The Lonely Lady (4 page)

He nodded.

“Maybe I will ask my father then.”

Her father agreed that it was a good idea. He had noticed her development and the sudden interest the boys had taken in her and had been concerned that when school was out there wouldn’t be enough to keep her occupied. Once he had given his approval and arranged the interview with Mr. Corcoran, her employment was assured, since the bank held the first mortgage on the club.

Until school closed she worked weekends only. Mid-days she served lunch by the pool. On Saturday night she was at the clubhouse dining room.

Lunch was not a problem, because the menu was simple—hamburgers and hot dogs mostly and a few other sandwiches with side orders of cole slaw, potato salad and french fries. Once lunch was over, about three thirty, she was on her own until six o’clock, when she reported to the main dining room to help set up the tables.

The three other girls with whom she worked in the main dining room had already put in two seasons at the club and knew the ropes. As a result, JeriLee found herself stuck with all the dirtiest jobs. Dinner was also made more difficult by the fact that the maitre d’ and the chef were Italian brothers who created an air of panic by screaming at each other in Italian and at everyone else in broken English.

After school closed and the summer families were in residence, there was a dance every Saturday night. Small orchestras were brought from the city, and when the dining room closed JeriLee and the other girls would drift over to the bar where the dance floor had been set up and sit on the terrace listening to the music and watching the members dance. Bernie was one of the two boys who bused the small cocktail tables set up around the dance floor, and she would wait for him to take her home, usually around one o’clock in the morning.

His father had gone in with him on the purchase of a 1949 Plymouth Belvedere convertible, and the payments took up almost all of Bernie’s salary. During that summer, between his responsibilities for the car and his job, Bernie seemed to acquire a maturity along with the dark summer tan and the sun-bleached hair. He was no longer a boy.

The girl members at the club also had their effect on him. As lifeguard at the pool, he was one of the few boys who were always around and so it was inevitable that they would try to exercise their charms on Bernie.

JeriLee saw it when in the afternoons she would change into a swimsuit and go out to the pool to cool off. The girls were always sending him for Cokes or cigarettes or towels or asking him to help them with their strokes or dives. She felt a twinge of jealousy as she saw Bernie glow under the attention. But she never said anything that would indicate she had noticed.

Instead she would slip into the pool and begin to swim back and forth in strong steady laps until her arms were like lead. Then she would climb out of the pool at the far end, away from his lifeguard’s chair, stretch out on a towel on the concrete edge of the pool and read a book. When it was time for her to return to work, she would gather up her towel and leave the pool without a backward look.

After a while Bernie began to notice and one night on the way home he asked, “How come you don’t talk to me when you come down to the pool in the afternoons?”

“Keep your eyes on the road,” she said, not answering his question.

“You mad at me about something?”

“No,” she said shortly. “You know the rules. Mr. Corcoran doesn’t like the help to mix when the members are around.”

“Come on, nobody pays attention to that and you know it.”

“Besides, you’re always too busy.” Her voice took on a New York tone. “Bernie, is my stroke too short? Bernie, I would love a Coke. Bernie, would you get me a light?”

“You sound like you’re jealous.”

“I am not!”

“It’s part of my job,” he said defensively.

“Of course,” she said with a note of sarcasm.

Silently Bernie followed the road that led out to the Point. He pulled into the parking area overlooking the Sound and stopped the motor. There were only a few other cars parked, their motors off and the lights out. It was still early. When the clubs and bars closed after two o’clock, the area would be full. A faint sound of music came from one of the car radios.

He turned and reached for her. She brushed his hand away. “I’m tired, Bernie. I want to go home.”

“You are jealous.”

“I just don’t like them making a fool of you, that’s all.”

“They’re not making a fool of me,” he said quickly. “I’m supposed to be nice to the members.”

“Sure.”

“Besides, there’s not one of them that can hold a candle to you, JeriLee. They’re all so phony and artificial.”

“Do you mean that?”

He nodded.

