“Yes, sir,” we said. Mama banged her hands together, hard and sudden, and Clarice and I both jumped. Florence and Bruster didn’t even blink. Mama opened her hands like a book and stared at her palms, then held them up again, six inches apart.
Uncle Bruster handed each of us a quarter and said, “If your date starts asking you to do things you don’t feel comfortable about, you give him this quarter. You tell him he can call me and ask me the question he’s asking you. If I say okay, then you’ll go along with it.”
“Yes, sir,” we said, and Mama banged her hands together again. Clarice and I watched her studying her palms.
“There’s a fly in the room,” Aunt Florence explained impatiently. “You listen up to Daddy.”
Clarice looked around. “I don’t see any fly.”
“That’s because there’s not really a fly,” I said, and Clarice flushed faintly pink. Mama had her hands up six inches apart again. “Can we maybe wait in the living room, Aunt Florence?”
Aunt Florence cocked a suspicious eyebrow and said, “Yes, you may, but no scooting out the door like dogs coming to a whistle if those boys sit out there and honk at you. You will wait until the doorbell rings, and Bruster and I will come in the living room and meet them before you even think you’ll head off into the night with them.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Clarice as Mama banged her hands together in another emphatic clap.
In the living room, Clarice and I perched on the orange sofa. We could hear the muted burble of the TV, punctuated by my mother’s sporadic applause, coming from the den.
“I hope he doesn’t honk,” whispered Clarice. “I hope he thinks to come up to the door, or Mama might march out there and get him by the ear and give him her ‘never underestimate the power of good manners’ speech.” Clarice shivered her shoulders in a horror that was only half mocking. Florence might actually do it.
Luckily, either Rob or Jim Beverly had been raised right, or they had heard locker-room tales about Clarice’s strict parents. They came up to the door to collect us. Clarice and I stayed sitting on the sofa in the living room while Bruster and Florence went to let them in. We listened to introductions going all around.
When the boys came through the doorway, I saw immediately that Jim Beverly had misread the situation. He was smiling and chatting easily with Bruster. Usually the girl’s father is a safe bet, but he’d missed seeing the actual danger. Florence watched him with cowboy eyes, cool and level, a deadly shot from fifty paces.
“Where are you taking our girls this evening?” Bruster inquired.
Jim Beverly outlined our plans, telling him we would see a movie at the Dupe in Fruiton and then head to Mr. Gatti’s for Cokes and slices with some other kids from school. Jim Beverly was using lots of eye contact and pushing his eyebrows up sincerely, but the real interview was going on in the living room doorway.
“I know that name, Shay,” Aunt Florence said to Rob. “Where do you boys get your preaching?”
“Jim and me, our folks all go to Mount Olive,” said Rob, and I saw Florence relax a notch. Mount Olive was a Southern Baptist church in Fruiton.
“You’re Caroline Shay’s boy?” Aunt Florence said.
“No, Caroline is my aunt. You’re thinking of my cousin Ronny,” said Rob. “I’m Darcy and Pam Shay’s oldest.”
Florence gave a curt nod. “I know Pam Shay. You have yourself a good mama.”
“Thank you, ma’am. I know,” said Rob. Clarice and I exchanged glances. Mount Olive and the “ma’am” meant our dates had just been approved.
“You have them home by eleven sharp,” Bruster was saying to Jim.
“Daddy,” said Clarice, protesting. “Eleven-thirty?”
I saw Bruster and Florence’s eyes meet, and she tipped him an almost imperceptible nod. “I tell you what,” said Bruster. “You leave the pizza place by eleven. It’s what, about a twenty-minute drive? But you act like Cinderella. When the clock is bonging eleven, you girlies better be climbing in the carriage.”
“Thanks, Daddy,” said Clarice. She hopped up, and I followed as if on a string attached to her. “But you know Cinderella got to stay out till midnight.”
“Cinderella was a sophomore,” said Bruster.
The movie was some underwater special-effects thing with a sea monster and bikini-clad skin-diving scientists getting eaten all over the place. It was what Clarice’s borderline-slutty friend Janey called a clutch film. Things kept popping up from the shadowy depths. I had managed to slip into the row of seats before Rob could, and we were sitting in a line with Clarice on the end next to Jim Beverly, and then me in between the two boys. I clutched nothing but my own hands in my lap, happy to be sitting next to Jim.
