Chapter 48

 

This Year's Model

 

 

It is said that when the first English-speaking settlers explored the region north of La Cunae Bay, they came across a range of arboreal hillsides in full spring bloom.  “Surely,” the pious among them proclaimed, “this is a foretaste of the landscape awaiting us in Heaven!”  Hence the dubbing of the Hereafter Hills: though individually they would be known more down-to-earthily as Crabapple, Plum Tree, Cherry Tree, Serviceberry, Redbud and Dogwood.

 

A century-and-a-half later, all their branches were bare and most of their roots snowbound in the February darkness.  Wristwatches worn by those trysting on secluded Hereafter bypaths were nudging toward midnight and teen curfew, though the police only tended to enforce the latter on those loitering near locked businesses or vandalized sites.  (This leniency resulted several years earlier, after Wendell “Do-Right” Dudley tried to drive Misty Triff home from a salmonella-stricken party at 12:15 a.m.  Misty barfed over a traffic cop’s boots; Wendell got booked for curfew violation and Misty for disorderly conduct, with mugshots and fingerprints taken; and the Dudley and Triff families raised an uproar till their children’s records—if not the cop’s boots—were expunged.)

 

Patrol cars still made wee-hour sweeps of the Hereafter hideyholes, particularly in wintertime when jalopies got stuck and batteries conked out and scuzzes like Susie Zane’s brother Jason failed to set their brakes, causing vehicular damage while parking with girls whose fathers forbade them to consort with each other.

 

Avery Loderhauser was neither a scuzz nor an automotive lummox, and least of all foolhardy.  Yes, he might have sculpted nude statues of two teenage girls (one the daughter of Pasquale “Peanuts” Panucci) but he was not about to overmeddle with a sophomore in a parked car past midnight, even if her parents were out of town for the weekend.  In their absence she was staying in the home of a prominent attorney and Vanderlund alderman, who might not be as potentially lethal as “Peanuts” yet could still entangle your ass in a litigious sling.  So before the witching hour struck, Bomber backed his Mustang out of its Hereafter hideaway and started gliding down the icy Tilton Trail.

 

Midway to Cherry Tree Drive they encountered a Cadillac Seville descending from a similar direction, and Vicki found herself gazing through two frosted windshields at her very best friend/weekend hostess:

 

Don’t you dare say “Fancy meeting you here,” Vicki sub-tutted.

 

Hee hee hee!  Wouldn’t dream of it, Joss sub-rebutted.

 

Her second-chair trombonist date P.J. Panucci (son of “Peanuts” and brother of “Beany”) ground his Seville to a courteous halt, waving Bomber along to take the lead; so it was the Boss’s headlights that flushed a Datsun Z out of the concealing shrubbery, then two disheveled heads rising up from the Datsun’s interior.

 

“There’s your gasbag,” Avery observed.

 

“Not my gasbag,” said Vicki, giving Zerlina’s irate profile a don’t-blame-me wave in passing.

 

Histrionic fanfare by Zal Tergeist on the Datsun’s horn as the Mustang and Cadillac left it behind and turned onto Cherry Tree Drive.

 

“Somebody’s gasbag,” remarked Avery.

 

Vicki thrust away thoughts of some body as she tried to pacify her agitated nerve endings into ladylike composure.  Outside the car it might be zero degrees or below, but inside her overcoat and sexy purple dress and lavender lingerie and olivaceous epidermis, fierce tropical winds were gusting with no sign of reduction.

 

WOW...  I mean, WOW... Talk about “On a hot winter night would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?...”

 

“This the right place?”

 

“Hunh?  Oh!  Um—yeah—Joss’s house—”

 

And here came P.J. bringing the Seville to a stop right alongside the Boss in the Queen Anne’s driveway, leaving barely enough room for Vicki to wriggle out.  Not that she was in a rush to do so; but Joss had already bestowed a parting smooch upon her Nanki-Poo and left his Seville to head for the Queen Anne’s porch by l‑e‑i‑s‑u‑r‑e‑l‑y degrees, humming “Short People” (Vicki’s least favorite Top Ten pop hit) loudly enough to be heard over the rattly Mustang heater.

 

“I really did have a really good time.  Really,” Vicki vowed, drowning out the humming.

 

“Sure about that?” asked Avery; adding “Guess so” after Vicki (with sucked-up courage) leaned over and gave him a Turnabout-is-fair-play smack-dab.  “Need any help getting in?”

 

“No—getting out,” said Vicki, frowning at the too-close P.J. as he sat raptly watching Joss’s p‑r‑o‑t‑r‑a‑c‑t‑e‑d progress toward the front porch.

 

“Sec,” went Avery, bandy-legging out of the car and over to catch Joss under her unprepared elbow (interrupting the Randy Newman song with an audible “Yeep!”) and boost her bodily up the porch steps; then loping back to sweep the Caddy away down Jupiter Street with a thrown-out-at-home-from-deep-center-field gesture.  And all this done in a corduroy blazer, Avery having shrugged off the coat that Vicki flung back over his shoulders while he extracted her from the Boss and propelled her to the porch.

 

“Put it on!  You’ll catch your death!”

 

“Not tonight I won’t.  See ya Monday.”

 

Blink and he was going.  Blink again, and he was gone.

 

*

 

“What was all that [humming “Short People”]?” Vicki demanded in the entryway.

 

They got little baby legs, they stand so lohhhw You gotta pick ‘em up just to say hellllohhhh

 

Joss sang sotto voce as she tugged off her slushy boots; Toughie would know if these were worn upstairs, no matter how many times they got wiped on the welcome mat.  “(You should’ve seen the gym, it looked like a fancypants outfitting station, so many coats and boots and bags that people brought their dancin’ shoes in.  You’d’ve thought it was supposed to be a Valentine sock hop, with all those stocking feet changing out of the one and into the other—)”

 

“Don’t change the subject!” Vicki grumped, struggling to remove her own blotched footwear.

 

“Ssshhhh,” went Joss.  Silently they tiptoed up the broad oak staircase, lest Mr. Murrisch, Mittens, or Fingers be disturbed.  (Beth, Thumb, and Invisible Amy already were, and had been from birth.)

 

“Avery might’ve thought you were humming that dumb song about him,” Vicki groused once they reached the out-of-earshot aerie.

 

“What could I possibly hum that might embarrass your Bomber, ‘cept maybe the Butterfinger jingle if he muffed a fly or something at the ballpark?”

 

“You better not hum anything like that at him, even if he does make any errors playing baseball which I bet he won’t.”

 

“So how’d Bomber like The Dress?”

 

“He had no complaints,” smirked Vicki, removing Sexy Purple and placing it on a wooden hanger.  “Brrrr!  I just wish I’d had warmer weather to wear this in.  How’d P.J. like yours?”

 

“Signor Panucci is a most appreciative fellah,” said Joss, hanging up the silver disco sheath Vicki’d talked her into wearing.  “I just wish I’d worn my flannel jammies.  That stupid gym needs a lot more insulation—I swear you could feel a draft di‑rect from the Arctic Circle!”

 

“What, even while you were boogeying in Nanki-Poo’s tubular arms?”

 

“Now don’t poke fun, he’s a nice guy and not that thin and a pretty good dancer and has access to a Cadillac.  I had no complaints, ‘cept he’ll never be the ‘brutha’ of my dreams.  How’d it go at the dinner theeAYter?”

 

“It got dramatic,” sighed Vicki, emerging from the aerie’s half-bath in her flannel jammies, a quilted robe, thick bedsocks and fleece-lined slippers.  “But first tell me how the Turnabout turned out.”

 

“Oh, Jeez.  Talk about getting dramatic...”

 

*

 

Much of the Gossip Brigade’s pre-dance anticipation had centered on Dennis Desmond’s going with the post-dumped Cheryl Trevelyan; yet neither bothered to put in an appearance, together or apart.  Even so, the scandal-slack got made up for (and then some) by a series of startling crackups in the deep-rooted senior class, each fissure adding aftershocks to the others.

 

There’d been no preliminary hint of this during Zero Hour on Valentine’s Day, when Scott Grampian and Jeremy Tolhurst had BMV’d their time-honored steadies Lesley Ogilvie and Pamela Redfern, who’d done the mannerly thing by inviting Scott and Jeremy to be their escorts without holding out for alternate offers.  Each couple had been in tandem for so long that their romances were encrusted with ingrained habit—plus Pam’s lingering censure of Jeremy for having bungled the Spirit Week ice cream social and necessitating a $1,079 refund.

 

It was Jeremy, though, who jettisoned Pam at the gym and went off with the much less elegant Tara Garamond, who’d gone to the Turnabout with Brill Yant (poison-pen/cover-name of senior gadfly Bayard “K.” Flaherty) who’d be sure to react vitriolically.  Meanwhile Scott eloped with Judy Disseldorf, who’d been brought by Noel O’Leary who was playing Roscoe (the aged tenor who sang “Beautiful Girls” in Frazee’s Follies, not Masetto Monticello’s nom de banjo).  Either way, Lesley and Pam got left on the same surprise-discard shelf where Cheryl and Zerlina had previously been deposited by Stu and Paitoon.

 

Lesley’s abandonment was bound to have a detrimental effect on that year’s Aqueduct.  This magazine had been little more than a souvenir of the annual Intersociety Literary Contest for most of its run, printing the prizewinning poems, stories, and essays illustrated with tasteful donations from the Art and Photography Clubs.  Sufficient copies were bought by relatives of published students to keep Aqueduct operational through the Fifties and Sixties; but as LitSoc fortunes dwindled in the current decade, so had Aqueduct’s, and it’d been generally understood that the 1977 edition would be its last.  By then only four LitSocs survived, and that year’s contest was sure to be painfully lame.

 

Ms. Shelley Stoker and Mitchell “Hieronymus” Lodge decided Aqueduct’s finale should be marked with a resounding kaboom!

