Rafferty dipped some of my hair into a bowl of ketchup.
“Careful now,” he said. He gave me a long look. “Like your poster says. A violent world, white man.”
I nodded and edged away.
Jocks, I thought. Linebackers and bacteria. Try, but you couldn’t escape them.
Up at the far end of the gym, a band was playing Stranger on the Shore. The place was dark and noisy. Like a cattle show—everybody sweating and swaying and grinding up against each other. Right then I nearly called it a night. No dignity, I thought, but I moved over to the punch bowl and stood around drinking scalp for the next half hour. No knowledge, no vision. Wall-to-wall morons. At one point I spotted Ollie and Tina out on the dance floor. They were snuggled up close, like lovers, and in a way I envied them. Just the closeness. They weren’t my kind, though, and when Ollie waved at me I turned away and watched the band.
I could feel my stomach cramping up. Maybe it was the punch, maybe loneliness, but I was on the verge of walking out when the circuits connected.
Partly luck, partly circumstance.
It began as a silly party game called Pevee Pair-Off. The idea was for the women to line up in a single long row at one end of the gym, all the men at the other, and then when the signal was given, the two rows were supposed to march toward each other like opposing skirmish lines in old-fashioned warfare. A lottery of sorts. Whoever you bumped into became your partner for the evening. Again, for me, it was one of those mysterious either-ors—I could’ve headed for the door—but for some reason I took the risk.
Once the rules had been explained, and once we’d lined up in our parallel formations, the band struck up a jazzy version of Moon River and someone blew a whistle and we started out across the floor. It was a ticklish experience. Exciting, I suppose, but scary. The lights had been turned off to prevent people from taking aim, and there was the strange, somewhat dizzy sensation of moving blindfolded toward a steep drop-off. Finally I closed my eyes and let the momentum take over.
I almost knocked her down.
When the lights came on, she was bent forward at the waist, drawing shallow little breaths. It took a few seconds before she recognized me.
“Oh, shit,” she said. “You.”
It was not instant love. We danced a few numbers, watched the limbo contest, then sat at one of the tables near the bandstand. She seemed a little sullen. But gorgeous—the body of a gymnast, like hardwood, and black eyes and black eyebrows and black-brown hair. And the skin. Miracle skin, I thought. Even there, in winter, it had a rich walnut gloss, smooth and flawless against a white blouse and a crisp white skirt.
For some time nothing much was said. She kept fidgeting, very ill at ease, so finally I began chattering away about various cheerleading matters, megaphones and culottes, whatever I could dream up.
“Culottes?” she said absently. “What about them?”
I glanced over at Custer. “Nothing, really. Mysterious. Tantalizing, I guess.”
“Tacky,” Sarah mumbled.
“Exactly right.”
“You, I mean.”
I smiled. “Maybe so,” I said, “but I always thought you looked fabulous in culottes. Super kneecaps. Culottes and kneecaps, they go together.”
“No shit?” she said. Her eyes shifted out toward the dance floor.
It was not going well, I knew that, but I couldn’t seem to settle down. I told her how I used to sit up in the bleachers during high school football games, how much I admired her cartwheels and backflips. Stunning, I said. A real athlete. I even confessed that I’d always been somewhat in awe of her—in awe of cheerleaders in general.
Sarah nodded and looked at her wristwatch.
“Well,” she said, “I can understand that. We’re special people.”
She paused and massaged her temples. When she spoke again, her voice had a plaintive quality, mournful and bleak.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “Fluffhead. All beauty, no brains. People think we’re just glitz and glitter, nobody realizes how much crap we have to put up with. Christ, if—” She stopped and stared at me. Complex things were happening in her eyes. “I mean, just think about it. You ever see a cheerleader with fat thighs? All that cruddy cottage cheese—God, I hate cottage cheese, it’s like eating chalk—but do you hear me complaining? No way, because I care. Because I’ll go that extra mile.”
“A martyr,” I said.
She gave her head a quick, violent shake.
“Don’t mock me, man. Straight A’s, you can check it out. I’m smart. Body and brains, the whole package.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Smart,” she said.
There was a silence.
“What I despise,” she said quietly, “is condescension. I’m a human being.”
“For sure,” I said. “A smart one.”
“Yes?”
“It’s very clear.”
Sarah frowned at me. For the first time there was some warmth in the eyes, tiny flecks of orange and silver floating in the deep blackness.
The band was playing My Girl.
“Well,” she said, still frowning, her voice cool and wary, “maybe you’re not such a creep after all.”
“Maybe not.”
“But still—”
Again, there was that softening. She looked at her hands.
“Anyway, this is strictly a one-night shot. We’re stuck with each other—c’est la vie, et cetera—but to be perfectly honest I’d rather be down in Brazil munching on maggots. No offense. Just so we have an understanding.”
I nodded, then Sarah stood up and hooked a thumb toward the dance floor.
“All right, let’s jiggle it,” she said. “Hands off, though. I know every gimmick in the book.”
She looked like a starlet. Sleek and lean and smart. She danced with her eyes closed, ignoring the crowd and the music, ignoring me. Luck, I kept thinking. Between dances we talked about the old days at Fort Derry High, the time I’d passed out in geometry class, the way she’d cradled my head and fanned me with her notebook. “Bizarre,” Sarah said, and I smiled at her and admitted that I’d gone through a rough period back then. I described the headaches and constipation, that out-of-synch sensation, my sessions with Chuck Adamson.
Sarah listened carefully.
“In other words—” She waited a moment. “Bats? Breakdown?”
“Not quite. Ancient history, back to normal.”
“Right,” she grunted. All around us people were dancing hard to drums. “And this thing at the cafeteria? The bomb scare—that’s normal?”
“No,” I said. “Necessary.”
“Which means?”
“Nothing. Just necessary.”
Sarah made a vague motion with her shoulders.
“Maybe so, but it seems a little—what’s the word?—pretentious. Mr. Prophet.”
“War,” I said. “Vietnam. In case you haven’t—”
She stepped back. “I told you, I’m not stupid, so you can cut out the condescending crap. The prophet with his poster, it’s all very cute, I suppose, but very half-assed.”
“Just a symbol,” I said.
“Oh, lovely.” Sarah snorted and shook her head. “Take a look around. You think these idiots care about symbols? Fireworks, that’s all they understand. Bang for the buck. It’s a bad new age—symbols don’t make it.”
“And you could do better?”
“No worse. At least you’d see some pyrotechnics. Not that I’d ever get involved.”
Her eyes moved sideways. She started to add something, then thought better of it.