George Mills Part 26

It is perhaps the first time he has ever really examined himself in the gla.s.s. Looking for blemish, sorting rash, feature, the inventory of surface, the lay of the skull. He sees with wonder the topography of his hair, the evidence of his arms beneath his suit coat, the hinged and heavy wrists. He leans forward and splays his lips, stares at the long teeth, touches them. Before, if he has looked in the mirror, it has been with the shy, cursory glance of a customer into a barber's gla.s.s, that automatic, that mechanical.

I was no virgin, virgin, you understand. you understand.

His s.e.xual encounters had been in bars, low dives, his conquests drunk, mostly older, fumbling his c.o.c.k in the alley, blowing him in cars, deeply, deeply, smothering his foreskin on their sore throats, scratching it on dentures. Hoa.r.s.ely they had moaned, called out someone else's name. Or come to them always in their their beds, in cold rooms, in badly furnished apartments above beauty parlors. So that he believed, vaguely, that females had regulated intervals of abstinence, cycles of seasonal rut, their need encoded, driven by the calendar, the tides, the moon, by floundering glands, secret biological constants. (He stayed away from wh.o.r.es not because he believed their need was shammed but because he believed they had no need, that their natures had been torn from them, that their c.u.n.ts were quite literally holes, hair and flesh covering nothing, like houses built on the edges of cliffs. He thought of them as amputees. He did not go with wh.o.r.es.) beds, in cold rooms, in badly furnished apartments above beauty parlors. So that he believed, vaguely, that females had regulated intervals of abstinence, cycles of seasonal rut, their need encoded, driven by the calendar, the tides, the moon, by floundering glands, secret biological constants. (He stayed away from wh.o.r.es not because he believed their need was shammed but because he believed they had no need, that their natures had been torn from them, that their c.u.n.ts were quite literally holes, hair and flesh covering nothing, like houses built on the edges of cliffs. He thought of them as amputees. He did not go with wh.o.r.es.)