 

The VTHS English department was already set to lose Ms. Stoker, who’d amused her colleagues and enjoyed popularity with students but was lowest on the seniority pole at a time when budget-belts required tightening.  No Up the Down Staircase idealist was Shelley, even as a novice teacher; as might be inferred from her correspondence with a young columnist for Mademoiselle named Fran Lebowitz (not to be confused with Fran Loderhauser):

 

“Not bad commentary—for a New Yorker,” Ms. Stoker wrote Ms. Lebowitz.  “Come out west sometime and pick apart a real City.”

 

“If I ever do, try and find me,” replied Ms. Lebowitz.

 

Ms. Stoker’d offered the 1977 Aqueduct editorship to Mitchell Lodge, who’d accepted it with the stem of a full-bent pipe clenched between patrician teeth.  Room was reserved in his blue-blooded mailbox for admission letters from Harvard, Princeton, and Yale; but “My safety school is Elgin State,” Mitch would say, extolling its faculty of nice young men in clean white coats who’d be coming to take him away ha-ha.  He'd blazed the expulsive trail for Roger Mustardman by getting tossed out of Front Tree Country Day School after sixth grade—though not for going berserk in a field hockey faceoff, like Mauly the Mauler Carstairs.  In Mitch’s case, “Front Tree went Turn of the Screwy on me for Miles upon Miles.”  When asked to explain, he’d say “I’m not called ‘Hieronymus’ for nothing” and describe a hallucinatory Prep School of Earthly Delights diorama he’d constructed, or an Adoration of The Magus adaptation of John Fowles’s novel as a whippersnapping rockabilly opera.

 

At VTHS, Mitchell continued to flap the Bosch banner.  “It’s Never Permitted to Be Surprised at the Aberration of Born Fools,” he headlined a term paper on The Spoils of Poynton for Ms. Stoker’s World Literature seminar.

 

“There’s your theme for this year’s Aqueduct,” Ms. Stoker told him in her capacity as its terminal faculty advisor.

 

“Consider it done to death,” replied Mitch in his capacity as its kamikaze editor.

 

“Oh, what an exit—that’s how to go,” added Evita Krauss (Gumbo’s big sister) in her twin capacities as its design director and family print shop heiress.

 

For the ’77 cover she devised an optical refraction where the title’s eight letters were quasiduplicated as

 

 

though it took a cunning eye and canny mind to perceive this.  Ms. Stoker had both, and approved; some of her academic coworkers were more inclined to sound the alarm, and did.  Ultimately Principal Stabeldore appointed an administrative task force to scrutinize proofs of the unpublished magazine, subjecting each poem, story, artwork and photo to fine-tooth combing.  Try as they might, the task forcers uncovered neither obscenity nor incitement to violence, but a collection of mordant humor along Charles Addamsish or Alfred Hitchcockesque lines.  Among the trenchant contents were:

·       •  “Leave of Absence,” a tale in which Spanish Castle Square seceded from Vanderlund (as Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard had voted to do from Massachusetts), fortifying its fountain with bullfight banderillas and casks of Amontillado against the threat of besiegement;

·       •  “Fringe of Society,” a richly decorated sonnet describing a debutante cotillion from the viewpoint of zombies in the country club’s crawlspace;

·       •  “Flip Side Story,” an inverted diptych with the right half of an increasingly grotesque narrative printed upside down and in reverse;

·       •  “A Necessary End,” soliloquizing how a murderer condemned to death (think Gary Gilmore) might slip into a coma and be kept on court-ordered life support (think Karen Ann Quinlan) and spend purgatory thinking only about green beans;

·       •  “With Both Eyes Open,” a poem by Lesley Ogilvie about a blind female Copernicus cruelly deluded into believing the center of the universe was occupied by Frankie Valli;

·       •  “Wallflowers Need Ruin,” originally a massive typescript submitted by Brill Yant, who was prepared to defend its every line (each a caustic cross between Nabokov and Stephen King) from revision or deletion—till Mitch Lodge printed its first two pages with scrupulous exactitude, followed by [cont on p 988]

“Like the smack peddlers say: ‘Best to leave ‘em wanting more,’” Hieronymus notified the apoplectic Brill.

 

Too late by then for him to do more than fulminate.  Aqueduct/Aberrant was certified by the task force, ratified by Mr. Stabeldore, and brought out by the Krauss Print Shop to considerable word-of-mouth attention but very modest sales.  Evita alleged that only one copy was actually bought, then passed from hand to hand till Julian Runnymede of the Tannin Press grabbed hold and declared it to be “a masterpiece of subtle satire”—for high schoolers, at any rate.  The publicity he provided didn’t just help sell out the print run but garnered Aqueduct an Achievement Award from the National Council of Teachers of English; and these two remunerative feats persuaded the School Board (however grudgingly) to keep Aqueduct alive for another year, in hopes they could be repeated.  Mr. Runnymede also prolonged Shelley Stoker’s livelihood by hiring her to write a sardonic monthly column for North Squire magazine.  (“You try and find me,” Shelley alerted Fran Lebowitz.)

 

Mr. Ballantine of the Vanderlund Art faculty was commissioned to guide the next Aqueduct toward redoubled glories.  He assigned his fellow Caledonians Scott Grampian and Lesley Ogilvie to edit the magazine, and Tara Garamond to design it; they were to keep Bayard “K.” Flaherty alias Brill Yant (alias B.Flatt) at bay while sifting through his voluminous contributions.  That done, Mr. Ballantine stepped aside with a hip flask of Teacher’s Highland Cream and left the students to carry on redoubling.  Their assembly of Aqueduct ’78 proceeded reasonably trouble-free; though inevitably less aberrant with no input from Mitchell Lodge (who’d wound up at Dartmouth) or Evita Krauss (now attending Cooper Union).  The biggest uncertainty had been whether an excerpt from Rula Hradek’s erotic Spirit Within, Spirit Away could be snuck under the censorial radar, and so guarantee boffo sales.

 

Then: those interpersonal crackups at the Valentine Turnabout.

 

And all of a sudden Aqueduct seemed on the brink of filling with quicksand.

 

“What can you expect when a hornyboy gets a whiff of a bimbette’s AquaNet?” Joss overheard Nancy Sykeman ask Holly Brollis after they attempted to comfort Lesley.

 

*

 

Vicki was thankful to have missed this.  Much as she respected Lesley Ogilvie as Austen-Alcott’s Presiding Genius, being in her company could make you feel almost as uncomfortable as hanging around Lisa Lohe or Don’t-Call-Me-Debbie Karberski.  Like Lisa and D‑C‑M‑D, Lesley gave you the impression of forever waiting for the worst to happen, and taking darkhearted gratification when it did.  Hard to believe that she and Kirsten were sisters: Thirsty K (not to be confused with Bayard “K.”) was cheerful and fun to be with, if you didn’t mind a little (okay, a lot of) perspiration; while Hungry L was dry to the point of aridity, and not just glandwise.  Vicki couldn’t understand how she’d been together at all (much less for so long) with a goofy-cutie like Scott Grampian, who was usually found hunched over a pad doodling creepy-comic verse and cartoons—thus a far better-fitting boyfriend for Jenna Wiblitz, if not Judy Disseldorf.

 

Well: she (Vicki) felt sorry for her (Lesley) but had higher-priority matters on her (Vicki’s) mind that Sunday.  Uppermost was trying to wheedle some clue from Joss about what she (Joss) was planning for her (Vicki’s again) Sweet Sixteen, slated for Saturday the 4th of March—less than two weeks away.  Joss had assumed responsibility for organizing this after Spacyjane’s party, saying “Crashes in Toyland are all well and good, but we can and will be more spectacular!”

 

“Like how?  And where?”

 

“Never you mind.  Just leave it to me.”

 

Since then Joss had kept her lips stubbornly zipped, and Vicki’d had no choice but to forward everyone else’s inquiries to her.  These what’ll-you-be-doing-this-year? questions were astonishingly frequent: Vicki might pride herself on trying to be a friendly person, but hardly claimed to be überpopular.  Last year’s Quinceañera had been a fluke, drawing crowds for the Rosa Dartles concert rather than to celebrate her birthday.  Yet those same crowds now seemed to expect a bigger, better second helping; Vicki was approached again and again by bunchkins, acquaintances, people she vaguely knew and perfect strangers—all wanting to know what’d be in store for this year’s extravaganza.

 

That sort of magnitude rightfully belonged to Alex, Miss Überpopularity of the sophomore class.  But her Sweet Sixteen had gotten pre-empted by her visit to Mexico, so Alex’s many wellwishers had compensated by throwing a whole series of festivities upon her return.  Meaning Alex didn’t have to wonder who would or wouldn’t receive invitations to her one-and-only presumed-to-be gargantuan gala event.

 

Vicki did.  Wonder and worry and weigh possible pitfalls, since it wasn’t likely they’d be renting the Madhouse on Madison and play host to the entire school.

 

For instance: Jenna would obviously be invited to Vicki’s Sweet Sixteen, but then Lisa would be offended if she weren’t even if she didn’t want to come, and you definitely didn’t need Lisa Lohe spending every Lunch 5D nursing resentment of your imagined snub.  Another instance: Isabel still wasn’t everybody’s favorite person, but her easily-bruised feelings would be badly hurt if she weren’t invited, so it was a lucky break that Is now seemed to be on affable terms with Spacyjane (not to mention Floramour).  Then there was Zerlina, who’d been a friend for less than a month yet ought to be invited, but would their mothers insist that Roscoe (Zerl’s brother, not the Follies tenor) be asked as well?  Should the same courtesy be extended to all the girls on Stage Crew, with whom Vicki’d spent so much time this winter?  What about the Austen-Alcotters who weren’t on crew, though AA was sure to be as messed up as Aqueduct by Scott’s dumping Lesley, and how would she react to not getting invited under such circumstances?  Then of course there was Avery to be considered, especially after Saturday night; plus there were the other guys on Stage Crew though Vicki didn’t know some of them that well (Slats? Stretch? Nature Boy Rutherford?) but they might like to be asked and feel slighted if they weren’t... Gahd, where would it end?

 

“Leave it to me,” Joss kept airily repeating.

