“Dance hall down on the beach closed up Labour Day,” Mickey said coldly.
“There any other dance halls?”
“There’s a dance tonight out at Wilson’s school,” Mickey said.
“That old-time? No, no, I don’t go for that old-time. All-a-man left and that, used to have that down in the basement of the church. Yeah, ever’body swing—I don’t go for that. Inna basement of the church,” George said, obscurely angered. “You don’t remember that,” he said to me. “Too young.”
I was just out of high-school at this time, and George had been working for three years in the Men’s Shoes in a downtown department store, so there was that difference. But we had never bothered with each other back in the city. We were together now because we had met unexpectedly in a strange place and because I had a little money, while George was broke. Also I had my father’s car, and George was in one of his periods between cars, which made him always a little touchy and dissatisfied. But he would have to rearrange these facts a bit, they made him uneasy. I could feel him manufacturing a sufficiency of good feeling, old-pal feeling, and dressing me up as Old Dick, good kid, real character—which did not matter one way or the other, though I did not think, looking at his tender blond piggish handsomeness, the nudity of his pink mouth, and the surprised, angry creases that frequent puzzlement was beginning to put into his forehead, that I would be able to work up an Old George.
I had driven up to the Lake to bring my mother home from a beach resort for women, a place where they had fruit juice and cottage cheese for reducing, and early-morning swims in the Lake, and some religion, apparently, for there was a little chapel attached. My aunt, George’s mother, was staying there at the same time, and George arrived about an hour or so after I did, not to take his mother home, but to get some money out of her. He did not get along well with his father, and he did not make much money working in the shoe department, so he was very often broke. His mother said he could have a loan if he would stay over and go to church with her the next day. George said he would. Then George and I got away and drove half a mile along the lake to this little town neither of us had seen before, which George said would be full of bootleggers and girls.
It was a town of unpaved, wide, sandy streets and bare yards. Only the hardy things like red and yellow nasturtiums, or a lilac bush with brown curled leaves, grew out of that cracked earth. The houses were set wide apart, with their own pumps and sheds and privies out behind; most of them were built of wood and painted green or grey or yellow. The trees that grew there were big willows or poplars, their fine leaves greyed with the dust. There were no trees along the main street, but spaces of tall grass and dandelions and blowing thistles—open country between the store buildings. The town hall was surprisingly large, with a great bell in a tower, the red brick rather glaring in the midst of the town’s walls of faded, pale-painted wood. The sign beside the door said that it was a memorial to the soldiers who had died in the First World War. We had a drink out of the fountain in front.
We drove up and down the main street for a while, with George saying: “What a dump! Jesus, what a dump!” and “Hey, look at that! Aw, not so good either.” The people on the street went home to supper, the shadows of the store buildings lay solid across the street, and we went into Pop’s.
“Hey,” George said, “is there any other restaurant in this town? Did you see any other restaurant?”
“No,” I said.
“Any other town I ever been,” George said, “pigs hangin’ out the windows, practically hangin’ off the trees. Not here. Jesus! I guess it’s late in the season,” he said.
“You want to go to a show?”
The door opened. A girl came in, walked up and sat on a stool, with most of her skirt bunched up underneath her. She had a long somnolent face, no bust, frizzy hair; she was pale, almost ugly, but she had that inexplicable aura of sexuality. George brightened, though not a great deal. “Never mind,” he said. “This’ll do. This’ll do in a pinch, eh? In a pinch.”
He went to the end of the counter and sat down beside her and started to talk. In about five minutes they came back to me, the girl drinking a bottle of orange pop.
“This is Adelaide,” George said. “Adelaide, Adeline—Sweet Adeline. I’m going to call her Sweet A, Sweet A.”
Adelaide sucked at her straw, paying not much attention.
“She hasn’t got a date,” George said. “You haven’t got a date have you, honey?”
Adelaide shook her head very slightly.
“Doesn’t hear half what you say to her,” George said. “Adelaide, Sweet A, have you got any friends? Have you got any nice, young little girl friend to go out with Dickie? You and me and her and Dickie?”
“Depends,” said Adelaide. “Where do you want to go?”
“Anywhere you say. Go for a drive. Drive up to Owen Sound, maybe.”
“You got a car?”
“Yeah, yeah, we got a car. C’mon, you must have some nice little friend for Dickie.” He put his arm around this girl, spreading his fingers over her blouse. “C’mon out and I’ll show you the car.”
Adelaide said: “I know one girl might come. The guy she goes around with, he’s engaged, and his girl came up and she’s staying at his place up the beach, his mother and dad’s place, and—”
“Well that is certainly int-er-esting,” George said. “What’s her name? Come on, let’s go round and get her. You want to sit around drinking pop all night?”
“I’m finished,” Adelaide said. “She might not come. I don’t know.”
“Why not? Her mother not let her out nights?”
“Oh, she can do what she likes,” said Adelaide. “Only there’s times she don’t want to. I don’t know.”
We went out and got into the car, George and Adelaide in the back. On the main street about a block from the cafe we passed a thin, fair-haired girl in slacks and Adelaide cried: “Hey stop! That’s her! That’s Lois!”
I pulled in and George stuck his head out of the window, whistling. Adelaide yelled, and the girl came unhesitatingly, unhurriedly to the car. She smiled, rather coldly and politely, when Adelaide explained to her. All the time George kept saying: “Hurry up, come on, get in! We can talk in the car.” The girl smiled, did not really look at any of us, and in a few moments, to my surprise, she opened the door and slid into the car.
“I don’t have anything to do,” she said. “My boyfriend’s away.”
“That so?” said George, and I saw Adelaide, in the rear-vision mirror, make a cross warning face. Lois did not seem to have heard him.
“We better drive around to my house,” she said. “I was just going down to get some Cokes, that’s why I only have my slacks on. We better drive around to my house and I’ll put on something else.”
“Where are we going to go,” she said, “so I know what to put on?”
I said: “Where do you want to go?”
“Okay, okay,” George said. “First things first. We gotta get a bottle, then we’ll decide. You know where to get one?” Adelaide and Lois both said yes, and then Lois said to me: “You can come in the house and wait while I change, if you want to.” I glanced in the rear mirror and thought that there was probably some agreement she had with Adelaide.
Lois’s house had an old couch on the porch and some rugs hanging down over the railing. She walked ahead of me across the yard. She had her long pale hair tied at the back of her neck; her skin was dustily freckled, but not tanned; even her eyes were light-coloured. She was cold and narrow and pale. There was derision, and also great gravity, about her mouth. I thought she was about my age or a little older.