[I did not go go with anyone. When I wanted a woman I knew where to find her. Those bars. Maybe once a month I'd leave my neighborhood and take the bus north or south, get off somewhere in the city I had never been and find a tavern, and usually it was the only place with the lights still on, settled among the frame houses and dark apartment buildings-bowling alleys too, the lounges there, those Eleventh Frames, Lovers' Lanes, Spare Rooms and Gutter Bowls near the pinball arcades and shoe rentals-so that I always had the impression I had come to the country. I didn't waste time. I ordered my beer, showed them my money-I didn't have a wallet; in those days I carried my cash in my pay envelope-and looked around, smiling not broadly so much as inconclusively. If I saw a woman put money in the jukebox I listened to hear what songs she'd picked and I played them too, leaning backward or forward when the music came on, waiting to catch her eye, raising my gla.s.s to her, toasting our taste. Almost always she smiled. I took my beer and moved down the bar toward her. If the stool next to hers was empty I sat down. I'd read the label on her beer and signal the bartender to bring us another round, talking all the time, not lying, you understand, but this wasn't conversation either, telling my name and where I worked, the position I played, other things about me, all I could think of who didn't know what my hair looked like or what were my strong points or the condition of my teeth, and never asked anything about her unless it was what she was drinking if it wasn't beer or something I recognized, the difficulty being finding things to say after I'd told her my name, what I did for a living, where I was from, conversationed no better than a candidate, some pol at a gate when the shifts change, but talking anyway, having to, the distracting spiel of a magician, say, the cardsharp's chatter, friendly, open, frank for a man in work shirts, boots, but steering clear, too, of questions and promptings and preemptive reference, not rude or aggrandizing but shy for with anyone. When I wanted a woman I knew where to find her. Those bars. Maybe once a month I'd leave my neighborhood and take the bus north or south, get off somewhere in the city I had never been and find a tavern, and usually it was the only place with the lights still on, settled among the frame houses and dark apartment buildings-bowling alleys too, the lounges there, those Eleventh Frames, Lovers' Lanes, Spare Rooms and Gutter Bowls near the pinball arcades and shoe rentals-so that I always had the impression I had come to the country. I didn't waste time. I ordered my beer, showed them my money-I didn't have a wallet; in those days I carried my cash in my pay envelope-and looked around, smiling not broadly so much as inconclusively. If I saw a woman put money in the jukebox I listened to hear what songs she'd picked and I played them too, leaning backward or forward when the music came on, waiting to catch her eye, raising my gla.s.s to her, toasting our taste. Almost always she smiled. I took my beer and moved down the bar toward her. If the stool next to hers was empty I sat down. I'd read the label on her beer and signal the bartender to bring us another round, talking all the time, not lying, you understand, but this wasn't conversation either, telling my name and where I worked, the position I played, other things about me, all I could think of who didn't know what my hair looked like or what were my strong points or the condition of my teeth, and never asked anything about her unless it was what she was drinking if it wasn't beer or something I recognized, the difficulty being finding things to say after I'd told her my name, what I did for a living, where I was from, conversationed no better than a candidate, some pol at a gate when the shifts change, but talking anyway, having to, the distracting spiel of a magician, say, the cardsharp's chatter, friendly, open, frank for a man in work shirts, boots, but steering clear, too, of questions and promptings and preemptive reference, not rude or aggrandizing but shy for her, her, modest for the lady, in charge only through consideration, a ricochet restraint, the billiard relationships and carom closures and retreats tricky as dance steps. Because I figured we both knew what was what, who, one of us at least, knew nothing. And a.s.sumed she a.s.sumed I would not mention it, her presence a matter of course, the body's will, some compulsion of the skin, shame's innings and l.u.s.t's licks, as if, were I to permit her the edgewise word that word would be a groan, a speech from heat, not conversation either, as if the both of us were mutes, but the driven diction of desire, I more than hinting she had gotten there as I had, on a bus, come in a car from some distant neighborhood, as much the stranger in those parts as myself. And where, I wonder, did those gestures come from, that silent toast, that almost knowledgeable little bow of deference and tribute, that polite, bar-length greeting, romantic, so close to civilized? How would I have learned these signs who had learned nothing? Not my profile, not my air. But deferential, always deferential, as deferential to her hormones as a gent to disfigurement or some grand-mannered guy to handicap, deferentially drilling her with my attentive small talk, clocking the parameters of her drunkenness all the way to its critical ma.s.s. Like a scientist, like a coach, like a doc at the ringside, gauging, appraising and contemplative, only then stepping in, cool as a cop: "That's enough, don't you think so? Look, you're beginning to cry. Listen how shrill you've become. You don't want to throw up, do you? You don't want to pa.s.s out. Where are your car keys, where is your purse? Is that your coat? Did you come with a hat? Splash water on your face, go relieve yourself first. Beer, pee and estrogen. That's a tricky combination. The beer's in the pee. The pee floods the estrogen. Go on, go ahead, I'll wait." And d.a.m.ned if she didn't. Do as I say. And grateful as well. As if I'd actually helped her. So that by the time I had her skirt up, her bra.s.siere down, lowered her corset, raised her slip, sucked the garters, kissed the hose, and had the cups of her bra loose on her belly or awry at her side, she was actually watching, amazed as myself at her condition, convinced by her gamy, ribald chemistries, struck by what was neither rape nor love but only my simple, driven confidence, a kind of carnal transfusion, s.e.xual first aid