 

Felicia was equally closemouthed when the Volesters reunited at Burrow Lane on Monday.  Fel did bring Vicki an early birthday present from San Francisco: a swanky new keychain for car keys once Vicki got keys to a car.  (Though not the model John DeLorean’d touted at the NADA convention—an outlandish “gullwing” sports vehicle that looked like something Han Solo might drive on his day off.)  But apart from that, Felicia acted more concerned about ridding Goofus of the gaseous habits he’d lapsed into while spending the weekend with his friend Breezy.

 

As for Ozzie, he came home as he left it: fretting about the weather-related impact on auto sales, and whether Chrysler’s chairman had accurately predicting a further and steeper sales decline due to governmental fuel-economy and safety-emission standards.  Yet around Vicki he put on his butter-and-egg grin, saying “Birthday?  Someone having a birthday around here soon?  News to me, Kitten.”

 

None of her nearest and dearest would crack.  Alex positively glowed while attesting that Joss had made her swear on Scout’s honor not to divulge a word.  Nonique pretended Vicki was asking about Mr. Dimancheff’s latest gross poster, this one of a dissected turtle.  Laurie, who in the past would scarcely have been able to keep her yap shut, remained too shy to tell Vicki much of anything despite a month of psychotherapy.  And Fiona would only mutter that whatever might happen wouldn’t happen again at the Vinyl Spinnaker, soon to reopen as La Bugaba; which was a relief to Vicki, who’d always been afraid of Bunty O’Toole.

 

“(One more thing...)”

 

“Yeah?  What?  C’mon, Feef, tell me!”

 

“(When you see what will happen, just remember it wasn’t my idea.)”

 

*

 

Hunger when you’re younger   Is all about the gut So you’re told by the old   Who think they know you, but There’s more need than to feed   And cleaning off your plate More to miss than just this   Will fill you up too late Breaking up your aching   With taking a deep breath Live on that?  Leaves you flat   And then you starve to death.

 

Penned not by Fiona Weller as Downbite lyrics, but by Lesley Ogilvie for a third-grade poetry assignment.

 

The topic “hunger” had been expected to elicit cutesy results—say about sneaking cookies between meals.  Lesley and her parents were closely questioned about who had actually composed this epitaph; and when Lesley unveiled a stack of Big Chief tablet-drafts to verify it was all her own precocious work, she was further interrogated as to her state of mind and morale and what must be so deeply bothering her.

 

“You didn’t believe I could write this,” she reproached.

 

“Perhaps Lesley could benefit from some counseling,” her parents were advised.

 

“It’s been tried,” the Ogilvies replied.

 

This was the same little girl who, when she and kid sister Kirsten were given two Afghan puppies for Christmas, had named them Ignorance and Want.  (Abbreviated to “Iggy” and “Whoa” by Kirsten.)  Not that Lesley didn’t love the adorable hounds, in her way; though she often objected to their being in her way when she was trying to read or write or think.  Ditto regarding Kirsten, whose yen for adventurous make-believe was hindered by a deficient imagination that kept her pestering Lesley to “Tell me a stoooory...”

 

“No.  Go somewhere else and work up a sweat.”

 

“Oh pleeeease, you tell ‘em so gooood...”

 

“Okay.  ‘Once upon a time a second-grader got washed up on a desert island and had nobody to hassle.  The end.’”

 

“Jeepers!”

 

Thirsty K really did chug water, Hawaiian Punch and Gatorade by the quart to replenish her athletic dehydration, whereas Hungry L picked at food at every meal and had no favorite dishes.  Her appetite, as indicated on that Big Chief tablet, did not involve the gastrointestinal system.

 

“So what is it that you’d like?” asked a counselor.

 

“To find something to remember doing when I’m old and die.”

 

“Something worth remembering?  Such as...?”

 

“If I knew, I wouldn’t have to find it.”

 

“Well, you have your whole life ahead of you to look for it, don’t you think?”

 

“No.  I’m eight already.  Eight years is a long time, even for a grownup—don’t you think?”

 

“Do you worry about growing old and losing loved ones, family, your friends?”

 

“No.  It’s going to happen to us all.”

 

“Are you wanting to do something to be remembered by, after you’re gone?”

 

“It won’t matter to me then.  I’ll be old and dead.”

 

The counselor recommended Librium to alleviate what was diagnosed as forlorn moodiness.  The dosage merely made Lesley drowsy and quickly got discontinued.

 

A little grave can make you brave   If the tombstone’s not too heavy But you can bet you’ll be all wet   If you’re buried by a levee...

 

Forlorn or not, she did not lack for self-defense mechanisms.  The prime Mean Girl in her class at Dopkins Elementary was Gabrielle Sundheit, who not only starred at swim meets but modeled bathing suits for catalogs.  Gabey tried to pick on Lesley for being a “pickle-pussed gloomy gus”; Lesley countered with dry-as-dust ripostes about bloodyfooted ex-mermaids that made Gabey cry her deMeaned self to sleep.

 

A confrontation with another classmate had vastly different results in sixth grade.  The Ogilvies lived on Canongate Lane, which was actually closer to Snead Elementary than Dopkins, but the district rejected their appeals to cut across the attendance boundary.  Lesley and Kirsten were obliged to take the school bus, boarding it so early they had their choice of seats.  Lesley always took one by a window and made Kirsten (not yet sweaty, except in the hottest weather) sit beside her on the aisle so Lesley could read in peace, or as much peace as Kirsten (“Tell me a stoooory...”) would allow.  Till the day a crazy clownfaced creature reared up in the next seat forward and turned around to say:

 

“You two look like ZaSu Pitts and Thelma Todd!”

 

Shoving an open copy of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Comedy Teams under the sisters’s noses to substantiate this.

 

Such was their introduction to Nancy Sykeman, freshly moved to Nutsedge Road.  Lesley would’ve taken an instant indelible dislike to this lunatic had Nancy not spotted the title of her own book and said “The Portable Dorothy Parker?  Have you got to her ‘Resumé’ yet?”—rattling off Mrs. P’s pithy pointed octave from memory, all the way to “You might as well live.”

 

“That’s what I keep telling her!” beamed Kirsten.

 

Nancy’s other hand reached over to give Kirsten’s chin an auntie-squntch.  “Ooh, such a heartbreaker this one is!”  To Lesley: “Not that you couldn’t bust a few ventricles too.  Feel free to rhyme that with ‘tentacles brew’—I hear you write bitchen poems.”

 

“She does!” went Kirsten, rubbing her squntched jaw.

 

“I try,” murmured Lesley.

 

“With your dotted i!” Nancy crowed before the bus driver ordered her to face forward and sit back down.

 

Lesley decided to reserve judgment on this newcomer.  Six years later, she hadn’t yet completely made up her mind.  Then and now, Nancy Sykeman was fully committed to behaving like a high-volume psycho; on the other hand, you might as well live as Nancy’s comrade, confidante and occasional collaborator.  (They’d co-created Nancy’s boyfriend-BLZ-Bub routine, and the “snaps” for her running-the-dozens versus Rhonda Wright.)  There might be times when Lesley’d regret Nancy’s sugarcoating their adolescence with a layer, however thin, of palatability; but “Hey, I just ‘gild the pill,’” Nancy’d remind her.  “You can choke on it whenever you choose.”

 

Acids stain you and drugs cause cramp...

 

Choking to death on an antidepressant would be an ironic way to go.

 

Or on some med prescribed to heal a busted ventricle—not that any could, even when swallowed properly.  Not when the busting had been foreseen from the very start...

 

A September afternoon in eighth grade.  A carrel in the VW Media Center.  Studying the Classic Film Script of Greed (what was that doing in a junior high library?) in order to write an elegy about ZaSu Pitts’s performance.  Distracted by snortles coming from the next carrel—not directed at Lesley or ZaSu, but a sketchpad over which bent a tall redheaded boy, virtually doubled over with hilarity.  Or from nearsightedness: he wore thick-lensed glasses in thin-rimmed frames, over the clearest bluest shiniest eyes Lesley had ever seen when he glanced over in response to her irritated ssshhhh.  And gave her a rueful smile that penetrated her defenses and undergarments to smite every erogenous zone known to pubescent femininity.

 

As ZaSu would’ve fluttered: Ohhh, myyy, goodness...

 

Hungry L might lack Thirsty K’s sparkly blonde charm, yet she attracted her unwilling share of juvenile male gazes from those partial to dark moody forlornitude.  Among these boys, Scott Grampian stood front-and-center—if alarmingly slumped, with more curvature to his spine than a legitimate scoliotic.  Thus a lot of mutual throbbing got set in perpetual motion that September afternoon in the VW Media Center.

 

Scott coyly shielded his scribbles from Lesley’s reluctantly aroused interest, though not for long; she soon discovered his predilection for underground comix and the National Lampoon’s Funny Pages.  R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Gahan Wilson, Bobby London, Shary Flenniken, Charles Rodrigues—all fed Scott’s fertile inventive talent and production of bizarrely diverting smut.

 

Let’s go over and sit on the sewer...

 

“Sorry,” he shuffled from foot to foot as she, a real live girl, leafed through his vulgar sketchpad.  “‘Fraid I get kind of, y’know—naughtyminded.”

 

“Make that naughtybutted,” she tried to say dry-as-dustily. “Well, I guess you can’t help being a guy.”

 

“Not around you I can’t,” he replied, slumping (though only spinally) very close to her.  Yet hesitating to make a true move till she, the real live girl, quit refraining and seized the day along with Scott.

 

You might as well live...

 

Knowing even then, right at the start, that one day­—make that one night—he was destined to fracture her ventricles.

 

Though not for a long time, astoundingly long in retrospect; outlasting a number of contemporary adult marriages.  “What’re you two, like glued to each other?” Lesley and Scott were asked periodically through the rest of junior high and then most of senior.  “Dontcha ever wanna try dating anybody else?”

 

Lesley did not.  It couldn’t be said that she never looked at another boy or man, but everything below her lower eyelids had been dedicated to and levitated by Scott Grampian.  Passion and effusion were so dormant in her nature that it was as if the All Creatures Great & Small pet cemetery had abruptly developed into Mount Vesuvius—with Scott eager to be Pompeii’d any time she could be induced to erupt.  (Or even just to fizz: as Nancy Sykeman would say, a smile from Lesley Ogilvie was the equivalent of a pants-wetting belly laugh from any normal person.)

