"C'mon," she said. "I give you your dollar back."

"I don't want to intrude."

"I'd sure tellya if you was," said Laverne. She climbed up and opened the screen, unlocked the door, and, reaching in, chose the wrong switch of the pair and put on the outside light. They blinked at each other in the gnat-filled glare.

He took the pressure of the screendoor off her hip. She extinguished the outdoor globe and got the inside sconces lighted.

"C'mon," she had to tell him, "you're letting the bugs in."

She went to the bathroom and got from the top of the medicine chest the Kotex box in which, behind the pads, she banked. She had thirty dollars there, give or take, between her and the poorhouse. She couldn't hustle downtown any more after tonight, and she was now much too heavy of upper leg for the car-hop outfit: with six months of the kind of food you eat when home all the time and no exercise, her thighs were like the pair of toy zeppelins, when the flat folds were inflated, that she had once bought for Vinnie's boys. Her keester felt like a loaded garbage can. Her girdle was killing her. And so were her shoes.

Crossing the hall to her bedroom, she called: "Get yourself a Coke in the icebox." Teeth clenched, she peeled off the elastic tube, forgetting to free the garter clips, so the stockings came down as well. For a moment there was a big mess of alien material around her ankles. She sat down on the chintz-covered chair and, feeling her breasts, still brassiered and thus firm, press against the liberated swell of her belly, she pulled the whole works, shoes and all, off her feet and threw it at the stuffed elephant on the bed. Her skirt was at her waist, and she still wore the picture hat. Buddy had always liked to see her snatch when she was otherwise fully dressed. She could whistle for the kid to come and pop his eyes, probably his cork too. But she was incapable of vindictiveness, being devoid of envy.

She skimmed the hat at the closet door and got into her mules. But without high heels and stockings the dress looked sluttish, and without the girdle her stomach bulged even when she was standing, so she removed everything, her tits falling to the red corrugations left by the waistband of the girdle. She quickly wrapped herself in the pink satin negligee.

When she went to the living room he was still standing in the middle of the carpet. "I just got comfortable," she said. "Here's your buck."

He backed away. "I owed you."

She threw the bill onto the coffee table. "Suit yourself. I'm sick of that subject." His paralysis annoyed her because she too suddenly felt ill at ease in her own front room. She glared at him. "Why'd you really come here, kid?"

"I was in the neighborhood, and I remembered what I owed you, and-sorry, you're sick of that, though."

"Aw," said Laverne, artificially taking the strain off herself by dropping her shoulders, "I was just ribbing you. You're sure serious for a boy your age. You ever have any fun? You got yourself a girl?"

He grimaced. "I had one. For about an hour. But it wasn't much fun. It was more like work."

"Ha!" Laverne said, twisting away and addressing the radio set, "then don't tell me about it. I don't wanna hear no sad stories tonight." She brought her trunk back, hands on hips. "I had a real ornry day. I'm just lucky a bird didn't do his dirt on my hat. You know the kind of day I mean?"

"Yeah," he said eagerly. "I've had them like that."

"Is that right? Well, you're starting out young. Now how about that Coke? And sit down, huh. You give me the willies standing there. It's like you was making a delivery or something. You're company now."

He looked around bewilderedly and chose the hassock. She shrugged and went to the kitchen. Along with the Coke she took, after a few jabs with a table knife to chop it free, the ice-cube tray from the Frigidaire and loosened its contents under running water. Buddy had also promised to bring her one of those trays with rubber compartments; she had intended not to think of him. She filled a soup bowl with potato chips and took it and the glass out to Ralph. With dainty fingers he accepted one chip.

"You're a cheap date," said Laverne. "Listen, I'll put it here, and you help yourself." She meant the coffee table, on the other side of the room. There was no nearer surface but the rug, and she had a traditionalist's aversion to seeing on the floor the vessels of eating and drinking.

Ralph had sprung to his feet when she entered. He now bent forward slightly from the waist and asked: "Aren't you joining me?"

"Why? You coming apart?" When he laughed out loud, he lost all dignity. His tongue showed, and his ears fanned out. She decided now that she preferred him when he was a bit formal.

"I kid a lot," she said, "but I don't mean it. You got real nice manners. I appreciate that in a fellow." She lowered herself to the couch. A kneecap poked out of the wrapper, but she soon concealed it.

"My father is always after me about that," said Ralph, sinking to the hassock with a wary eye on the level of his glass. "He harps all the time on that subject."

Laverne said quickly: "Know who's a perfect gentleman in the movies? Warren William."

Ralph nodded. "I guess that is a specialty of the English. Leslie Howard, for example."

"Well, I always thought he was sort of a pans-" Laverne caught herself; hell, he was a better model for a boy than Wallace Beery, scratching and blowing his nose in his hat. "Actually, I ain't-haven't been to the movies in ages. Been too busy. Who are your favorite girl stars, though, while we're on this?"

