Hearts in Atlantis(116)

Yeah, yeah, and Confucius say woman who fly upside down have crackup. I began to cry. Not a lot, but they were tears, all right. Mostly I think it was being caught so utterly unprepared. And okay, maybe I was crying for myself, as well. Because I was scared. I was now flunking or in danger of flunking all but a single subject, one of my friends was planning to push the EJECT button, and I couldn't seem to stop playing cards. Nothing was going the way I had expected it would once I got to college, and I was terrified.

'I don't want you to go,' I said. 'I love you.' Then I tried to smile. 'Just a little more information, okay?'

She looked at me with an expression I couldn't read, then cranked down her window and tossed out her cigarette. She rolled the window back up and held out her arms to me. 'Come here.'

I put out my own cigarette in the overflowing ashtray and slipped across to her side of the seat. Into her arms. She kissed me, then looked into my eyes. 'Maybe you love me and maybe you don't. I'd never try to talk anyone out of loving me, I can tell you that much, because there's never enough loving to go around. But you're confused, Pete. About school, about Hearts, about Annmarie, and about me, too.'

I started to say I wasn't, but of course I was.

'I can go to UConn,' she said. 'If my mother shapes up, I will go to UConn. If that doesn't work out, I can take courses part-time at Pennington in Bridgeport, or even CED courses at night in Stratford or Harwich. I can do those things, I have the luxury of doing those things, because I'm a girl. This is a good time to be a girl, believe me. Lyndon Johnson has seen to that.'

'Carol - '

She put her hand gently against my mouth. 'If you flunk out this December, you're apt to be in the jungle next December. You need to think about that, Pete. It's one thing for Sully. He thinks it's right and he wants to go. You don't know what you want or what you think, and you won't as long as you keep running those cards.'

'Hey, I took the Goldwater sticker off my car, didn't I?' It sounded foolish to my own ears.

She said nothing.

'When are you going?'

'Tomorrow afternoon. I have a ticket on the four o'clock Trailways bus to New York. The Harwich stop isn't more than three blocks from my front door.'

'Are you leaving from Derry?'

'Yes.'

'Can I drive you to the depot? I could pick you up at your dorm around three.'

She considered it, then nodded . . . but I saw a shaded look in her eyes. It was hard to miss, because those eyes were usually so wide and guileless. 'That would be good,' she said. 'Thank you. And I didn't lie to you, did I? I told you we might be temporary.'

I sighed. 'Yeah.' Only this was a lot more temporary than I had been expecting.

'Now, Number Six: We want . . . information.''

'You won't get it.' It was hard to sound as tough as Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner when you still felt like crying, but I did my best.

'Even if I ask pretty please?' She took my hand, slipped it inside her sweater, placed it on her left breast. The part of me which had begun to swoon snapped immediately back to attention.

'Well . . . '

'Have you ever done it before? I mean, all the way? That's the information I want.'

I hesitated. It's a question most boys find difficult, I imagine, and one most lie about. I didn't want to lie to Carol. 'No,' I said.

She slipped daintily out of her panties, tossed them over into the back seat, and laced her fingers together behind my neck. 'I have. Twice. With Sully. I don't think he was very good at it . . . but he'd never been to college. You have.'

My mouth felt very dry, but that must have been an illusion, because when I kissed her our mouths were wet; they slipped all around, tongues and lips and nipping teeth. When I could talk I said, 'I'll do my best to share my college education.'

'Put on the radio,' she said, unbuckling my belt and unsnapping my jeans. 'Put on the radio, Pete, I like the oldies.'

So I put on the radio and I kissed her and there was a spot, a certain spot, her fingers guided me to it and there was a moment when I was the same old same old and then there was a new place to be. She was very warm in there. Very warm and very tight. She whispered in my ear, her lips tickling against the skin: 'Slow. Eat every one of your vegetables and maybe you'll get dessert.'

Jackie Wilson sang 'Lonely Teardrops' and I went slow. Roy Orbison sang 'Only the Lonely' and I went slow. Wanda Jackson sang 'Let's Have a Party' and I went slow. Mighty John did an ad for Brannigan's, Derry's hottest bottle club, and I went slow. Then she began to moan and it wasn't her fingers on my neck but her nails digging into it, and when she began to move her hips up against me in short hard thrusts I couldn't go slow and then The Platters were on the radio, The Platters were singing 'Twilight Time' and she began to moan that she hadn't known, hadn't had a clue, oh gee, oh Pete, oh gee, oh Jesus, Jesus Christ, Pete, and her lips were all over my mouth and my chin and my jaw, she was frantic with kisses. I could hear the seat creaking, I could smell cigarette smoke and the pine air-freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, and by then / was moaning, too, I don't know what, The Platters were singing 'Each day I pray for evening just to be with you,' and then it started to happen. The pump turns on in ecstasy. I closed my eyes, I held her with my eyes closed and went into her that way, that way you do, shaking all over, hearing the heel of my shoe drumming against the driver's-side door in a spastic tattoo, thinking that I could do this even if I was dying, even if I was dying, even if I was dying; thinking also that it was information. The pump turns on in ecstasy, the cards fall where they fall, the world never misses a beat, the queen hides, the queen is found, and it was all information.