The Last Picture Show (10 page)

For a time the conversation had the effect of inhibiting Jacy drastically. After she and Duane had concluded they were in love she had taken to allowing him considerable freedom with her body. She had even let him feel inside her panties on a few occasions, but when her mother told her to go ahead and sleep with him she immediately put a stop to that. She felt she had to if she were going to protect their love from her mother's subtle treacheries. Besides, the only times she really enjoyed letting him touch her there was on the school bus.

She even tried to quit letting him take off her brassiere, but Duane complained so bitterly about the loss of that privilege that she finally let him start doing it again. There were a few awkward dates, but in time Jacy became rather proud of herself for the mature way she was handling the situation. She could let Duane kiss her and play with her breasts and yet remain quite cool about it all, protecting them from his passion and her own. Her mother was outwitted and Duane had as much fun as was good for him. Sometimes in church she felt a little like a martyr because of the effort it cost her to keep the two of them morally upright. Her grandmother would have approved if she had been alive and known about it-her grandmother had been a woman of virtue.

Besides, sexual intercourse was supposed to be painful at first, and she knew Duane wouldn't want to hurt her until it was absolutely necessary. There was a time and a place for everything, as her grandmother had always said.

The week before Christmas there was a big county-wide dance held at the American Legion Hall, an annual affair that everybody looked forward to. About the only people that stayed away were the hardshell Baptists and a few of the smaller, eccentric denominations who, like the Baptists, believed that dancing was sinful. In the old days, before the church women of the town had organized, eggnog had been served at the dance, and the men who couldn't tolerate dilution brought their whiskey bottles inside and kept them in the coat pockets while they danced. But when the church women finally organized, they saw to it what drinking was done, was done outside.

This year L.ester Marlow was one of the first people to arrive at the dance. He stood around the almost empty hall for an hour, practicing looking rakish and devil-may-care. Lester was temporarily a celebrity in Thalia by virtue of the fact that, only the night before, he had lost a record amount of money to Abilene in an all-night nine-ball game. He had come out the loser by some $820, winning only 11 of 181 games, but that fact did not dismay him at all. Instead he felt almost legendary for having lost so much, and as he strolled around the silent dance floor he continually adjusted the hang of his cashmere sports coat. He wanted to look like the sort of fellow who was ready to accept all risks. He had not bothered to bring a date, but had a plan involving Jacy that he meant to put into effect at the proper time.

Half an hour later, when Jacy drove up in her convertible, Lester was waiting at the curb, bourbon flask carelessly in hand.

"Why hi, Lester," Jacy said nervously. She knew Sonny and Duane would be coming along any minute.

"I hear you lost some money last night," she added. The sum
had
been impressive.

"Duane coming?" Lester asked at once. Jacy nodded. Any other time Lester would have taken the nod as final, but he had had enough whiskey to be able to set aside his normal caution.

"You know Bobby Sheen, in Wichita?" he asked. "He's going to have a midnight swimming party tonight in his indoor pool. A lot of kids from the club are going to be there. I guess you heard about the last one: his folks were gone to Miami and everybody swam naked. I was there and it was really something. I don't know what they'll do tonight, but his folks are gone again and it's probably going to be pretty wild. If you want to run over there with me after the dance, why don't you? Bobby has great parties."

Lester was smart enough to leave it at that. He rakishly took another sip of bourbon and went back into the dance. Just as he was walking away Sonny and Duane rattled up. They parked the pickup and immediately got in Jacy's car. Duane had noticed Lester talking to her and asked about it.

"Oh, he just wanted to tell me about losing all that money," Jacy said, a little, on edge. She had been all primed to enjoy the dance, but Lester's invitation upset her timing a little and Duane came along before she could think things out.

In a few minutes Sonny got out of the car and went in the dance to see what Mr. and Mrs. Farrow were doing. They were on the sponsoring committee and Jacy felt she and Duane probably ought to go in separately unless her father was already drunk enough not to notice them.

