THE FOLLOWING WEEKEND I DIDN’T SEE ANY BOYS, BUT I did keep busy. I spent the time with another of my friends, Jessie Scaley. On Saturday afternoon we went shopping, then we took a ride out to Queens to meet Marilyn, one of Jessie’s friends from school. We all went ice skating together, and then Jessie and I slept over at Marilyn’s house.
Jessie wasn’t someone I ordinarily would have chosen to be friends with, even though she could be a lot of fun at times. She could also be snappy and sarcastic, and she had a tendency to lie, so I never felt I could completely trust her. I had become close with Jessie because she had gone steady with Sheldon Emory, Lenny’s best friend, for over a year, and the four of us often went out together. But Jessie had started private school the term before and had met some boys there who treated her better than Sheldon did. Recently he had caught her going out with one of them and had picked a big fight with her over it, and they had broken up. Since Jessie was a free agent, as I was, I figured we’d have a lot in common.
Unfortunately, we had a bit too much in common. Marilyn fell asleep quickly, but Jessie and I were up late talking, and our conversation kept gravitating to Sheldon and Lenny. Jessie lived in Sheldon’s apartment building and had become friendly with Sheldon’s mother. Mrs. Emory had given Jessie some information that I would probably have been better off not knowing.
“It looks like both Lenny and Sheldon are into new relationships,” she informed me. “Sheldon’s going out with some girl from the Bronx named Peggy, and Lenny’s dating Lauren, one of Joel’s old girlfriends.”
“I know about Lauren; Lenny’s been dating her for weeks now. Did Sheldon’s mother say anything specific about her?”
“Only that Lauren is simply adorable, and very nice. Oh—Mrs. Emory did say that she never knew Lenny was capable of treating a girl so well.”
“Probably a lot better than he ever treated me,” I said grimly. This talk of Lenny and “simply adorable” Lauren wasn’t doing me any good. I tried to change the topic by asking Jessie about some of the boys she knew from school, but I hardly heard her answers. My mind kept focusing on this awful picture of Lenny holding Lauren in his arms, kissing her, touching her, and telling her he loved her, the way he once did to me.
When I finally did fall asleep, it was to dream of Lenny. He came galloping up to me on a big white horse, and he motioned for me to climb on and ride with him. I reached for his hand, but just as I was about to grab it, along came this girl whose face I couldn’t see, and she shoved me aside. It was she who climbed up and rode off with him, leaving me to stare after them, all alone with nothing but the aching emptiness I felt inside.
* * *
The letters and phone calls I got from Dave after homecoming were all sweet and proper as could be. He apologized over and over again for any behavior that might have been upsetting to me. He swore that nothing like that would ever happen again. I wanted to believe him. I wanted all those wonderful feelings I had had while with him in New Hampshire to come back to me. I didn’t think I had felt really good about anything since I returned to the city.
The next week something happened to give me a lift. One of the boys I was friendly with in my modern European history class, Alan Bethel, asked me out to a concert given Saturday night at Columbia. Alan and I had often had long discussions after class about such topics as the reasons for Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, and I had found him very knowledgeable. I was really looking forward to my date with him.
My parents were tremendously impressed with Alan, especially since he took the trouble to talk with them about our history class before we left for our date.
“A Columbia boy, and such an intellectual—it’s wonderful!” my mother whispered to me as Alan began discussing the causes of World War II with my father. World War II was one of my father’s favorite topics, and the two of them became so engrossed in their conversation that I practically had to drag Alan out the door so that we wouldn’t be late for our concert.
I had never been to a formal classical music concert before, and I was impressed. Everyone was all dressed up and sophisticated-looking. I had worn my best dress, and I felt very important and proper as I sat next to Alan, waiting for the concert to begin. The program said the music would all be by the famous composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
“Did you know Mozart represents the climax of late-eighteenth-century music?” Alan asked. “He was a boy genius, born in Salzburg, Austria, in 1756, and began composing when he was five years old.” Alan went on to fill me in on some background material of Mozart’s life, his death before his thirty-sixth birthday, and the details of his most famous quartets, symphonies, and operas.
It was all very interesting, and I probably would have really enjoyed the concert, except for the fact that Alan had this annoying habit of humming along to the music, which he seemed to know by heart. He was so loud that I noticed several people in the surrounding rows throwing dirty looks our way. Alan, however, seemed oblivious to anyone else’s needs, because he kept right on humming. I slunk down in my seat as far away from him as I could manage, in the hope that no one would know that I was with Alan. If someone I knew from school spotted me with him while he was humming away, I would never get over the embarrassment.
I felt a great sense of relief when the concert finally ended and we left the auditorium without running into anyone I knew from school. But the rest of my date was even harder to deal with than the concert had been. Alan suggested we go to a restaurant not far from the campus to get something to eat. As we waited for our order he talked on and on about the historical background of Mozart’s times. This king and that king, this war and that minister—-after a while it was all the same to me. I had had my fill of intellectualism for the evening. How I longed for some plain, ordinary conversation!
