“Thank you,” Helen said. The pressure of her fingers tightened slightly.
“Do you belong to this club?” he asked.
“No. I just came down. With a friend.”
“A girlfriend?”
“Yes,” she said.
“That’s good.”
“Yes.”
“You look pretty.”
“I feel pretty. You make me feel pretty. You’re staring at me.”
“I know I am.”
A tall boy in a brown suit sauntered over to them. “Welcome to Club Beguine,” he said. He looked at them curiously. Helen stood up and smoothed her skirt, and then she went into Bud’s arms, and he knew they were about to observe the convention of dancing, but he felt she would have come into his arms even if they were standing in Macy’s window.
He was suddenly very happy. The room behind Helen was a dull blur. Only Helen stood out in almost painful detail, blinding almost. Helen filled his eyes and his mind, and he pulled her close to him. She leaned her body against his, and the reality of her coincided with the memory, and he smiled stupidly, his cheek against hers, and she felt his facial muscles move in the smile, and she pressed closer to him. They did not talk while they danced. When the record ended and a lindy screeched into the room, they went back to her chair, and he did not release her hand. The boy in the brown suit came around at the end of the lindy, subtly hinting that Bud should show up or shove off, and he happily paid his quarter. From the corner of his eye he saw Tony and Andy emerge from the bathroom and enter the room with the record player. Tony moved easily about the room, a dark wraith with a wide enameled grin, and Andy clung to him like an animated shadow. He watched them, holding Helen’s hand all the while, waiting for Tony to break the ice. Reen was immersed in the record collection, not interested in anything going on around him.
Tony stopped near two girls and began talking, introducing himself and Andy. Andy smiled and nodded acknowledgment, and Bud felt a sudden sympathy for the kid. He had so much to learn, so much to realize. One of the girls was an attractive blonde who smiled prettily and began talking to Andy enthusiastically. Bud tried to place her, but he couldn’t, and he watched her for a moment, realizing that her attractiveness was a clever trap that lured one into a full appreciation of her startling beauty. He examined her dispassionately, the way he would a lovely bit of jewelry in a store window, and then he turned his full attention to Helen.
“Dance again?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
They went onto the floor again. She was a good dancer, light on her feet, responsive to every subtle pressure of his hand and body. He held her close, and she pressed her cheek against his, and her cheek was very smooth, and he could smell the faint scent of perfume in her hair, a lilac scent, a very innocent scent.
He was consciously aware of their youth in that moment, the slender body in his arms, the music floating from the phonograph, the scent in Helen’s hair, the smoothness of her cheek, the ease with which they glided over the Boor. There was something powerful in their youth, and he wanted it to be springtime and not winter outside, and he wanted Helen Cantor to be the girl he had longed for, hoping she was the girl, wishing it were so, ready to accept her as such, wondering if the vague picture he carried in his mind would ever assume real flesh-and-blood shape, thinking of their youth at the same time, feeling the surge of strength that coursed through their bodies, feeling life beating there, pulsing there wildly.
He was only vaguely aware of the other dancers, vaguely surprised to see Andy on the Boor with the vibrant blonde, moving quite smoothly for a beginner. The strength and power of his youth was overwhelmingly heady. He wanted to fly up there in the sky with Helen, wanted to crash the sky with wings of youth, feeling he could crash the sky. And, absurdly, he wished he could hear Andy playing his trumpet now, right this minute, wished the clean gold-brass would carry him and Helen up there where he wanted to be, bursting into the blackness of the sky with wings of youth. He wanted to say, “Helen, let’s crash the sky,” but instead he said, “Helen, let’s take a walk,” and he was not surprised when she answered, “All right.”
He went to get Helen’s coat from the cloakroom near the makeshift bar, noticing that only soft drinks were being served by a club member. When he started back toward Helen, Reen winked at him obscenely. He did not return the wink. He went for his own coat where he had draped it over the back of Helen’s chair, still feeling this heady drunkenness inside him.
The stars outside were crisp and austere. The night was very cold, and she took his arm firmly and moved closer to him, and he felt that he would burst because this sudden movement was something very familiar and very intimate, and he could not banish the persistent feeling that he and Helen had walked into the cold like this before, that she had looped her hand through his arm and then moved close to him, and that the movement had somehow built a solid front against the onslaught of winter, against the cold, against the forbidding stars — against the world.
“It’s cold,” she said, her breath pluming out ahead of her, her voice small and almost echoing in the hollow bowl of the sky.
“Yes.”
“Do you think we ought to go back?”
“No.”
They walked silently beneath the bare branches of the trees, automatically falling into step. Helen’s hand clutched his biceps tightly, and her head moved to his shoulder, and they walked without speaking, and neither of them questioned the thing they knew was happening. They were seventeen, and anything that happened was right, and anything that happened was unquestioned. There was still enough of the child in them to suspend a disbelief in fairy stories, just enough of the adult to hold a healthy respect for the suspension of such disbelief. And so the magic of their meeting, and the magic of their wordless walk, and the steady hush of the world around them, and the hollow clatter of their shoes on the pavement, and the warm intimacy of her hand on the tweed of his sleeve, and the brittle vapor that rushed out of their mouths, all went unquestioned. The adult in each of them urgently whispered that it did not happen this way — but there was youth strong within them, and the song of youth was high and keening and curiously nostalgic of an uncluttered, untroubled existence, and the song of youth crooned its warm logic: It is happening this way.
“Do you want to go back?” he asked.
“No, it’s all right.”
“If you’re cold, we can sit in the car.”
“Do you have a car?”
He would ordinarily have lied about proprietorship. Now he said, “My father’s.”
“All right,” she answered.
He led her to his father’s car, and he held open the door for her, and then he slammed the door shut. He walked around the car hastily, as if the sound of the slam were an intrusion from a real world where magic did not exist, as if he expected her to have vanished when he entered the car. She was still there, and he sighed and then moved closer to her on the seat. He kissed her instantly. She tightened her arms around his neck, and then she pulled away from him, a faint smile on her mouth. He pulled her gently toward him again, and she turned her head and whispered, “My lipstick.”