"Merle Oberon and Olivia DeHavilland," he said as if in response to the pushing of a button.

"Is that right?" Laverne said doubtfully. "I really like Bett Davis."

"She's certainly a good actress," Ralph said pompously. "She plays a lot of difficult parts."

"You don't really go for her, you mean."

"No, I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say that at all."

"You prefer the ones who are always real ladies."

"Well," said Ralph, "maybe they're not as good actresses."

"Be hard," said Laverne, "to find yourself a girl like that around this burg." She put back the foot she had eased from her slipper: the big toenail showed cracked paint, and the whole hoof was red and puffy from its hours of confinement in a shoe one size too small. Her feet were anyway not her long suit. She also regretted having climbed into the satin wrapper, which hadn't been cleaned since the Year One.

"Oh, I don't know," Ralph murmured, hiding his face with his glass.

Laverne said: "You can't go around all dolled up all the time if you got to earn a living. I'm on my feet the livelong day." She primly brought her mules together.

"What happens to be your profession?" He lowered the Coke without having drunk much; he was still ruminating on the little crescent of potato chip he had nicely severed and holding the remainder in space.

"Hostess in a tea room. But I'm on vacation at this time. I might not go back to work. I might get married."

Now he took a long drink, swallowing several times with the glass still at his mouth.

"Then again, I might not. I can't make up my mind. This person is nuts about me, and he's quite a catch, I have to admit that-handsome, well-to-do, the whole kit and caboodle." She gracefully smoothed the satin over a thigh, but feeling the sponginess beneath, took her hand away and let it droop across a back-rest cushion. She had put on new polish before going out, and her fingers were still an attractive feature, long and slender and not discolored from smoking. She looked from this hand to him intermittently. "I just don't like the idea of giving up my independence."

He wiped his lips on his wrist. "You said-I don't know if you recall, but I believe this afternoon you said you weren't going to see that gentleman again."

She rounded her mouth and put an index finger into the little roll of flesh under her chin. "Oh, that gentleman. Yes, that's right." She smiled. "I guess I play the field." She frowned earnestly. "You got to, if you're popular."

He rose, marched across the carpet, and put the empty glass on the coffee table. "Thank you for the refreshments."

She had not been prepared for this. No little punk, no son of Buddy's, would walk out on her unless she dismissed him.

"You get spanked if you stay out after eight?"

He was obviously hurt, but reacted in a manly fashion. "I don't want to take up your time."

She threw herself up from the couch and, changing gears, said huffily: "Far be it from me to waste your evening for you, sir. Kindly call again when you can spare a minute."

He assumed the burden. He made a face and flapped both hands at the level of his waist. "I guess I put my foot in it somehow. I'm sorry. I can stay if you want."

He looked so young and vulnerable that Laverne was instantly ashamed of herself. She had gone too far to call it kidding again.

"My fault," she said. "I had a real bad day. I oughtn't to take it out on you. What I oughta do is to get me a drink."

She came back with a glassful of ice and the entire fifth, three-quarters full, of B & L. Ralph had taken a seat on the couch.

"You could use another Coke." She returned to the kitchen and got it. Entering the living room, she saw him desperately screwing the cap of the whiskey bottle in a clockwise direction. His glass was clean as a whistle: not even any dregs of Coke or nuggets of melted ice.

She seized and smelled it. "Oh, no, kid. You don't do that in my house!"

His face was warped in a combination of guilt and defiance. "I drink all the time."

"Well, then you do it someplace else." She put the glass down and sat alongside him. "No, you don't do it at all, see. It ain't right." He turned his head away. "Look at me." She grasped his chin and brought his face around. She rubbed her hand all over his cheeks. "You ain't even started to shave, for God's sake. Why you want to ruin your stomach, huh?" She was smiling in fond remonstrance when he put his lips on hers. She could taste the whiskey.

It surprised her that she was not surprised. She pushed him slightly away after a moment and said, in the same tone as before: "You don't even know how to do that." She put his head in her neck.

"Why you in such a hurry to get old, huh?" He was almost as big as a man but her fingers felt the skinny nape and the funny thin ears of a child. "Let me tell you, when you get there you'll find nobody's to home."

She felt a strange tickle on her nose, brought her hand there to rout the fly, and discovered it was a tear: her own. What a stupid thing. She never cried except when mad. She had not realized she felt so sorry for him. With his sensitive temperament, he would think he had offended her again somehow. To distract him she opened the bosom of the wrapper and lifted a breast to his mouth.

In shifting weight, his knee was gone, not only from her thigh but from the couch as well, taking with it the rest of his body. He had slipped to the floor; she heard the thump as if a long time later. It did not seem funny to her, though he grinned immediately. He knelt there, and she missed him awfully.

