Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls (24 page)

"Your hair," I say.

He runs his hand over his stubby scalp. "Yeah," he says. "Saved the navy the trouble."

I picture him sitting in the barber's chair. Mr. Bellamy stands over him, his scissors snip, snip, snipping while Buddy's hair falls on the floor. I don't know why this makes me so sad. It just does.

For a while, we drive around the dark streets like we're on a tour of Elmgrove. Buddy stares straight ahead, smoking one cigarette after another. Neither of us says anything. The radio is silent.

I ask if I can turn it on. Buddy shakes his head. "I hate the music they play."

I nod. I understand. Here and there, the headlights pick up somebody walking a dog or a bunch of kids on a corner.

We pass Eastern, a big block of brick in the moonlight, its windows dark, its parking lot empty. "God, I hate that place," Buddy mutters.

"It was fun sometimes."

"Maybe for brains like you and Ellie."

"Ellie's the brain," I say, "not me. I almost flunked geometry and chemistry and I scraped through Latin with straight Cs."

He looks at me. "Yeah, but you're going to college. Teachers love that. They think kids like me are losers, going nowhere."

He hits the steering wheel with his fist. "I bet every one of them thinks I killed Cheryl and Bobbi Jo."

I shake my head. "I'm sure—"

He cuts in. "Two people in this town think I'm innocent. You and the cook at the Little Tavern. And you know why he thinks I didn't do it? Because I never went in there and laughed at him like Ralph and his friends. They'd make fun of him, cross their eyes and stuff, act like he was a moron. Jesus H. Christ. Those are the kind of guys teachers love."

What Buddy says about Ralph is true. Once I saw him making fun of Raymond, the janitor at Eastern. He's kind of retarded, I guess, and he has a harelip, which makes him talk funny. Ralph did a perfect imitation of him, and all the other basketball players laughed, even Don, and so did the cheerleaders. Poor Raymond just stood there, holding his broom. He knew they were laughing at him but he wasn't sure why. It made me so mad, but instead of saying something, I just walked away. The gym teachers saw it all. They didn't do a thing about it.

"You know what I think?" Buddy asks. "That son of a bitch was using her. Sally Smith dumped him and he was looking for somebody to make out with."

We're in the country now and it's dark. He speeds up, swerves around a curve. A Deer Crossing sign zooms past. What if we hit a deer?

"You saw her dancing with him," he goes on, "acting so sexy, wearing that low-necked blouse, you could practically see her tits. She looked like some cheap slut. And that's how he saw her—all he wanted was to get in her pants."

I've never been around a boy who talks about tits and getting into a girl's pants. I'm so embarrassed I can't even look at him.

Suddenly he swears words much worse than
tits
and pushes the gas pedal to the floor. The car speeds up, the tires squeal on a curve. Out of the darkness, telephone poles rush t oward us, lit for a second, pale and straight, then gone again. Trees lurch past, here and gone in a sweep of the headlights.

He's going to crash, he's going to kill us both. I imagine the
Sun's
headlines—
MURDER SUSPECT DIES IN CAR CRASH ALONG WITH FRIEND OF VICTIMS.
Everyone will think he was going to kill me, why else would I be in his car?

Why can't I say "Slow down"? I'm too scared. I've lost my voice. My face is paralyzed, I can't open my mouth.

The car swerves around a sharp curve, it crosses the center line, it heads straight at a huge tree, a killer tree. There's no escape. I'm going to die. I clench my teeth, shut my eyes, brace myself. Buddy struggles to control the car. We miss the tree, but we go off the road, skid through mud, slide sideways to a stop.

He turns off the engine. The sudden silence is like an explosion.

I sit beside him shaking, my heart pounding. So close, we were so close to dying.

Buddy doesn't look at me. In a quiet voice, almost a whisper, he says, "Cheryl was my girl. I loved her, I wanted to marry her after she graduated. She's all I ever wanted."

He presses his forehead against the steering wheel and grips it with both hands. I can't see his face, but his shoulders shake.

Very slowly, almost fearfully, I touch his shoulder. "I'm sorry," I whisper.

Without lifting his head, he nods.

