American Boy - Larry Watson [32]
It was close to ten o’clock when Gary Krynicki returned from the garage where the beers that wouldn’t fit in the refrigerator were chilling. “Hey, there’s a carload of girls out in the driveway,” Gary announced. “Mary Gwynn, Bonnie Wahl, and Daniels and McCarren. They want to come in.”
“No!” shouted Otis, jumping up from the card game. “Jesus, if this gets out of hand ...”
While most of us would have welcomed the girls, it was Otis’s party, so no one tried to argue with him when he went out to shoo them away.
Minutes later, Otis returned. “Garth? Debbie wants to talk to you. I think she’s drunk, but I told her I’d give you the message. You can go out there if you like, but they can’t come in. Got that?”
“Shit,” I said. Then I finished my beer and walked out into the cold without bothering with a coat.
As soon as she saw me coming, Debbie rolled down the back window of Mary Gwynn’s father’s cream-colored Oldsmobile. She leaned out and waved, as if she were trying to catch my eye from a great distance. When I arrived at the car, however, Jilly Daniels pushed her way in front of Debbie in order to issue a warning on behalf of her friend. “Matt, don’t say anything that’ll hurt her. Really—”
“I’m not supposed to hurt her? Who do you think—Oh, forget it. Hey, Debbie.”
Debbie extended a mittened hand in my direction. “Matt, I miss y-o-o-o-u-u!”
She was drunk, all right. I’d only seen her in that condition once before, at a party after the Homecoming Dance, but I remembered the signs. Debbie McCarren was vivacious and seldom had trouble making her moods and feelings known. But after a few drinks every expression of emotion seemed artificial and overwrought. Now, for example, she had furrowed her brow and pursed her lips in an attempt to look sad, but the effect was closer to a little girl’s pout, and an unconvincing one at that. That said, her mascara was smeared as if she had been crying, and her cat’s-eye glasses were askew. Her dark brown hair, usually lacquered into a smooth helmet, was mussed as well.
I used the cold as an excuse to jam my hands into my pockets. “Do you?”
“I mean it, Matty. I do.” She leaned even farther out the window, and Jilly pretended to attempt to pull her back into the car. From the front seat, smart-ass Bonnie Wahl said over her shoulder, “Matty? That’s cute.”
“Shut up,” Debbie snapped at her friend. “Can we talk, Matt? Please?”
“About what?”
“About us.”
“I didn’t think there was an ‘us.’”
A light snow was falling, and Debbie batted at the flakes as if they were the only obstacle to agreement between us. “Please, Matt? In private?”
The Valiant was parked around the corner, and I nodded in its direction. “We can talk in Johnny’s car.”
Debbie scrambled out of the car and immediately linked her arm in mine.
Before we could walk away, Bonnie Wahl asked, “What the hell are we supposed to do?”
Debbie shrugged and said demurely, “You can go.”
Jilly Daniels leaned out the window again. “Hey, Matt. If we can’t go in, can you at least bring some beer out? We’ll pay.”
“Sorry. Our supplies are limited.”
“Oh, who needs them,” said Bonnie. “We still have some vodka left.”
Debbie McCarren was short, full-breasted, and widehipped, and she walked with a kind of waddle. She had large brown eyes, a pug nose, and an upper lip more prominent than the lower. She never would have been mistaken for beautiful, but somehow she worked what she had to her advantage.