When the bikini-eating went on hold while some plot points and conversations happened, Jim Beverly shifted in his chair and whispered to Clarice, “I’m gonna go get me a Coke. You want a Coke? Or Milk Duds or something?”
Clarice said no, but Rob overheard him and said, “Get me a popcorn, bro.” He passed a bill to Jim, who took it and said, “Arlene?”
I shook my head, but then I whispered, “I’ll come with you. I need to go to the ladies’.”
I let him go past me and then stood up and followed him out of our row and up the aisle. I liked it, the two of us heading to the concession stand, as if he were my date. He nudged my arm and said, “Girl, I better not get you a Coke, if you already need to hit the loo twenty minutes into the movie.”
We slipped out the double doors. The Dupe had only two theaters, and the doors led directly out onto the lighted lobby. I flipped my long braid over my shoulder and smiled up at him the way Clarice would have. I tried to emulate the teasing tone I had heard her use so often to fuss at boys. She could complain about something they’d done as if she secretly thought it was adorable or naughty or both. “I would have gone before, but you boys were late coming for us. I didn’t want to miss the previews.”
Jim Beverly grinned back at me and said, “Blame Rob for that. He had to blow-dry his pretty—”
He stopped talking abruptly and came to a dead stop so fast I was two steps beyond him before I realized he was no longer beside me. I looked back. He was staring ahead at the concession stand. He was no longer smiling, and his eyes were no longer kind. I followed his line of sight.
At the head of the line, standing with a boy who could only be her date, was Rose Mae Lolley. She had not seen Jim Beverly yet. Her hand was moving with its customary slow grace to pull her mink-brown braid around. She draped it over her shoulder and was musingly stroking its smooth length as she waited for the senior she was with to pay for their drinks. She was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, cranberry red, so sheer that a hint of her pale belly glinted through. She was obviously wearing a black bra. Her knit skirt was long and black, like mine, but tighter, with a slit on the side that came to about mid-thigh. She had on knee-high boots, and I could see a sliver of her thigh, framed in a triangle formed by the slit and the top of her boot.
As if she felt my gaze, her head turned languorously and our eyes met. Her eyebrows went up in astonishment as she took in my outfit. In another moment, she noticed Jim Beverly standing beside me. Her mouth opened, and then she gave her head a tiny shake. She lifted one shoulder in a slow half-shrug of disbelief, then turned away from us, sticking her hand in her date’s back pocket and worming up under his arm, showing us her elegant back.
We both stood silently, and then Jim Beverly said, “I thought you had to pee?” without looking at me and with no inflection.
I scurried obediently to the ladies’ room, where I bolted myself into a stall and leaned against the door, trying not to cry and ruin the pretty makeup job Clarice had done. I pulled the band out of my hair so savagely that I broke it. I threw it on the floor and combed my braid out with my fingers. When I had myself together, I went back out into the lobby. Neither Jim Beverly nor Rose-Pop and her date were there.
I went back into the theater, and made my way to o
ur row. On the screen, a pretty girl who looked much too young to be a scientist was holding up a test tube and saying, “The light! It’s like poison to them!” in a wonder-filled tone. Jim Beverly’s seat was empty. Becky Spivey from school was sitting on the other side of Rob, whispering to him. I said, “Excuse me,” and made my way past both of them. I sat down in my chair. Clarice leaned across Jim Beverly’s empty one and said, “Where did he go?”
I shrugged. “I went to the bathroom.”
I wasn’t sure how much I should say, especially since Rob and Becky Spivey might overhear. Clarice looked over her shoulder worriedly.
Rob was tapping at me from the other side. “Where’s Jim?” he whispered.
“I went to the bathroom,” I said again.
A guy behind us made a shushing noise.
I folded my arms around myself and put my eyes on the screen. Rob was still in whispered consult with Becky Spivey. He turned to me again and whispered, “Hey, a bunch of people are already down at the gulch, so do you want to maybe skip out of here? This movie blows.”
“You go ahead,” I said quietly.
“C’mon, it’ll be fun. Becky’ll take us in her car, and we can meet up with Jim and Clarice later at Mr. Gatti’s.”