 

Scott had seemed satisfied, if by no means satiated: “can’t help being a guy,” after all.  Automatic tendency to roam, to rove, to stray.  Not that Scott ever outright cheated on her (till the Turnabout) but his male gaze was even more relentless than the hornyboy norm.  Impossible for him not to react to the erotic presence of Rula Hradek, of course, or Gabey Sundheit who continued to model swimsuits for catalog spreads, or Ginger Snowbedeck who went out of her way to be an uninhibited bombshell, or kid sister Kirsten whose daily schvitz bath kept her blossoming till she now resembled Thelma Todd at almost-seventeen.  (She at least was fastened tightly to Jacuzzi Jake Korva and did nothing intentional to bewitch Scott.)

 

Over the years Lesley had striven to refine Scott’s artistic impulses from colorful smut to elegantly unnerving Edward Goreylike compositions.  Not least in his series The Adventures of Penny Threadful, a character inspired by herself, samples of which were included in Aqueduct/Aberrant.  Lesley’s only criticism of Penny was her long black Wednesday Addams braids, which Lesley’d only worn the first Halloween she’d known Nancy, who’d donned a baldcap, heavily padded coat and novelty lightbulb to trick-or-treat as Uncle Fester.  (Kirsten’d come along as the cutest imaginable Pugsley, with her regrettably-coiffed friend Nancy Buschmeyer as Cousin Itt.)  Lesley was proudest of “Penny Threadful at the Ailing Flea Market,” whose original ink-and-wash she’d framed and hung in her bedroom (till after the Turnabout).  This depicted Penny sitting knitting beside a big-as-a-breadbox flea wearing an icebag:
 

Penny preparing a shroud, in case The sale of her pet does not take place

 

read the caption.  Scott had come up with it all on his own, and in Lesley’s opinion that coup had earned him the Aqueduct ’78 editorship.  She didn’t want the job, having been hustled by Nancy S and Nancy B and Rula Hradek into shouldering the Austen-Alcott presidency.  (“Who better to steer AA down the Euthanasia River?” Nancy S had asked.)  Lesley’d opposed trying to resuscitate the LitSocs by recruiting boys—she was the one who told Mr. Stabeldore “All they ever read is porn and sports sections”—and in fact that experiment appeared to be a failure; hardly any guys had shown up for the most recent monthly meetings, and female LitSoc participation had also dropped.  Best theme for this spring’s Intersociety Contest?  So long, farewell, auf Wiederseh'n, goodnight.

 

Same line could be said, sung, shouted, or snarled silently—to Aqueduct ’78 and its editor.

 

Not that he’d bother to listen, or respond, or give a constipated shit—now that he’d gone goopy-gaga over Judy Disseldorf.

 

“Who’s with Joo-dith tonight?”

 

Who the hell hadn’t been with Joo-dith, on any night of any random calendar?

 

But why must SCOTT have added himself to her long-and-winding laundry list?  While scratching his one-and-only name off Lesley’s, for all the world to witness?

 

Granted: it wasn’t as though their rift-writing hadn’t been on the wall.  Lesley’s top three college choices were Kenyon (alma mater of Shelley Stoker), Amherst (despite not belonging to Dickinson LitSoc), and the U of C (for sticking close to home).  Scott’s were all renowned party schools: Slippery Rock (for its letterhead), San Diego State (Raquel Welch’s alma mater), and the University of Miami (shortening the commute to spring break).  Neither he nor she had put it into words, but both knew each other was incapable of maintaining a long-distance relationship.

 

Said or unsaid, the last words of every narrative and every lifetime are the end.

 

Unless you believe in ghosts.

 

(Kenyon, according to Ms. Stoker, was famous for being haunted.)

 

Still and all: Scott could’ve had enough respect for her sensitivities to wait till after graduation before breaking loose.  Lesley hadn’t even wanted to go to the Valentine Turnabout, though she’d appreciated his taking for granted that they would, as per usual.  To her (not a natural dancer, mingler, or partier) it was just another “shaggy rug story” that ate up aimless time till an anticlimactic the end.

 

But then; but then...

 

She and Nancy S and Alva Dee Bickling and Chookie Yentlebaum were starting to help Jenna Wiblitz salvage the hearts-and-lace decorations for repurposing on the Follies Loveland set, when up strolled Scott with Judy Disseldorf on his arm—though not to lend any assistance.

 

“You can catch a ride home, right?  I’m gonna give Judy a lift.  Her date went and” [expressive snort along a raised forearm] “till his eyes popped.”

 

Pitifully naïve reaction: “He wiped his nose on his sleeve?”

 

Titter from Joo-dith and guffaw from Scott, who knew this wasn’t intended to be drily witty.  “Gahd, get with it, Les!  Be seein’ ya.”

 

And away they went.  Not we go—they went.  With no promise of return, that evening or ever.

 

Then Nancy was at her elbow, Jenna and Chookie and Alva Dee were gathering round, soon joined by Kirsten and Holly Brollis and Nancy Hantz, plus some of the AA sophs hovering on the periphery.

 

Such news travels fast in such a setting.

 

Indeed, on that night there was similar news being bandied at the other end of the gym, and a second group of sympathizers encircling Pamela Redfern.

 

By the time Jacuzzi Jake drove the Ogilvies home to Canongate, phone messages had already been left by Nancy Buschmeyer (who’d boycotted the Turnabout) and Rula Hradek (whom Nancy S had notified via Rula’s Bellboy pocket pager—she only dated college men and was at a Campus kegfest).  Everybody offered comfort, though they knew Lesley’s Calvinistic soul was Scotchguarded against it.  No one excoriated Scott too harshly—there was always the chance of a reconciliation, no matter how undeserved or ill-advised—but they all took a dig or two (Nancy S taking several) at Judy Disseldorf.

 

Back when the Footlight Players had first read the script for Follies and seen that Middle-aged Sally was a delusional neurotic, there’d been unanimous consent that this role should go to Judy.  She’d played Amaryllis in last year’s The Music Man, packing so much fervor into her unrequited love for a little lisping boy that she nearly upstaged Fleur Groningen as Marian the Librarian in their “Goodnight My Someone” scene.  (Fleur had demanded that Judy be replaced; Mr. Frazee, who regarded Joo-dith as the next Judy Garland, had suggested they trade roles; Fleur’d settled for the status quo.)

 

All the Disseldorf girls were notorious for being ultraseductive without flaunting their flesh.  Goldie, the eldest, threw herself on the merciful kindness of strangers; Tess, the youngest, made devastating use of spellbinding insolence; and middle-child Judy swept onlookers into her soap-operatic existence with a powerful undertow of irrational attraction.  Teenage boys who initially ranked her as cute-at-most found their hearts and loins being dragged beneath the waves of Judy’s sudsy nymphetry.  An illustrious career on stage or screen was predicted for her, and not just by Mr. Frazee; Theresa Challis championed Judy as the foremost Footlighter and superstar of Frazee’s Follies:

 

“When she sings ‘Losing My Mind,’ the whole entire audience’ll believe her!”

 

Now it seemed she’d gotten involved with the local cokehead coterie, or at least with Noel O’Leary who’d doubtless introduced Judy to his dealer so maybe that was why Scott “gave her a lift”—they were roping him into their web as well!  And maybe already had which’d explain his coldhearted dismissiveness after four-and-a-half years of devotion, yet if that were the case what tack should Lesley take if any since whichever decision she’d make was likely to end in futility and Scott was certain to get frostbitten unless Lesley whom he’d brutally left bereft was the only one who could prevent this?

 

Can distress be finessed With an ohhh, myyy, goodness?...

 

*

 

“You in a hurry to get home today?” Avery wanted to know.

 

OhmyGahd does he want us to go parking again, in the middle of the afternoon on a school night??  “Well, um, kinda, yeah—my folks’re back in town and so we’re all sorta going home...”

 

“Right.  Well, you can watch what I do and I’ll explain it as we go.”

 

“Hunh??”

 

“First step in learning to drive.”

 

“Oh!  Um—sure—learn—drive...”

 

The Follies company had spent Monday’s afterschool double-hour conducting post-mortems on Saturday’s Operetta “stumble-through”: the first attempt to rehearse the entire production without stops.  Dexter and the tech heads (Avery on sets, Slats on sound, Stretch on lighting, Alva Dee on hair and makeup, Nancy B on costumes, Link Linfold on flies, Nelson Baedeker on props, Jenna on the run crew) had been busy coordinating their cue lists into a master cue sheet, and despairing over the chances of transitioning the cast into and out of the Loveland sequence without catastrophe.

 

“Of course, if we didn’t stagger through a ‘stumble-through’ you’d know we were in deep dreck,” Jenna’d told Vicki.  “But even shallow dreck can be tracked all over the stage by a sloppy cast.  And then guess which of us’ll have to mop it up?”

 

One of Vicki’s tasks would be to help Judy and Theresa get into their gowns for the “Losing My Mind” and “Story of Lucy and Jessie” numbers, while at the same time helping Holly and Candy Gates change from black-and-white ghost/memory getups into bright multicolored costumes for “Love Will See Us Through” and “You’re Gonna Love Tomorrow.”  Holly and C.G. had to be ready first, but Judy and Chass were going to need greater attention thanks to Judy’s likely comatose state after Middle-aged Sally’s enraged showdown with her younger self, plus Classy Chassis’s propensity for bursting forth above, below, or behind during energetic highkicking.

 

“We could sew her into a suede pantsuit and she could still pop out of it,” groaned Nancy B.

 

Which reminded Vicki of Spacyjane’s “Yum Ticky” bodice incident in Carnival, except there was a lot more of Theresa to pop.  Kathleen Prindle would have to triple-stitch her gown, turn the skirt into a skort, and maybe install a reinforced breastplate.

