You could always hear David coming long before you saw him; his late- fifties MG had not seen a muffler without holes in more years than anyone could remember. How he managed to keep the thing on the streets was a puzzlement to everyone who knew him or the car. David had the sort of looks that usually draw small-town cops like sugar draws ants: long hair, a Mexican-bandito mustache. And always the latest in freaky clothes. But somehow he managed to elude them, for his racing green MG was almost an institution on the streets between Valley Farms and Alexandria. He never drove his car into the city; because of thieves, he said, but most people suspected it was because the D.C. cops would be less likely to put up with that awful brraaappp!
Lucy Barrett remembered the exact day she first met David; the exact day, the hour, the minute, all of it. It was the night Kate first brought Jerry home with her. Oh, sure, she knew they had been seeing each other. Everyone in Valley Farms knew by that time. But at least until then she had had the decency to keep him out of their home. Her father's home!
And Kate Barrett brought that sawed-off shrimp of a man with his awful pot belly into the study where she was doing her homework and introduced him, just like that. What was she supposed to do, curtsy and pretend she was glad to meet him? That man in her father's house? Well, she didn't, and she was not sorry in the least now as she waited outside the school for David to pick her up. No, not in the least. That was the night she first went to Scottie's, a late-night drive-in hangout not far from Valley Farms, but definitely on the shadier side of the tracks. Lucy had never even felt the urge to go to that awful place, though some of the bolder girls from Valley Farms went over in groups of four or five just for laughs sometimes. Much in the manner that the Park Avenue swells used to go down to the Apollo in Harlem before the blacks declared them non-grata. Lucy went there that night for one reason – to get drunk on beer. She ordered a plate of French fries and a half-quart of beer, just like she had heard the kids did it here; and when it came, she gulped half of it down without a breath. Lucy was no drinker, at least not then, but she had sampled a few different drinks over the years, including a fair share of beer at debutante-season parties and by the pool at the country club. That night, though, she had only wanted to get drunk as quickly and painlessly as possible, and being under legal age, beer was the safest way. She had finished the first and ordered a second when David poked his head in her passenger-side window. Perhaps if she had not downed that large can of beer so quickly, she would have switched on the power window and told him to get lost. Perhaps.
But Lucy invited him inside instead; why not? she asked herself, Mother's at home with her boyfriend. If she can play around with a fat old creep like Jerry Marlowe, then I can pick my own playmates too! she told herself assuringly.
And that was exactly what she did. Call it revenge, getting even, even love, but the end result is the same. Lucy Barrett lost her virginity that night in David's third-story studio apartment in Alexandria. It was all over so quickly she could hardly remember it now; of course, being perfectly soused might have affected her memory a bit. And looking back, she felt not the slightest recriminating pang, not one. She took David home to their Valley Farms house the very next night and treated Kate Barrett to a bit of her own medicine. Of course, John Barrett's charming widow was too much the southern aristocrat to make a scene in front of company, even if the guest was, in her own words, «some degenerate hippie creep and probably an addict as well.» The real scene came later, when David dropped her off at half past three in the morning, but Lucy came out ahead on points at the end of round one by turning up the very next afternoon for five o'clock cocktails at the Club with David firmly in tow. Long hair, sandals, dirty jeans, and all. That was the real beginning of a running battle between the Barrett womenfolk that had dragged on for over a month. Kate Barrett with her «gentleman friend» and Lucy with her hippie.
«Hi, baby, been waiting long?» Lucy was so caught up in her reminiscing that she failed to hear David pull to the curb, and that was no mean oversight with his MG.
«No, just a couple of minutes,» she lied to save conversation. «Let's get out of here, David. I'm just not in the mood for school today. I slept through the business accounting class and I was supposed to see the Dean about being late this morning, but I just cut out.»
«Okay, baby, I think you should have split from that lousy place a long time ago. Who the hell wants to go to school to learn to be a file clerk?»
Lucy reached inside and opened the latch of the tiny sports car and then climbed into the passenger seat, doubling her long legs to get them inside. David leered down between them at the snatch of white as her panties showed momentarily. «Hmm, nice beaver shot there, sweetheart,» he said with a phony Bogart lisp.
«Can it, David,» the well-built young blonde shot back irritably. «Step on the gas, will you, I said I wanted to get out of here. How about a couple of beers at Scottie's?»
He threw the gearshift into first and popped the clutch in a howl of burning rubber. «Scottie's?» he inquired over the raucous din of the finely-tuned roadster. «What made you decide that? We haven't been to Scottie's since the night we met. I thought you didn't like the place.»
«Well, that was yesterday and today's today. Now I'd like to have a beer at Scottie's. And then maybe over to your place.»
David did not need any further hints; Lucy was strangely eager to get into bed today, and whatever the reason, he was game. Lucy was the kind of dish some men lived all their lives without once ever having, and she was his for the taking! «Okay, baby, Scottie's it is. And then my place for dessert, right?» he said with a knowing chuckle.
Lucy turned her head and looked at him blankly. «Don't joke about it, David. I need it today, that's all … I need you!»
David pressed the accelerator a bit closer to the floorboards; he'd never seen her quite like this. And Lucy to practically ask for it. Damn that was almost unthinkable! He glanced to be sure she was looking away and then used the heel of his palm to press down the eager erection that was already bulging in his tight Levi's.