Going All the Way (12 page)

Gunner gingerly took the book in his hands. It was called
From the Danube to the Yalu
, by General Mark Clark.

“The Yalu River,” Gunner said, by way of a comment.

“Turn to the opening,” Mrs. Armbrewster instructed.

Gunner flipped a few pages and came to an underlined part that said:

In carrying out the instructions of my government, I gained the unenviable distinction of being the first U.S. Army commander in history to sign an armistice without victory.

But when I signed the armistice, I knew, of course, that it was not over—that the struggle against Communism would not be over in my lifetime. The Korean war was a skirmish, a bloody, costly skirmish, fought on the perimeter of the Free World.

Gunner coughed and said, “Well, it was bloody all right.”

“You go on reading that—you were there, you deserve to know the real meaning of it,” Mrs. Armbrewster said.

“And you”—she nodded to Sonny—“you were in Information here at home. We need more information like
this
—”

She handed him a copy of the new
Saturday Evening Post
, folded to the editorial page, which she had marked in red:

All over the country nowadays the Communists are busy in a vast and silent infiltration, moving skillfully into a wide variety of local, regional, and national groups. No pro-Moscow orations bubble from their plausible lips. They appear to be sincere, hard-working liberals, eager for the success of the organizations in which they have become active, including unions, parent-teacher organizations, Democratic clubs, and in a few cases even Republican clubs.

There was no one you could trust, Sonny figured. The editorial went on to say:

And yet this insidious operation is a part of the Communist Party's effort to re-establish the popular front.…

“Oh,
Mother
.”

Sonny looked up and saw DeeDee Armbrewster standing at the door of the study. She had her hands in fists on her hips, looking as if she'd caught her mother showing her personal diaries to the guys or baby pictures of her in the nude. DeeDee wasn't too political, herself.

“Hi, Deeds,” Gunner said, standing up and going toward her.

“Gunner.” She smiled.

He kissed her the way you kiss a girl in front of her mother, and said, “You remember Sonny Burns, don't you?”

“Oh—of course,” she said, looking at him blankly.

“I must talk with you young men again soon,” Mrs. Armbrewster said as they started edging from the room. “Every day counts.”

“Right!” Gunner affirmed with great gusto, taking DeeDee's arm.

“Yes, ma'am,” Sonny said.

They all three piled in the front seat of the car, DeeDee in the middle. She had on a sleeveless summer dress and Sonny felt nervous, touching her brown bare arm. She was one of those cool, confident girls who always seemed to be beyond his reach. She wasn't any great beauty, but she had a firm little body and a fine-boned face with perfect teeth and brown eyes that seemed to look right into you, not afraid of anything, and that rich kind of dark chestnut hair that was thick and clean and caught the sunlight just like the hair of girls in those advertisements for diamonds.

“Were you snowing my mother this time?” she asked Gunner. “Or was she snowing you?”

Gunner laughed and said, “Listen, I'm in like Flynn with your old lady now.”

“I bet. Big War Hero. God, if she only knew.”

“Whatya mean?”

“Nothing,” she said and leaned up and gave Gunner a little nip on the ear.

Buddie was wearing a peasant blouse and a full skirt and those black flat Capezios that always reminded Sonny of boats stuck on the feet. In Buddie's case, he noted, pretty big boats, at that. She looked very homey, like one of those healthy Dutch girls carrying pails of milk. She reminded him of the sort of girl you'd like to have for a sister.

When they got to Gunner's place, the girls went right to the bathroom to comb their hair and fix up, although they had presumably been doing just that before the guys picked them up. Gunner took Sonny to the kitchen, where he had made a whole big thermos of seabreezes. He poured one for Sonny to taste, and Sonny gulped about half the glass and pronounced it just right. It tasted almost like straight grapefruit juice; you hardly even noticed the gin. That was the beauty of the seabreeze. You could load a hell of a lot of gin into the grapefruit juice and still barely taste the gin, so a girl would drink it down easily and not feel like she was really boozing it up, and before she knew it she was happy. And friendly. It was a favorite drink for taking on picnics and blanket parties.

