B00BSH8JUC EBOK (6 page)

“All right, all right. What can I say? It was a great first lay.”

Randie sighed. “You got away with murder.”

I smiled. Now it was my turn to needle her. “Hell, Randie, if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t even have been worried when you walked in on us.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Back in those days, I thought you were just a red-blooded, All-American coach with your eyes on the guys. I had no idea you had any sort of appreciation for what I was doing. I didn’t know about you and Julie.”

“No, that had to wait until your next sexual escapade.”

I winced. “Are we going to go into that, too?”

Randie was maddeningly serene. “You bet we are.”

***

The summer after my encounter with Shamrock, Randie’s prediction came true. Our softball team won the state championship and I was one of the players the team counted on.

As I entered my senior year at Hillsboro High School, I should have been feeling pretty good about myself; but I knew better. Instead, I was aware of being headed for one of those crises that mark your life forever, and naturally it had to do with my parents. Wendell and Lynn were assuming I would go to some small, egghead college—Hillsboro would be nice but not mandatory—for liberal arts, to be followed by graduate school. Well, I didn’t want to go to any stifling, antiseptic ivory tower. I wanted to be a cop.

I put off the confrontation as long as possible by letting Wendell and Lynn think I was conforming. I enrolled in academic courses, took my SATs and even sent away for some college catalogues.

Meanwhile, Randie had made lieutenant, faster than anyone in the history of the department. As a sidelight she started an introductory program in criminal justice for high school seniors, and I signed up, of course. There were ten of us, meeting after school at the Hillsboro police station. I loved hanging around there, usually showing up early and staying late. Randie and the other cops encouraged me and included me as much as they could, whether it was inventorying the evidence locker or simply photocopying their reports when they were too pressed to do it themselves.

I learned a lot about police work—about the diligence and patience in the face of constant stress, long stretches of boredom and an endless parade of human suffering. I learned about the wisecracking that hid the hearts behind it, the lousy hours, the camaraderie of the force and the lethal joy of stalking crooks. The more I learned, the more I wanted to say.

My school work was going fairly well—because it had to. I knew if my grades fell, Wendell and Lynn would yank me out of the police station faster than you could say “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.”

I probably could have kept out of trouble until the spring—except for the arrival of the student teacher.

Her name was Deb Jaworski, and she was a physical education major at Hillsboro College. She showed up in late October in my first period gym class.

Deb Jaworski was as fearsome an athlete as ever set foot on a playing field. She was big and strong and not very fast, but she had the reflexes of a cobra.

In the fall she played goalie on the college hockey team, where she was heard to say, only half-humorously, “Why run up and down the field when you can stand in the goal cage and be a hero?”

In the winter she played volleyball and was the heart of the squad; but it was in the spring she really excelled. That was the season she played softball.

She was a catcher and an All-American, but she was known in local sports lore mostly as the only woman ever to hit a ball out of the Hillsboro College stadium. It was such an extraordinary feat that a plaque was mounted at the top of the center field bleachers to mark where the ball passed overhead, still rising as it did.

Her teammates called her “Jaws,” and so did the grateful headline writers for the sports pages. It fit much better than “Jaworski.” When she arrived in gym class, she allowed that we could call her “Miss Jaws.”

Jaws would have been welcomed by our class under any circumstances; but as it was, we regarded her with nothing short of relief. Gym class was otherwise the iron province of Mrs. Engler, a stern tyrant so ancient we swore she began teaching when bloomers were still risqué. Her first name was Diane, which the other teachers shortened to “Di” when they talked to her. Her students embraced the sound of it. There wasn’t one of us who hadn’t muttered, “Die, Engler.”

Jaws endeared herself to us during her very first class. While Mrs. Engler was threatening to flunk anyone who didn’t begin the week with ironed gym clothes, Jaws gave us a wink.

It was all I needed to develop a mad crush on her. I never could resist jocks, anyway.

Jaws was fun. She freed us from Mrs. Engler’s regimen of calisthenics and let us play soccer and flag football and other reckless games. Anyone who didn’t try hard was ordered to run laps. Anyone who gave her a hard time had to run them, too.

