Not Exactly a Love Story (24 page)

Patsy and I stared at each other over a distance of about six feet. I was giving her a chance to walk away. She didn’t. The music started again, something slower. I swooped in and dipped her, let the cape drape over us. Our faces were only a few inches apart.

I held on to Patsy and led again. When Mom insisted I take dancing lessons with Dad and her, she said all the guys she’d ever slow-danced with were fumblers at worst and just adequate at best. Patsy was cool. Not too cool. Her heart was going at a pretty good clip. We were close, and we were wearing clothing thin enough to appreciate it.

I shifted into a more complex step, punctuated with turns and stops. She was with me all the way. The cape swept around her at every turn, holding her enclosed with me for a moment before we moved again, whispering over the bare skin of her arm as it fell back again. I never took my eyes off her face, although much of the intensity on both of our faces must have had to do with the effort we put into dancing. The music ended.

Patsy didn’t pull away. I spotted the clock over the double doors. Ten minutes to nine. I said, “Your boyfriend has your soda.” I let go of her and turned with a swish of cape before she could put on a polite face. It was worth the whole evening, the whole everything, to see that look in her eyes. She wanted to go on dancing. With me.

It was hard to go. I felt like I was breaking a connection, like I
was hanging up. But I continued out of the gym and headed for the boys’ locker room like I was going to the john. I went straight to my locker and grabbed the sweater with the mask balled up inside it. I fished in my pocket for the bar dogger to open the hallway. I raced up the stairs.

The upstairs hallway was dim as I opened the metal gate, gratefully acknowledging the inspiration that made me take the dogger. I pulled the gate closed behind me and raced to the other end to open the one Patsy would need to pass through.

Then back to the appointed meeting place. This door didn’t have a window like the classroom doors. And I’d stood on the table to loosen the lightbulb yesterday afternoon. There’d be no light in the room once the door was
closed. I had trouble with the key. The lock was a little tight. I could swear I heard the scrape of shoes on the stairs. Shoes that were trying not to make too much noise.

Finally the bolt shifted. I opened the door, flicked the light switch a couple of times to be sure no one had screwed the bulb back in, then dashed down the hall to the john. I glanced at the hall clock. Ten after. I slipped inside and stood still, listening.

Not a sound.

I closed the door silently. She would come. She had to. I tore off the cape and pulled the turtleneck over my shirt. Took off Zorro’s eye mask and stood behind the door of the john, peeping out.

Where was she?

I was just about to open the door to listen again when I saw her. Timid. Looking up and down the hallway before she tried the door, pushed it open while standing as far away from it as she could. I could just hear her voice, presumably calling out an Italian name. I grinned as I pulled the mask over my face.

I didn’t move until she went in, then I tiptoed across the hall and stood there for a moment, trying to breathe normally. No good. I could stand there until midnight, but I wasn’t going to feel normal in any way. The rubbery smell of the mask made me feel faint.

I opened the door as narrowly as possible, slipped inside, and shut it quickly behind me, hoping the light from the hallway hadn’t allowed her to identify me by my shoes or
the way I moved. At least, by arriving last and leaving first, I had some control over how long she could see me at all.

Patsy reached out and touched my arm. “I thought you’d get here sooner,” I said, deepening my voice.

“I couldn’t get away from my friends. They were all excited about something that happened downstairs.” She didn’t take her hand away. I was glad. It was so dark in the room that it was like talking through a tunnel. It was like talking on the phone.

“I like your socks.”

“Not exactly glamorous.”

“I admit it. I was way off base.” I knew she’d like hearing that.

“You still sound like you’re talking through a handkerchief.”

“It’s the mask.”

“I saw it when you came in,” Patsy said. “It’s dark in here now.”

“Pitch-black,” I agreed. I reached for her hand, still resting on my arm, and felt my way to the table I knew was in the center of the room. All of about three feet. I pulled off the mask and took a breath of fresh air, setting the mask down.

Patsy’s voice had gone high and childlike. “Now that we’re here, I don’t know what to say.”

I didn’t answer, but found her other hand in the darkness. I was not feeling suave. I let my fingers drift up her arms, then her neck. Her skin was incredible. My hands
were shaking. She couldn’t have taken it for anything but fear. I touched the little ponytails. Silky blond hair between my fingers.

The shaking had spread all through me. Even my breathing shook as I leaned toward her. Maybe some of it was Patsy. I hoped so. Her lips were soft against mine. Eventually the space between our bodies closed. It was a while before we came up for air. When we did, we leaned against each other and I took in the scent of her hair.

“Are you going to tell me who you are?” she whispered.

I shook my head, loving the way her hair felt against my face. “Not yet.”

“Are you going to call tonight?”

“Twelve o’clock on the dot.”

She sighed.

I let my face slip over hers, exploring the contours with my own cheek and with my lips. We kissed again—my mouth was open, and after a moment hers opened beneath mine. When our tongues touched, it startled us both and we drew back slightly, our lower lips barely touching. The heat that had built up between us was astounding.

“Patsy.” It killed me to do it, but I pulled away. “I’m going to go back downstairs.”

“No.”

“We have to,” I said. “I’ll go first.”

I grabbed my mask and pulled it on.

“Wait,” she said.

I turned back and, lifting the mask, gave her a quick
peck on the cheek. “You wait,” I whispered. “Give me a minute.”