While Sonny was reconnoitering Jacy made a quick decision: clearly she would have to go to the swimming party with Lester. It took a rich, fast crowd to go swimming naked, and Jacy always prided herself on belonging to the fastest crowd there was, moral or immoral. Indeed, for a rich, pretty girl like herself the most immoral thing imaginable would be to belong to a slow crowd. That would be wasting opportunities, and nothing was more immoral than waste. Then too, when word got around that she had gone swimming naked with a lot of rich kids from Wichita Falls her legend would be secure for all time. No girl from Thalia had ever done anything like that.

It was clear that she had to go: the only problem was Duane. He had the night off and was expecting to devote it entirely to her—if she left him at eleven o'clock to go somewhere with Lester it would make him so mad he might even break up with her, and that was to be avoided. She quickly decided that her best bet would be to spend a couple of hours being extremely nice to him, so he would be too much in love with her to be mad when she left. If he was mad anyway she would have to blame it all on her mother -that always worked.

She turned to Duane and started to kiss him, but then stopped and looked at him fondly a moment. "I love you so much tonight," she said. "I wish we could stay together all night."

As soon as they settled into the kiss Jacy turned so that one of her breasts nudged Duane's hand. He was astonished, but not too astonished to take advantage of what was offered him. He pulled her brown sweater out of her skirt and slipped his hand beneath it. Her belly was warm but the brassiere was a cold barrier. It was frustrating to come up against the stiff, cold material when Jacy's warm breasts were just underneath. Duane had experienced that frustration many times before, but it was nothing Jacy usually cared to help him out with; anyway he could hardly expect her to undress right in front of the Legion Hall. Then Jacy broke the kiss with a soft sigh. "Wait a minute," she said. "I don't want to go in right now—let's get in the back seat a few minutes." As soon as they had she edged both her bra straps off her shoulders. Duane slipped the bra down a few inches and her breasts were free. She didn't seem to mind that the tight straps more or less imprisoned her arms. She kissed Duane lingeringly while he touched her breasts and nipples.

Sonny came out to report a minute or two later, meaning to tell the two that it was perfectly safe for them to come in together. Lois and Gene were at the other end of the hall, and both were fairly tight besides. When he got to the car and saw what Jacy and Duane were doing, he hated to interrupt, but he wanted to let them know about Jacy's parents. Finally he rapped on the windshield a time or two and went hastily back inside.

Duane was annoyed that Sonny had even knocked. He was deliriously caressing Jacy's bosom, and gladly would have given up the dance for another hour with Jacy in her present mood. For her part, Jacy was quite ready to go in, though she was careful not to show it. The evening ahead would require delicate timing, and it would be unwise to allow Duane too many goodies right at the beginning. She straightened up and smiled at him, her arms still imprisoned by the bra straps.

"We better go in while we can," she said, turning so her back was toward him. "Would you put my bra back on? I can't manage it without taking off this sweater:"

Her request was a perfect touch. She had never even used the word "bra" in Duane's presence before, and her willingness to let him put the garment on her added a quality of intimacy to the proceedings that more than compensated for the interruption. He reached under her sweater from behind and slipped the straps up over her slim shoulders—when her arms were free she raised them and let Duane put her breasts back in their cups. When he had the bra hooked he held her a moment, feeling very tender and protective.

A square dance was in progress as they entered the hall and Gene and Lois were dancing. All the men loved to square dance with Lois Farrow because if she was in a good mood she was tolerant of a little free-and-easy feeling around. She might be heavier at the waist than she had been once, but she was still a much prettier woman than most of the men saw at home, and they hovered around her.

