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By Root 24592 0

brought back to him, with too much clarity, what was ahead of him, the problems and responsibilities he would have to face. He felt weak and powerless before them, and with his face clouding he began to pity himself, to feel almost as sorry for himself as he did for Catherine. Christ, what was he going to do? Himself, a father! How would he act, and what did he know about bringing up a kid? And the dough. Yes, goddamn it, he knew now what money meant. And while he began to under-stand such things, there were all those people here having a good time, all these fellows and girls flirting, some lads breaking the ice with girls they would lay and leave, and maybe others starting off with them on a road that would lead to the same place as Catherine’s road and his own had led to. Why couldn’t he have just made her, and then left? But how could he? Jesus, he couldn’t take a run-out powder on her. And he didn’t know if he wanted to, either. But he was out here at the beach to forget and have a good time.

“Yes, well, I’m nineteen,” an almost flat chested, pertly attractive girl was saying nearby to a group of three fellows.

“And wouldn’t I hate to hang until you reach seventeen.”

“Well, hang then.”

“Yes, Nellie, he’s just a cynical old dope, isn’t he?”

“If he tries hard and studies late at night, he might be a dope. He’s not even that yet,” the girl said, throwing sand at one of the fellows, jumping up to run screaming toward the water, pursued by them.

Hot little teaser, Studs thought, imagining how those fellows would grab and handle her in the water. His eyes met Catherine’s, who also had been watching and listening. They smiled knowingly.

He laid his face downward in her lap, his right arm slung under his closed eyes. She toyed with his hair, and he liked the caressing touch of her fingers. So often he’d seen other fellows at the beach with their heads in girls’ laps this way, and he had envied them. Well, some guys would be plenty dumb to envy him now.

“My darling little boy,” Catherine whispered into his ear.

The world closed out of his mind, and the beach with its noises seemed far away. He was only half-awake, and he felt her fingers twining through his hair. Christ, if only life could be forever like this, no worries, no thinking of money, duties, responsibilities. If he had never to lift his head from her lap, and could just go on forever and forever feeling just like he did now.

He sat up blinking, squinting his eyes as he glanced around the beach. A girl, full and sexy, passed in front of him, kicking sand as she walked heavily, and he wondered how she would look naked. A bald-headed man sat in a family group about ten yards in front of him, and he watched the sun reflecting on the man’s dome.

“Say, tell me now, no kiddin’, you’re a Polack, aren’t you?” a fellow on Catherine’s right was saying.

“Say, I don’t catch your meaning.”

“Meaning, baby, I know some meaning.”

“I ain’t that kind of a girl. Ha! Ha!”

A bitch. Still, he’d like to be lining her up. But what a lousy thought to have, so unfair to Catherine. Putting her in this jam and then wishing he was lining up some bitchy broad who sounded like the kind that favored only friends and had no enemies in pants. Wanting girls who wouldn’t walk two steps for him, when he had Catherine who would go to hell for him. He must have the streak of a real bastard in his make-up.

He looked covertly at Catherine, and a horror like a cold sweat came over him. He saw her again as if she were a stranger. He didn’t know her. Didn’t know what went on in her head. He didn’t feel that he would ever know her. He wondered how he could ever love her, and was this all that love really was?

“I wonder what time it is?” she asked moodily.

He shrugged his shoulders, and then noticed that she was looking thoughtfully ahead at those in the water and hadn’t seen him shrug his shoulders. Was she having the same kind of thoughts that he was having?

“I don’t know what time it is, but it must be about four o’clock.”

“I was just wondering what time it was,” she said abstractedly, and