What You See in the Dark - Manuel Munoz [88]
A vulgar fact. The ugly privacy of marriage.
The two brothers living in suspicious bachelorhood, one going up to San Francisco to live luridly, the other quietly expected to care for their parents once they aged.
Understood facts, no matter that they were vulgar. People said that was what San Francisco was becoming.
So it must be true.
No wonder people applauded the picture when it ended. No wonder they stood up in an excited buzz, the film a respite from their lives, the ugly things they knew. No wonder the crowd took its time to file out of the theater, the house lights brought up, the tiny stars on the ceiling extinguished. Handsome men with mustaches, cowboy hats, shiny belt buckles, all of them walking protectively behind their dates, all of them guarding the women they intended to marry. At the theater, a date was for display. Not like at the drive-in, not like at the grocery store, not like at the café. But eyes everywhere locked on each other in regard, men looking from the safety of where they stood, behind their dates. How many times had men looked at that girl, looked up to see Dan Watson looking back at them, their eyes filled with a different knowing?
Traffic rumbled, headlights all along Union Avenue, as patient as the lines to exit the theater. Some cars drove off toward the Bluebird, toward El Molino Rojo. Married couples drove on to the side streets to their dark homes, the taillights lonely along the road. Everyone else, it seemed, had headed to the Jolly Kone, all the ones in between, too young to be going to the bars so late, too young to be married quite yet.
That was the night in question. People went to the bars to drink or to the Jolly Kone for a burger or right on home. Good married couples went right on home.
None of the ladies who came to the shoe store ever knew about the Jolly Kone. They never knew about the drive-in. The things that went on in both places. You never said a word about the boyfriend taking you there.
The large neon sign lit bright in yellow and blue, an ice cream cone with a grinning, welcoming face. Large orange heaters glowed overhead at the order windows, all the young men with hands in their pockets to keep themselves warm. Dan Watson and that girl had eased right into one of the choice slots, right under the awning near the door.
At the window, a large-breasted teenage girl, blue paper hat pinned in place. She grinned slyly at Dan Watson, her mouth suggesting a banter than involved more than the order. He leaned in, looking up at the posted menu as if he’d forgotten what to say. The waitress stared at his Adam’s apple, not minding the wait, but she glanced over at the Ford where that girl sat, as if she’d felt a stern glare coming at her, and the unspoken possession brought her back to jotting in her notepad, closing the window. Dan Watson stood outside under the orange heaters, waiting, and once again it was all there for everyone to see: how steady and strong his back looked, his plaid shirt pressed and tucked in snug at the waist. He was taller than Ricky Nelson, surely, but a survey of the other men milling around, carrying food back to their cars, showed how he stood out. That one was squat and powerful in the legs; another too thin and slender in the chest; yet another had wide, flat buttocks.
Everyone hungry, everyone eating. Dan Watson walking back to the Ford with a box of burgers and greasy fries. The Jolly Kone ice cream sign looked down at everyone with its neon grin.
In the car, your whistle-clean boyfriend pointed to the paper cup of soda lodged between his legs, the two straws poking out of it.
“Thirsty?” he asked.
The pretty, large-breasted waitress shot a stare over at the Ford.
“I’m kidding,” he said, but his hand slid over in the shadowy darkness of the car and settled on your knee.
“Not with all these people around,” you said.
“Nobody can see,” he said, and this was true. People held greasy