About Schmidt - Louis Begley [82]
But you do have sex!
Yeah, when he wants to. It’s like I told you. We hang out. He’s not the love of my life. I just don’t want him to go crazy.
She slid over and whispered: Don’t look like that, darling. You can do anything you want with me, always. I told you I belong to you. And I’ll be faithful to you. I want to be. Just be very careful at the restaurant, promise? And, please, don’t get mad about Bryan!
He wanted to have her full attention. When the hockey game was over, very cautiously, as though he were stepping out of a car barefoot onto the surface of a parking lot that was baking hot and covered with shards of glass, he put the question: The love of your life, who is he?
She laughed and with her toes tickled the foot he had left touching her.
It’s you, you dummy.
Then, seriously: I was kidding. It was a long time ago. I wasn’t even fifteen. An old guy, like you. He broke me in. Man, I really loved him.
How did it happen?
It was real weird. I had this boyfriend, a Jewish kid. Was he cute! We used to go to the chemistry lab after school. He had the key, because he was like the best student and was always working on special projects. So after he locked the door we’d lay on the floor and fool around. It was pretty wild, but I wouldn’t let him fuck me. I was real scared of getting pregnant. My father would have killed me.
Schmidt noted her hand working under the covers. The memory was exciting her.
One day we’re in the lab and Frank has me on the floor with my legs spread as far as they can go and my T-shirt off when the door opens and the lights turn on. Guess what: Mr. Wilson walks in right on top of us. He was the chemistry teacher. So he had a key too. Was I scared! He could have got us both thrown out of the school. Instead, he’s very polite, says he is sorry, and leaves, locking the door. Frank was afraid he’d bother me and ask me to do stuff, but nothing happens. He just says, Hello, Carrie, when he sees me in the corridor and smiles and then the school year is over. I told you my father worked for the Board of Education? One day during the vacation I’m on Livingston Street, so I go to see him, and when I’m leaving Mr. Wilson gets into the elevator with me. I almost died!
Meanwhile he looks at me real cool like he’s taking my clothes off and says, Let’s have a cup of coffee or a Coke. We sit down in this booth in the luncheonette and he tells me what a good student Frank is, and what a nice guy, and asks if I’m serious about him. I say I don’t know. Then he tells me how girls should be careful and how it’s too bad to learn about love on a dirty floor. Believe me, it was unreal!
I believe you.
You can’t believe it! This old man, maybe even a couple of years older than you, but nice looking—he looked a lot like you but bigger, not fat just big—he’s talking to me about birth control, and how a guy doesn’t need to come inside the girl if he’s careful and crazy stuff like that; only, the way he talks about it it’s real beautiful, and he tells me he used to be a professor at some university. Then something happened and he had to be away for a couple of years. When he got back, his job was gone, and that’s why he’s teaching high school.
So I finish my ice cream and he finishes his coffee and he kind of winked at me and said it’s time to go home. By this time, I was acting pretty fresh, and I asked if he had to go back to his wife and kid. He just laughed and laughed! No, he says, there are too many girls in the world. Wasn’t that a cute line? He lived just a couple of blocks away, so I said I would walk him home, and I kept kind of bumping into him on purpose, to tease him. So suddenly he grabbed me by the elbow and said very quiet: You’ve got some cunt. I saw it. I want to fuck you. It was like I was melting. I tell you, Schmidtie, I thought I couldn’t get up the stairs I wanted it so bad.