 

Speaking of bosoms: it was fortunate that neither Becca Blair (as a Dancing Chorus Girl) nor Crystal Denvour (as Young Heidi Schiller) required a major costume change during the show—just some additional frou-frou for Loveland.  Even more fortunately, Vicki would not have to assist Zal Tergeist to take anything off.  (Zerlina, when phoned yesterday from Joss’s aerie, refused to confirm or deny whether she’d done so Saturday night on the Tilton Trail.)  Yet Candy Gates, behaving like the diva she was, might very well requisition a personal dresser and how would Vicki avoid that backstage affliction?

 

“Could you rescue me from Candy Gates?” she asked Avery as they climbed into his Mustang.

 

Derisive snort by Avery—at C.G., Vicki hoped; not the idea of rescuing her.

 

He began to itemize automotive features and functions, with intermittent pauses to quiz Vicki on what he’d said and how’d she apply it if she were behind the wheel.  Avery was every bit as rigorous and exacting as Mr. Dimancheff in Bio, showing no tolerance for carelessness, sparse with praise if she gave a right answer.  All the same, when they reached Burrow Lane Vicki cleared her timid throat and asked: “Would you, um, like to have dinner with us here some night this week?  And maybe ask Fran if she’d want to join us too, if she’s not busy at the Holdahl?  I’d have to check with my folks and let you know when...”

 

No ear-to-ear expression of gratified joy, but Avery’s voice was noticeably softer than it had been grilling her on auto parts and purposes.  “Sure.  Might be nice.  I’ll ask Fran.  Thanks for thinking of her.”

 

“Oh no problem, glad to do it, will be nice...  Um—there’s one other thing—my best friend’s putting together this party or whatever for my birthday, y’know, on Saturday the 4th?  Have you... sort of... heard anything... about that?”

 

Silence (apart from heater-rattle) in the parked Boss.  Then, blandly: “Birthday? Someone having a birthday around here?”

 

*

 

When Nature her great masterpiece design’d   And fram’d her last, best work, the human mind, Her eye intent on all the wondrous plan,   She form’d of various stuff the various Man.

 

For “Nature,” read Tara Garamond.  Who might not have read Robert Burns, but knew by instinct how to turn sentiments such as these to her craftily laid-out profit.

 

Living a privileged life from birth to age thirteen in a high-rise City apartment, Tara had been earmarked for admittance to the Runcible School of Fine Arts and then (on her own presumption) eventual takeover of Geyer & Gimbel, the elite advertising agency her great-grandfather had co-founded.  His daughter’d married a G&G account executive and they’d begat the well-publicized Harlean Wabe, who in turn had wed Montgomery Garamond Jr., a rising young architect with The City’s preeminent construction firm.

 

Nowadays Monty was still rising, though no longer young; he remained with the same firm, though its eminence shrank while his grew; and he had remarried, this time to a trophy mistress for whose oomph he’d traded in Harlean’s lack-of-same five years ago.  Though not hearing-impaired then or now, Monty was deaf to Harlean’s many entreaties and petitions—as well as Tara’s magnanimous offer to stay in her father’s new high-rise apartment and attend Runcible while acknowledging Trophy Mistress as Stepmom.

 

How difficult would that have been for Monty to accept?  His Oomphette was no gold-medal prize, yet Tara’d been willing to overlook this.  Instead she’d gotten ejected along with Harlean and older brother Trey (Montgomery Garamond III) to go bunk with Grammy and Grampy Wabe like a passel of castaways.  And when Daddums Dearest did deign to take notice of his children, Trey received the lion’s share because he was [a] the firstborn, [b] the namesake, [c] a boy, [d] an eventual letterman (basketball), and [e] a platonic flirt with Second Wife.

 

Leaving Tara with the jackal’s share.

 

Harlean had been no help.  Instead of seeking a better-off Second Husband to rub Monty’s nose in her resurgent fortune, she’d settled for a nine-to-five job with Geyer & Gimbel’s research department; and even that had to be procured by her stringpulling father, the soon-to-retire account exec.  Now Harlean ate too much, drank too much, and did no research on how to improve her lot or that of her only daughter.  A total write-off.

 

Lucky thing for Tara that she (Tara) could independently capitalize on most any situation: even her own (apparent) lack of oomph.

 

Instead of Runcible, she’d been exiled to VW Junior High, and there as an eighth-grader got identified with “that kid in American Graffiti, y’know, the uggo who hung out with the hot rod hunk and was hit in the face with the water balloon.”  Some might consider Mackenzie Phillips’s character an “uggo,” but she’d scored a kiss from the hunk plus a souvenir gearshift knob.  Proving there were all kinds of oomph: you didn’t have to be stacked or display toothpaste-commercial teeth to coax goodies out of a guy.  The goal was to win over a utilizable guy—one who could be a boost toward the lifestyle to which you’d once been accustomed and (as God was your witness) would sure as hell be again, sooner rather than later.

 

Tara’s first stepping stone was Chunk Kuppers, a VW football lineman who “didn’t like a chick with too much meat on her bones”—maybe because he had to butt heads etc. with other beefy boys for hours on end.  Who knew why?  Who cared why?  The key things were that [a] Chunk came from a well-to-do family and [b] consorting with him gained Tara a foothold in Vanderlund’s cushier circle.  Stepping stone #1.

 

During ninth and tenth grades she dated Arby Paulsie of the pizza-chain clan, whose product might not be the tastiest in town but generated a heapin’ helpin’ of expendable income.  Arby wanted to pursue the same route taken by Art Paul and design graphics (the more graphic the better) for Playboy if not Penthouse if not Hustler.  Tara lacked the dimensions of a Playmate/Pet/Honey, yet Arby hankered for her underweight centerfold (again, who knew/cared why?) and demonstrated this relish in a variety of ways.  He always coughed up expensive art supplies at giftgiving times, which postponed his getting superseded as Tara’s stepping stone by almost a full semester.  She might’ve kept him on longer than that if Arby’d forked over the tabletop opaque projector she’d dropped enough hints about.

 

In junior year she hooked up with Brill Yant aka Bayard “K.” Flaherty.  No one knew for certain what the “K.” stood for; Tara guessed “Knifethrower.”  Bayard, the son of an orthopedic surgeon with a manse in Baroque Vista, had a serrated attitude toward life and all living things—including Tara, whom he called “Scrawn” without a final y.  She addressed him as “Weasel” with an emphasis on wheeze.  Theirs was a rancorous rapport, spiced with lacerating dashes of heighdy-heighdy-ho; and many of these were thrashed out at the Channelside Sammitch Shoppe.

 

This smorgasbord was the lair of the Bingo Nygren Stationary All-Stars & LitWit Ring, a clique founded a couple years earlier by Archbishop Houlihan’s Lonnie Nygren, the Swedish Catholic enfant terrible.  He’d mobilized renegade preppies from schools in all the snootier northeast suburbs: Front Tree, Startop, Hereafter Park and Vanderlund.  Mitchell Lodge and Evita Krauss came from VTHS, bringing Scott Grampian and Lesley Ogilvie and Bayard Flaherty (not yet sporting that middle initial) plus Arby Paulsie and Tara Garamond.  The latter two weren’t especially literary—nor, for that matter, was Evita—yet they had the same take-no-prisoner mentalities and proclivities.

 

While chomping down Italian beef or Polish sausage on Vienna bread, the LitWit Ring flung barbed bon mots at each other à la the Algonquin Round Table.  Some were more determined to draw blood than others; no participant was more sanguinary than Brill Yant, who engaged in vendettas against almost all the other LitWits.  He hated Rodney Waldover for attending Front Tree, which had refused to enroll Bayard because of subpar grades in math and science (subjects he deliberately slacked off at, to frustrate his surgeon father).  Bayard detested Allison Pendleton of Startop for socializing with Rod Waldover; he loathed Spanky McNamara of Hereafter Park for the nickname alone; and Lonnie Nygren got placed on his Index Prohibitorum for majoring in anthropology at Notre Dame after graduating from Houlihan.  Bayard never forgave Mitch or Evita for truncating “Wallflowers Need Ruin,” and Scott Grampian warranted his eternal enmity for having “stolen” Lesley Ogilvie from him back in eighth grade.  (A theft Lesley’d been unaware of, since Bayard coveted her dark allure from afar.)

 

(“Coveting up close requires covert contrivance.  Don’t even hallucinate about editing that,” quoth Brill Yant.)

 

He dubbed Arby Paulsie “Greasy Gut” for ingesting purported pizzas, but Bayard was fascinated by Tara’s ability to gobble down foot-long subs without gaining visible weight.  (His unwitting old flame Lesley seldom did more than pick at breadcrusts.)

 

“Bet you can belch like a trooper,” he wagered.

 

“I-don’t-know-but-I’ve-been-told,” burped Tara.  “Now that you’ve won your bet, you can buy me an Artograph DB300.”

 

Bayard did, and with it Tara produced many of the graphics for Aqueduct/Aberrant.  Cinching that credit under her slender belt, she aimed to appropriate the top spot on the ’78 Baratarian staff.  (Tilda Purcell was legacy-hogging the Channel newspaper editorship, previously occupied by two older siblings and an older cousin.)  But here Tara got foully outmaneuvered by Mercedes Palmieri, who had no business editing a high school yearbook since she had no plans to [a] attend the Parsons School of Design, [b] become a highly successful commercial illustrator, and [c] take over Geyer & Gimbel.  Mercedes simply wanted to highlight her friends’s temporary accomplishments, choosing “I Remember Yesterday” as the Baratarian theme.  (Yuck.  Total write-off.)

 

So Tara’d been stuck with designing Aqueduct, paying minimal heed to editorial notions from Scott and Lesley till the former dumped the latter at the Valentine Turnabout.  Bayard’s weasel-ears etc. pricked up even as this was transpiring; and Tara, who unbeknownst to him had herself already moved on, told Brill to go catch Lesley on the rebound.  (He faltered, though, forfeiting an opportunity to drive her home; which underlined why Scott always referred to him as B.Flatt.)

 

The moment was ripe for Tara to openly mount a loftier, weasel-free stepping stone, right there in the gym at that same fateful Turnabout.  And who was next up on her stairway to affluence?

 

“I’m Jeremy Tolhurst, and you’re not.”

 

The fact that the speaker bore some resemblance to Chevy Chase didn’t make this intro line any less hackneyed.