Becky Spivey leaned over. “Come on, Rob, she doesn’t care.” I could smell butter on her breath. She was wearing a tank top, too, a peach one. She was spilling out the top of it as she leaned over. Between my insistence that he go, Becky’s cleavage, and the person a few rows behind us releasing louder and more enraged shushing noises, we finally got Rob unglued from his seat.
“Are you sure you don’t care, Arlene?” he asked.
“She said she doesn’t mind four times now, go already,” said the shushing guy loudly. And Rob went.
Clarice watched them leave and then leaned across Jim Beverly’s empty seat again. “What on earth’s going on?”
I whispered, “Rose-Pop,” to Clarice. She pointed back towards the concession area and whispered, “Out there?” I nodded.
Clarice sat up straight in her chair, looking back at the screen. I looked behind me up the aisle and realized she had looked over my shoulder and seen Jim Beverly returning. He had a huge tub of popcorn and two Cokes balanced in his hands. He sat down between us and said, “Where’d Rob go?”
As quietly as possible, I tried to give him a brief explanation, but three words into it, the guy a couple of rows behind us piped up again. “Do you mind?”
Jim Beverly whipped around so quickly that some of the popcorn came spilling out of the tub and scattered at his feet. “Yeah, I do fucking mind. Do I need to come up there and explain why?” he said loudly.
When the guy did not answer him, he turned back to me and said, “So. Where’s Rob?” in a casual, conversational tone.
Clarice was looking at him with round, surprised eyes.
I explained about the gulch party and Becky Spivey and meeting up later. He handed me the popcorn tub and said, “Well, this is his.” Then he handed one Coke to Clarice and stared morosely at the screen, gulping at his own Coke. He sucked about a fourth of it up through the straw in thirty seconds.
Clarice and I were watching him now instead of the movie. He reached into the pocket of his baggy Levi’s and pulled out a flat pint bottle of vodka. “Sorry I was gone so long,” he said to Clarice. “I had to make a run out to the Jeep.”
He peeled the plastic lid off his Coke and spiked the hell out of it, pouring about a third of the pint into it. He tilted the pint bottle towards Clarice, indicating her Coke. She shook her head and set her Coke down on the floor, whispering, “I didn’t even want the Coke, remember?” He capped the bottle and put it away.
We sat in silence through the second half of the movie. Jim Beverly was brooding. He glared at the screen with malevolent eyes, gulping down his spiked Coke so fast that I developed a sympathy ice headache. I could sense Clarice’s discomfort. She sat stiffly on the other side of him. When his Coke was gone, he got hers off the floor and poured another third of the pint into it. He gulped that one down, too.
At last the credits rolled and the lights came up. We filed out with the few other people who had been in our theater. The guy who had been sitting a few rows behind us was gone. He must have slipped out quickly to avoid us.
As we made our way up the aisle, I noticed Jim Beverly was listing a tiny bit to starboard. Clarice had noticed it, too. By the time we made it out to the Jeep, neither of us had any doubts that he was halfway to stinking drunk.
“So, what? We meet up with them over at Mr. Gatti’s? Or go down to the gulch?” Jim asked.
Clarice smiled up at him as he fumbled around with his keys. She said, “Hey, Jim, why don’t you let me drive. I always wanted to drive a Jeep.”
He looked back at her, incredulous. “You aren’t driving my Jeep. What, do you even know how to drive?”
“Yes, I know how to drive,” she said, laughing. “I got my learner’s last month.”
“Oh, your learner’s,” he said. “Yeah, great, whatever. Get in.” He managed to get the passenger door open.
I clambered into the backseat, but Clarice stayed right where she was. “You might as well give her the keys,” I said. “Clarice won’t ride with anyone who’s been drinking.” I buckled myself in.
Clarice shot me an exasperated look as Jim Beverly drew himself up and looked down at her. “I’m not drunk,” he said belligerently.
She lifted one shoulder and said, “Right. You’re just scared to let me drive your car. What do you think is going to happen? I’ll run it into a chicken truck and get you in trouble with your daddy?” Her voice was half sassy, half mocking.
“I’m not scared,” he said, slurring the s.