“Won’t you tell me who you are?”

“Soon.” I slipped through the door, shutting it behind me, and dashed for the john. Stripping off my current disguise, I listened for her to shut the book room door. By that time I was Zorro again.

I dropped the Fonz mask and the sweater out the window. I flipped the lights off in the hallway and ran, yanking the gate shut. I wanted to beat her back to the gym. I flashed through the locker room, stopping only to check that my eye mask looked undisturbed.

I strolled out of the locker room and back into the gym, heading for the back wall. Patsy came through the double doors only a moment later, followed by three girls. They were all aflutter about something. I wondered whether Patsy had said anything to them about our meeting.

Biff walked over to her with an ugly expression. I stepped into the soda line. Her girlfriends stood by her, flapping their hands at him, shooing him away. A teacher came over and sent him on his way.

Patsy danced a couple of times with some other guys. She was more than lively. She was agitated.

I didn’t ask her to dance. I was still shaking. And to tell you the truth, I could still feel the length of her against me. I couldn’t have danced with her again without communicating some of that to her.

I was bothered by the answer I’d tossed over my shoulder,
“soon.” Did I mean it? If I didn’t mean it, she was not going to take it well. I hadn’t really thought things through. I should never have arranged to meet her. Or at least I should never have shown up.

I was an idiot.

Apparently, I was not the only one. Whatever Biff’s problem was, and it must have been her thirty-minute disappearance, he wouldn’t let it go. He cut in on a dance and Patsy stayed on the floor, but they didn’t look like they were enjoying each other’s company.

I’d planned to jog home.

I wanted to pick up the sweater and the mask first. I was on my way through the parking lot to get them when I saw Patsy and Biff, a cloud of heated breath fogging the air between them. She threw her arms in the air in a dismissive gesture and started to walk away. He went after her and grabbed her arm. Another burly type stepped in to tell Biff to lay off. By then I was close enough to hear what was being said.

“I don’t have to go home with you,” she said angrily. “I can walk.” What struck me, she was wearing sweatpants for warmth, very un-Patsy. The ponytails jiggled merrily with every move she made.

“All I said was, you’re not acting right.”

“Better, then, that you don’t have to put up with me.”

“Patsy,” Daniel put in. “You can ride with me and Melanie. It’s too late to walk.”

Then Patsy saw me. “I can walk with Vinnie. He lives right next door to me. Okay, Vinnie?”

“Sure. Okay.”

Melanie viewed the situation with obvious approval. I think I already knew she wasn’t exactly a member of Biff’s fan club. Patsy and I said good night. Biff stood there until we were maybe thirty feet away. Then he got into his car with a heavy slam of the door and drove off.

“Thanks, Vinnie,” Patsy said. Nothing pathetic or even particularly humble. Like we were friends and friends do this sort of thing for each other.

“Sure.”

“You’re a terrific dancer.”

I shrugged that off.

“My dad taught ballroom at Arthur Murray while he was putting himself through school,” she said.

I grinned. “That’s where I learned.”

“You could’ve asked me to the dance.”

I shook my head. “I really wasn’t sure I’d go.”

“Are girls here so unsophisticated, compared to the ones you know in New York?”

I raised my eyebrows. “We’re still in New York.”

“This is the Island,” she said derisively, and as she went on, she was imitating Brown Bunny. “ ‘There’s all of Queens between here and New York.’ Queens with three e’s,” she told me with a grin.

“She’s from Manhattan?” I leapt at the first opportunity to steer the conversation in another direction. Toward Brown Bunny, toward anyone else. “Your friend, I mean.”

“Does that make her more interesting?”

“Not as a date. You ask a lot of questions,” I said, trying for polite exasperation. It always works in the movies.

“At first I thought you were shy. Now I get the feeling you’re trying to be the strong, silent type,” she said, undaunted. “Has somebody in your past made that seem desirable? Or are you shy?”

“That’s two.”

She laughed.

I started to laugh, too, but I choked it back. Laughter is like a fingerprint. The sound that came out was something of a snort, like I was making fun of the reason for her laughter. There was nothing I could do about it.

She sighed, then muttered, “I’m sorry.” She looked like she’d had a tough evening. “I didn’t mean to sound like my dad. And I didn’t mean to get you involved back there. You’ve had your share of run-ins with him.”

I wanted to reach out to touch her arm, to comfort her. But that would be out of character. I could say something like … oh, I don’t even know, but something that would come off the way I danced with her.

But since then, I’d held her in the darkness. The thought of reaching for her now made me start to shake again. I hoped it would pass for the shivers. We didn’t talk, walking fast because it really was cold.

After a while I became aware of a tiny sound she seemed to be trying not to make, and it sounded suspiciously sniffly. At first I thought she just had a runny nose, it was cold out. Her face was turned slightly away, so I moved in close enough to lean around her as we walked.

A wet trail down her cheek reflected the light from a streetlamp, and when she stopped, I wiped it away with my thumb. Yes, shaking. “I don’t usually have this effect on girls,” I said.

She laughed in a sloppy kind of way, spraying tears on my hand. Standing in the glow of the streetlight, I put my arm around her shoulders and held on, feeling sort of stoic. It was easier that way. She wiped her eyes, letting her jacket sleeve fall over her wrist so that she could use it like a handkerchief.