 

Jeremy was a classic case of getting by on one’s looks and trust fund.  He too hailed from a Baroque Vista household, but had made no bid to enter Front Tree; not only were the Tolhursts fervent VTHS alumni unto the third generation, but Jeremy couldn’t have made academic ends meet at an all-boys school.  His educational method in every subject except Gym was to latch onto a Smart Girl, smooth-talk her into piggybacking him through the course, then reward her with some degree of physical intimacy.  His perennial girlfriend Pamela Redfern turned a blind eye to these dalliances since Jeremy never indulged with anyone better-looking (and-therefore-more-meaningful) than herself.

 

Pam never suspected Tara Garamond might be capable of usurping Jeremy’s attachment.

 

True, he wouldn’t have passed Trigonometry without Tara’s guidance, nimbly evading the safeguards put in place after Gootch Bulstrode’s cheating scandal.  Also true, Jeremy was wholly dependent upon her for survival this semester in Economics.  But oh my stars!  Pam could double for Jaclyn Smith of Charlie’s Angels, while Tara still looked like Mackenzie Phillips as Young Eleanor Roosevelt or the skinny older daughter on One Day at a Time!

 

However: there were more kinds of oomph than were dreamt of in Pam Redfern’s philosophy.  Young Eleanor could-and-did win Young Franklin’s heart; Skinny Daughter could-and-did wangle a marriage proposal from a handsome man old enough to be her heartthrob father.

 

So too could-and-did Tara Garamond score hunkish kisses plus souvenir gearshift knobs (or superior counterparts) from Jeremy Tolhurst.  She’d never lambasted him for that Zeff Heff ice cream social fiasco, nor had she held it over his head for the next four months—though she might have been jogging his memory (repeatedly) as to who had.

 

So, once again. you didn’t have to wear C-cups or dental caps to coax goodies out of a guy; you only needed art and craft, lubricated by charm and wit.  Not LitWit, when it came to Jeremy—“He can’t even tell Lolita’s plot from ‘Salem’s Lot’s!” sneered his Baroque Vista neighbor Brill Yant.  Well, neither could you, but sketch in a few details and you could whip up a dynamite pictorial ad that’d sell either book like crazy.  Which was more than can be achieved with a breathless Jackie-O voice and ooh-so-stylish Jackie-O poise; so go buy a one-way bus ticket, Pammykins, and take off for Vassar.

 

Your feet are firmly planted on the Tolhurst terrace.  How best to show off your new possession?  Well, that little sophomore chick who was mixed up with that bal masqué fracas at the Shoreward is supposedly throwing a monster bash that might be worth crashing with Jeremy.  Maybe pick up a graphic impulse or two for Aqueduct or Parsons or what lies beyond: keeping your eye intent on all the wondrous plan your great masterpiece keeps designing.

 

*

 

By Thursday the 23rd Vicki was simultaneously studying “Imperialism and the Great War” for World History and All Quiet on the Western Front for English, which was a blessed overlap timewise.  Robin Neapolitan had begun to tutor her and Isabel on algebraic relationships with polygons, which were almost as bogglesome as how to keep Robin from throttling Is.  The Stage Crew had made some progress fabricating showgirl headdresses for dancers, drifters, and gaudy Loveland paraders.  Jenna’s Zayde Leyva had finally been discharged from Mount Sinai (mazel tov!) after overcoming post-CABG complications—

 

—and at 5:15 p.m. Vicki found Fran Loderhauser huddled outside the VTHS auditorium’s rear exit, all ashiver within a vintage burnt-orange maxicoat.

 

“Hey there!  Hi there!  Happy birthday!” she husky-squeaked, giving Vicki a brief tight hug and a small wrapped package.

 

“Oh gee you didn’t have to do this, thanks so very much, can I save opening it till next Wednesday when my birthday actually is?  Not that I don’t appreciate getting early surprise presents, y’know...”  (All the while trying not to sneeze at the cloud of Charlie Blue enveloping Fran’s burnt-orange person.)

 

“Sure sure, me too, whenever you want, it’s just a little something, is Bom in the wood shop? or the metal shop? Gahd it’s so weird being back in this old dungeon, I haven’t set foot inside it or anywhere near it for close to five? is it five? years now, listen to me am I babbling? Bom’ll kill me if I babble at him...”

 

“You’re the big sister,” said Vicki, indignant on behalf of their shared sorority.  “He’s got no business killing you just for talking.”

 

“Babbling,” Fran reiterated as they hurried past the swimming pool and boys locker room and auxiliary gym.  “Even when he was my baby brother, Bom was never a baby and specially not to me, no ‘googoo gaga’ between us, know what I mean?”

 

Vicki could guess: Avery being Avery, leveling that half-hooded glare at Fran over the metal shop threshold.

 

Don’t you dare ask ‘Where’s the Tamb-ass?’ or who brought her here, remember she swapped days off to come to dinner with us tonight, Fran is my guest, Vicki warned him with a narrow-eyed scowl of her own.

 

“S’go,” was all he said, leading them away from the shop, out of the school, and across the still-snowy parking lot to his Mustang, where Fran gently nudged Vicki aside to take the backseat.

 

“No no no honey, your place is up front, I know Bom’s been giving you driving lessons and even if he wasn’t just think of me as ‘along for the ride’ tee hee hee...”

 

Avery let that go without comment, but viva voce’d Vicki throughout the trip to Burrow Lane.  What should she do if that light turns yellow when she’s this far from it?  How about here?  How about now?  What if it’s a flashing red light on this street only?  Before putting the car in reverse, what must she make sure of?  What’s the first thing to do if she wants to pass that car in front?  How should she figure out her following distance from it?  If another driver cuts in front of her, what things should she not do?

 

It reminded Vicki of the boobytrapped multiple-choices on Mr. Koehler’s Civics tests—“A and C,” “All of the above but D”—yet she stayed calm, as you must do while even thinking about driving a car, and answered all the questions correctly.

 

(Grunt from Avery; “Yay!” and clap-clap-clap from Fran.)

 

Thursday the 23rd was the hammered-out compromise date for the Volesters to host the Loderhausers (minus their unavailable parents) for a dish-up of breaded pork chops and potatoes au gratin.  This couldn’t be done on a Monday or Wednesday evening, when Felicia had her real estate classes; and was further boxed in by Fran’s working five nights a week at the Holdahl, plus much of the Volesters’s free time on the subsequent week being given over to someone-having-a-birthday-around-here.  But Fran’d managed to trade nights off with Kazoochie Zoe, since That Bitch Donna had finished her shampoo commercial and resumed playing Lacy Frill; so here they were, digging in together on Thursday the 23rd.

 

Fran—“that’s short for Francine not Francesca sorry to say don’t blame me I didn’t get to choose ha ha ha”—alternated between nervous shyness and mile-a-minute chitchat.  Goofus alternated between leering at her and adulation of the Bedeguar Way Bomber.  Avery, packing away pork ‘n’ taters, responded laconically to Ozzie’s queries about how the Boys in Blue’s season might go (they never should’ve traded Mad Dog Madlock) and Felicia’s probes about college aspirations (his top prospect was Arizona State, for its engineering and baseball programs)—

 

—while Vicki felt a cold hard j-o-l-t at the realization that her boyfriend, who’d entered her life only twelve days ago, would be gone from it by next September if not June.  And after she’d succeeded in seating him at an actual dinner table for an authentic meal with her parents, as hadn’t come close to happening with Tony or Dave or Roger or Jonathan Dohr (if you could count him) or Ordinary Mark Welk (who didn’t count)—

 

—at which point Vicki’s cold hard fist, clenched beneath the tabletop, was softly clasped by Fran seated beside her.  As Vicki’d done to Alex’s whitened knuckles that day in the VW cafeteria, when Kim Zimmer and Mike Spurgeon had gone snuggle cuddle nuzzle practically in their faces as they were trying to eat.  Except she and Alex had never spoken of this afterward; whereas Fran alluded to it as soon as Vicki walked her and Avery to the door, once they’d finished their pineapple upside-down cake and made their farewells (“Good eats—thanks for having us”) to Ozzie and Felicia.

 

“Kiss her nighty-night and go wait in the car,” Fran ordered Avery with atypical big-sister gravitas.  “I won’t be a second.”

 

He eyed her suspiciously.  “What’s up?”

 

“None of your business, just do what I say, I’ll give you some privacy—” rotating toward the front door.

 

“Well, you heard the lady,” Avery told Vicki, doling out a circumspect cheek-peck.  “Glad we came.  See you tomorrow.  Remember those tricks for parallel parking.”

 

Shake of Mustang keys at Fran; then Bomber headed off.

 

Swinging back around, Fran put Vicki in a longer tighter Charlie-Bluer clinch.  “(Be strong,)” she hissed in Vicki’s ear.  “(Be your own girl don’t let this time of your life slip through your fingers you’ll never get another one like it oh you’re such a honey Gahd I wish I’d been you—)”

 

HONK from the Boss.

 

“Coming I’m coming will you hold your horses Jesus Bom!”

 

Peck on Vicki’s other cheek; then swirl of burnt-orange maxicoat and she was gone.

 

Very late that night, Vicki got out of bed to switch on a lamp and open the small wrapped package.  Inside she found a sterling silver sweet 16 that appeared to have been snapped off a tarnished charm bracelet.

 

*

 

The just-with-family-at-home birthday celebration took place prematurely on Tuesday the 28th.  Fel fretted about not having it on Wednesday night, since she and Midge Monticello would be at LCU getting lectured about industrial property ownership; but Vicki forgave her.  “I know you’ll make up for it by letting me drive the Luxury Liner to school all by myself the very first day I get my license.”

 

“It must feel fantastic to have such incredible dreams, Brownie girl.”

 

It felt more fantastic to receive a new AM/FM stereo with automatic record changer, cassette deck, miniature speakers and oversized headphones; though Vicki did make a candle-blowing wish that the big bulky carton might contain a microcompact convertible coupe (new or used) if not a litter of kittens to which Ozzie wouldn’t be allergic.

