April North (8 page)

“Yes,” she said. “It’s very important for me to be good for you.”

“You were excellent. I never expected you to be as good as you were.”

“I want to be better.”

“You will be.”

“I suppose I have a lot to learn, don’t I?”

“Of course.”

She drew a breath. “Will you teach me, Craig?”

“I’ll teach you.” He turned to her, and his hand found her breast. With the tip of his finger he drew a miniscule circle around her nipple.

“It’s time for a lesson, April.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“I’m ready,” she said.

Craig reminded her to take a shower before she went home. She relaxed under the spray of water, scrubbed herself thoroughly, rinsed the soap away. She dried herself off and dressed again. The perspiration was gone now, and the tell-tale odors of sex were dispelled. She put on fresh lipstick and studied her reflection in the mirror. There were still dark circles under her eyes, the stigmata of incandescent orgasm, but other than that she looked none the worse for wear. It didn’t show, she thought. She would have looked just about the same after an inspired evening of hand-holding in a movie theater balcony. It didn’t show.

Craig was waiting for her in the living room. She asked him how she looked. He told her she looked good enough to eat.

“Not now,” she said. “You’d better take me home.”

He laughed. The car was at the curb. She settled her behind in the bucket seat and he started the motor. The Mercedes came to life and headed down the dirt road like a greyhound after a mechanical rabbit.

“A nice night,” he said.

“The best in my life.”

“I was referring to the weather.”

“Oh,” she said. The air was cool, she noticed, and the stars were bright in the black sky. There was a refreshing breeze blowing and the speed of the sports car increased the flow of fresh air. She filled her lungs with the air, watched tree limbs sway gently in the breeze. It was autumn, and the trees were losing leaves. Yes, she decided, it was a beautiful night. A glorious night.

“You’re right,” she told him. “It’s a beautiful night.”

‘You’re a beautiful girl.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Of course. I told you I don’t lie, April.”

“What do you like most about me?”

He told her.

“Oh,” she said. “I mean next to that. I’m not counting that.”

“Why not? It’s the best part of you, April.”

She giggled. “But you’re the only person who knows about it. What do you like next best?”

“Your hands.”

She had been expecting him to say that he liked her breasts next. His answer was a surprise. She looked at her hands. As far as she could see, they were just hands.

“My hands?”

“They’re neat and dainty and very pretty.”

A boy like Bill Piersall would never have noticed her hands. He would have noticed only those parts of her body intimately connected with sex. Craig was different, she thought. Vastly different.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Don’t thank me. You were fishing for a compliment, weren’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

“A compliment for these.” He let go of the steering wheel with his right and hand and tapped each breast in turn. “These were what you had in mind, weren’t they?”

She giggled.

“Well, they pass muster, little girl. In case you didn’t know already.”

Craig pulled the car to a stop in front of her house. He told her it was only midnight and she could not believe him at first. She felt as though she had spent at least ten hours in bed with him. He opened the door for her and walked her to her front door. She took a key from her purse and fitted it in the lock.

“I’ll see you soon,” he said.

He did not kiss her. She smiled and he turned and walked back to his car. She pushed the door open, stepped inside, and closed the door after herself.

Her mother was knitting in the living room.

“You’re home early,” she said.

“Not so early.”

“Well, early enough. Sometimes older boys don’t respect a young girl’s curfew. They don’t understand, being accustomed to keeping late hours themselves. But this Craig seems like a very thoughtful young man, April.”

“He is, Mom.”

“Your father likes him,” Mrs. North went on. “Says he has a good head riding on his shoulders. And I must say he gave me the same impression, April.”

She kept her smile back. So her father liked Craig.

God, maybe he’d offer him a job in the drugstore. That would be just the place for Craig Jeffers. She could see him now, filling prescriptions carefully and methodically. Well, she thought, there was something else he had filled, and he had done a magnificent job of it.

“Did he buy you dinner, April?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Where?”

