only illumination. "Paradise by the Dashboard Light…" Sitting on the edge of her huge bed, I put an arm around her.

“So, Dawn. Did you have a good time?” I asked.
She lay her head on my shoulder.
“The best time, Billy. The best time,” she said.
She took my wrist in her hand, and suddenly, I thought the game was over. As it happened, I was wrong. She raised my hand to her lips and by turns, kissed the back of it, my palm, and beginning with my thumb, each of my fingertips.

OK, this was a very good sign.

For the record, and for what I suspect are obvious reasons, kissing a hooker isn’t at the top of my “to do” list on any given day. I may have done a good many things with hookers over the years, but to reiterate, kissing them is not very high on my list of priorities. The whole “you don’t know where that’s been” thing comes into play, with the additional complication of having a damned good idea where it had been, and knowing for a fact that it had been over nearly every square inch of Yours Truly at one time or another.

Still, for whatever reason, I did kiss her. I took her face in my hands, and then -- quite delicately -- kissed her lower lip. She closed her eyes, and in seconds, she was actually kissing me back. From there, it was a flurry and a frenzy of kisses -- lips, cheeks, chins -- I leaned in and kissed her neck. She put a death-grip of a hug on me, and sighed. Her breathing was getting heavier now, and she had that silly, half-doped up look I’ve seen on the faces of many a woman who was truly “turned on“.

Suddenly, she pushed me away.
What the…? Frustrated and confused, I stared at her, trying to figure out what was going on.
“Billy,” she giggled, “you’ve got beer breath!”
I couldn’t help but laugh right back.
“Look who’s talkin’ you wino!”
“Want a mint?”
“Sure. Why not?” I replied, with a shrug.

She pulled a roll from her pocket and tore it open. I reached out to take one, but she shook her head.
“No, Billy. Like this.”
She popped one into her mouth and leaned in to kiss me again.
OK. What the hell? I’d already violated one of my own “prime directives” that night, so why not go for broke? I kissed her again, and she passed the mint to me. I was battling a welter of strange emotions -- uncertainty, nostalgia, you name it -- but at the same time, I was really getting turned on.
In a way, it really was high school all over again. Here I was, “swapping spit” -- and a mint -- with a girl, even if I had paid two hundred bucks for the privilege of doing so.

She removed the scunci that had been holding her hair in a ponytail, and shook it loose.
“You must be tired after the big game, Billy,” she whispered. “Do you want a back rub?”

OK. Back rubs were good…

I pulled off my t-shirt, and rolled onto my stomach. I was no Frank Zane, even in those days, but I lifted weights two days a week and practiced Karate five, so I was a decent specimen, even if I do say so myself. I’d like to think I gave her something nice to look at, at any rate. She straddled my waist and got down to business on the back rub. I tried to think of the last time I’d received one, and came up dry. High school? I guessed so. Hell, that had been over ten years ago.

She wasn’t Elaine -- and nobody else ever would be, as far as I was concerned -- but she really put her to shame when it came to massages. Dawn certainly knew what she was doing, so much so that I could have sworn she’d had training of some sort. I could feel her hair gliding over the bare skin of my back, when suddenly, she kissed me between the shoulder blades, on the nape of my neck, and then bent down and lightly bit my ear.

This was too much. I spun over, sat up and grabbed the back of her head, pulling her in for another kiss. My free hand went directly to her breast, lightly squeezing it through her flannel shirt. She tensed for a second.
“It’s alright, baby,” I whispered. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I know, Billy,” she whispered back, huskily.

I stretched her out on the bed, and began unbuttoning her shirt, beginning at the top and working my way down. By turns, I kissed her neck, her collar bone, and her sternum, working my way down to her navel. Dawn sighed and grabbed my head in both hands.

“Sit up a second, will you?” I whispered hoarsely. She giggled and acquiesced. Perhaps I was getting into the whole “game” a little too much, because I actually had trouble getting the hooks-and-eyes of her bra undone, and that’ something that hasn’t happened to me in years.

“You need a little help, Billy?”, she asked with a laugh.
I laughed back, even though I felt like an idiot.
“Yeah, baby. I think I do.”
She gave me that weird, dreamy smile, undid the fastening, and then lay back on the bed. This was more like it! This whole “let’s pretend” bit might have some promise, after all. Getting into the spirit of things, I put my index finger on her collar bone and grinned at her.

