Then, as if on cue, Sharon came walking down the street. Her thick auburn hair streamed in the wind.
'Hello, sexy,' said she, approaching.
'Hello, precious darling,' Smiths said. He embraced Sharon and began stroking her silky auburn hair.
Sharon eyed me conspicuously over Smiths's shoulder. It was a look that screamed, 'You could have your arms around me and be stroking my silky auburn hair right now, but you screwed it all up, you loser!'
I cleared my throat.
Smiths and I spent a lot of time together that summer. Smiths ate peanut butter sandwiches and spoke of Russian history while I smashed a tennis ball against his garage.
'I have a girlfriend,' Smiths told me one day.
I turned around in such shock that the ball I had just whacked came back and hit me in the cheek.
'You're not supposed to be that surprised, Alfie,' said he. 'Come on.'
'Sorry, man,' said I. I well knew it shouldn't have come as such a shock; but Smiths was pasty, reclusive, and in the habit of snarfing sandwiches. How could he have a girlfriend and I not?
Of course, there was Samantha. We hadn't had a tryst in at least five days, though; I was burning for her, and she always seemed occupied.
'I'm happy for you,' I told Smiths. 'It was about time you got a girl.'
'Thanks,' Smiths said.
But I stopped. . .my blood suddenly ran cold. . .I turned my gaze back on Smiths.
I said, 'As long as it's not Sharon, that is.'
After parting ways with Samantha, I stumbled home and snuck quietly into the house, only to find my mother perched near the doorway, reading a novel in the light of a reading-lamp.
'You're still awake, Mum?' said I.
'Yes, Alfie. Why's your hair so mussed?'
'Um. . .it's the style now, mother. Yes. . .it's square to look groomed. Ostentatiously casual is in.'
She looked up from the book. 'I understand, Alfie.'
I pretended not to notice the knowing quality of the look. She'd known about the dance, she'd once been sixteen herself, she understood young men in a sly way. I said, 'We danced good-naturedly for an hour and a half, drank non-alcoholic beverages such as water and V8, and split ways in the parking lot, well before any lascivious behavior had a chance to occur.'
The crickets chirped loud outside my window that night.
A small wooded path opened almost imperceptibly in the otherwise dense forest on the right side of the lane. We glanced around to make sure no one was watching, then plunged deep into the trees.
'I think you're going to like this, Alfie.'
'I do already,' I said, and she turned back and kissed me.
After traveling about fifty yards down the path, we came into a sort of clearing. It wasn't as dramatic, certainly, as it would have been in the daylight, but it was still almost thrilling.
'Here I show you the Abandoned House.'
'That's magnificent,' said I. 'Might there also be an Abandoned Bed somewhere within?'
'Not on a first date,' Sam said.
'I was kidding, Samantha.'
'I wouldn't mind any other activities we might do in a dark, abandoned house on a mysterious night, though,' she said, with a naughty look in my direction. 'We enter here.'