Gunner poured drinks for the girls when they came out, and put on a record of Chet Baker and Strings. The new cool jazz was very soothing, very relaxing. And yet it wasn't too obvious, like putting on Frank Sinatra love songs right away. DeeDee said she wanted to hear all about Korea and Japan, and Gunner got out his photographs. DeeDee and Buddie and Sonny sat on the couch and Gunner sat cross-legged on the floor and passed up the photos, which went from hand to hand. Sonny kept sneaking glances at DeeDee's pointy boobs. The left one had her diamond Theta pin right on the tip of it. Buddie had a pretty nice pair, but you couldn't see them through the baggy folds of her peasant blouse. Sonny poured another seabreeze and let his mind float off with the music. “Love Walked In.” “What a Difference a Day Made.” That soft, sexy trumpet. Cool to make you hot.

Gunner was telling the girls about Zen and pouring more drinks. These weren't the kind of girls you could just take into an apartment and lock the door and turn the lights off, even if you'd been screwing them for years. They were Nice Girls. You worked them up to it, got them in the mood, so they could be sort of surprised when it happened, let it seem like they didn't have any idea what was coming at all.

For all of Sonny's problems he at least was thankful he wasn't a girl. Some of them really got the short end of the stick, if you really thought about it. The ones who made out with guys and weren't in the right clubs and came from big, poor families usually got the reputation of being sluts. But you take a girl like DeeDee, she was always in the in group, and in the top clubs and sororities, and she wouldn't do it with a guy unless she was going steady or pinned or chained to him, and that made it all right, that wasn't being whorish or anything, even though if you counted up, she had gone steady and been pinned and chained to a hell of a lot of guys, ever since she'd been a freshman in high school. But getting laid by all those guys didn't count against her. Also, it didn't count against her to do it with a guy she
used
to go steady with or be pinned or chained to; after all, if you were once in love, who could know when the old spark might not be rekindled? All in all, if you figured it out, DeeDee Armbrewster had probably fucked a pretty fair number of guys between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one, but there wasn't a guy or girl in town who would have thought her promiscuous. She wasn't a slut; she was a Theta.

Buddie was a nice girl too. She and Sonny had gone steady for a while in college. They couldn't get pinned because Sonny didn't have a pin, and while some of her Sisters in Tri Delt frowned on that (they were always trying to fix her up with Greeks), she was such a swell kid that it didn't really hurt her reputation, her standing as a Nice Girl who it was O.K. for anyone to marry.

Sonny noticed that DeeDee was laughing a lot, louder than normal, and he realized everybody must have had four or five seabreezes. Gunner turned out the big overhead light and put on a record of Frank Sinatra songs for lonely lovers. They were songs by the new “mature” Sinatra, but as far as Sonny could tell, the main difference was that the old, immature Sinatra songs were good for getting teen-agers hot, while the new “mature” ones were good for getting people hot who were already out of college. That was O.K. with him.

Gunner pulled DeeDee up to dance with him, and she slipped off her shoes and put both arms around his neck, so she was kind of hanging on him, pressed tight against him, and they barely swayed. You could just see their hips moving, against each other. Sonny took Buddie's hand, and she stood up and cuddled right into him. They did the same swaying thing, and she pressed her box against his dick, but he didn't have any kind of hard-on. By the time the record was over, Gunner had danced DeeDee into the bedroom. Sonny turned the record over, poured himself another drink, and led Buddie to the couch. He knew he had to get a little more stoned to get sexed up.

He drank down the new drink very fast, almost in two gulps, and then pulled Buddie down on the couch and started kissing her fiercely, almost frantically, hoping to get himself worked up.

“Isn't anyone home?” Buddie whispered.

“Whatya mean? Gunner's here, and DeeDee.”

“I mean his mother.”

“No. She's in Louisville, at the races.”

“Oh.”