“Chicken?” I asked.
She smiled back and shook her head, so I began moving my finger in ever-tightening circles, saying, “Chicken?” every few seconds. By the time I got around to lowering my head, she gasped and actually -- Just damn! Did she really…? -- quivered. We were out of our clothes in no time, and she pushed me down onto my back.

“I want to do something for you, Billy,” she whispered into my ear.

I was cool with that… She kissed my nipple. It was a little shocking at first, not the kind of thing you’d expect a woman to do to a man, but I can’t say I didn’t like it. She continued kissing her way down my chest and stomach, and the rest was ecstasy.

“Do you like that, Billy?”, she asked. “Does that make you feel good?”
What the hell kind of question is that? Is a bear Catholic? Does the Pope shit in the woods? “Yeah!” I gasped. “Oh yeah!”
I wasn’t even mad at her for not calling me by my right name. As long as she was doing that, she could call me Ignatius Funklepucker, for all I cared. Within a minute or two, I tapped her head.

“Dawn! Dawn! Stop for a second, will you?”
“What’s the matter, Billy?” she asked, “Did I hurt you?”
“Far from it,” I said, almost laughing. “It’s too good. I’m afraid I’m gonna…”
She smiled and kissed her way back up to my neck, before rolling over onto her back.

“I’m ready for you, Billy”, she whispered. “If you want me, I’m yours.”
I didn’t need any further encouragement. Hell, I was in her in a second, starting off slow and easy at first, then working my way up in an escalating spiral of lust. It wasn’t long at all before she wrapped her legs around me, ran her arms under mine, and pulled me to her, so that the lengths of our torsos were pressed together. I’d never known Dawn to be a “moaner,” but when we both came -- at the same time -- she whimpered “Billy!” into my ear. Completely spent, I collapsed on top of her, just as the digital clock showed midnight.

Midnight. The carriage turns back into a pumpkin. The homecoming queen turns back into a hooker. And Prince --- or was that “King”? -- Charming turns back into an emotionally unstable redneck with “anger management” issues. We lay there for a while, just letting our breathing and heartbeats return to normal. At length, I rolled off her and lit two cigarettes, handing her one. I may not be the brightest light on the Christmas tree, but I’d figured out a thing or two since the evening began. I knew I was walking on thin ice, but I asked anyway.

“Billy was your high school sweetheart,” I said -- and it took me a moment to come up with that term. Wow. Had my vocabulary really become that depleted, my thought-patterns that degraded? Well, I could worry about that later. Now one might think that I was proud of myself for my performance a few moments ago -- I'm such a studmuffin I can even get a hooker off! -- but that wasn't the case. Truth be told, I was feeling very odd, because she'd really done it herself. It was all in her head. I was the one screwing her, but in her mind, she'd been making love to this "Billy" guy. I didn't have room to complain, as I'd pretended she and other women were Elaine before, but being on the receiving end really sucked. I wondered if she cared about me enough to feel the same way.

“Yes.”
“You loved him.”
“Yes.”
She rolled onto her side, facing away from me.
“More than anything else.”
“Yes,” she whispered.

Mama had always told me that I had good intuition, for a boy. I hoped she was right, as I pressed on, knowing that this could lead to another screaming fight, but wanting -no, needing -- to know. The same motive that led me to become an unlicensed PI for a few years, the same impulse that got me into trouble time and time again.

“What kind of guy was he?” I asked.
“He was nothing like you, McVann,” she said. “He was wonderful. He was beautiful. He was perfect.”
Great. Feel free to spare my feelings at any time, lady…
“Played football and all that shit, huh?” I asked.
Man, but was I ever a class act. Here I was, jealous of a hooker’s old boyfriend. Way to go, McVann. Just take those "seven deadlies" and run with the best of 'em.

“Yes. He was quarterback. Captain of the team,” she said.
Feeling increasingly -- and inexplicably -- jealous, I asked: "What did he look like? Was he bigger than me?" I had visions of some corn-fed Viking strolling around with her on his arm, and the image bugged me.
"Yes," she said with a nod. "He was over six feet tall, probably two hundred and ten. Blue eyes, brown hair."
"What was his last name?"
"Duncan".
"So this Billy who's nothing like me sure as hell shares a few of my physical traits -- even if he's bigger-- and my ethnicity from the sound of it," I said.

She didn't answer.

"You went to the homecoming dance with him, right? You were the king and queen?"
"Yes."