All my efforts at changing the topic amounted to nothing. It was fast becoming obvious to me that while Alan was absolutely brilliant as far as history was concerned, he was practically incapable of talking about anything else. I found myself starting to nod off as I attempted to listen to him drone on and on. I was so bored, I couldn’t wait for the night to finally end.
Alan took me home by taxi. He sat with his arm around me, and this sick feeling came over me as I realized he might very well want to make out with me when he got me home. I didn’t know what I would do if he tried anything. When I had talked to Alan at school I had actually thought he was pretty cute, but now, sitting so close to him, I was much more turned off to Alan than I had been to Jason. To make things worse, I was well aware that while I didn’t have to see Jason ever again if I didn’t want to, I had to face Alan every time I went to history class. I didn’t want to act in a way that would ruin our friendship, but the thought of kissing him was making me absolutely ill. I didn’t know if I could bring myself to do it.
I took a deep breath. How different this was from dating someone I really cared about! When I was with Lenny or with Dave, I couldn’t wait for them to kiss me. I hadn’t anticipated these kinds of annoying problems that were involved with casual dating, and I still didn’t know the best way to handle them. I could only hope that Alan would decide to let me out of the taxi and that he would stay in it and keep right on going home.
That wasn’t what Alan had in mind. The cab pulled up in front of my house, and Alan leaned over to pay the driver. “It’s a good thing you live near Broadway. I can always find another cab to take me home,” he said to me. He gave me a meaningful grin, and I knew I was in for trouble. In the greenish light from the street lamp his skin looked sallow, and his lips and nose looked absolutely huge. He totally turned me off.
“Right.” I looked at my courtyard and was tempted to make a mad dash up the stairs to my apartment, to rush inside and slam the door behind me. But I couldn’t do that. I didn’t want to be rude to Alan or hurt his feelings in any way. I had told myself I needed to be prepared. I decided the best way to handle the situation was to brace myself to kiss him as briefly and painlessly as possible and come up with some excuse for having to go inside fast.
I never had a chance to see how this would work. Alan and I had just gotten out of the taxi, which was waiting for the light to turn green, when an old, red, familiar-looking Chevrolet pulled up behind it. It was Billy Upton’s car, and in it were Lenny and all his buddies—Billy, Sheldon, and Joel.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Linda.” Billy leaned out of the window and grinned malevolently.
“And look what she dug up to go out with tonight!” Lenny laughed. “Where do you get these little pukes from, anyhow?”
“The sewer. This one looks like he came from the sewer—a regular sewer rat!” concluded fresh-mouth Joel.
“Hey, sewer rat, you’d better keep away from that girl before you get yourself exterminated!” threatened Sheldon. “She’s the personal property of my friend here, isn’t she, Lipoff?”
Alan stood there throughout as if petrified. He looked at the boys, then at me, then back at the boys once again. “I-I didn’t know she was anyone’s g-g-girl,” he stammered. Then he pulled open the door of the taxi. “I-I think I might as well go home in this cab, Linda,” he called to me as he slid inside. “You can never tell when I’ll find another one. See you in school!”
“In school!” I waved after him. The light changed, and he was gone. I stalked over to Billy’s car, where the boys were rolling around, laughing hysterically. As grateful as I was to have gotten out of kissing Alan, I was furious at the boys for pulling such a stunt. What if I had been out with someone I really cared about?
“You guys have a lot of nerve!” I said angrily. “What do you mean ruining my date like that?”
“Ruining your date?” Joel demanded. “From the looks of that guy, we did you a favor, Linda!”
“I never saw anyone make a move as fast as the one he made toward that taxi!” Lenny was laughing so hard he had to hold his stomach to get the words out.
The boys looked so funny that I had to struggle to keep from laughing myself. I didn’t want them to think I condoned their actions in any way. “What are you guys doing driving around here on a Saturday night, anyhow?” I asked. “Don’t you have anything better to do—like going out with girls? That is, if there’s anyone who’ll have you!”
“For your information, we did have dates for tonight,” Lenny made sure to let me know. “And Lauren—or any of the others, for that matter—would put that creep you went out with to shame! We just took the girls home and happened to be riding down your block on the way to the poolroom. So don’t go thinking we came here looking for you!”
“I don’t waste my time thinking any thoughts about you whatsoever!” I told him. Then I turned around and headed for the entrance to my building as fast as I could.
I didn’t want Lenny to see how upset I was. Why did it bother me so much that Lenny was still going out with Lauren? Why did the realization that he had been seeing her far too long for their relationship to be a casual one make my stomach feel like it was all tied up in knots?