“Even Marian Daley?” Seventeen and blond, Marian Daley had always been indulged by her doting parents. She wore the briefest bikinis at the club and was said to be even wilder than the New York girls.

“She’s the phoniest of them all,” he said. “The boys know she’s the biggest teaser around.”

Without knowing it, he had said exactly the right thing. She softened. “I was beginning to wonder,” she said. “She never lets you alone.”

“She never lets any guy alone,” he said, clinching his case. He reached for her again.

She slid next to him, lifting her face for his kiss. His mouth was warm and soft. After a moment she let her head fall on his shoulder. “It’s so quiet here,” she said softly.

“Yes,” he said, raising her face to his and kissing her again. This time his lips were harder and more demanding.

She felt his excitement and her own response. Her heart began to pound. She opened her mouth slightly and his tongue found its way inside. A warmth ran through her, leaving her peculiarly weak. She pressed herself harder against him.

His hands slipped from her shoulders, cupping her breasts. He felt her nipples hardening. “Oh, Jesus!” he moaned softly, fumbling with the buttons of her blouse.

Her hand caught his, stopping him. “No, Bernie,” she said softly. “Don’t spoil it.”

“You’re making me crazy, JeriLee,” he whispered. “I just want to touch them. Nothing else.”

“It’s not good. You know it leads to other things.”

“Oh, Christ!” he swore, suddenly angry. He pulled his hands away. “You’re a worse tease than Marian Daley. At least she lets a guy feel her tits.”

“Then you did go with her,” she accused.

“I did not!” he retorted, lighting a cigarette.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to smoke.”

“I’m not in training,” he snapped.

“Then how do you know about her if you didn’t go with her?”

“I know some of the guys who did. And I could have too.”

“Then why didn’t you? If that’s what you want?”

“I don’t want her. I want you. You’re my girl. I don’t want any other.”

She saw that his face was hurt and troubled. “Bernie, we’re much too young to feel like that,” she said gently.

But even then she knew that there were currents running inside her that were bringing her closer and closer to the brink of her own sexual awareness.

Chapter 5

“You’re new around here, aren’t you?”

She was lying face down at the side of the pool and when she opened her eyes the first thing she saw was his white city feet. She rolled to one side and, squinting against the sun, looked up.

The boy was tall, not as tall or broad as Bernie but wiry with curly black hair. He smiled. “I’ll buy you a Coke.”

She sat up. “No, thank you,” she said politely.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re all friends here.”

She shook her head. “I work here. It’s against the rules.”

“Stupid rules.” He grinned and held out his hand. “I’m Walt.”

“I’m JeriLee,” she said. She took his hand and found herself being pulled to her feet.

“I’ll buy you the Coke anyway,” he said. “I’d like to see them try and stop me.”

“No. Please. I don’t want to make waves.”

She picked up her towel. “Besides I have to set the tables for dinner.” She started to walk away.

“Maybe I’ll see you at the dance later.”

“We’re not allowed to do that either.”

“Then we can go to a juke joint.”

“It will be too late. I’ll have to go home then.”

“Something tells me that you don’t want to go out with me.”

Without answering, she hurried away, a strange feeling knotting the pit of her stomach and creating a trembling in her legs.

She saw him again with a group of boys and girls in the dining room that evening. He was seated next to Marian Daley and seemed engrossed in her conversation. When he glanced up and saw her walking by, he nodded and smiled. She went through the swinging doors into the kitchen feeling once more that strange sensation of weakness. She was glad that he wasn’t at one of her tables.

“Coming to the dance?” Lisa, one of the waitresses, asked as they were putting away the last of the dishes.

JeriLee finishing drying her hands. “I don’t think so. I think I’ll just go home.”

“They say the singer with the new orchestra is just like Sinatra.”

“I’m too tired. If you see Bernie tell him that I’ve gone straight home. I can still make the eleven thirty bus.”

“Okay, see you tomorrow.”

“Right,” JeriLee replied. “Have fun.”

She heard the faint sound of the music as she walked past the clubhouse. In her mind she pictured the dance floor.