I knew I was really pushing it, but I continued.
“You and Billy never made love, did you?” I asked, as gently as I could.
She sat up, and I thought I’d really blown it, but then I saw the beginnings of tears in her eyes. She began to look all around the room, as if searching for something -- anything -- other than me or herself upon which to focus.
“No,” she said in a shaky whisper. "I did things for him, Will. Like I did for you earlier. You know what I mean.”
I nodded, almost amused. As if a hooker was going to die from saying the word “blowjob” or something?
“Things to make him happy. I loved making him happy. But no, we never made love.”
“Because he’d find out that you weren’t a virgin,” I said.
She nodded. The tears were beginning to flow now. She clasped her hands together in her lap and hung her head.
“And he’d want to know who.”
She nodded, as the first sob escaped her.

“I remember what you told me about your father,” I said. Remembered? Hell, I don’t think I’ll ever forget. It was indelibly burned into my mind. We were in a motel room, not far from the interstate. We’d just concluded “business”, and something she said rubbed me the wrong way, or something I said rubbed her the wrong way. I can’t remember, as there were so many such incidents. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, naked, with the sheet wrapped around me to preserve my -- my what? Modesty? As if I had any of that -- , a cigarette in my mouth and a pint of bourbon in my hand. After an increasingly heated exchange of recriminations, she spun on me with fire in her eyes.

“You make me sick, McVann. Look at you! Look at you! You’re nothing but a self-pitying drunk!”
I needed this like I needed a hole in the head. I got up and stepped into my jeans.
“Fuck you, Dawn,” I said as I zipped my fly.
I felt her fist crash into my back. It was a good, solid shot, what I’d call a “hammerfist”.
“God damn you, McVann! Don’t you EVER turn your back on me!“ she screamed.

I raised my own hand and spun around. God! What was I doing? I’d never hit a woman in my life!

“Don’t you ever ---” but I never finished my sentence. Her palm struck me in the face with a sound like a pistol shot. It was one of those stinging, eye-watering slaps, and the impact spun my head around. Stunned, I staggered backwards, at which point she shoved me onto the bed.

“You listen to me, you son of a bitch!” she hissed. “I know you’ve had it rough, McVann, but who hasn’t? I know things have happened to you that you didn’t deserve, but that is life. It doesn’t make you special, and it doesn’t give you a license to act like an asshole. I know about the stabbings, and the shooting and all that. I know your father was a mean drunk who beat the shit out of you. I know all about the domestic violence, but that doesn’t excuse you, do you hear me? It doesn't excuse you at all. Let me tell you something about domestic violence, McVann. You think you had it rough because your dad broke a bottle over your head? Well let me tell you something.”

There were tears of rage in her eyes. I sat there, rubbing my jaw in stunned silence.

“When I was nine years old,” she continued, "my father -- my own father -- raped me. And he kept doing it until I graduated high school. There. You want to hear about domestic violence? Well that’s it. My father, McVann. My father. But you don’t see me acting like a complete bitch 24-7, now do you? You make me sick, McVann. I’m sick of you."
“Oh God, Dawn,” I said. “I didn’t know. I had no way of knowing. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Damn right you are,” she hissed. “You’re the sorriest sack of shit I’ve ever seen in my life.”
The next thing I heard was the door slamming and her gunning her engine. I just sat there with my jaw in my hand, alone with my thoughts as spilled bourbon seeped into the carpet of the motel room.

Back to the present.

I reached out and gingerly put my hand on her shoulder. She didn’t pull away, something I halfway expected her to do.
“He did find out though, didn’t he?”
I asked. She heaved another sob and nodded wordlessly.
“How did it happen?” I asked.
“Not long after I graduated, I was...” She paused, then continued. “Late. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“It went on for a month, then another. When I told my father I was pregnant, he just laughed and said we could pin it on Billy. When I told him what I just told you, he went berserk. Screaming at me and asking what kind of freak wasn’t screwing her boyfriend.”

My God! I shook my head in disbelief. I’d never given much thought to fatherhood, but I knew that were I someone’s father, any snot-nosed punk kid I thought was doing my daughter would be in for the ass-kicking of his life. What kind of sicko was this bastard?

“At that point, he panicked. Took me to some quack street doctor who’d lost his license for malpractice. He botched the operation, and a week or so later, I came down with an infection. This time, I had to go to a real hospital, and I told the doctors everything. They told me -- they told me --” she sobbed again, “that because of the damage the infection had done, I could never have children.”

