Norman grinned and slapped his arm. “Just watch it, okay? Don’t give your mother hysterics by being too late.”
Joyce called out something else, but it was drowned in a louder roar from the garbage disposal, and he nodded quickly to his father, was answered with a wink, and left as fast as he dared. He knew that look on the man’s face — it came when Norman thought it was time to have a man-to-man talk, usually when one or the other had only five minutes to get where they were going. And usually it was aborted before the first sentence was done.
God, that was close, he thought, shook himself dramatically and waved to his mother, who was standing in the living room window drying her hands, Norman at her side. They always did that, waiting as if he were going off to war; and if he didn’t get back first, they would be there when he returned, slightly drunk from the bourbons they’d had while watching TV.
Waiting for their baby.
But tonight, if he were lucky, they would have had a good meeting — teachers, public officials, and the Ashford Day committee — and won’t be stiff from a fight.
Can it, he ordered then. This wasn’t the time to be thinking about them when he had himself to worry about — what to say, how to say it, how to impress Tracey without tripping over his tongue. His usual dates weren’t really dates at all but a gathering of forces down at Beacher’s Diner next to the theater. It might have been a real diner once, but now it was more like a restaurant with a counter in front. Weeknights it closed at nine; weekends it catered to the movie crowd and the teens, and more often than not six or seven of them would troop into the theater together.
On the other hand, when he was alone with a girl he was lucky if he could think of a dozen coherent words to say between the time he picked her up and the time he brought her home.
He checked his watch under a streetlight and broke into a lazy trot. Tracey lived seven blocks down and two over, and he didn’t want to be late. He only hoped that her father was on night shift this time; the man scared him to death. He was short, built like a concrete barrel, and if he ever had a good word to say about anyone under forty, Don had yet to hear it.
Please, God, he pleaded as he turned into her block; please don’t let Sergeant Quintero be there.
And as he walked up to the door, he checked to be sure his fingernails were clean.
“I swear to god,” Brian said, his voice overriding the others sitting at the counter with him. “I mean, they were out to here!” He stretched out his arms, curved his hands back, and flexed his fingers. “To frigging here, for god’s sake.”
There were a few sniggers, some groans, and Joe Beacher in his stained apron and squashed chefs cap scowled until Pratt shrugged an apology for the language.
The front section of the diner was a long counter with eighteen stools and five jukebox terminals, and nine small tables arranged in front of the wall-long window; there was only one waitress and Joe Beacher himself, who knew he belonged in front, rough-dressed, and not in back wearing a suit. The decor was Formica and aluminum, with a roundfaced clock on the wall beside the door, above an array of posters announcing upcoming charitable events, rummage sales, and the Ashford Little Theater’s latest program. A wide passage straight from the entrance ran past the cash register to the larger dining room in back, where the walls were paneled in pine and had watercolor landscapes depicting each of the seasons. The tables were larger, were wood, and the menus were tucked into red leather binders; three waitresses here, and Joe’s brother-in-law in a black suit that passed for gentility and a bit of class. Just now the room was nearly filled as families and high-spending seniors hurried to finish their meals in time for the nine-fifteen show; and despite the Jekyll-and-Hyde appearance, the food was about the best in town.
Don stood just over the threshold, Tracey behind him, and he hesitated until she poked his back. A quick smile and he stepped aside, let her pass, and followed her to a small round table in the center of the diner’s front window. When he held the chair for her, there were whistles from the counter; when he sat, Pratt cupped his hands around his mouth and made a loud farting noise.
Don winced and there was laughter, and more when his cheeks flushed a faint pink.
“Damn,” he muttered under his breath, and Tracey smiled at him, telling him silently to ignore it as she handed him a plastic-coated single-page menu from behind the napkin dispenser. He inhaled slowly and nodded, and scanned the offerings though he knew them by heart.
“Hey, Don,” said Tar Boston, spinning around on his stool, “a good flick or what?”
He didn’t know, though he said it was all right, nothing great, lots of blood, shooting, stuff like that. He didn’t know because he had been too busy sneaking sideways looks at Tracey, debating whether to try to hold her hand, or put his arm around her shoulder, or even to steal a kiss. He had known her for years but had never been out with her alone; he had confided in her as a friend ever since junior high, but when she slipped off her jacket and he saw that she had, under all those clothes, an honest-to-god figure, he didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t Tracey the friend any longer; this was Tracey the woman, and suddenly he didn’t know which rules to follow.
The realization that things had changed without his knowing it made him miserable throughout the film, seeing nothing, hearing little, though he could have told anyone who asked exactly how many lines there were at the corner of her right eye, how high the white collar of her shirt reached toward her ear, how the intricate twirls and tucks of her hair related to each other as they brushed back toward her nape.
Brian hummed the school song mockingly, loudly, then leapt from his stool and stretched as he announced it was time for the real men to head next door, to see how Dirty Harry compared unfavorably with the Pratt. Groans again, and only Tar strutted with him to the door, their dates hustling out behind them. Fleet and his girl, Amanda, stopped by the table and asked again about the film.
“Boring,” Tracey said. Then she winked at Amanda, “Unless you’re into Eastwood.”
Amanda clung to Fleet’s arm and feigned a swoon, and was rewarded with a slap to her rump for her troubles.
Don laughed and relaxed a bit, and wondered aloud what the coach would think of his three top players staying out so late the night before a game.
“The man,” Fleet said, “just doesn’t realize that an athlete who is so smooth and graceful like myself needs a bit of relaxation and stimulation before the impending onslaught in the trenches.” He grinned. “How ‘bout them words, huh? Mandy makes me do crossword puzzles in bed.”
Amanda slapped his back, hard, and a brief scowl crossed his face before he laughed with the others and made his way to the door. As it hissed shut behind him, he stuck his head back in and winked broadly at Don, circling thumb and forefinger and making a fist with his free hand.
Don grinned back, and sobered as soon as Robinson was gone. This was a disaster, and for the first time in ages he wished the guys had stuck around. Even the teasing he’d get would be better than sitting here like a dummy, playing with the salt shaker, rearranging the silverware and paper place mat, finally folding his hands on the table as if doing penance in the third grade.
“Are you all right?” Tracey asked. “You’ve been awfully quiet since we left the house.”
He ducked his head and shook it. “Fine. I’m okay, no problem.”
“It was a lousy movie.”
“Yeah.”
“My father scared you, didn’t he?”
He looked up without raising his head and was pleasantly surprised to see the distress in her eyes. He couldn’t deny it, however; Luis Quintero had scared the shit out of him, standing there, in uniform, in the middle of the living room and reading him, quietly, the that’s-my-baby-and-don’t-you-forget-it riot act: do not mess with her, do not corrupt her, do not get her drunk, do not bring her back a second late, do not show yourself in this house again if you as much as breathe on a single hair of her head. Then he had shaken Don’s hand solemnly and walked out of the room, leaving him to wonder what the hell had happened to make the man so unpleasant.