His mouth was blotched in red. She had been wrong: he wasn't grinning, he was making the kind of face that comes from swallowing with a strep throat. In another situation he would have looked completely ridiculous. He was also glistening with sweat.

She put her hand on his hot, wet cheek. He seized it and pressed its palm to his stained mouth. "What are you trying to prove, sweetheart?" she asked.

"Sweetheart," said Ralph, going all over her fingers with his nose. "You called me sweetheart."

"Like the song," said she. "It's just something you say."

"No." He grasped her hand and said firmly: "No, you meant it."

She threw his hand away. "Goddammit, don't tell me what I mean. I can take care of myself. If I couldn't, who would? You?"

He thought about that and seemed to grow disheartened.

With the noblest motives she exploited the advantage, indignantly covering her breast. "You can't be nice to some people. They'll walk all over you."

"You kissed me back."

"I was just being polite, for God's sake."

With youthful vigor and grace he came up from the floor, using no hands and applying no discernible effort. It was like a flower shooting up before your eyes. As it turned out, he wasn't discouraged at all. "You don't have to do a thing," said he, gleaming. "I won't try to kiss you any more. I won't hang around if you don't want me to. You don't ever have to even see me again. But what I think is my own business." He was walking backward. "And I don't care what you say: you kissed me back." He had almost reached the screendoor. He shouted: "I'll love you all my life."

Her responsibility was unbearable. If he backed out the door he might keep going across the landing and through the rail, breaking his skinny, goofy, sweet neck. What a sap he was.

She raised her arms before he got away. "How about just for tonight?"

Now of course he looked scared, lifting a gym shoe as if he would run off for the opposite reason. So she had to go and get him and lead him back, and he wanted to stop off at the sofa, but she said no, that wasn't the place, and she had his shame to contend with in the bedroom and he surely would still have taken French leave had she not quickly got the crucial clothes off him first, and he wouldn't go far in a sweaty T-shirt and the wool athletic socks that stank sweetly of his gym shoes, and she couldn't help kissing his darling wiggling smelly feet.

Forever his little root just hung there, or lay there, or dangled there, or just was squeezed between the softness of her belly and the flatness of his, and she wouldn't do anything whorish to it, else this right thing would turn sordid, and he would be distracted from her to what she did, and having finally found an idealist she would not throw him away. So what they did was just hold each other and breathe together as if their lives depended on it.

At some point she fell asleep, a state of which she was aware only retroactively, being brought awake by a body-sense of deprivation. He had separated himself from her and rolled to face away. She raised her head to peep over his slender shoulder, looking down that hairless plateau of chest and belly. His manhood was enlarged now, quite stiff and domineering, with him asleep. But before she was able to fall back and contemplate the loveliness of this in pure mind, she saw his hand sneak out from beneath his hip, and enclosing the base of the projection, begin to- "No, sweetheart," she said, turning him to her, he pretending to be asleep with squeezed eyes. "That will give you pimples."

He kept his lids lowered. "I'm sorry. I just couldn't help it."

He was in her now, and she moved her hand out and around his narrow hip and into the small of his taut, boyish back.

"Neither can I," she said. "I want you to remember that when you are grown up and I am dead."

But when their eyes flared in unison, she forgot, for the first time ever, her habitual self-pity.

Ralph did not come back to real life until, rounding the town-hall corner on winged feet, five minutes from home, his eye was distracted from the celestial semen of the Milky Way by the clock on the fire-department annex. The time was 1:25.

As had always been his wont, he had told the truth when apprehended after breaking Bigelow's window: and been taken for a liar. Manliness was sometimes mere folly. He must be shrewder now and do something like steal in through the outside basement door, go boldly upstairs, and if his father was staked out in the living room, profess to have gone down cellar in early evening to find a certain old issue of Open Road for Boys and to have fallen asleep over it, concealed behind the high stacks of discarded papers awaiting the junkman; to have awakened only now, disoriented and dismayed.

If all was quiet, the same narrative would serve in the morning. The essential thing was to deliver it with an air of confidence, so that though his father would hardly accept the details he might well, if Ralph knew the man, himself so suave in manner, bold in deed, at least respect the authority with which it was told.

About the Author.

THOMAS BERGER is the author of more than twenty novels. His previous novels include Regiment of Women, Adventures of the Artificial Woman, and The Feud, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His novel Little Big Man was made into a successful movie and is known throughout the world.

ALSO BY THOMAS BERGER.

Adventures of the Artificial Woman.

Arthur Rex.

Being Invisible Best Friends Changing the Past.

The Feud The Houseguest Killing Time.

Little Big Man Meeting Evil Neighbors Nowhere.

Orrie's Story Regiment of Women The Return of Little Big Man Robert Crews.

Suspects Who Is Teddy Villanova?.

THE REINHART SERIES.

Crazy in Berlin.