I reached over and put an arm around her, drawing her close.
“It’s OK,” I said. “Just let it out.”
“My father’s trial lasted a month. His attorney had asked for a change of venue, for obvious reasons, and got one. They took us to Cleveland for the trial.”
Man. The little farm girl goes to the big city for the first time, and It’s to testify against her own father for raping her. I shook my head again.
“What happened?”
“The jury deliberated for a week, but found him guilty. He got twenty years.”
Eleven down, nine to go, I thought. I also thought of visiting Ohio with a sawed-off shotgun in a few years.
“Served the son of a bitch right,” I said.
“Billy, don’t talk about my father that way,” she said.

Way to step on it, McVann. I knew how she felt. For all that I’d hated my dad at times, he was still my Daddy, and I loved him at the same time. When he died, I must have cried for a week. Damn, but did I know how she felt.

“I was supposed to start at Ohio State that fall, but because of the trial, I had to start my classes late. One of the attorneys talked to the Dean’s office, and they were very kind when they heard my story. They let me take my first month of classes by correspondence. Of course by now, Billy had to have known. Change of venue or no -- well, you know how small towns are."

Yep. I sure as hell did.
She continued:

"In early October, I started for real. I got a student directory and looked Billy up. When I knocked on his door of his dorm room and he answered, I threw myself on him and hugged him. I never wanted to let go.”
She paused for a moment.
“What happened?" I asked.
She began to sob again.
“He- he- he- p-p-pushed me away. He pushed me hard,” she said in a rising whimper. “So hard. I fell down and --” her face contorted, a mask of pain -- “I hit-- hit -- my head on a doorjamb.”
“And that’s where you got the chipped tooth,” I said, knowing but not knowing.
She nodded again.

“And then he called me -- he called me-- he called me a -- whore.”

God damn him to hell.

That son of a bitch. I didn't know him from Adam, but I swear I could have killed him at that moment.

Instinctively, I reached out an hugged her as tightly as I could with both arms. She hung her chin over my shoulder and began to weep uncontrollably. I could feel her tears running down my back as I stroked her hair. It was as if something black and crusted began to crack inside me, pieces falling away and allowing something that had been buried for far too long to shine through. When I hugged her, I meant it. I had never in my adult life felt that much compassion for another human being, and it struck me as almost funny that it would be for a prostitute.

"I'd never do that to you, Dawn," I told her. But inside, I had the queasy feeling that I might have. How would I have have handled that situation at that age? I didn't know, and didn't want to think about it.
"I know you wouldn't," she whispered. "I told you he was nothing like you."
How about that? I'd taken it as an insult, but it had actually been a compliment. Typical of her.

“It’s OK,” I murmered over and over again. She lay her head on my shoulder, and I sat there silently, gently rocking her back and forth as she cried. At length, I eased us both down, and we lay there together, I on my back and she with her head on me, one arm flung over me. I could feel her tears trickling through the hair on my chest, and I don’t remember what I did next. Maybe I sang to her. Maybe I didn’t. All I knew was that before she drifted off to sleep, we were both whispering lines from an Eliot poem we both liked.

“…seeing that it was a soft October night, curled once around the house and fell asleep.”

Eventually, her breathing became slower and deeper, and she, too, fell asleep. I lay there with entirely too much to think about. God, what a story. What a life. I understood her now, better than ever before, and wasn’t necessarily glad for it. Just damn me, but what guts! What courage it must have taken to tell me all those things. I’d liked her for a long time, but now -- now I actually respected her, as perverse as that may sound.

Now I knew why this had been so important to her. That homecoming dance was probably the happiest moment of her life. I could imagine her in the school gym or auditorium, being crowned, and then balloons or confetti or whatever dropping from the ceiling. I had no idea if that was actualy done at dances, but the image fit. I could imagine her up there, smiling and radiantly beautiful, taking in the sights and hoarding them away, as a barrier against the horror she faced at home every day. Afterward, she wouldn't have been sharing a bed in her Atlanta apartment with a burned out thug named Will McVann, but rather the back seat of this Billy Duncan guy's father's mid-seventies Olds or something in a -- in a what? A field? A forest? Lovers' Leap?

I tried to visualize Ohio, as I'd never been there. What did they grow in Ohio? Corn? I tried to construct a mental picture, and only came up with "October country" -- Bradbury images of endless acres of dried cornstalks. Pumpkins on porches. Smoke curling from the chimneys of white, wood-frame farmhouses.

I put an arm around her and pulled the blanket up, almost protectively. I bent my neck and kissed the top of her head as she slept.

“That’s right, baby. Just sleep. Just sleep. Everthing’s going to be alright now. You’ll see. Everything’s going to be fine. Billy’s here.”

©David Jefferson Bean, 2006

Comments

[mary]

nice.