Fast Times at Ridgemont High (18 page)

Damone grinned. “Do you have that book where the guy . . . well, it’s the one with the picture of the man with a spoke in his head? The man was walking down the street, and a spoke fell in his head. They left it there, right, because if they pulled it out they didn’t know what would happen . . .”

“Yes,”
she laughed. “That’s the book.”

“What’s your name?”

“I’m Karen.”

“I’m Mike Damone. This is Mark Ratner.”

Big smile from Karen. “Maybe I’ll see you sometime at State!”

“See you later, Karen.”

She walked on.

“Now
that’s
how you talk to a girl,” said Damone.

“You lie to her?”

“No, you wuss. One person says something to another, and it starts.”

The Rat came back to Mike Damone’s house. Damone’s parents had left for the day to visit his grandparents in Riverside. The Rat didn’t like to use things as a crutch, but on Damone’s advice he downed a Colt 45. He made Damone leave the bedroom. Then he picked up the phone and dialed Stacy’s number.

“Hello?”

“Hi. Is Stacy there?”

“This is Stacy.”

“Hi, this is Mark Ratner.”

“Oh, hi!”

They talked for a while, one of those conversations with lots of long silences. They decided they didn’t know each other too well. Then The Rat popped the question.

“Stacy, would you like to go to the movies with me this Friday?”

“I can’t.” He knew it.
She had a boyfriend.

“Okay . . .” Then, an afterthought. “How about Saturday?”

“Saturday would be great.”

A Date with Stacy

M
ark Ratner had borrowed his sister’s car. It was the result of an intricate negotiation process involving several past and many future favors, but the final factor had been Mark’s holding over his sister’s head her sex quiz answers in old copies of
Cosmopolitan.
That won him the car.

The Rat arrived to pick Stacy Hamilton up at the prescribed time, by the mailbox.
Led Zeppelin IV
was on the cassette machine.

“Thanks for coming to get me,” she said.

“Sure thing.”

Now what else would he say for the next four hours? The Rat sure didn’t know. All he knew was that their next stop was the Charthouse Restaurant, and after that they were going to the Strand Theatre to see
Phantasm.

“I hear this movie’s pretty good,” said The Rat. “They were talking about it in English today.”

“Do you have Mrs. George?”

“Yeah. She’s pretty good.”

“Yeah. She’s pretty good.”

They drove along in silence until they reached the Charthouse Restaurant. The Rat’s boss at Marine World had recommended it.

“I hear this is a pretty good restaurant,” said The Rat.

“Yeah. Me too.”

They took a seat at a table with a view of the ocean. A waitress handed them each a large wooden menu.

Damone’s Rule Number Four,
said a voice inside The Rat’s brain:
When ordering food, find out what she wants, and then order for both of you.

“What do you feel like eating?” asked The Rat.

“Well,” said Stacy, “I think I’m going to have the Seafood Salad Special.”

“That should be pretty good,” said The Rat. He was starting to feel in control now. He was starting to feel like this could be the place, the very place. The lights were low. The view was good. The prices were . . .

Oh, my God.

The Rat reached back and checked his pants pocket. Then, casually, his jacket pockets. Empty. He had left his wallet at home on the dresser.

Jesus.

Cool. Cool was the name of the game. The Rat sat there, enjoying the view, smiling at Stacy. Inside he was dying a slow and miserable death. Stay cool.

“Do you mind,” said Mark, “if I excuse myself for a moment?”

“Not at all.”

The waitress bustled up to the table. “Are you ready to order?”

“Sure,” said The Rat. “She will have the Seafood Salad Special.”

“Okay. How about you?”

The Rat stared at her blankly. Of
course.
He had to eat too.

“I’ll have the same.”

“Okay. Anything to drink with that?”

“Sure. I’ll have a Coke.”

“How about for the girl?”

“Iced tea, please.”

The waitress left the table. The Rat got up to make his phone call.

“Yo?”

“Damone. It’s Mark.”

“Mark.
What happened to your date?”

“It’s happening right now,” said The Rat. “I’m here at the Charthouse. Everything’s fine, except . . . I left my wallet at home.”

“Did you go home and get it?”

“No. It’s too late. The food is coming and everything. Damone, I’ve gotta ask you this favor, and I’ll never ask you for anything again in this lifetime or any other. Will you
please
go by my house, get my wallet, and meet me back here?”

Silence.

“Hello, Damone? Are you there?”

“Just be glad I’m your bud,” said Damone with a world-weary sigh.

Ten minutes later there was a page. “Telephone call for Mr. Ratner.”

“Excuse me,” said The Rat. “I’ll just take this call and be right back.”

The Rat picked up the phone at the front desk. “Hello?”

“Rat. It’s not on your dresser.”

“Did you look in the bathroom; that’s where I was last.”

“Hold on.”

“Okay, I’ll hold,” said The Rat. The maitre d’ gave him a nasty look.

“Okay. I found it.”

“Okay. Thanks, Mike. I’ll see you here.”

“You owe me your life.”

“Okay. Thanks, Mike. I’ll see you here.”

Mike Damone strolled into the Charthouse forty-five minutes later. Stacy and The Rat were still picking at their dinners and trying to make conversation out of life at Ridgemont High.

“Hey Ratner! Is that you?”

“Damone! What are you doing here?”

“Hey, you know what, Mark? I found your
wallet
the other day. You want it back?”