Buddie started tugging at her blouse, and she sat up and pulled it over her head, and then shucked off the big, ballooning skirt. He liked her a lot better in her underwear, even though it was white and sort of wholesome looking. Buddie never wore the black, lacy kind that really sexed him up. But even the wholesome white kind was still underwear, and that was a lot sexier than the healthy sort of Dutch-girl dresses and skirts and blouses she wore. She started unbuttoning his shirt and giving him little kisses on the chest as she went. When she got to his stomach, he held his breath, so it wouldn't be so fat. He stood up and took off his slacks, but left his shorts on. He didn't like to take off his shorts till he had a real good hard-on. It was embarrassing, having a girl see his dong when it was limp. He started kissing her and reached around for the hooks on the back of her bra. No matter how many times he undid those damn things, he could never do it smoothly.

“Let me,” she whispered, sitting up and with one quick motion releasing the mechanics of it, then sort of slumping her shoulders forward so it slid down. Sonny pulled it off the rest of the way. She really did have nice tits, and when he first saw them a long time ago, touched them, kissed them, he got tremendously excited, but now they didn't affect him much more than seeing her elbows. And yet they were the same tits. He lay down beside her and started kissing them, trying to get himself aroused. She pulled one of his hands down to her panties and slipped it inside. He felt along the fuzz and probed with one finger for the slit. It was already wet. He put the finger in and worked it around and she started to moan, that pleasurable moan. With one hand she was fondling his cock, and it was responding. She slipped off her panties, and Sonny propped himself up on one elbow, to deal with the damned inevitable problem.

“Is it a good time?” he asked.

That was the code.

“Yes,” she said. “I ought to be getting it this week.”

Her period, she meant. That meant he didn't have to fumble and fight with the hateful rubber. Sure, it was taking a chance, but it had worked for him so far. If you weren't too sure, you could always pull out. That wasn't really safe either, but most guys preferred it to using the damn rubber. He heard that some girls who went East to school got diaphragms, but mostly the girls in town didn't get those until they got married, if even then. It was like an admission of guilt, or something. And besides, you couldn't very well go and ask the family doctor unless you were getting married could you? A doctor Sonny knew in the Army said someday there'd just be a pill the girl could take and she wouldn't get knocked up! That'd be the day. Imagine fucking and not having to worry about pulling out or putting a damn rubber on or what time of the month it was. Sonny figured they'd probably invent it after he was too old to do it anyway.

Buddie was stroking his cock, and it was nice and hard and ready for action. He scrambled on top of her and she guided it in for him. He always had trouble finding the right place. She moaned as it went inside, digging her nails in his back. He felt weirdly removed from what was going on, like it was him just watching these people do this. He didn't feel much of anything at all, except a kind of annoyance at himself that he could get a real good hard-on now with Buddie when he didn't really care much one way or the other, but when he first knew her and really creamed for her, his prick would start sagging on him as soon as he tried to stick it in, or if he got it in, it would shoot off right away. That same thing had happened to him with an older woman he dated in Kansas City, a secretary he met who was almost thirty years old and not too bright but nice and sexy. He would get all charged up and then, when the time came, his cock would start to shrink, and if he managed to worm it inside her he'd shoot his wad right away. She was very nice about it, but Sonny got so embarrassed he stopped calling her. She called him a couple times to see what the matter was, and he acted real nasty and irritated and never saw her again.

Sonny was sitting on top of Buddie, with his prick going in and out, like it could go on forever, when the record ended, and he could hear the voices of Gunner and DeeDee coming from the bedroom. They were kind of shouting in whispers, and you could hear everything.

“Dammit, we're not in school anymore. We're supposed to be
adults
,” DeeDee said.

“So? You mean adults don't fuck?”

“No!”

“Are you crazy?”

“No! I mean, I didn't mean what you said.”

“Which?”

“That adults don't—don't do it. I wish you'd stop using that word.”

“What word?”

“Fuck!” she shouted.

Gunner laughed, and DeeDee said, “Dammit, I'm serious.”

“You used to like me to say it,” Gunner insisted. “You used to like to say it yourself. While we were doing it, you used to say, ‘Know what we're doing? We're fucking.' And I'd say—”