“The Coachman,” she said, naming a popular middle-class restaurant in Xenia. If she told her mother about Kardaman’s, Mom would never believe her.

“That’s a fine place, April. Did you enjoy your dinner?”

“Yes, Mom. It was nice.”

“Well, it’s a nice place. I hope it didn’t cost him too much money?”

“Not too much.” She smiled inwardly. Craig had placed two twenties and a ten on the table to cover the bill plus the tip. But there was no point in telling her mother about that.

“Although he seems to have quite a bit of money. That car he drives must have cost a pretty penny.”

“Well, his parents left him some money.”

“Of course,” Mrs. North said. “Well, money never hurt a good man. Your father used to say that it was as easy to fall in love with a rich girl as a poor one. Of course, he married a poor one in the end. But just the same—”

“Yes, Mom.”

It was getting good, she thought. Now the old lady was hearing wedding bells in the distance. She could hardly wait to tell Craig.

“April? You didn’t kiss him goodnight, did you?”

“Why? Did you watch, Mom?”

The woman blushed. “Of course not,” she said crisply. “I wouldn’t spy on you, April.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I just noticed that your lipstick wasn’t smeared. My, you used to come home from dates with other boys with your lipstick smeared all over your face.”

“Oh, I see.”

“But you didn’t kiss Craig?”

“No, Mom.”

“Did he try to kiss you?”

It was very hard to keep from laughing. The whole idea of a long discussion about a goodnight kiss with a man who had just taken her to bed for several hours was ridiculous in the extreme. But she managed to keep a straight face.

“Not on the first date,” she said.

“My,” her mother said. “Your Craig really is a gentleman, isn’t he?”

“Yes, Mom. He is. I’m pretty tired, Mom.”

“Well, you just run along to bed, April.”

She started for the stairs. She was tired—that was true enough. And she did want to get to bed. But more than anything else she wanted to end what was becoming the conversation of a lifetime with her mother. If this bit went on much longer she was simply going to crack up laughing and that was all there was to it.

“April—”

She sighed. “Yes, Mom?”

“I was concerned about your going out with an older man, you know.”

“I thought so, Mom.”

“I’m not concerned now. Older men are more settled, April. They don’t feel compelled to prove themselves. I think you’re probably—well, safer with an older man, April.”

This time, as she ran headlong up the stairs, she laughed hysterically. It was just too much, just too funny.

6

APRIL focused her eyes upon the small leather-bound hymnal and sang the words to the song in a small clear voice. She did not really have to study the words, since the congregation sang
God Bless America
each Sunday in an effort to prove that a theory holding Protestant churches to be a hotbed of communism was markedly untrue as far as Antrim, Ohio, was concerned. Still, by looking at the hymnal she could avoid looking elsewhere. Elsewhere took in a lot of ground. Elsewhere included the minister, and April North was young enough to have trouble looking steadily and soberly upon the steady and sober countenance of a minister of God just a few hours after a night of scintillating sin. That the minister would have approved of April’s conduct was highly doubtful. And, although she hardly suspected that he could guess her conduct from the expression on her face, she preferred not to look at him.

Elsewhere also included Bill Piersall a few pews forward, Danny Duncan a little to her left, and Jim Bregger across the aisle on her right. She seemed to be surrounded by boys who either had gotten into her or who had tried. Bill, for one, qualified on both counts-he had taken his pleasure with her in the woods and he was ready for more.

She did not want to look at them.

                  
G-o-d bless A-m-e-r-i-c-a—

                  
Our home, s-w-e-e-t ho-o-o-ome.

God bless everything, she thought. She closed her hymnal and returned it to the rack where it belonged. She turned to kiss her mother and her father in turn, then followed them all out of the church. Sunday, she thought, should be abolished. What a God-awful way to spend a morning.

She had never objected to church before. Previously she had even looked forward to it. It was uplifting, in a way, and after a morning spent sitting primly in a clean dress between her parents in the small church she had generally felt a great deal better. But the time she had spent with Craig had changed her feelings on the subject. Craig was almost violently anti-religious, and after being with him she felt the same way.

