Muscles tightened under the red shirt, a spasm of remembering for no special reason the agony of undressing in the gym locker with perspired, perfumed bodies crowding her against the steel cabinets, the gagging, hot-faced bewilderment of her own nakedness and theirs. “It’s sharp. I mean, it goes together.”
A horn sounded and the girl spoke again. Under the heavy black lashes, the pastel eyes looked vaguely amused. “Listen, I gotta go. What’ll it be tonight—butch?”
Lon handed back the menu. “Large chocolate Coke.”
Violet didn’t move. “You heard me.”
“I said, large chocolate Coke.”
“Oh, Christ, come t’ the party. You slow on the uptake, butch?”
“My name’s Lon Harris.”
“Lon. Hey, that’s cute. You just cruisin’ or did somebody tell you ‘bout me?”
“I just got a taste for a Coke.”
“Sure you did!”
“I did.” Lamely, Lon added, “I hadn’t much else to do.”
“I bet you didn’t know I work here,” the girl teased. “No, not much.”
Helplessly, Lon sensed insinuation. “What difference would that make? I don’t know anybody you know. Anyway, what difference would it make?”
Violet’s eyes widened. “No kiddin’, you don’t know any of the kids?”
“Oh, I know kids, but….”
“Our kind a kids?” Then with something like awe. “Holy Mother, you ain’t that dumb! I’d a swore …! Oh, Jeez, I woulda swore!” She looked over her shoulder as if to check the nearness of others. “I hang out at The 28%. Ever hear of it?”
“What’s the 28%?”
“Gay joint. Private, jest girls. I know all the kids hang out there.” She lowered the hoarse voice. “Wanna go?”
“When, tonight?”
“Crazy. I get off ten-thirty.”
“I don’t know.” Lon’s glance fell to the low-slung jeans. “I’d have to go home and change.” And added sheepishly, “I didn’t bring … money.”
“I get paid tonight. Go on me.”
“What is it, some kind of girls’ club?”
“Yeah, a gay club. Where the kids c’n dance. They have beer an’ Coke—you know.”
“I’d have to change,” Lon said again.
“Nah, what for? Saturday night the butches wear good pants, but Friday night who cares?” She reached through the window to pat Lon’s cheek. “Stick around, hon.”
A blast from a front-row M.G. shook Violet from the window. “Ah, have y’self a hemrich, why dontcha?” And then to Lon, with the soft sound of old intimacy, “I gotta hop, sweetie. Don’t go. I mean after, when you drink your Coke. Stick aroun’!”
Lon stuck around. Stuck after the syrupy drink tasted like melted ice and after three visits from the girl whose brows were a thin black pencil-line. Once she slipped into Luigi’s phone booth to call home and tell her mother she had met some of the girls from school and was going to the show. And the fourth time Violet returned to the car, she had changed into purple toreodor pants, a bulky white sweater and spike-heeled gold slippers. Her mouth wore a fresh coat of orchid-pink lipstick and she smelled of violet cologne.
She bounced into the Plymouth, snuggling deep into the scratchy upholstery before she pulled the door shut. “You’re a doll, waitin’ aroun’. This girlfriend of mine, she moved up t’ Stockton an’ I’m playin’ the field nowadays. I sure am glad t’ get a lift.” Lon chugged the old car out of Luigi’s lot, into the street.
She drove purposefully, following Violet’s instructions, glad of the heavy Friday-night traffic that absorbed her wondering exultation. And Violet rattled on. The girl with the lavender hair seemed compelled to reveal in minute detail the story of her life.
She was nineteen. She lived in a rented house at the wrong end of the Valley. Her mother was out of town, workin’ grab joints on the fair circuit which is what the old lady had been doing since they had left Cicero, Ill. That was after her old man beat the old lady up so bad and her an’ the old lady had grabbed a bus for California, which was sure funny because one time in Chicago, before they moved to Cicero, they had lived in this flat on a street called California. How ‘bout that? Violet was not insensitive to the strange twists of fate.
“I worked grab,” she told Lon. “Jeez, I got so I come near pukin’ if I smelled a hot-dog.” But her old lady didn’t trust her around the carnies or the carnies around her. Which was okay by Violet because she was makin’ good hoppin’ cars, not on’y in the fair season but all year. And which brought up another subject. “We’re Bohunks. What’re you?”
Lon turned from the wheel, guessing at the question’s meaning. “Welsh and English descent.”
“Well, we’re Bohem’an. My real first name is Fialka. That means Vi’let. My last name’s Polivka. You know what that means? Soup. Vi’let Soup. Ain’t that a kill? Vi’let Soup.”
Some of the tension eased away. Lon could laugh at this.
“Guys usta say, ‘How’s about a little hot soup?’ Horka polivka. Jeez, it usta make me so mad.” She remembered another important factor. “We’re Cath’lic. You Cath’lic?”
“My folks go to the Methodist church,” Lon told her. It would have taken too long to explain that God Tikitehatu and Goddess Hiuapopoia had produced life on the Island.
Violet grudgingly said, “I was scared maybe yez were Baptist. Or them Witnesses. Methodist ain’t too bad.”
Lon laughed again. And to sober her, Violet said, “My old man froze t’ death in a car barn. How ‘bout that?”
“Froze?”
“You think it don’t get cold back East? Wow!”
“Gee, what a rough thing to have happen.”
Violet laughed now, a tin-pan musical convulsion. “Oh, yeah? Try an’ tell that t’ my old lady.” Then, evidently remembering, reporting dutifully: “Another reason I stay home, this carny got me in trouble. We had to adopt the baby out, this place called St. Vincent’s Foundling. You think I don’t cry about that sometimes? Never again, believe you me, kid. She woulda been two years old. Jeez, I talk like she’s dead. I mean she’s two years now an’ you know how cute you c’n dress kids that age. But Holy Christ on a bicycle, I mean t’ tell you I had a hard time. I bit clean through my hand, if you wanna know. I could show you the scar, even.”
There was another world beside the other people’s world and her own. Maybe there were thousands of worlds, millions of worlds, one of them in purple pants and who knew how many others? Lon gunned the Plymouth to be on the safe side—to be sure she by-passed the new Buick when the light on Vineland Avenue turned green. And listened to the mysteries of a world much stranger than her own.
“So this bookkeeper where I worked—that was in this supermarket before I started at Luigi’s. She was butch, same as you. All she ever did was wanta sit around her place makin’ out. Jesus, I like t’ get out, so that’s why we broke up, but she made sure I got wise. I got more kicks with her than that damn lousy carny, an’ no hospital,