Hearts in Atlantis(112)

'Good.' I got up myself. 'Before you go in, will you help me do something?'

'Sure, what?'

'I'll show you. I won't take long.'

I walked her down the side of Holyoke and then we started up the hill behind it. About two hundred yards away was the Steam Plant parking lot, where undergrads ineligible for parking stickers (freshmen, sophomores, and most juniors) had to keep their cars. It was the prime makeout spot on campus once it got cold, but making out in my car wasn't on my mind that night.

'Did you ever tell Bobby about who got his baseball glove?' I asked. 'You said you wrote to him.'

'I didn't see the point.'

We walked in silence for a little while. Then I said: 'I'm going to call it off with Annmarie over Thanksgiving. I started to phone her, then didn't. If I'm going to do it, I guess I better find the guts to do it face to face.' I hadn't been aware of coming to any such decision, not consciously, but it seemed I had. Certainly it wasn't something I was saying just to please Carol.

She nodded, scuffing through the leaves in her sneakers, holding her little bag in one hand, not looking at me. 'I had to use the phone. Called S-J and told him I was seeing a guy.'

I stopped. 'When?'

'Last week.' Now she looked up at me. Dimples; slightly curved lower lip; the smile.

'Last week? And you didn't tell me?'

'It was my business,' she said, 'Mine and Sully's. I mean, it isn't like he's going to come after you with a . . . ' She paused long enough for both of us to think with a baseball bat and then went on, 'That he's going to come after you, or anything. Come on, Pete. If we're going to do something, let's do it. I'm not going riding with you, though. I really have to study.'

'No rides.'

We got walking again. The Steam Plant lot seemed huge to me in those days - hundreds of cars parked in dozens of moonlit rows. I could hardly ever remember where I left my brother's old Ford wagon. The last time I was back at UM, the lot was three, maybe even four times as big, with space for a thousand cars or more. Time passes and everything gets bigger except us.

'Hey Pete?' Walking. Looking down at her sneakers again even though we were on the asphalt now and there were no more leaves to scuff.

'Uh-huh.'

'I don't want you to go breaking up with Annmarie because of me. Because I have an idea we're . . . temporary. All right?'

'Yeah.' What she said made me unhappy - it was what the citizens of Atlantis referred to as a bummer - but it didn't really surprise me. 'I guess it'll have to be.'

'I like you, and I like being with you now, but it's just liking you, that's all it is, and it's best to be honest. So if you want to keep your mouth shut when you go home for the holiday - '

'Kind of keep her around at home? Sort of like a spare tire in case we get a flat here at school?'

She looked startled, then laughed. 'Touche,' she said.

'Touche for what?'

'I don't even know, Pete . . . but I do like you.'

She stopped, turned to me, slipped her arms around my neck. We kissed for a little while between two rows of cars, kissed until I got a pretty decent bone on, one I'm sure she could feel. Then she gave me a final peck on the lips and we started walking again.

'What did Sully say when you told him? I don't know if I'm supposed to ask, but - '

' - but you want information,' she said in a brusque Number Two voice. Then she laughed. It was the rueful one. 'I was expecting he'd be angry, or that he might even cry. Sully's big and he scares the devil out of the football players he matches up against, but his feelings are always close to the skin. What I didn't expect was relief.'

'Relief?'

'Relief. He's been seeing this girl in Bridgeport for a month or more . . . except my mom's friend Rionda told me she's actually a woman, maybe twenty-four or -five.'

'Sounds like a recipe for disaster,' I said, hoping I sounded measured and thoughtful. I was actually delighted. Of course I was. And if pore ole gosh-darned tender-hearted John Sullivan stumbled into the plot of a country-western Merle Haggard song, well, four hundred million Red Chinese wouldn't give a shit, and that went double for me.

We had almost arrived at my car. It was just one more old heap among all the others, but, courtesy of my brother, it was mine. 'He's got more on his mind than his new love interest,' Carol said. 'He's going into the Army when he finishes high school next June. He's already talked to the recruiter and got it arranged. He can't wait to get over there in Vietnam and start making the world safe for democracy.'

'Did you have a fight with him about the war?'

'Nope. What would be the use? For that matter, what would I tell him? That for me it's all about Bobby Garfield? That all the stuff Harry Swidrowski and George Gilman and Hunter McPhail say seems like smoke and mirrors compared to Bobby carrying me up Broad Street Hill? Sully would think I was crazy. Or say it's because I'm too smart. Sully feels sorry for people who are too smart. He says being too smart is a disease. And maybe he's right. I kind of love him, you know. He's sweet. He's also the kind of guy who needs someone to take care of him.'

And I hope he finds someone, I thought. Just as long as it's not you.