Gym class changed from drudgery to joy. Then came the day when matters got a little out of hand.

A bunch of us were in the locker room early before class. Linda Franzione, who played on the field hockey team, was showing us a doll she bought at the school store. It was dressed in a miniature hockey uniform, including a kilt in the school colors just like Mrs. Engler always wore. Beth DeWitt got the bright idea to get some cotton out of the first aid kit on the wall and give the doll white hair, just like Mrs. Engler’s. Estelle Martinez, my pal from softball, had a pin cushion with some straight pins for her home economics class, and one thing led to another until I was stabbing pins into the Engler doll, voodoo style.

“Die, Engler!” I said and stabbed. “Die, Engler! Die, Engler!”

It was all very funny. My friends were laughing and squealing and encouraging me, and then suddenly they weren’t. In the deathlike silence I looked up to see Jaws standing there.

There was no denying what we were doing. We were shark chum.

Jaws was calm. “May I have that, please?” she said, holding out her hand for the doll. I gave it to her, pins and all. Already I regarded it as
the evidence.

“I think you girls better get out there and run some laps,” Jaws said, “and don’t stop until I come to get you.”

Laps were not a very bad punishment. I was feeling grateful and relieved as I headed out. Then I heard Jaws say, “Not you, Kotter. You stay here.”

I stopped dead. My friends rushed for the door in a shameless display of self-interest, desperate to get out before Jaws called anyone else back. I was going to walk this plank alone.

“I take it you’re the ringleader here,” Jaws said.

I shrugged. I wasn’t really, but I wasn’t going to rat out anyone else, either. It was the code we lived by.

“There are a couple of things we can do with you,” Jaws said matter-of-factly. “The most logical would be to tell Mrs. Engler about this and let her handle it. How does that sound to you?”

It sounded terrible. No doubt it meant Mrs. Engler would flunk me, and although my parents weren’t very big on gym, a failing mark in any subject certainly wouldn’t look good on my transcript. The jig would be up.

I swallowed. “Did you say you might have something else in mind?”

“Possibly. You could stay after school and deal directly with me.”

I hesitated. If I stayed, I would miss Randie’s criminal justice session, and she would want to know why. “I’m supposed to be at the police station,” I said, “for a special program.”

“Fine with me. We can just turn this whole matter over to Mrs. Engler.”

“No, wait. I’ll come after school.”

“All right. Meet me here. Wear your gym clothes.”

“What will I have to do?”

“You’ll see.”

I wasn’t happy, but it was clearly the best deal I was going to get. I went to the pay phone and called the police station. I left a message with the Beer Belly Polka, already beginning his terminal duty as desk sergeant, to tell Randie I had an assignment at school and couldn’t make her program. I didn’t have the nerve to talk to her myself.

Then I sweated out the rest of the day until I reported back to Jaws. She gave me a businesslike nod, a sort of teacher’s equivalent to the preacher who loves the sinner but hates the sin.

“Come with me,” she said, and I followed her outside. It was a fine fall afternoon, just at the end of the sun’s warmth but before the evening chill set in. I was comfortable in my gym shorts and T-shirt, but if Jaws kept me too long, I would be wishing for my sweatshirt.

She led me down to the football field, where the school district had just erected tall, concrete bleachers on the home side. “Let’s see you run to the top and back down,” she said.

I was in pretty good shape. I did it, and it wasn’t too bad.

Jaws had clicked a stopwatch when I started. She eyed it critically and said, “I think you can do that faster. Try it again.”

I pushed myself and felt it, but not enough to let on. Jaws read the stopwatch with disdain. “Once more,” she said.

I gave her a look, the student’s patented mix of disgust and defiance. Jaws did not let it pass. “Anytime you want to stop,” she said, “we can go and talk to Mrs. Engler about what you did.”

I headed for the bleachers and went all out. By the time I was finished, I was soaked with sweat, my chest was heaving and my leg muscles were burning. Jaws checked that damned stopwatch. “You’re getting there,” she said. “Do it faster and maybe I’ll let you go.