“Whatever,” she said, looking away.
“Fine. You want to drive so bad, here.” He looped his index finger through the ring on his keys and dangled them in front of her. “Take the keys.”
She reached for them, but he snatched them out of her reach. As soon as she put her hand down, he dangled them in front of her again. She reached for them, and he snatched them away. She folded her arms across her chest. He dangled the keys in front of her again. She just stood there with her arms crossed, shaking her head at him. He said, “Come on, puppy. Jump for it. Jump for it, puppy. Bounce a little.” He was laughing.
She thumped him in the chest with the back of one hand. “You’re such a jerk,” she said.
“I know, I know,” he said. “Sorry. Come on. Get in.”
“No,” said Clarice. “I’m not riding with you when you’ve been drinking. Give me the keys, and we’ll go to Mr. Gatti’s. You can have a couple of slices of pizza, we’ll hang out with everybody, and you’ll be totally fine to drive us home. Come on, I’m a good driver. I do this for my friends all the time. I learned how to drive because Missy Carver’s older sister was so drunk once she couldn’t get the car out of reverse. And it was an automatic. Just give me the keys.”
She was smiling up at him, sweetly reasonable, and for a moment I thought he was going to do it. But then he closed his fist around the key ring and said, “No. Bad puppy. Get in the Jeep.”
“No.”
They stayed in a Mexican standoff for a few seconds, and then Jim Beverly climbed in through the open passenger door. He pulled it shut behind him and crab-walked across into the driver’s seat, steadying himself with the roll bar. He sat down and jammed the key into the ignition.
“Get out, Arlene,” said Clarice.
I rolled my eyes and unbuckled myself obediently, slipping between the front seats. I rested my butt on the passenger seat, reaching to open the door, but Jim Beverly snaked one long arm across me and caught my wrist, stopping me. “You’re not the boss of her,” he said to Clarice, laughing again.
“Get out, Arlene,” Clarice repeated. She was deadly serious.
I hesitated. I couldn’t help liking where I was, sitting in the front seat of Jim Beverly’s Jeep, with his warm, callused ha
nd holding my wrist.
Jim Beverly felt my hesitation, and he let go of my arm and turned the key. The Jeep’s engine came to life. “We’re going to Mr. Gatti’s,” he said. “You coming or not?”
“Arlene,” said Clarice.
“Going once!” he said, and tapped the gas and hit the brakes. The Jeep lurched forward a foot and then stopped.
“Going twice!” he said, and lurched us forward again.
Clarice took two running steps to catch up to us, used the back bumper as a step, and grabbed the roll bar, vaulting herself into the backseat just as he took off for real. He was laughing like crazy, and I was a little, too. Clarice reached into the front seat and gave me a hard pinch as we rocketed out of the parking lot onto Firestone Drive.
“This is so not funny,” she said.
“It’s a little bit funny,” Jim Beverly said.
Clarice buckled herself into the back. “I think you better just take us home.”
He leaned towards me sideways and said in a stage whisper, “I think Mom’s pissed.”
The Jeep listed to the side as he leaned, and we bumped briefly up onto the curb. Jim Beverly jerked the steering wheel hard, and we thumped down. He got us centered on the road, laughing and cussing under his breath.
Clarice had grabbed my arm as the Jeep bumped up and down. “You better stop this car and let me drive, you asshole,” she said.
“Too late,” said Jim Beverly and got on the entrance to the highway. “I’m taking you candy-asses on home.”
Rocketing along on the highway in the dark, I lost the brief fear that had surged when he ran us up on the curb. I was instead exhilarated to be beside him, and the nastiest inside bit of me couldn’t help but enjoy the reversal, having Clarice for once in her life take the backseat while I rode shotgun. My long hair was whipping around my face, getting in my eyes, and I gathered it up into a wad and held it against my head with one hand.
Next to me, Jim Beverly got the flat pint bottle out of his pocket again. It was less than a third full. I tried to hold the irritating pieces of my hair flat as Clarice and I watched him unscrew the cap and take a healthy swig, steering with one knee pressed up against the bottom of the wheel. I glanced back at Clarice. She was holding her breath. As soon as he had capped the bottle and had one hand back on the wheel, she started yelling at him.