 

She also received a pearl necklace from MomMom and PopPop; a pair of Gran’s saved-for-this-occasion earrings from Diamond Joel; plenty of moolah from Uncle Ted and Aunt Edie, Aunt Bonnie (Sister Agnes) and Uncle Jerry, Aunt Fritzi and Gross Uncle Doug; plus sixteen assorted sweatsocks “for when track season starts, unless you wanna change the reeky ones you got on now” from Goofus.

 

(Nada from Tricia, whom nobody mentioned.)

 

On Wednesday Alex and Nonique were missing from the morning bus, which Vicki’d mostly anticipated yet still caused a dollop of apprehension.  She herself had gone early to school numerous times to help decorate lockers for friends’s birthdays and welcome-back days; but she always harbored a pea-beneath-the-furthest-mattress unease that everybody would neglect to do hers and then she’d have to pretend it didn’t matter in the slightest, she hadn’t even noticed—

 

—it from halfway up the hall, DayGlo-ing behind her congregated bunchkins.  (Whew.)  So many balloons and streamers and curly ribbons and plastic flowers and glittery greeting cards had been brought that they overflowed Vicki’s locker onto Jenna’s and Carly Thibert’s on either side.  Even more were added as the day went on, cards signed by guys as well as girls, several of the boys wishing a-pinch-to-grow-an-inch to “Badass” (as she’d been called by far too many since the bal masqué) with “Can’t wait till Saturday night!” addenda.

 

Can’t wait to go where?  And do what?

 

No one would give her the smallest inkling; all she got were slyly knowing smiles.  Plus many happy returns, quite a few embraces, some sidestepped pinches, a homemade meal of quiche [Victoria] Lorraine and blueberry muffins from her lunch tablemates, the beautiful aubergine-glazed bowl Jenna’d made in Ceramics class (and used for serving the muffins), a brand-new pair of size-six Adidas running shoes (courtesy of Double-A Sporting Goods), a batch of other smaller-scale gifts, and her very own showgirl headdress which Vicki was compelled to wear during Stage Crew’s afterschool workshift.  This provoked the first-ever laugh she’d heard from Avery Loderhauser, when he stopped by to help carry her loot out to the Mustang.

 

“Got room for one more?” he asked, handing over a canvas zipcase adorned by a decorative bow.  It proved to be an emergency road kit containing flares, flashlight, trouble light, jumper cables, tire inflator, fire extinguisher, siphoning hose, first aid pouch and distress flag.  Vicki was mildly miffed at its shortage of romance (though the pretty bow was a welcome touch) till it occurred to her this could be a sign she’d be needing such a kit before long—and not the ones stowed by her parents in their Honda and T&C.

 

“Bomber!  Does this mean I’ll be getting a car of my own on Saturday?”

 

“Not from me you won’t.”

 

“No, silly—from my dad!  Is that what you’ve all been keeping so secret?”

 

“You haven’t even got your learner’s permit yet.”

 

“Okay then, will it be an offer of a future car?  A coupon for a future car?  A poster of a future car?”

 

“Let’s just say,” dangled Avery, “this Saturday might involve some wheels...”

 

*

 

That night Vicki dreamed of being a contestant on The $20,000 Pyramid, where she was teamed with little Adam Rich from Eight Is Enough who got oohed-and-ahhed at by the studio audience but was no help at all; he couldn’t or wouldn’t guess any of the mystery words or phrases.  Yet Dick Clark, instead of offering Vicki the game’s home version as a consolation prize, said “Think fast, Kitten!” with Ozzie’s voice and pitched her a set of keys to her very own new/used convertible coupe!!  Vicki started shrieking with joy while Adam Rich transformed into Goofus and began to snap Polaroid photos of her having hysterics.  “You better get rich and famous, Sis, so I can blackmail you with these screwball pics!” but fat chance of that as the network cameras dollied back to reveal Vicki dancing for daytime TV in nuh-thing but her unn-der-pants, and there was Avery with mallet and chisel ready to sculpt every scrump-tilly-umptious inch of her Badass—

 

A-W-A-K-E to no keys, no coupe, no extortion and no exposure: flannel jammies were intact above and below.

 

(Uncertainty whether to feel relief or disappointment...)

 

On Friday evening Felicia, Mama Dmitria, Midge Monticello and Mrs. Nakayama took Vicki, Joss, Alex, Zerlina and Keiko to see Dorothy Hamill and the Ice Capades.  Mrs. Weller doubtless would’ve liked to go too, but Fiona refused pointblank.  As for Nonique, she’d been flabbergasted by Floyd Lewis offering to escort her to that night’s concert by The City Symphony, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini and with Isaac Stern soloing.  As was documented earlier that Friday on a homeroom note:

 

 

The Ice Capades were more Vicki’s speed than either of the Isaacs.  It took some effort, though, to enjoy the show without viewing it through a stage crew techie’s eyes.  Imagine having to get all those precision skaters into and out of their elaborate costumes, or needing to coordinate all those props (some on fire!) for that skating juggler.

 

Then there was Dorothy Hamill, to whom Vicki owed the Short & Sassy hairstyle she’d worn since turning fourteen.  Dorothy’d been accused of being a bad-tempered snob, a veritable Candy Gates On Ice; but to watch her swoop and glide and twirl and spin, full of grace as ever, was to know she was still America’s Sweetheart.

 

(And had probably been given a car for her sixteenth birthday.)

 

*

 

The second stumble-through of Frazee’s Follies kicked off at noon on Saturday the 4th.  An intermission had been inserted after “Who’s That Woman?,” as the Original Production’s Director had contemplated doing but decided against.  This would give the Vanderlund company some badly needed breathing space, and allow the Dancing Chorus Girls more time to exchange their monochrome-sequined leotards and tights for Loveland iridescents.  Then, following a brief reprise of “Mirror Mirror,” the second act curtain would rise to show only the Middle-aged Ex-Showgirls minus their ghosts/memories; Fletcher Wyndham as Dmitri Weismann would ask “Are there any hungry actors in the house?” and present-day action would resume.

 

Other benefits of having an intermission: it would enable Gail Spruce’s publicity team to boost revenue by peddling refreshments in the cafeteria, and give weakbladdered audience members (e.g. the cast’s grandparents) a washroom break without their having to walk out during the performance.

 

Also confirmed on Saturday was permission for Spacyjane to wear a showgirl’s costume and headdress (borrowing Vicki’s birthday gift) while manning the box office—i.e. a card table set up in the lobby for selling tickets and distributing the programs that Split-Pea had slapped together.  This was belated amends for Space having been deemed too short and too young to play a Drifting Phantom Showgirl onstage, despite being far more suitable for this role than, say, Lois Wilkie or Charisse Sassoon.

 

Most of the company raised no objection to these alterations; but Zal Tergeist was in a recalcitrant funk, what with Zerlina’s having shot him down since the Valentine Turnabout (as Zerl’d related in frank detail at the Ice Capades).  Go ahead and put the little Groh choupinette in a snug spangled one-piece—that couldn’t “disrupt the story arc” or necessitate “restarting from stone-cold scratch” like partitioning Follies into separate halves would!  Zal knew better than to voice these quibbles aloud while the second stumble-through was in process; yet their smoldering intensified as the dry run dragged on, and flared into an open blaze when the final curtain fell (or would’ve fallen if they’d been using it).

 

Before anyone could say “boo,” Zal and Dexter Rist were practically having a fistfight backstage.  Ron Deacon and Shecky Yentlebaum had to haul them apart while Candy Gates egged them on, Nancy Sykeman contributed wisecracks, Judy Disseldorf wrang anguished hands, and Dory Jobling knocked down Mark Brown as they tried to scurry out of harm’s way.

 

Avery stood aloof with the Schrimpfen twins.  “Us interfere?” he’d tell Vicki.  “Those two’ve been at loggerheads since junior high.  High time they did something about it.”

 

(Over the next few days, rumors would fly that Zalman had been or was about to be axed from Follies for picking this fight; but when the cast and Symphonic ensemble had their “sitzprobe”—which sounded disgusting but merely meant “seated rehearsal”—it would be blatantly obvious that Matt LaVintner, Zal’s understudy as Ben, did not possess the chops to interpret “The Road You Didn’t Take,” “Too Many Mornings” or “Live, Laugh, Love” with anything like Zal’s vigorous brio.  So [the rumors continued] Zal Tergeist would retain his part in the show, probably after making a dramaturgical act of contrition which would force Dexter to shake hands with an actor in front of the assembled company.)

 

One thing for sure about that second runthrough of the Spring Operetta: at some point nearly every participant, from Alva Dee Bickling and Nancy Buschmeyer to Link Linfold and Nature Boy Rutherford to Holly Brollis and Theresa Challis to Ken Keezer and Tim McDermid, plus even some of the faculty like Mr. Watford and Coach Celeste, gave Vicki a slyly knowing smile.

 

But no one would tip her off as to what might be coming that Saturday evening: not even dyed-in-the-wool Gossip Brigadiers like Jerome Schei, Wes Gormley or Gale Spruce.

 

Unless Spacejane’s “I’ll be wearing padding tonight—you might want to too” could be considered in any context other than bosom-enhancement or time-of-the-month.

 

*

 

“Hey, you were the one who tried to blindfold me on our way to the Blackstone for my Jazz Showcase birthday,” Joss reminded the fidgety Vicki.  “‘Member how we all sang ‘Ninety-nine boys in the back of the Buick’?”

 

“This is a Lincoln Continental,” Vicki griped.

 

“‘Beautiful music / Dangerous rhythm / It’s something daring, the Continental,” sang Alex.  “Those’re the only lines I remember, but it’s a really great tune.”

 

“Assuming you actually loaded me into that car and not some other one,” Vicki groused.  “I can hardly inhale behind this scarf, much less see through it!”

 

“Well, we’re not in the Smiths’s Brougham,” said Joss.  “When will we get to ride in that, Nonique?”

 

“Don’t know when I’ll get another ride in it,” sighed Vernonique, who’d been driven over to Jupiter Street in her mother’s Hornet.  (On Friday night the Rebounder had scraped a fender while picking her and Floyd up from Orchestra Hall; this was held to be Floyd’s fault, with Nonique and Isaac Stern and The CSO as accessories to the crime.)