We sit there silent again. The car windows are down. All around us, cicadas buzz and shriek. Lightning bugs glimmer in the trees. And the air smells sweet like cut grass. The night is cooler, not so humid.

I prop my feet on the dashboard. My new moccasins almost shine in the moonlight. I lean back in the seat, my head turned toward the window and the dark woods beyond.

I
GOTTA
say one thing about Nora. I almost wreck the goddamn car, I go to pieces on her, and she just sits there, nice and quiet. She even pats my shoulder and says she's sorry.

It means a lot to me. After I pull myself together, I tell her so. She gets all shy and hugs her knees to her chest like she's locking herself up tight. Against what? Me maybe. Like maybe she's just realized what a great makeout place this is, the side of a country road way out in the middle of God knows where and maybe I'm going to try something.

In the moonlight, I decide she's kind of pretty, not cover girl pretty, not sexy pretty like Cheryl, but pretty in a sort of sweet way. I wonder what she'd do if I tried to kiss her, a thought that surprises me.

I light a cigarette and look at her profile while I smoke. She has a nice mouth, full and definitely kissable.

We talk for a while about ordinary things. I ask her if she ever got a better camera but she says no, she's still got that Kodak Hawkeye. I tell her I drive around sometimes and take pictures of places Cheryl and me used to go. I don't say I always hope I just might see her wading in the spillover at the reservoir like she used to or walking along the road swinging her purse or sitting at the counter in Walgreen's drinking a cherry Coke or playing the jukebox at the Sugar Bowl or sitting on her front steps waiting for me to drive by. I can see her in those places so clear, I can't believe I'll never see her anywhere again. It's like a dagger in my heart carving me to pieces.

I tell Nora I'd like to be a photographer for
National Geographic
and travel all over the world—Africa, the South Pole, India, the Amazon, Japan and China and Easter Island where those heads are. I've never told anybody this, not even Cheryl, but Nora doesn't laugh or say guys like me don't get jobs like that.

Instead she says, "Maybe that's why you enlisted. To see the world. You should take lots of pictures and when you get out of the navy you can show them to
National Geographic
."

Like it's that easy. For a smart girl, Nora doesn't know much about how the world works. But still you can never tell. I could get lucky or something.

She tells me she wants to go to Maryland Institute, this art school in Baltimore, but her parents say they can't afford to send her there. She has to go to Towson State and live at home and take the trolley to class like she's still in high school. Her mother tells her she'd meet the wrong kind of people in art school—wild, Bohemian, no morals. She'd be ruined.

I tell her that's bullshit. She's a really good artist (and she is, I've seen some of her pictures in the art display case) and she should go to a real art school. But she just sighs and looks sad.

"The trouble with you is you got no backbone," I tell her. "You got to fight for what you want."

We look at each other and laugh because neither one of us knows how to get what we want. Never have, never will.

After a while we run out of stuff to talk about. She goes back to looking out the window, even though there's nothing to see in the dark. I go back to thinking about kissing her.

I look at the key in the ignition. I should start the car and take her home—yes, that's what I should do, what I ought to do, but I keep sitting there, smoking and thinking about kissing her. I never expected this. It wasn't on my mind when I called her up, it wasn't on my mind when she came walking out of the dark on those long legs of hers, it wasn't on my mind till she touched my shoulder and said she was sorry.

"Do you know what time it is?" she asks. Even though her voice is low, it's like a shout in the silence.

I check the glow-in-the-dark dial on my watch, a birthday present from Cheryl so we'd always know what time it was, even in the dark. "A little past ten," I say.

She draws in her breath. "Oh my God. I promised my parents I'd be home at nine thirty. They'll be worried to death—they think I'm at the Sugar Bowl with Susan Allen. Shit!" She says it in a cute way, like a kid who's just saying it out loud for the first time.

"Shit," I say like a goddamn echo. "How come you have to be home so early?"

"They're scared something will happen to me." She hesitates, bites that sweet lower lip. "You know, I might be killed by a maniac or something."

I feel like laughing, only it's not funny. "What do you think they'd say if they knew you were out with the killer himself?"

"They'd send me to the looney bin in a straitjacket." She tries to laugh like she's joking, but she means it. That's what her parents think of me. A girl would have to be crazy to get in my car. It's what they all think.

