Winning is Everything (13 page)

23 

Smashingly drunk and boisterously spirited, the hundred partygoers approached the dilapidated yellow school bus headed for who-knew-where and were immediately greeted by the sight of all fifty windows soaped over, so no one could see out. Only the window in front of the bus driver was clear, and a small curtain had been rigged around and above his seat to prevent anyone else from peeking past him.

“Welcome to the mystery bus ride,” said the attractive blond “stewardess,” a hostess from the Kodak Pavilion Ron had hired for the evening, as guests boarded the bus. Dressed in furry “bunny ears,” with pendulous breasts popping provocatively from a dark bathing suit, the “stewardess” looked like a runaway from Hugh Hefner Airlines.

Once the guests and the SRO’s were seated (or standing) and lastminute confusions were cleared up (there were a few would-be party crashers and several of the Ford folk who hadn’t purchased tickets, now sorry, trying to get on), the doors were shut and the bus took off for the Long Island Expressway. Ron had given one of the hosts a free ticket in exchange for bringing along his guitar and starting a sing-along. The “stewardess” walked up and down the crowded aisle handing out cans of beer and containers of coffee. She also passed around aspirin and airsick bags for those passengers too far gone for caffeine.

The ride down the viewless highway was a huge success, and people sang along with the guitarist or sipped beer or sobered up on coffee or checked out for a fast nap. An hour and twenty minutes later, at five after two, the bus pulled into a driveway in East Hampton at an oceanfront house heavily under construction, nearing completion.

“This is it!” Ron announced loudly. “Everyone out! Don’t wander too far. We leave from here at five-thirty in the morning; right after sunrise. Have a good time and for God’s sake, party, party, party!”

The Ford horde vomited from the bus (literally, in some cases) and found a welcoming committee of Gary and Kip waiting for them at what would eventually become the front door.

Eager guests scurried into the dark, cavernous rooms and were each handed party favors of tiny yellow Japanese flashlights which had a decal of the fair’s Unisphere on them. They lit their ways down dark hallways until they arrived at an entranceway draped by a dark blanket. As they walked into what would eventually become the enormous living room, they found several hundred small votive candles lighting up the room. A three-piece band composed of seventeen-year-old musicians started banging out rock ‘n’ roll, and couples immediately began to dance. In each corner of the room was a large metal tub with a huge block of ice and a huge metal ladle. The tubs were filled with Hawaiian Punch and vodka, a nonalcoholic Kool-Aid, and a lemonade with rum. Pick your poison.

The future living room was one of the rooms in the house that still had no roof over it, and since it was a clear October night, couples were fortunate enough to be dancing under the stars.

The living room led to an enormous, as-yet-railingless deck, and beyond that lay the beach and ocean. At a given signal Kip ignited a bonfire on the sand. Revelers cheered with delight at the sight of the pyrotechnics and hurried outside to see the blaze. As the soaring flames subsided, the party began to split up.

People strolled along the beach or sat around the bonfire. Inside, they danced beneath the stars in the candelit living room and drank. Ron had figured, correctly, that people would be looped by the time they got to the beach, so he had made alcohol one of his smallest investments, putting very little amounts of rum and vodka into the various punches. No one complained.

Gary was standing next to the lemonade-and-rum concoction, helping ladle out paper cupfuls of refreshment, when he spotted Hamilton Forsyth leaving the living room, heading toward the beach. Curious to know the answer to something that had been pestering him for months, he handed the ladle over to the next taker and hurried outside.

“Ham!” Gary called. “How’re you doing?”

“Oh, drunk like everyone else, I guess,” said Ham. “You should tell your friend Ron to do this sort of thing for a living. He’s got quite a Midas touch.”

“He already knows,” said Gary.

“True,” Ham agreed.

“Can you tell me something, Ham? Something in confidence?”

“Probably,” said Ham, placing a hand on each side of his waist. “Shoot.”

“Well … this isn’t the easiest thing to discuss. But I was wondering what was it … that made you decide to invite me to that … uhm … party with all those guys last summer?”

“Relax, Gary.” Ham laughed. “It’s no big deal. You weren’t obvious or anything. One of the guys working with us in the Product Salon thought you were real cute, that was all. He asked me to invite you on the off-chance you might accept.”

Gary was silent.

Hamilton placed a brotherly hand on Gary’s shoulder. “Naturally, when you did show up, it sent several tongues wagging. Do you want to know who your admirer was?”

“I told you before, Ham—”

“I know,” Hamilton finished Gary’s thought. “You’re a straight-shooting, pussy-happy, all-American heterosexual boy. Don’t talk to me, pal. Took me five years of solid therapy before I came out of the closet. All I know is, for the first time in my life I’m relaxed. I can finally look back at myself in the mirror each morning without hating myself. Be straight. Be crazy. Be anything you damn well please. Just be yourself and be happy.”

“That’s all I want to be, Ham. Honest,” said Gary. Then jokingly he asked, “Okay, Ham, tell me … who was it had the hots for me?”

“You really want to know?” asked Ham.

“Why not?” asked Gary. “Curiosity killed the cat. Let’s see what it can do for me.”

“Okay, pal,” said Ham. “You asked for it. It was me.”

Ham smiled at Gary, and Gary smiled back, unsure how he should react. “I … guess I’m flattered,” he said. “How ‘bout we go back to the house, back to the party, have a drink together, toast the end of the fair?”

24 

Back at the house, Gary and Ham stood in a corner of the living room having a Kool-Aid punch. Gary was convincing himself that he was being liberal until he spotted Kip talking with the Kennedy boys, Mike and Jack.

Gary suddenly felt very embarrassed talking with one of the acknowledged homosexual gentlemen from the pavilion. Casting Ham’s feelings aside, he made a fast excuse, claiming he had to discuss plans with Kip for the bus trip back to the city.