 

“This is the Continental,” spoke up Mr. Murrisch from the frontseat.

 

Well, you could believe him: like Honest Abe (or was it George Washington?) Joss’s father couldn’t tell a lie.  But he also wouldn’t tell the truth about where you were being taken, which street the car was slowing down at (as your well-trained foot reached for and stepped on an imaginary brake pedal) with a click, click, clack of the turn signal (if not Death’s grisly violin) as you rounded some unknown corner onto some different street or maybe into a parking lot? since you sensed an expansive mass of other vehicles on every side, some of them moving, some stopping as the Continental eased to a stop, though Mr. Murrisch didn’t put it in park or switch off the ignition.  Over and under the Lincoln’s ongoing noises and the twittering of your closest friends, you could hear or rather feel a continual

 

whubb

whubb

whubb

whubb

 

that indicates disco music must be in the vicinity, maybe from a neighboring car with a powerful sound system? except that after Joss’s dad tells you to “Have fun” and the girls ease you out onto the asphalt or tarmac or concrete or whatever the ground is made of that crunches frostily beneath your boots (“Don’t let me fall, you guys!”—“We’ve got you, don’t worry”) the vibrations increase and start moving up your legs like those galvanic currents you felt when Avery massaged your ankle except these’re going

 

whubb

whubb

whubb

whubb

 

so do some fishing with the tentative line “I thought Feef said we wouldn’t be going to the Vinyl Spinnaker, I mean La Bugaboo or whatever Bunty O’Toole’s calling it now” but Joss says “She was right, we’re nowhere near there” and deliberately slows your pace with a sub-added Mustn’t have you showing your slip again to which you go Oh shut up and she goes You shut up and while you’re still outside in below-freezing cold a door is opened nearby and through it pours a pulsating

 

WHUBB

WHUBB

WHUBB

WHUBB

 

as the scarf is whipped off your face and you behold a garish neon sign proclaiming that you’ve arrived at the Triville Skating Center on Orcus Avenue.

 

Oh Gahd no! would be your reaction if you didn’t immediately suppress it with a wide-smiling cheeks-hurting mask lest you break Joss’s tender heart with gag-reflexive ingratitude.  But no! you came here for Alex’s fourteenth birthday when it was a newly-opened indoor rink, and that one time was all it took to quench any foolish ice-skating aspirations you might’ve ever had.  Sure, being a spectator at the Ice Capades is fine and dandy; but recklessly jeopardizing your own life and limbs out there on the ice, not so much.  You are (if you say so yourself) an excellent runner and a wonderful dancer with hopes of becoming a reliable hurdler this track season; but dammitall you’ve filled your quota of slipping and falling and other-cheeks-hurting on slick surfaces this winter, which Joss knows perfectly well so why in the world has she brought you to this place quit thinking quit thinking about it just keep smiling don’t let her know—

 

“We’re not here to ice skate,” she informs you, sounding not at all hearbroken as you’re led inside but not in the same direction as before, turning instead toward a vast new annex where the darkness is shredded by flashing rainbow strobes and everybody’s buffeted by the engulfing

 

WHUBB

WHUBB

WHUBB

WHUBB

 

of the Triville Skating Center’s recently-opened Roller Disco.

 

Which would explain all these people trundling around on rented wheels.

 

Not sharp-bladed ice skates, but leatherette bootees with plastic casters.

 

Swooshing you back four years ago, four years to the very night—March 4th (hardy har har)—to revisit the Pivotal Roller Rink for your own twelfth birthday party: the first boy/girl shindig thrown by anyone in your class at Reulbach Elementary since kindergarten.  “Vicki, you get all the glamour,” somebody said—was it Kris Rawberry? April Tober?—anyhow, the glamour mostly amounted to handing out slices of cake and pizza and Dixie-cupped ice cream, after you got swept off your feet and onto your rump once too often.  The pipe organ shook you further with its renditions of “Baby Elephant Walk,” “Yellow Submarine,” “The Mickey Mouse Club Song,” and the Pivotal’s house tune: “Where You Bump Into the Nicest People.”

 

Fast forward to the here-and-now, where-and-when a Triville DJ is spinning “Serpentine Fire,” “Rigor Mortis,” “Utopia - Me Giorgio,” and (as you’re laced into a pair of wobbly leatherette clodhoppers) the theme song from Which Way Is Up, which seems ominously prophetic of what you’ll be wondering much too soon.  Talk about “stumble-throughs”—this is absolute insanity, hazarding all sorts of renewed sprains and twists and crippling bruises if not compound fractures with the Operetta only two weeks off and track season starting right after that!  How can Joss and Alex and Nonique subject you to running this gauntlet no make that plunging and why aren’t any of them holding onto you for Gahd’s sake why’ve you been left unprotected and defenseless like you were at the Shoreward bal masqué or the blacked-out VW Back-to-School Dance except here you’re wearing roller skates and about to go sprawling headlong into a vortex of painful concussive punishment—

 

“Gotcha!” goes a not-entirely-flat, not-entirely-hard voice behind you.

 

As you’re caught up and held steady by two strong arms in the aquamarine sleeves of a Gondolier letterman’s jacket.

 

“The key to smooth movement is to alternate between supporting your weight on one leg while pushing off with the other,” drones the voice; but what you’re listening to is “Footsteps in the Dark Parts 1 & 2” by the Isley Brothers, which rapidly becomes your favorite song as you’re piloted into a cadenced flowing glide, threading through the other skaters just like the Mustang Boss does in rush-hour traffic.  Except that here you’re not being drilled about what to do and not do if you ever occupy the driver’s seat of a car traveling down the road—no, here you’re doing the traveling, the wheels are attached to the soles of your laced-up bootees and their whirling is transmitted up through your feet and ankles and calves and knees and thighs ohhhh Gahhhhd to your torso and finally your brain, triggering your dancer’s intuition, waking every muscle in your body all at once and causing them to regain their memory of basic rhythmic forward motion that can make you skim, make you soar, make you swoop across the rink.

 

Recognizable figures loom out of the skating throng as the DJ strikes up “Brick House.”  Here’s Bianca Panucci rollerdancing with Gootch Bulstrode, she very short and he very tall plus more adept on skates than playing basketball or cheating at Trig—and is Beany showing off to make her ex-boyfriend Bomber jealous?  No time to worry about that now as they’re displaced by Junior Nygren and Buddy Marcellus, she even shorter and he a lot less tall but quite a bit rotunder, the two of them looking like a cute little squirrel rollerboogeying with a comic pachyderm as “Brick House” segues to “The Hump” and here come Judy Disseldorf with Scott Grampian whom you’re ready to snub for how he treated Lesley Ogilvie the AA Presiding Genius whom you spot off to the side, clinging to the rink’s outer handrail, keeping tabs on Scott?  That would be so sad, don’t ever stoop to doing that no matter what might happen with you and Avery as the DJ moves on to Sylvester’s “Over and Over” and you have to dodge when Jeremy Tolhurst whizzes past with Tara Garamond, a skinny senior you only know secondhand, Jenna says she’s a competent designer but “thinks perspective is a sticky substance, like rubber cement” and here’s Jenna herself, a treat to see on skates though kept safely in check by Ken Keezer, what’s she got on tonight’s spectacle frames?  Tiny mirrored beads that reflect the blinking rainbow strobes as she blows you a big-sisterly kiss with her free hand, and there’s Zerlina wearing a variation on her skimpy avant-garde recital costume (Gahd, Zerl! it’s like Arctic outdoors!) rollershimmying with a guy you don’t recognize, not Zal Tergeist and probably not Paitoon the Moonstone yet somehow familiar—by golly if he doesn’t remind you of Juodas Jautis, principal male dancer of the Norroway Ballet Company, as brawny as he was strapping as he was robust.  Good for you, girl! you grin at Zerl, who shakes her shapely bare shoulders in smug response as “The More I Get, the More I Want” winds down and the Triville DJ calls for attention while you’re surrounded by your extended bunch and their partners: Joss with P.J., Jenna with Ken, Nonique with Floyd, Alex more-or-less with Mike Spurgeon, Robin with Arlo Sowell, Sheila-Q with Graham Aleshire, Crystal with Judd Courtney, Isabel with Jeff Friardale, Zerlina with Brawny Strapping Robust, Fiona and her bandmate PoonElly Scales, Spacyjane and Split-Pea with his FLASSSHHHH flassshhhh flassshhhh-ing camera that outshines/outblinds the intermittent rainbow strobes—

 

As the Roller Disco’s DJ announces that a new local group called [squinting at label] “Downbite” has recorded a single [displaying what looks like a genuine 45] to commemorate the Sweet Sixteen of a Certain Someone here tonight; so without further ado, get ready to get down to the sound of [second label-squint] “Dead Letter”—

 

“Not that one!  Play the flip side!” Feef’s full-tilt boogie-diva voice rips through the strobing darkness—

 

“Oops,” goes the DJ.  “Let’s try that again!  Kudos to the Birthday Girl, and here’s hoping she and all of you here tonight get a Triville thrill from [third label-squint] ‘Clicking with... errrr... Vixteen? yes, Vixteen!’”

 

We’re all in a rush just to get in the mix comes charging out of the disco speakers with a Fiona-on-Fender bass line rather than the standard whubb whubb whubb whubb, but that definitely doesn’t deter the throng from rollerbopping to the beat: all the cats and chicks are taking their licks, not even slowing down to flick their Bics as they realize what all along has made them click—

 

And just like at last year’s Quinceañera you’re too mindblown to do more than absorb the sensations of the moment, even as you’re swung around and around by Avery the skateboard daredevil (“Knew you druther gone dancing”) in a dizzy polychrome whirlwind of clicks—clicks—clicks— and treats—no—tricks— and getting down to the throbbing sound of becoming a Sweet Vixteen.

 

*

 

“(That turdhead Roller Derby disc jockey!)” Fiona mutter-fumed afterward.  “(Do me a favor and just remember it wasn’t my idea.)”

 

 

 

 * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

 

 

 * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

Return to Chapter 47                          Proceed to Chapter 49