and the terrible blunt liberties of emergency, averting her eyes not even when she came, her moans and cries and whines and whimpers and skirls of o.r.g.a.s.m a sort of breathless yodel, Baby Shameless beneath this fellow like some heavy lifter or love's day laborer who did all the work and insinuated knees, fingers, hands, lips, mouth, tongue, teeth and c.o.c.k too at last, not as weapons-as little seduction as rape-and not even as parts, members but as tools, the paramedical instrumentality of the available-as if I lived off the land, made do like a commando-so that only when modest for the lady, in charge only through consideration, a ricochet restraint, the billiard relationships and carom closures and retreats tricky as dance steps. Because I figured we both knew what was what, who, one of us at least, knew nothing. And a.s.sumed she a.s.sumed I would not mention it, her presence a matter of course, the body's will, some compulsion of the skin, shame's innings and l.u.s.t's licks, as if, were I to permit her the edgewise word that word would be a groan, a speech from heat, not conversation either, as if the both of us were mutes, but the driven diction of desire, I more than hinting she had gotten there as I had, on a bus, come in a car from some distant neighborhood, as much the stranger in those parts as myself. And where, I wonder, did those gestures come from, that silent toast, that almost knowledgeable little bow of deference and tribute, that polite, bar-length greeting, romantic, so close to civilized? How would I have learned these signs who had learned nothing? Not my profile, not my air. But deferential, always deferential, as deferential to her hormones as a gent to disfigurement or some grand-mannered guy to handicap, deferentially drilling her with my attentive small talk, clocking the parameters of her drunkenness all the way to its critical ma.s.s. Like a scientist, like a coach, like a doc at the ringside, gauging, appraising and contemplative, only then stepping in, cool as a cop: "That's enough, don't you think so? Look, you're beginning to cry. Listen how shrill you've become. You don't want to throw up, do you? You don't want to pa.s.s out. Where are your car keys, where is your purse? Is that your coat? Did you come with a hat? Splash water on your face, go relieve yourself first. Beer, pee and estrogen. That's a tricky combination. The beer's in the pee. The pee floods the estrogen. Go on, go ahead, I'll wait." And d.a.m.ned if she didn't. Do as I say. And grateful as well. As if I'd actually helped her. So that by the time I had her skirt up, her bra.s.siere down, lowered her corset, raised her slip, sucked the garters, kissed the hose, and had the cups of her bra loose on her belly or awry at her side, she was actually watching, amazed as myself at her condition, convinced by her gamy, ribald chemistries, struck by what was neither rape nor love but only my simple, driven confidence, a kind of carnal transfusion, s.e.xual first aid and the terrible blunt liberties of emergency, averting her eyes not even when she came, her moans and cries and whines and whimpers and skirls of o.r.g.a.s.m a sort of breathless yodel, Baby Shameless beneath this fellow like some heavy lifter or love's day laborer who did all the work and insinuated knees, fingers, hands, lips, mouth, tongue, teeth and c.o.c.k too at last, not as weapons-as little seduction as rape-and not even as parts, members but as tools, the paramedical instrumentality of the available-as if I lived off the land, made do like a commando-so that only when I I came did she avert her eyes, blink, as if only then I had exceeded my warrants, behaved less than professionally. But rea.s.sured the next moment by my withdrawal, suddenly thoughtful, charmed and sad. "Oh, say," she'd say, "where'd you learn to do a girl like that? That was really something. came did she avert her eyes, blink, as if only then I had exceeded my warrants, behaved less than professionally. But rea.s.sured the next moment by my withdrawal, suddenly thoughtful, charmed and sad. "Oh, say," she'd say, "where'd you learn to do a girl like that? That was really something. Really Really something. You know I never...I didn't frighten you, did I? When I made those sounds? Did I? Tell the truth, were you embarra.s.sed? Honest, I never...It was like someone else's voice. I swear it. It was like someone's voice I've never heard. I never something. You know I never...I didn't frighten you, did I? When I made those sounds? Did I? Tell the truth, were you embarra.s.sed? Honest, I never...It was like someone else's voice. I swear it. It was like someone's voice I've never heard. I never have have heard it. I didn't know I even knew those noises, words." I all skeptical rea.s.surance, muzzling my doubts as till the last minute I had muzzled my l.u.s.t, as accomplished a dresser in the dark back seats of cars or on the damp sheets of those strange beds as undresser, saying: "Oh, hey, listen, that's okay. That was only nature. You mustn't mind what Mother Nature says. You're not to blame-here's your stocking-you couldn't help it. Don't you think I know that much? Sure. Anyway, it was your glands talking, only your guts' opinions, just some tripe from the marrow. You think I pay heard it. I didn't know I even knew those noises, words." I all skeptical rea.s.surance, muzzling my doubts as till the last minute I had muzzled my l.u.s.t, as accomplished a dresser in the dark back seats of cars or on the damp sheets of those strange beds as undresser, saying: "Oh, hey, listen, that's okay. That was only nature. You mustn't mind what Mother Nature says. You're not to blame-here's your stocking-you couldn't help it. Don't you think I know that much? Sure. Anyway, it was your glands talking, only your guts' opinions, just some tripe from the marrow. You think I pay that that any mind? That I listen to endocrines? Women any mind? That I listen to endocrines? Women do do that stuff when they get excited. They're not in control. I know that stuff when they get excited. They're not in control. I know that that much. It was just Nature and your ducts' low notions. much. It was just Nature and your ducts' low notions. Hey Hey now, cheer up. Do I look like the kind of guy who sets store in a fart? Here's your earring. It must have slipped out when you were thrashing around like that."] now, cheer up. Do I look like the kind of guy who sets store in a fart? Here's your earring. It must have slipped out when you were thrashing around like that."]

