I opted for the kegged beer and was drawing myself a large cup’s worth when the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it!” Judi shouted. And she rushed off.
I heard her shriek some guy’s name in the front hall and I knew right away I had seen the last of her.
I squeezed my way out of the kitchen and back into the living room. I thought it funny I hadn’t seen Bill yet. I was beginning to think I was at the wrong party. I had been to great beer bashes before, but never a college party. I couldn’t help thinking that all the guys there went to college for the sole purpose of evading military draft. They were all about the same age as me, and even though they were more educated than me, I felt more mature. I had experienced life. What did college kids know about life? What did they know about anything except getting drunk and barfing their brains out? Bunch of knotheads is what they were. I stood in the middle of the living room holding my plastic cup and wearing a hardened scowl on my face. Just let anybody look at me sideways, I thought, and I’d send them home crying for their mommies.
I wished I had worn my field jacket or a fatigue shirt so that everybody, especially the girls, would know I had been in the Army. Then the girls would ask me questions and sit and stare at me while I told them horror stories and made them squirm and cry and feel sorry for me and pat me on the back and stroke my thigh and press their soft cheeks against mine and hold my hand.
But not one of those morons gave me a second look!
Actually, one girl finally did approach me. She was built like a plank, with long curly hair that must have worn out ten curling irons to get into that condition. She wore a strip of rawhide around her head, tied in the back, with a single feather pointing downward. I couldn’t tell the color of her eyes behind her rose colored glasses. Instead of a drink in her hand, she held a daisy.
“Have you seen Allison tonight?” she asked me.
“I don’t know any Allison.”
“She’s tripping bad.”
“What?”
“She came tonight dressed in tears.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“She’s bummed out, man.”
I wanted this girl to leave me alone. I didn’t need any flower children hanging around me. “Do you want to see my tatoo?” I asked.
“You have a tatoo? Where?”
“I have it at home. In a jar.”
“Far out!”
“Yeah, I keep it on the mantle, right next to my grandmother’s head.”
“Oh, wow, man. That’s really far out.”
I gave her a big, toothy grin and the evilest chuckle I could conjure. She looked all around. Maybe she was looking for Allison, or maybe just looking for someone to rescue her from me. She handed me the daisy and walked away.
And where the hell was Bill? Several beers and a dozen cigarettes later there was still no sign of the future corporate leader. Maybe he forgot to invite himself to his own party.
For at least the tenth time I made my way to the kitchen and back to the living room. There was a coffee table in front of the couch with a platter of potato chip fragments and a half empty bowl of dip. I suddenly realized I was hungry. I hadn’t eaten since my five thirty break, and beer and cigarettes did little to quell the need for munchies.
The couch was already taken by a bell-bottomed couple sucking the fillings out of each other’s mouth, and next to them was a half-dead hippie who looked like he hadn’t seen a barber since Westmoreland was a boy scout.
So I knelt in front of the coffee table and scooped out the thick dip with my fingers. No one seemed to notice what I was doing. When I was down to the last finger licking mouthful I heard a voice behind me.
“That would be so terrific with Cheese Doodles.”
I looked up to see the first familiar face of the evening.
“Nancy!” I said, getting to my feet. “Hi.”
“Hi, yourself. What were you doing there? Eating or praying?”
I laughed. “I was a little hungry.” I wiped my fingers on the inside of my hip pocket. She was beautiful. We met for the first time at two dimly lit bars, and although I thought she was attractive then, seeing her at Bill’s was like seeing her for the first time.
She said, “I didn’t know you’d be here tonight.”
“Oh, sure, wouldn’t miss it. You should’ve been here for our high school graduation party. I got so drunk I…well, that was a long time ago.”
“I heard you’re working at the Post Office now. That’s great.”
I was surprised—no, shocked—that she would know that. Had she been thinking about me these past few months? Had she been asking questions about me? Was she warm for my form?
“Yeah,” I said, “it’s a pretty good job. At least it keeps me off the streets at night.”
She giggled and touched my arm. I felt my pulse jump. I asked her what she was going to do now that she was a college grad.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Actually, I am sure, but my parents are against it. They want me to go to graduate school.”
“What is it you want to do?” That’s what I asked her, but what I really wanted to ask her was, Do you want to get naked?
“You’ll laugh,” Nancy said.
“No I won’t. I promise,” I said, holding my hand over my heart.
“I want to be a home decorator.”
“You mean an interior decorator? Someone who tells people where to stick the sofa?”
“No, not like that. I want to…decorate. You know, wallpaper and paint.”
“You want to paint houses?”
“Just the insides. And wallpaper.”
I nodded. “Sounds great.” I said that, but I really didn’t believe it. I couldn’t imagine anyone hiring a girl to hang wallpaper for them. It wasn’t that I doubted her or any other girl’s talent, but I didn’t think we lived in an age where women could be trusted to do what was traditionally a man’s vocation. “What did your parents say about that?”
Nancy shrugged. “They think I’m kooky.”
That’s about what my parents thought about me when I told them I had joined the Army. I didn’t like not having their support. And I didn’t like the idea of Nancy’s parents not supporting her.
“Well,” I said, “I think if that’s what you want to do, Nancy, then you should go ahead and do it. Don’t worry about what your parents say, or what anybody says. It’s your life, you have the right to live it as you want. I’m sure you’d make a fantastic decorator.” As enlightening as that was for me to say, I couldn’t believe I actually said it.
She touched my arm again. “Thank you, Mackenzie. You’re the first person who didn’t laugh at my idea.”
I didn’t understand the attraction I felt for Nancy. I had known other girls, even though I hadn’t dated many, but I never felt for them the same way I felt for Nancy after being with her for so short a time. We went into the kitchen together, each drawing a full cup from the keg. She smiled at me as she raised the cup to sip her beer. I wanted to kiss her right then, before she had the chance to lick away the beer from her lips. I ached for the slender fingers that held her cup to touch me. I wanted to touch her too, and I did, sort of. I just guided