Gary hurried over to the other side of the room, eager to stand next to the “real guys,” and walked into a conversation about skydiving.

Mike Kennedy was going on about how he and Jack had finally gotten all the information and how they could now hardly wait to sign up. Knowing his blood pumped best when surrounded by danger, Kip, too, was saying he could hardly wait to jump.

That left Gary, who was so taken by the he-manly excitement of the moment that he too chimed in, saying, of course he’d been waiting forever to don a parachute and step out of a moving Cessna.

So it was agreed. Mike Kennedy said he’d make arrangements, and Gary, full of bravado, pounded a fist into an open hand, suggesting it was only too bad they couldn’t leave for the airstrip at that very moment.

By four in the morning only the most diehard party-people were still flailing bare arms and torsos on the bare wood dance floor. Upon Ron’s orders to de-stimulate, the band segued into a series of slow foxtrots. The slow music did, indeed, have a tranquilizing effect upon the party.

The bonfire dwindled to embers.

Ellenor wandered the upstairs hallway sipping the {last of her rum-spiked punch as she scouted around, checking various corners for just the right spot. Then she leaned her back to the wall and slid slowly to the floor. Patience, she told herself. She knew he’d pass by sooner or later, and she was willing to sit there till dawn if necessary. I’ll just finish my drink, she told herself, slowly, sip by sip, and wait right here while my eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. He’ll be by. I know he will. Eventually.

At five o’clock Ron asked Kip and Gary to go around the house informing scattered guests they had half an hour to finish up their dances, their naps, their fumblings in the dark. Kip went upstairs, moving slowly from room to room, his small flashlight a beacon before him. When he turned the corner of a seemingly endless hallway and walked into still another dark room, a pair of hands reached out from the darkness and encircled his waist. “Who is it?” he asked.

“The wild-bear-hugger!” said a small female voice behind him.

“Really?” asked Kip. “I didn’t even know a wild-bear-hugger had been invited to the party.”

“The wild-bear-hugger goes everywhere.”

Kip removed the soft hands from around his waist and turned to try to see his embracer. He could make out the silhouette but little else. He raised his flashlight and was about to shine it in the mystery lady’s face when she said, “Please … no flashlight.”

Kip put the flashlight back into his hip pocket. He had recognized the voice. “Hi, Ellenor,” he said.

Ellenor dropped her hands to her sides. “Damn! How’d you guess?”

“What can I say? Enjoying the party?”

“I’m a little drunk,” said Ellenor.

“You and everyone else,” said Kip.

“Where you going after the fair?” asked Ellenor.

“Not sure,” said Kip. “Going to find some way to become an actor.”

“So you’re not going back to Philadelphia?”

“I’m certainly not going back to Philadelphia. And right now I have to make sure everyone knows we’re leaving in less than half an hour.”

“Where we going?”

“Back to the city,” said Kip, starting to walk past her. In an eleventh-hour attempt to get his attention, she reached out and grabbed his hand.

“What’s up?” asked Kip.

“I’m sorry,” said Ellenor, moving closer to him. “I’m always this way with you, aren’t I?”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, you know,” said Ellenor. “Stupid and clumsy. I wish you’d give yourself a chance to get to know me so I could stop throwing myself at you.”

“Well …” Kip tapped the bottom of Ellenor’s chin with his fingers. “There’s not much time. We leave here in twenty minutes.”

“But I think we could really get to like each other. After all, we’re both left-handed …”

Kip looked down, trying to think of something kind to say.

She spoke first. “And we’re both Leos.”

“Anything else?”

“Sure. I was a theater-arts major and I bake and sew and make my own Christmas cards; and you act and eat and rip your socks and get Christmas cards, I’m sure you do….”

“You’re absolutely right. This
is
a small world.”

“Tell you the truth,” said Ellenor, taking a step closer to him. “I’ve always sensed something extraordinary about you. Don’t you feel that way about yourself?”

“No,” said Kip firmly. “What I sense right now is great discomfort.”

“Why’s that?” Ellenor wanted to know.

“Because you’re standing on my shoe.”

Ellenor looked down. Why, so she was. “Why, so I am,” she said. “How unobservant of me.” She shifted her foot so it was no longer resting on his. “Better?”

“Much. Thanks.”

“Would you kiss me?” Ellenor finally asked, blurting it out.

“Kiss you?”

“Kiss me. To say good-bye. I’m a wonderful kisser.”

“I’m sure you are … I can tell from the shape of your lips.”

“Look, I know I’m throwing myself at you, but …”

Kip took Ellenor in his arms and brought his lips down to meet hers. For a long minute he kissed her solidly on the mouth. Then very gently he straightened up and said, “I’ve got to get going.”

“I understand,” said Ellenor. “Thanks for the kiss.”

Kip looked down at the dark figure before him. It was not an unfamiliar situation. Back at Lehigh there had often been one or two girls hanging around outside the locker room waiting to see him, lonely sophomores who had latched onto him as their romantic interest. He could never feel less than grateful for their attention. Reaching forward, he lifted Ellenor’s chin and softly kissed the middle of her forehead. “Well …” He smiled. “You were certaintly right about one thing.”

“What’s that?” asked Ellenor.

“You are a wonderful kisser.”

Without thinking, Kip again brought his face down to meet hers. This time it was a kiss full of passion and genuine sensuality, the intensity of which surprised them both, Kip because he suddenly found himself so excited, Ellenor because she was so surprised to find herself in his arms.

When at last their lips parted, Kip smiled boyishly, and then, with a small wave, he turned and left the room.

A tear ran down Ellenor’s cheek. She wiped it with her index finger and put it to her mouth to lick the salt.