As he believed, again vaguely, in virgins. Not-he was no prude-in their moral superiority. Not in some special quality they possessed which their fallen sisters-not even, particularly, in the fall of those sisters-lacked. Not in their fitness as brides or suitability as girl friends, not in their congenial apposition to grace and tone or in their conformity to a grand convention. Not, in fact, in anything pet.i.te or chaste or delicate, prudent, pure, virtuous, discreet or even modest. In virginity, in virginity itself, in its simple mechanical cause. He believed, that is, in the hymen. In the membrane, that, he took it, air-and watertight occlusive seal like cellophane on a pack of cigarettes or the metal cap on a soda bottle that somehow sh.o.r.ed for as long as it was still in place all the juices of need, all the s.e.xual solutions, that endocrinous drip drip and concupiscent leak which he so expertly stanched in cars and plugged in those furnished rooms.

And just as he shied away from the wh.o.r.es, he shied away from the virgins, and for much the same reason--that they had no needs. They were too much trouble. They would take seduction, courtship, the long, difficult ploy of friendship.

[What was the point? How could I deal with someone who did not mean to be dealt with? Did I have beer money and bus fare to burn on women and girls who had an existence aloof and outside the terms of my desires? If I did not think of them as incorruptible then I thought of them as indifferent, people outside my sphere of influence. I might as well have had conversations with ladies whose language was French, who could not understand my English, who may not even have heard it.]

Which explains why, at twenty-seven, George Mills, who'd had his ashes hauled as often as he'd felt the urgency, who'd been blown, whose flesh and b.u.t.tocks had been chewed and clutched, whose back and backside raked in wanton, dissipate zest, why George Mills, bruised by delight and all the hijinks of high feeling, had never so much as kissed a maiden. It was that membrane, that cherry like some mythic grail or fortified fastness, which kept him off, not so much at bay as at home, like some frail, stiff, awkward peasant mowing in a field who sees the battlement, the walled, high, thick and ancient parapet and, behind the cas.e.m.e.nt, the oppressor himself, say, taking the sun on the bulwark's broad and open deck, defenseless, alone, who looks once, shrugs, and embraces the hay, the infested, heavy bales, to shove them about with his last declining energies.

[It was the two free pa.s.ses.]

He wasn't shy around these women, any more than one is shy around furniture--tables, chairs. He wasn't overly modest or una.s.suming. (He had his a.s.sumptions.) It was that in their presence-the presence of virgins-he had some genuine gift for the revoked self, a redskin caution, an anonymity reasonable as a good alibi. It was only afterward that a teammate ever remembered that he had failed to introduce George to his girl's friend, her roommate, a cousin in town on a visit. The roommate or cousin would not even have noted this much. On a streetcar or bus, in a private automobile going back to the neighborhood after a game in the park, he could sit thigh to thigh beside the strange girl without contact, his skin as nerveless as his clothing.

[I figured why bother, and made myself as indifferent as I supposed her to be. I looked out the window. I watched for my stop.]

He might have gone on this way forever.

[It was the two free pa.s.ses, at two bucks apiece the sixteen bottles of beer they represented, which, if you figure the woman in that tavern was already on her second bottle by the time I put my coin in the jukebox to play her song, and when you remember that I nursed mine-someone had to drive, someone had to stay sober enough to take responsibility for my erection-often drinking only one to her three or, if I ordered a pitcher, maybe a gla.s.s and a half to her four, and if you add to the equation the fact that she rarely drank more than seven bottles, two of which she'd paid for herself, and usually not more than five or six, three or four of them on me, then the two pa.s.ses stood for two to three women successfully courted, successfully wooed. I'm not mean. Money doesn't move me. I'm talking about effort, all that waiting at bus stops, listening to songs played over again again that I hadn't liked the first time, all those strained and jumpy monologues, the patient stints at their bodies, watched as boilers, supervised as machinery. So it was the two and a half months I was thinking of-I'm a working man, I punch time clocks, I'm paid by the hour-when I made the connection between the two free pa.s.ses and the trio of women. It wasn't the money. A fifth of my working year. It wasn't the money. Didn't I spring for new clothes? Didn't I pop for accessories? And it wasn't any investment I was seeking to protect when I bought them. The poor aren't cheap, there'd been no investment. "Bring your girl," the manager said and gave me free pa.s.ses. So it wasn't the money and I had no girl. h.e.l.l, maybe it was the manager's investment I was protecting. Though I still think it was the effort, that I suddenly saw all the man-hours and elbow grease that just those beers and bus rides entailed.]

Stan David was the orchestra leader at the Delgado Ballroom. David's was a regional band, almost a munic.i.p.al one. They played at proms and weddings and, during the week, at the Delgado. They cut no records but had been often on the air. Theirs was the studio band for the local Mutual radio station, and they had been heard behind the victory celebrations in the ballrooms of many downtown hotels a few hours after the polls closed on election days.