There was no way I had the energy for it. “Come on, Miss Jaws, isn’t this enough?”

“Kotter, I’m surprised. You’re not crying uncle already, are you?”

That made me mad. I turned to the bleachers again, but my left calf cramped, and I crumpled like a bird with a bad wing. Instantly Jaws knelt on the ground and worked on my screaming muscles. She knew what she was doing, and after some bad moments, the pain drained away.

I was left with the sensation of her touch—a soothing combination of strength and tenderness. I realized with the stark self-awareness of Eve after the apple that I wanted more of it.

I looked at Jaws and found her looking at me. It came to me how I must have appeared as she unknotted the cramp—my face strained and body arched, as though her magical hands were not on my leg but elsewhere.

I should have turned away from her, but I did not. She was a student teacher, and she certainly should have turned away from me, but she did not.

“If you want more out of me, it’s up to you,” I said, my voice a little unsteady. “I can’t do anymore. You can tell Engler or do whatever.”

“That’s ‘Mrs. Engler’ to you, and you know it.”

“Are you going to tell her that, too?” I knew I should shut up and stop pushing her, but I couldn’t seem to help myself, lying there exposed and vulnerable. I wanted a reaction from her, one way or the other.

I was shivering now, mostly because I was cooling down but also because of the emotions bubbling within. Jaws stood up and said, “Let’s get you inside before this chill makes you cramp again.”

She extended her hand, and I grasped it to pull myself off the grass, then deliberately swayed against her, attracted by the muscular solidarity there. She righted me with a rough touch that lingered longer than it should have.

I was done in and limped slightly as we returned to the gym. No one else was there. The varsity football players were still out on the practice field, and the rest of the fall sports teams had away games. Jaws took out her keys, unlocked the towel room and gestured for me to go inside with her. She locked the door behind us.

The walls were lined with shelves and shelves of coarse white gym towels, notorious for being too skimpy to cover the tall girls from chest to crotch. I didn’t have that problem, but I knew Jaws would, and the image caught in my mind.

In my exhaustion I leaned against the door. Jaws put her hands on my shoulders, pinning me there. “What do you want?” she said.

I should have said, “A towel,” and that would have been that, but I didn’t. “You know what I want.”

“Tell me.”

“God damn it!”

“Tell me.”

“Just do it.”

She leaned in and kissed me. I closed my eyes and lost myself in the raw sensuality and power of an athlete who believed the human body was put on this earth to perform.

This was even more forbidden than being with Shamrock, and I couldn’t believe how much it was turning me on.

Jaws slipped her hand under my T-shirt and felt my breasts through the thin fabric of my sports bra. I started to melt against her, but she pulled back abruptly, shoved me against the door and held me there. “You tramp,” she said, but it was with a forgiving lilt in her voice, “you’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

“Just once, I swear. Two summers ago at the state softball tournament. Come on, kiss me again.”

“You’re desperate for it aren’t you?”

“Please, you’re torturing me.”

Her lips took me back to delirium, and her hands created new excitement under my shirt. I felt for her hips but didn’t have the nerve to explore further. Anyway, what I really wanted was what she was doing to me.

She yanked down my gym shorts and panties, turning them into shackles around my ankles. I was crazed with desire but also with fear—who else had a key to the towel room door?

Jaws didn’t give me much time to wonder. Her fingers went where it counted, touching, teasing, stroking, now gentle, now demanding, making me care about nothing in the universe except what was happening here, here, here. She knew what she was doing, and I was eager and inexperienced and overwhelmed, and in no time at all I was clinging to her to keep myself upright while wave after rapturous wave pounded through me in violent release.

“Holy hell!” I gasped and collapsed against her. She held me, but it wasn’t in tenderness so much as physical support. If I thought my muscles were in disarray coming into the towel room, they were demolished now.

Jaws kissed me on the forehead. “We better get out of here.”

“But what about you?”

“Another time. Football practice should be over any minute.”

I collected myself shakily. Jaws waited while I showered. I was still pretty dazed when I reappeared, and she seemed quite pleased with what she had done. “I may have to keep you after school again tomorrow,” she said.