“Wow. What a coincidence. I’ve been looking for that thing!”

The evening was a complete disaster. Only a few sentences passed between them after the wallet incident. They had gone to the theatre. The kid right in front of them hauled off and puked right toward the beginning of
Phantasm.
It smelled up the whole row.

By the time the movie was over, The Rat was wondering if he should even try the next step of the game plan—maneuvering her to the Point, where he would slip on the first side of
Led Zeppelin IV.

They reached the car again. Something was wrong. The Rat had remembered locking his door. The Rat opened Stacy’s side of the of the car, then she leaned over to open his and found it . . . already open. The Rat knew something was wrong. He looked at the dashboard of his sister’s car.

The tape deck was missing. In its place was the steel bolting ensemble. The machine was gone.

The Rat turned pale, didn’t mention it to Stacy. He drove her straight home, without even asking her about the Point.

He pulled up in front of Stacy’s house. “I had a really nice time,” he said like a zombie.

“Me too,” said Stacy. “Do you want to come inside?”

“Aren’t your parents asleep?”

“No, they’re away for the weekend. Brad and I are watching the house.”

It’s midnight and she wants me to come inside.

“Okay,” said The Rat sullenly. “Sure.”

He followed her inside.

“Where’s your brother?”

“I don’t know. Probably out.” She set down her purse. “Want something to drink?”

“No. That’s okay.”

“Well, I’m going to change real quick. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Naw. I don’t mind.”

She turned her back and pulled up her hair. “Will you unzip me?”

This cant be what it seems.

He unzipped her, past the bra and down to the small of her back. It was the first time The Rat had ever done that.

“Thanks.”

Stacy walked down the hall to her room, easing out of her dress as she walked. She left the door to her room open. “You can come in if you want.”

She wouldn’t be doing this if she hated me.

He followed her into her room, his heart pounding in his throat. He turned the corner and stepped into the room. She stood there in her bedroom in a diaphanous white house dress. He pretended not to notice the difference.

“So . . . pretty nice house you got here.”

“Thanks. What do you want to do?”

Damone’s Rule Number Two: Always call the shots.

“I don’t know,” said The Rat.

“Do you want to see some pictures? I have all these pictures and stuff from Paul Revere. I kept a whole scrapbook! How stupid!”

“Sure.”

She fished the old Paul Revere scrapbook out of her closet, and they sat together on her bed looking at the photos of mutual friends and acquaintances. Her knee grazed his.

She definitely expects something.

For twenty minutes, Mark carried on two conversations. The one with Stacy about her scrapbook and the one in his head. There was a scoreboard in his mind, and the odds seemed to be racking up in his favor. He debated all the signs. She had brought him inside, they were alone, she had changed. He had unzipped her.

But what if he tried to kiss her and she screamed or something? He would feel like Jack the Ripper. No, he wouldn’t. Or maybe he would. What a wuss.

Then it occurred to The Rat. It wasn’t one of Damone’s big rules, but he had given Rat the special advice just the same:
Tell her you don’t hang around many high school people, make her feel special.
He decided to use the tip, but it came out like this:

“Not too many people like me in high school.”

Stacy looked at him oddly. “That’s too bad,” she said.

More silence. He watched her pull her hair up and let it fall back down again. Another sign?

After a while it all got to be too much for The Rat.

“Well,” said Mark, “I’ve got to go.”

“Really?”

He got up off the bed and stood up.

Beg me to stay.

“Do you really have to go?”

“It’s getting pretty late.”

Beg me to stay just a little.

“Well . . . if you’ve got to.” She stood up, too. “I’ll walk you to the door.”

The Rat gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and ducked out of the front door.

He walked down the steps of the Hamilton house. He wanted to turn around, to go back and tell her that he didn’t want to leave. He wanted to violate all the rules of The Attitude and tell her how much he liked her.

And she, of course, she would tell him that she wanted him to stay, that she was glad he came back. And that this was just the beginning for them. And she would hug him and press up against him and . . .

Just as The Rat was heading back up the stairs, he saw Stacy’s bedroom light shut off. He stopped in his tracks. It hit him like an enormous gong. It was as if the words were a Cecil B. De Mille production written in the nighttime sky, just for The Rat: YOU BLEW IT, ASSHOLE!

Bob Savage

E
arly in January, just after classes were back in session after Christmas vacation, Ridgemont High held a traditional mandatory assembly. The subject was ordering the school yearbook, the
Rapier,
and class rings.

A.S.B. President Kenneth Quan kicked the assembly off with a brief pep talk about spirit and rivalry as a
substitute
for violence and vandalism. It was a direct reference to the spray-paint job done on the school over vacation. The usual culprits had hopped the locked steel fence leading into the Ridgemont campus. When students returned from the Christmas break they found the black spray-paint insignia over everything: LINCOLN SURF NAZIS! It was the biggest green job for the janitors yet. Forty buckets. The school had smelled like paint all year long.

Kenneth Quan introduced the editor and two members of the
Rapier
staff. They gave a quick progress report and dropped a juicy news item—this year’s
Rapier
would be black. They were off in a hurry.

Everyone was waiting for the main attraction. His name was Bob Savage. A young man in his late twenties, Savage was well known to many of the students. If you had no desire whatsoever to own or wear a class ring, you were digging for the money after ten minutes of listening to Bob Savage.