David was a small man, prematurely gray and responsible-looking. He looked more like the orchestra's business manager than its conductor and, when he sat down at the piano to lead his band, he somehow seemed someone from the audience, the father of the bride, say, or the high school's princ.i.p.al being a good sport. Indeed, he'd joked with the man who'd hired him for the Delgado and who'd commented on the fact that Stan wasn't dressed like the other players. "I know this town. It's a conservative town. I'm as much a master of ceremonies as a musician. These people will take more from a gray-headed guy in a business suit than they would from some b.o.o.b in a yellow show biz tux."

On the Sat.u.r.day night of George Mills's free pa.s.ses it was not yet an orchestra when Mills walked in. Unaugmented by strings or woodwinds, it was barely a band. They were still setting up.

George glanced at the small group, at their odd displacement on the commodious bandstand, at the gap, greater, Mills judged, than the distance between home plate and pitcher's mound, between the trumpet and the drummer. He looked at the arrangement of the vacant, freestanding, streamlined music stands like big phonograph speakers, at the sequin flourish of their initials.

Gradually the band fleshed itself out, but the dance floor seemed as unoccupied as the bandstand had, the handful of couples dancing there as reluctant to move next to each other as the musicians. They swayed skittishly to the temperate bra.s.s, the long, queer beat of the piano.

George is aware of his new clothes, the creamy fabrics like an aura of haberdash, a particular pocket like a badge of fashion, the vaguely heraldic suggestion of his collar, his lapels like laurels, his cuffs like luck. He strolls across the dance floor and, absorbed in all the flying colors of his style, already it is like dancing. He moves in the paintbox atmospherics of the big glowing room, the polished cosmetics of light.

Chiefly he is aware of his shoes, his elegant socks, his smooth, lubricate soles like the texture of playing cards. Always before the earth has resisted, stymied his feet, and he has walked in gravity as in so much mud. There has always been this layer of friction, of grit. Now he moves across gla.s.s, ice, the hard, flawless surface of the dance floor packed as snow. He feels swell.

Stan David, his voice augmented by saxophones and clarinets, by drums and ba.s.s, calls the room to attention. He is neither seductive nor peremptory but matter-of-fact as someone returned from an errand. He breaks into their mood seamlessly. "The boys and I are awful glad to be playing for you folks tonight. It's an important date for us because it's the first time Mr. Lodt has asked us to do a Sat.u.r.day night at the Delgado, so first off we want to thank those old friends who've so loyally supported our week-night appearances and who Mr. Lodt tells us have been requesting our engagement for the big one."

Most of the people applaud Stan David's announcement. George, on the strength of his good mood, applauds too.

"Well, thank you," Stan David says, "thank you much. G.o.d bless you all." He turns momentarily to the band and brings the song they've been playing to a conclusion. It is, George guesses, their theme song, though he does not recognize the melody. Immediately they begin another, softer, slower, as unfamiliar. "While we were jamming," Stan says, turning back to them, "I noticed a few unfamiliar faces in the room, a few new friends, I hope, I hope." There is additional, louder applause for David's familiar tag line.

"You know, it's funny, the lads and I have been doing gigs in this town since almost just after the war and, you have my word, I never forget a dancer. If a couple comes by the bandstand and I happen to spot them I have their style forever. I can recall all the different partners they dance with and know even the kinds of songs they sit out. That's what our music's about, you see--dancing. That's our bread and b.u.t.ter, that's what pays the rent. If just listening to music is what you prefer, better get yourself a high hat and a box at the opera. Buy records, a radio, tickets to concerts. Go with the highbrows when the symphony plays. That goes for the chaperones, that goes for the shy. Mr. Lodt thinks so too. He doesn't want any wallflowers blocking his fire exits. We don't get paid for our fancy solos and hotsy-totsy musicianship. It ain't Juilliard here, it's a dance hall. Now it's a big floor...What's that Mr. Lodt? Right. Square foot for square foot the biggest in the Midwest. So there's no need to b.u.mp into anyone. We want you to enjoy yourselves but expect you to behave at all times according to the international rules of ballroom etiquette. If you've come to show off or act like a rowdy you might just as well leave right now, I hope, I hope.