He was dancing with Marian Daley, who was pressing herself tightly against him. Her full breasts swelled over the top of her dress and she was smiling wet-lipped into his face. He was looking down at her and dancing even closer than before. Then he was whispering something in her ear. She laughed and nodded and a moment later they were leaving the floor on the way outside to his car.

It all seemed so real that for a second she expected to meet them in the parking lot. She began to hurry as if to avoid seeing them, then she stopped abruptly.

JeriLee, she said to herself, what’s the matter with you? You must be going crazy!

“Going to the bus, JeriLee?” said a voice from behind her.

She turned. It was Martin Finnegan, one of the beach boys who bused in the dining room on Saturday nights. They all thought he was rather strange because he kept mostly to himself. “Yes, Martin.”

“Mind if I walk with you?”

“Okay.”

Silently he fell into step with her. They had walked almost a block before he spoke. “Did you and Bernie have a fight?”

“No. What makes you think that?”

“I never saw you take the bus before.”

“I was just too tired to stay for the dance tonight. You never stay for the dances, do you?” she asked.

“No.”

“Don’t you like to dance?”

“Sure.”

“Then, why don’t you stay?”

“I have to be up early to go to work.”

“You don’t start on the beach until ten thirty.”

“I work at Lassky’s Sunday mornings and have to be at the station at five to pick up the New York papers.” He looked at her. “During the week you get the
Herald Tribune
every morning, but on Sundays you get the
Times
as well.”

“How do you know that?”

“I make up the papers for the home routes. I know exactly what papers everyone reads.”

“That’s interesting.”

“It sure is. It’s amazing how much you can learn about people just from knowing what papers they read. For example, your father’s boss, Mr. Carson. His favorite paper is the
Daily Mirror
.”

“The
Daily Mirror
? I wonder why.”

He smiled. “I know why. It’s the only paper that has complete race results from all the tracks in the country. I often wonder what people would think if they knew that the president of the only bank in town played the horses?”

“Do you really think he does?”

“Lassky calls it the closet horse player’s
Green Sheet
. That’s strictly a horse-racing paper.”

They were almost at the bus stop. “Are you going steady with Bernie?” he asked.

“Bernie is a good friend.”

“He says you’re his girl.”

“I like Bernie but he has no right to say that.”

“Would you go out with another guy if he asked you?”

“I might.”

“Would you go out with me?”

She didn’t answer.

“I haven’t got the money that Bernie’s got an’ I haven’t got a car but I could spring for a movie and a Coke one night if you want.” There was a hesitant tone in his voice.

“Maybe we’ll do that one night,” she said gently. “But if we do, we go dutch.”

“You don’t have to do that. I could afford that much, really I can.”

“I know but that’s the way I do it with Bernie.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“All right then,” he said, smiling suddenly. “Gee, that makes me feel good. I wanted to ask you out so many times but I was always afraid to.”

She laughed. “It wasn’t too difficult, was it?”

“No,” he said. “One night next week?”

“Sure.”

The bus squeaked to a stop in front of them and the door opened. He insisted on paying her fare, and since it was only a dime she let him.

“Gee, JeriLee,” he said, “you really are very nice.”

“You’re not so bad yourself, Mr. Ginnegan.” She noticed that he had been carrying a book. “What’s that you’re reading?”

“
The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan
, by James T. Farrell.”

“I never heard of it. Is it any good?”

“I think so. In some ways it reminds me of my own family. It’s about an Irish family on the South Side of Chicago.”

“Will you lend it to me when you’re finished?”

“I got it from the library. I’ll renew it and give it to you next week.”

She looked out the window. They were nearly at her stop. “I get off here.”

He got up with her. “I’ll walk you to your house.”

“You don’t have to do that. I’ll be all right.”

“It’s almost midnight,” he said firmly. “I’ll walk you home.”

“But you’ll have to wait a half hour for another bus.”

“That’s okay.”

At her door she turned to him. “Thank you very much, Martin.”

He shook her hand. “Thank you, JeriLee. Don’t forget you said we could go to a movie.”