She remembered an incident from the night before at his house. They were in bed together at the conclusion of their second bout of lovemaking—her “lesson”—and he looked at her suddenly and said, “You can go to hell now.”

She didn’t get it at first. She stared at him, thinking that he was telling her to get out and never darken his doorway again, and she wondered what she had done wrong. But he explained soon enough.

“You can go to hell,” he repeated. “You’ve committed a cardinal sin and you can burn eternally as punishment for it. Do you know what you’ve done?”

“What?”

“You’ve slept with a man without being married to him. You’ve parted your lily-white thighs without benefit of clergy. This makes you a sinner, April dear.”

“I don’t feel like a sinner.”

“You don’t look like a sinner. Even with your pretty nipples pointing at the ceiling, you somehow don’t resemble the popular stereotype of the sinner. Do you feel sinful, April?”

“Not just now,” she joked. “Give me a minute to catch my breath, Craig.”

“Do you know what the only sin is?”

“What?”

“Self-denial,” he said solemnly. “That’s the only sin in the world.”

She closed her eyes briefly. Craig was right, she thought. He was living a good life, a life better by far than that of the sanctimonious hypocrites who cluttered up the world. You only live once, and the value of your life could be measured by the amount of pleasure you received in the course of that one lifetime of yours.

Suppose I had stayed a virgin, she thought. And suppose I was walking along the road and a car hit me. And killed me. And suppose I died a virgin. She opened her eyes. Bill Piersall was standing in front of her, a determined look in his eyes, his hands planted firmly on his hips. He was wearing a dark blue suit. It was the only suit he owned, and he wore it once a week, to church and once or twice a year to a formal dance—these were the only times he wore a suit

“I have to talk to you, April.”

She wondered how many suits Craig owned. At least a dozen, she decided. And a dozen sports jackets and a dozen pairs of shoes, and he probably paid as much for his underwear as William Piersall paid for his whole precious blue suit.

“You can’t keep on giving me the cold shoulder like this, April. It’s not right.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“April—”

“You don’t seem to understand,” she said haughtily. “I do not like you. I do not care for your company. You bore me and annoy me.”

He drew a breath. “I know what it is,” he said.

“Do you?”

“I was reading,” he said. “In a book.”

“I didn’t know you could read.”

He went on doggedly while she wished he would simply give up and go away. But he would not. “I read about it,” he said. “About what happens with a girl like you. You see, you’re a good girl. Deep inside you’re a good girl.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“And you’re not cheap,” he pushed on. “So what you and I did, it made you feel all guilty. You get it? And you make up for this feeling guilty by taking it out on me. You don’t want to blame yourself, so you blame me.”

“You ought to be a psychiatrist.”

He missed the sarcasm. “I read it,” he said. “In a book.”

“That’s the best place to read things.”

“They have stuff like it in newspapers, but the books are better. I could lend you the book if you want. You could read about it and know it better.”

She yawned.

“What I want to tell you,” he went on, “is I respect you.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“And I’m not just after you on account of sex or anything. I wouldn’t even want to do it with you any more. I just want to be your friend.”

She laughed now. She laughed in his face, imagining how Craig would roar when she told him about it.
I just want to be your friend.
It was too much.

“Can we be friends, April?”

“Distant friends.”

“I’ll keep my distance, April. I mean it. I just want us to go out on dates and things, and go for rides, and maybe have cokes together and talk—”

“Distant friends,” she repeated. “Miles apart. In order to keep our relationship pure. I think we should see each other rarely. Otherwise our bodies will pull us together.”

“Sure. I mean—”

“We’ll see each other once a year,” she said. “At Christmas time. We’ll shake hands solemnly and go our separate ways. That way we won’t run into danger of fleshly sins. That way our love will be a pure love, William.”

He scratched his head. “You talk funny,” he said.