(IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT, PART 2)
"Ahhh...So what did you do last night?"
“Didn’t she tell you?”
“I’d rather you did. Gives us something to talk about.”
“I went to the Paradise.”
The Loew's Paradise movie theatre on the Concourse, with a blue ceiling that looked like sky and had white clouds moving along it. When he was small, he really thought it had no roof.
“What did you see?”
“Shane. They showed it again.”
“Saw it too. Great, huh?”
“I really like the Jack Palance character. As soon as he rides in, everybody hisses.”
“Can I ask you?....Did you go with ..a guy?”
“I went with Rita. I asked her to tell you.”
“Ahh.”
“Didn’t she tell you?”
“A little bit, yes.” She did study for the Algebra test. Rita didn’t LIE. “Just not…everything.”
“I told her to tell you.”
This issue apparently dispatched with as far as Annie was concerned, she asked,
“Can I play the radio?”
He supposed that’s what they were for. He hadn’t turned it on yet.
He said, “The Yankees are playing the Red Sox tonight.”
“Don’t you like r and b?”
“Yeah, but the Yankees game…”
“The Red Sox always lose.”
“They win some games.”
“Against the Yankees?”
“Sometimes. The Yankees are only one game ahead on the season.”
“How about we do both? Listen to some songs, and the game? Half and half.”
“I can’t promise if something is happening in the game I’ll go back to rock and roll right away.”
“I wish I had a radio.”
“You don’t have a radio?”
“Of course I have a radio. I meant a portable. I have a big Philco home. Who wants to stay home?”
“You can invite friends.”
“Did that all winter. Its spring now.”
Yeah, it was, and it held promise, even if tonight, and every night, were going to be a little of Alan Freid giving out The Penguins, Johnny Ace, The Platters, Elvis, Georgia Gibbs, Clyde McFadder (nothing wrong with any of that) and a little of Mel Allen broadcasting Yankee baseball from Yankee Stadium, a mile away: (“That ball is going, going, it is gone..”)
With Denny’s vantage toward Rita and Carolyn, he could see them in what seemed confidential conversation, heads close together, listening, he knew, to music on the same radio station, WINS, and while the Five Satins were remembering that night in May, when the stars were bright above, in the still of the night, in Swing Patch under a three quarter moon, lit by the dim spill of a of a street corner lamppost, Rita and Carlyn's lips brushed unmistakably for just a moment.
Annie hadn’t seen that, but it gave Denny encouragement, if only because he could now contemplate such a thing as not only being an actual possibility, but a likelihood if attempted.
He thought about putting his arm around her two nights ago, and not knowing what to do next. What did he think was next? It was as logical as Algebra. He didn’t put his arm around her this time. His mentor didn’t have her arm around Carolyn, she just seemed to touch her lips with hers as they were talking, as if it were the most natural thing two people having a conversation would do. And in certain situations, wasn’t it?
Like at Swing Patch on a balmy spring evening, the girls wearing their sexy colored jackets, open now, knowing soon they wouldn’t be able to wear them at all, the weather would be too hot.
So he didn’t need to put his arm around her first and seem like he was sneaking up on her to do something she wanted him to do, and this time he asked, “Okay to put my arm around you again?”
“Sure.”
She definitely wasn’t afraid of him any more. Rita had made him…human, he hoped, not funny. Same shoulder underneath the same vinyl. Odd how bony wasn’t so bad now. With her jacket zipper open, he couldn’t tell if Annie had breasts or those lumps were because she’d put a bra on to encourage a couple to grow, but he knew some things already from experience. If they were real, that was great, and if they were just foam padding, that was what he had been wanting for a long time, since his first encounter with a breast substitute.
The way she faced him in response to his arm around her, face tilted at kind of a forty five degree anticipatory angle, told him he didn’t have to ask to kiss her, that would be dumb, so he just did it.
The Five Satins rooted, “Sho dodin sho be doe / Sho do din shoh be wha…”
He just touched his lips to hers, then stopped, but looked into her brown eyes. He knew there was more that could be done than that, soul kissing, but he also sensed, not yet. He was still afraid she’d reject him.
But what to say?. Lacking any skills there, he brushed her lips again, and this time she pushed out a little bit of tongue that was barely there between upper an lower plates, and he of course reciprocated, though she’d set a barrier. They stopped again, but kept the visual contact, in fact hadn’t closed their eyes at all.
She said, “That was nice.”
“Have you ever been kissed before?”
How To Talk To A Girl, Beginners 1. Better to say nothing and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt. But she blushed at that question, and didn’t answer. He guessed that was to be expected, and if the answer was yes, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know who with .He just wasn’t generating conversation by asking a question she didn’t answer, and he still couldn’t think of anything to say, so he kissed her again. This time they kissed longer, though no deeper. It seemed to give both of them cover. She probably wasn’t so adept at this forced talking either, and they wouldn’t be expected to talk with their mouths full.
When they stopped this time, he thought, maybe a little humor, and at the same time show some appreciation for her form. He said, with what he thought was an obvious attempt at levity,
“How would you like to go steady?”
She said, “Okay.”
“That was a joke.”
“It was?”
Shit! He did it again. She said yes, and he was rejecting her. And there was Rita going to hear about this.
“I was just joking when I said I was joking.”
“You shouldn’t joke like that.”
“You’re right.”
“Can you ask me again so I know you mean it?”
“Look…Annie…I don’t have a school ring…”
“I don’t want a ring.”
“I’m just explaining. I lost my eight grade graduation ring. It was too big for me…” SCAN-lon!
“I don’t care. I mean, I’m sorry you lost your ring…” He had her doing it. “But I don’t care if you give me a ring..”
“You’re my girlfriend?”
“I was going to make you ask me again to be sure, but I don’t think I have to.”
“We’re going steady?”
“Yeah.”
They sat some more in silence, but not so uncomfortably now, until finally she said, “I love your radio.”
“I can’t give you that”
“I just want to hold it.”
Hold it? Like a pawn shop? Like the police? Like…?
She explained, “You know, when we’re together. Like now.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad at all, Annie. I’d let you hold the radio, you know, like a ring, but---my mother wouldn’t--- let me.”
“I understand.”
“She bought it for my birthday.”
“I didn’t think you bought it, Denny.”
Beyond Annie, he saw Rita and Carolyn sitting intimately, talking,, and was beginning to suspect an ulterior motive for Rita’s affinity for him. Annie had loved Rita’s radio too. Maybe Rita had had to come to terms with that and was moving on. Skinny Dinny conveniently came out of nowhere two nights ago and put his arm around Annie. Well, so what? It all seemed to be working out just fine for everybody.
That was how he got his first girlfriend .In the beginning, they met every night at Swing Patch. Sometimes Rita and Carolyn were there, sometimes not. There was a separation now between Annie and Rita, and after a while Annie started going with him to the Gillespie Park circle, where he usually hung around, to meet his friends.
It was idyllic, and even if it was just holding his radio she loved, he’d accept that.
Life was okay. It was good. So good, something had to happen.
CONINUED UNDER THE HEADING; STORY 7, PART 3