"Okay? Okay. Now, you gals who are here for the first time, who came with your girl friends to see what it's like, it's a scientific fact, it takes forty-eight muscles to frown and only half a dozen to smile. You guys remember that, too. But everybody everybody pay attention--we might just be playing your song when you fall in love!" pay attention--we might just be playing your song when you fall in love!"

George has seen the bar, more like a soda fountain than a bar, more-though he has no firsthand experience of this-like the sinks and c.o.ke cupboards in rec rooms, finished bas.e.m.e.nts. He has a forlorn sense of other people's families, of uncles and dads in sports shirts, of daughters who babysit one and two years after they have graduated high school, a notion of these girls in baby doll pajamas, rollers, furry slippers, of brothers called out for swim practice, track, even during vacation. They run punishment laps.

But it is the girls who choke his spirit, the peerless globes of their behinds full as geometry, their b.r.e.a.s.t.s scentless as health. He imagines their lingerie, the white cotton average as laundry. He knows there are virgins about, feels the concentrated weight of their incurious apathy, their inert, deadpan, ho-hum hearts. And is oppressed by obstacle, the insurmountability of things.

Yet he knows that it is only through some such girl-he hasn't seen her yet, has merely glimpsed her type gossiping over a soft drink, or dancing with a young man or another girl, not heedless so much as inattentive, not wanton, even when her partner tentatively divides her thighs with his leg, so much as absolved, locked into a higher modesty-that he may begin his life, be freed from the peculiar celibacy that has marked it, his periodic, furious bachelor pa.s.sions like seizures. But he has seen the beerless, liquorless bar who till now has only wooed with chemicals the chemically primed. There is no jukebox. How may he cope? He is ready to leave. And is actually walking toward the exit and past the gilt chairs that line the margins of the dance floor when Stan David speaks.

"Girls ask the boys to dance. Girls ask the boys to dance. Step up to some fellow, girls, and invite him to dance."

"You want to dance?" Louise asks him.

"Me?"

"Stan says."

"Sure. I guess. I'm not much of a dancer."

"It's a box step."

"Oh, a box step."

"You can do a box step, can't you?"

"Is this a box step?"

"That's right. You've got it."

"Like this?"

"You've got it."

"I'm dancing," George says.

"Louise Mead," Louise says.

"George Mills."

"Mrs. Louise Mills. Mrs. George Mills. George and Louise Mills."

"What?"

"Oh," she laughs, "you're not from around here. When a girl tells a boy her name and the boy tells his, the girl gets to say what her name would be if the girl and the boy were married."

"I'm not really a boy."

"What a thing to say!"

"I mean I'm twenty-seven years old."

"An older man," Louise says. "You're an older man."

"That depends," he says, pleased with his response.

"I'm nineteen," she says, and he has a sense that things are going well. He's following the conversation and doing the box step. The song-Stan David and his orchestra are playing "Getting To Know You"-has been going on for almost seven minutes.

"Did you come with someone, George?"

"No. Did you?"

"That's for me to know and you to find out."

"Oh."

"Do you think I did?"

"I don't know."

"That's not very flattering. It's Sat.u.r.day night. I'm nineteen years old. Do you think I'd come to a place like this by myself?"

"I guess not," George says.

"It's still the same song," Stan David says. "It's still girls ask the boys, and it's still the same song."

"I love your togs," Louise says.

"My togs?"

"Your clothes, silly."

"They're brand new. They're brand new togs."

"The boys and I just might play this song right to the end of the set. We might play it all evening. Does this tell you something about the human heart? Anybody can fall in love with anybody if they stand close enough long enough."

"He always says that."

"Did you know about this? Did you know there'd be girls ask the boys?"

"What if I did?"

"I don't know."

"Do you want to sit down, George?"

"If you do."

"I'm by myself," she says, and lays her head on his shoulder. "I came with my folks."

The cat has his tongue. In a bowling alley, in a bar, she would have had the story of his life by now, the comfort of his theories, but like this, in the dim room, a virgin in his arms, their bodies' curves and hollows adjusted by the dance, customized by music as by tailoring, he has no words, is adrift in a soup of contrary sensations. He is that self-conscious. He wants to kiss her. But knows that if he does-she is with her folks; where are they?-it would be a declaration helpless and humiliating as the raw need of those chemical-flooded ladies to whom he's ministered, revealing as a stump. He feels his erection, which he manages to keep out of her way, and glances furtively at the pants of the other male dancers to see if he's out of line. He is astonished. There are erections everywhere. It's a logjam of hard-ons.

"Why'd you ask if I knew Mr. David was going to make the girls ask the boys?"

"I don't know."