During the course of the evening Jacy noticed that more people at the dance paid attention to her mother than to her—an annoying fact that she had never noticed before. Her mother was the belle of the ball, and she wasn't. She could tell by the men's faces that they found her mother very attractive, and the same men hardly noticed her at all. Lois was wearing a loose white dancing dress with a low neckline; her hair was combed out long and shook about her shoulders as she danced. Jacy noticed, too, that her mother was wearing some sort of very brief, fashionable bra. The men could see her breasts move as she danced. It wasn't that Lois' breasts were overly large or indecently exposed, exactly; it was just that they were shaped right and exposed just enough to excite the men in the hall. The more she saw the men watching her mother the more annoyed Jacy became. Not only were the respectable men like the bankers and the doctor watching her mother, but the unrespectables were, too: the farmers and oil-field hands and filling-station men. When her mother danced their faces lit up; when she danced they didn't even notice. It was very insulting. Jacy decided that the next day she would point out to her mother that high-necked dresses would be more becoming for a woman her age. She could say it had to do with facial structure and all that, but it might not work. Her mother knew a good bit about facial structure too.

Jacy was somewhat let down to discover that she had fewer admirers among the male community than she had supposed. A close count revealed that she had only two admirers who really counted: Lester and Duane. Sonny admired her extravagantly, but he had no money and had not been in the backfield, so he really just didn't count. Of course almost all the sweaty little sophomores admired her, but they counted even less than Sonny.

Since there was clearly nothing she could do about her mother, Jacy turned her attention back to the swimming party and guided Duane back to the farthest, darkest corner of the Legion Hall, where the couples most in love always danced. In that corner it was possible to dance very close, and an hour or so of really close dancing fitted in perfectly with Jacy's plan. She had known for a long time that boys had erections on dance floors, at least when they danced with her—apparently it was just one of the little common-places of life that pretty girls had to put up with. It had never occurred to her that such a phenomenon could be useful until she began laying plans to get away to the swimming party, when she concluded that the thing to do was make Duane simply delirious with love. If he were delirious, and convinced she was on the verge of giving herself to him, then he couldn't be too mad when she made ready to leave. The quickest way to convince him was by dancing as close as it was possible to dance; so grimly Jacy did it, pressing herself right against him. It was 'so creepy it almost set her teeth on edge, but the effect on Duane was very strong indeed.

"Let's sneak out to the car a minute," he said, his breath hot in her ear.

Jacy knew that wouldn't be sensible. Much better to hold out the promise of a brief trip to the car after she had his reaction to her leaving. Then if he just had to be pacified some way, she could let him put his hand inside her panties. After all, he was very sweet, and had given her a fifty-dollar wristwatch for Christmas.

"I'll go talk to Mother a minute," she said. "Maybe I can talk her into letting me stay out a little later tonight."

She left the dance floor and found her mother in the front foyer, but the circumstances were extremely surprising. Abilene had just come in the door and her mother was kissing him, right there in the Legion Hall. Not only was it a shock to Jacy, but even more of one to the short, pretty brunette Abilene had come in with. Lois was kissing him right on the mouth, and though he seemed a little flushed he was not trying to make her quit. Even when her mother broke the kiss she kept her hands locked around Abilene's neck.

"Merry Christmas," she said, glancing at the brunette, whom she had not noticed. The girl was angry, but she was shorter than Lois and much younger and didn't quite know what to do with her anger.

"Uh, this here's Jackie Lee French," Abilene said. "Jackie Lee, this is Lois Farrow, my boss's wife."

"Hello, Jackie," Lois said.

"I don't have to talk to her," Jackie Lee said, turning angrily to Abilene. "I think she's just awful. What do you mean kissin' her like that, I'm embarrassed to death. I ought to slap her face."

"You can't even reach it, honey," Lois said, smiling at her. "Is your name really French or is that just something you like to do?"

Jackie Lee was absolutely stunned. Her mouth fell open. Nobody had ever talked like that to her before—she was the star barmaid in the tavern where she worked, and all the cowboys and airmen treated her very much like a lady.

Abilene made an amused face and took Jackie Lee by the elbow. "I never come here to referee no fight," he said, moving toward the dance floor. Jackie.Lee went with him, holding her butt in indignantly.

Lois snorted in amusement. "I know what I did wrong," she said. "You're supposed to have mistletoe." When she noticed Jacy she snorted again and went into the coatroom. She had a flask of bourbon in her coat pocket and took a neat nip, fishing in her purse for some Kleenex. The dancing had made her sweaty.