Nothing to do but drive her home now. It's probably just as well. She's not really my type. Cheryl was in Commercial like me—she was planning to go to secretarial school. This one's academic, maybe not in the Honor Society with the other brains, but going to college for sure. No sense starting something with her.

I turn the key and the engine starts. Maybe I was hoping it wouldn't, that we'd be stuck here and I'd take a chance and kiss her.

B
UDDY
stops the car around the corner from my house. He looks at me and I get this strange feeling he'd like to kiss me good night. I jerk the car door open. "I've got to go," I say and then add, "I hope you like the navy." Boy, does that sound dumb.

He shrugs. "It can't be worse than high school."

"Yeah." I hesitate, one foot outside the car but the rest of me inside. Do I want him to kiss me?

"If I write to you, will you write back?" he asks.

"Yeah, sure." But I'm thinking how will I explain when Mom notices I'm getting letters from him?

"I'm a lousy writer," he says, "almost flunked English more than once. Can't spell. So don't laugh when you read my letters."

He's still got that look in his eyes. I'm still more in the car than out. Part of me wants to lean over and kiss his cheek, which is crazy.

"I really should go," I say. "My parents..."

"So go," he says. "I'm not forcing you to stay."

"You know something?" I've got both feet on the sidewalk now, but I'm leaning in the open door. "You're much nicer than I thought."

Suddenly he reaches over and pulls me closer. His lips bump against mine.

Startled, I let him kiss me again. His mouth is soft and warm, his teeth hard. I kiss him back.

Suddenly a car passes us, and I jump away, caught in the headlights.

We stare at each other, surprised. I remember laughing the first time Charlie kissed me. I don't laugh now. Buddy's not joking around. And neither am I.

"Take care of yourself, Legs," he says.

"You, too."

We stare at each for a long moment. I want to get back in the car and come home when the sun rises. Like a girl in a story. A doomed girl maybe. But I don't even touch the door handle. I stand there in the dark and memorize his face, scared of my own thoughts.

"I'll write," he says.

"Me, too," I whisper.

Then I turn and run around the corner toward home. Behind me, I hear him drive away. I touch my lips with my fingers.

Mom and Dad are watching
What's My Line?
and laughing at Bennet Cerf's attempts to guess the identity of the show's mystery guest. Taking advantage of their good mood, I apologize for being late and make up a lie about meeting some other kids and forgetting about the time. Since it's obvious I haven't been drinking or making out, they say good night and I go up to bed.

Alone in the dark, I hug my old bear and worry about what happened between Buddy and me. What if Ellie finds out I let him kiss me? She'll hate me. But maybe she hates me anyway for writing all that stuff about the Church.

Downstairs I hear Mom and Dad talking. Their voices are soft, but I can pick out a few words. "Seems happier ... Susan ... Sugar Bowl ... just what she needs..." They must think I'm getting over Cheryl and Bobbi Jo, I'm going to be my old self again, I won't be moping around the house all day. They're happy because I lied to them.

I've never had a secret life before, and I'm not comfortable with it.

I'm not comfortable with my feelings about Buddy either. Truthfully, I wish he'd kissed me while we were parked in the woods, I wish I'd stroked his fuzzy head, I wished we'd made out. I wish I'd gotten back in the car and we're driving through a dark wood with honeysuckle and lightning bugs and the moon gliding along beside us. He's so much nicer than I thought. He's so sad. So haunted, so tragic ... Oh, I don't know what it is about him. I like him, I just do. I can't help it.

My life is in danger of becoming a
True Confessions
story.

Guess what? I broke up with Buddy tonight. He's been getting on my nerves really bad, always kissing me and hugging me and touching me, even in school down by the gym he tried to feel me up. He's like that joke about foreign boyfriends—russian fingers and roman hands and a french tongue. Ha ha. I told Bobbi Jo that but as usual she didn't get it, said she thought he was an american. That girl needs to get out of catholic school, and get away from those nuns. What a load of crap they put in her head about sin and hell and stuff. You just can't take religion all that seriously. I mean I believe in God and all but I don't think I'm going to hell for the stuff Buddy and me do.