“That son-of-a-bitch,” Tony said. “I’m getting sick of hearing Sinatra sing with a voice background.”
“It seems,” the record player sang,
“to me I’ve heard that song bee-
fore.
It’s from an old...”
“Look at the one in the blue sweater,” Frank said.
“Where?” Tony asked.
“There. With Bud. The one with the string of pearls.”
Tony looked at the girl’s pointed breasts. “Some string of pearls,” he commented. He looked around and then said, “I see something better,” and he left them and headed for a girl in a black silk dress.
“It’s funn-ee how
a theme
ree-calls a
fav-or-ritt dream...”
“Look what I found,” Bud said, coming over. The girl with him smiled and began toying with her pearls. “Patty, like you to meet Frank, Reen, and Andy.” Patty opened her eyes wide and batted her lashes. “Patty is here with some friends. I told her why doesn’t she bring them over.”
“I bet you’d like that,” Patty said shyly, her hands casually toying with the pearls, drawing attention to the large breasts beneath them.
“We would,” Reen said. “We would indeed like that.”
“Where’d you pick up this character?” Patty said pleasantly.
“We won him on a chance,” Frank said.
“You should have given him back.”
“Go get your friends,” Frank said.
“I’ve only got two friends,” Patty said, glancing quickly at Andy.
Andy felt suddenly uncomfortable. He waited for one of the boys to say something, but they had apparently tossed the ball into his lap. Awkwardly, he said, “That’s all right. I’ve got to get home, anyway.”
“Come on,” Bud said to Patty. “I’ll help you get your friends.”
Frank and Reen watched them walk away. “What do you think?” Reen asked.
“She’s got big teeth,” Frank said.
“I didn’t know you lisped, boy.”
“And she’s bowlegged also.”
“Pleasure-bent, you mean. Listen, if you’re not interested, we’ll get Tony. I mean, if you’re going to foul us up—”
“Who said I was?”
“Let’s get lost,” Vaughn Monroe sang,
“lost in each others...”
Bud was coming back now, three girls in tow. “Boys,” he said, “I’d like you to meet Frances and Sue. Reen, Frank, and Andy.”
“Reen, that’s a funny name,” Frances said. She had her hair combed into the same high pompadour the other girls sported, but her hair wasn’t as dark, nor were her eyes as brown.
“It’s René Pierre Dumar, to be exact,” Reen said. “When I was in kindergarten, there was a girl named Rena in the class. The kids assumed René was the masculine counterpart. Voilà. Reen.”
Patty blinked. “This one is the character in the click,” she said.
“Clique,” Reen corrected automatically.
“Cleek, shmleek,” the girl named Sue said.
“He’s really all right,” Frank said, smiling.
“Sure,” Bud said. “He reminds me of the man.”
“What man?” Frank asked, going into the routine.
“The man with the power,” Bud said.
“What power?”
“The power of voodoo.”
“Voodoo?”
“Voodoo.”
“Who do?”
“He do.”
“He do what?”
“He reminds me of the man.”
“What man?”
“Aren’t they crazy?” Patty said.
“Come on, let’s dance,” Frank said, taking Sue’s arm.
Andy watched all the boys move onto the floor, wondering what had become of Tony. He wondered, too, if he should leave. He wasn’t very far from home, and the boys certainly wouldn’t miss him.
The room was jumping now. Bodies hopped up and down, arms were hurled skyward, legs flashed, thighs showed occasionally, silk stockings threw back their sheen, bobby-socks glittered white. The floor seemed to rock with the frantic, frenetic movement of the dance. The tiled walls seemed to shake. Hair bobbed, breasts bobbed, pearls bobbed, faces bobbed, bobbed, faces turning, and smiling, and laughing, and bobbing.
“They’re either too young or too old
“They’re either too gray or too gras-eee
green...”
He stood there with the sounds and smells and sights unfolding before him, rising before him like a great cloud of strangeness, black in its depth, black with spastic bursts of color, and he felt peculiar. He felt peculiar in a strange way, alone, not the loneliness he felt when walking with his mother and father, when no one spoke, not that, but a peculiar a loneness. He felt peculiar all over now. He felt peculiar in the sports jacket Bud had loaned him, and he felt peculiar in the tie Bud had taken from the rack in his closet — awfully nice of Bud; even his own father never loaned a tie to him. And he even felt peculiar about the knot, which wasn’t like the knot he usually tied — What had Bud called it? A Windsor knot, yes. Bud had said something about a spread collar, but he hadn’t understood that too well, and the knot felt very big now, and if he cast his eyes downward just a little bit, not even enough so that anyone could see him looking, he could see the knot standing out like a big wart on his throat — Windsor knot. Had the Duke of Windsor invented it?
He tried to understand why he was feeling so peculiar because he knew he couldn’t blame it all on the jacket and tie, but he couldn’t find an answer. It was just that everything was so strange, not like his mother’s and father’s solemn grownup world at all, and not like his own quietly regular world, either. It was a sort of in-between thing where kids talked like grownups and acted like grownups and drank beer like grownups, but who didn’t seem like grownups while they were doing all these things. Now that was very peculiar, something like seeing a midget smoking a cigar and thinking, Gee, look at the little kid smoking a cigar, only he’s not a little kid, he’s a man. This was just like that, except in reverse, because these weren’t grownups doing the grownup things. They were kids. Well, that wasn’t quite true either because they weren’t exactly kids. Oh, nuts, he felt peculiar.
“He may be a good dancer,” a girl somewhere on Andy’s right said, “but he dances too close.”
“That’s why he’s a good dancer,” her girlfriend answered.