Rock Island Line David Rhodes (ereader iphone .txt) 📖

ever wanted anything. He refused even to talk to Butch about it, and his little cement room, which just the day before had been perfectly fine, felt like a slum and shamed him. Worries of personal inadequacy beset him.

At a quarter to seven he began to wait, although across the street. What had been tempered with better emotions was now pure fear. At seven thirty (according to the clock in the drugstore) he crossed the street. She hadn’t come. Of course, he thought. All along I knew she wouldn’t show. As he stood in the appointed place, his pride dangling from him by a string, several boys he knew yelled at him from out of a car and he waved,hoping they wouldn’t stop. They didn’t, but tossed out a half-empty can of beer at him. He jumped back to avoid getting wet and flipped the bird at them, laughing. They returned it, and raced on down the street.

When he saw her round the corner a block away, he couldn’t believe it. From that far away her long legs and small waist were evident. Wow, he thought. Someone yelled an obscenity at her from a moving car, but she didn’t turn her head, walking as if she hadn’t heard it.

“Hi, Charlotte,” he said, when she was up to him.

“Hi,” she returned, but he couldn’t help thinking her voice expressed more—a desire to have never come. The hostility was still there. “Let’s go.”

They began walking.

“Where are we going?” he asked hesitantly.

“We’re going to a movie, remember?”

“Oh yes, so we are, so we are. Which one?”

“That’s up to you, you’re the boss.”

He smiled and blushed.

They went to the theaters on 14th across the street from City Hall. Eating pizza, they chose a movie about reincarnation and radiation, where insects were born with human minds, paid and went in.

After some time he put his arm around her in the dark obscurity and she leaned her head back on his arm; but he couldn’t force himself to go further, and she took no initiative to encourage him.

When the movie was over he said, “Let’s watch it again.”

She said, “It wasn’t that good. Too much fake.”

“Everything gets better, second time around. Most books, for instance, never really make sense until the second time through. The Case of the Thread, for example—” he began, wanting to show his literary knowledge, but was interrupted by a man behind them leaning forward and saying: “Shut up or get out.”

“Stuff it, shithead,” mumbled July.

Walking with her out of the theater and into the street, experiencing that sensation of passing out of looming fantasy and into realness, July wished his parents could see him—without any fears, self-doubts or apprehensions, a beautiful, mysterious girl on his arm, her eyes wild and dark. They went to Baker’s Drug Store and drank cherry sodas and July told a slightly altered account of when three toughs had kidnapped his cat.

When they were back on the street again he wanted to get her to walk in the park, but she didn’t want to. The hostility had not returned, but a kind of obstinacy was beginning to rise. They wandered from store window to store window, agreeing and disagreeing on the worth of the items on display. At a certain point he realized that she had begun a slow navigation toward home and that he wouldn’t be able to turn her back. Each step was a step into the closing of the night. He fought against it, but there was nothing he could do. And then:

“I’ve got to leave you here. It’s been fun. I’ve had a great time.”

“I’ll walk you home.”

“No. I wouldn’t like that.”

“It’s not safe for you out alone. There’s too many monsters loose. This is the weekend they let them roam—once a month. Keeps down on the state’s food budget.”

“Well, they wouldn’t go for me. I’d be a bitter pill to chew.”

July wished desperately to say something here about how he’d like to chew on her, and the very idea of biting her made him fill up with heat. Instead, he said quite seriously, “You aren’t afraid of me, are you?” and looked away.

Charlotte burst into a fit of laughter. “How sweet you are!” she exclaimed, moved quickly to him and kissed him firmly, tenderly, but quickly on the mouth. “But I must go.”

“Again,” said July. “When will we see each other again?” The sensation of the kiss almost knocked him down. “Give me your phone number.”

“Stop it. I told you I couldn’t do that. I said, ‘Only once. Just once.’ ” July looked at her. His face was as though he’d been publicly whipped. “Damn you,” she said. “I told you not to go thinking anything about me. We could never be together. Damn you—I told you that.”

All July could do was stand there and nod his head. After she said, “I’m sorry,” and turned to go, he said, “Just once more . . . one more time.”

A terrible moment ensued. At the end of it, she agreed. He feared it was only because she thought he might cry. She promised to meet him for a matinee movie on Saturday—but nothing more . . . and that was to be the end of it. Then she left. July felt naked, alone, and watched every inch of her disappear around the corner.

He followed her from a safe distance. She went a few blocks, then turned west and began walking in the shadows close to the buildings. At one corner in the middle of a very ominous-looking neighborhood, where the houses were three-story stone and the lights inside made them seem like rows of tremendous horses’ skulls with candles ritualistically set inside that gleamed from the eyes and nostrils, Charlotte stopped and stood for several moments as though trying to decide where she wanted to go. Evidently making up her mind, she set off again and soon entered one of those horse skulls with only one nostril glowing. Broken windows on the third floor.