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Show 74 He had to be exaggerating. Elizabeth so pale and pure? Impossible! She was as virginal as ice. She was more virginal than I was, than anyone. She was so virginal she made my teeth ache. When I parked with her with my arm around her shoulders, the cool moon upon her cool pale yellow hair, I was as careful as could be, afraid I would melt her. I sat there and adored her, worshipped her, working up to a kiss which would be pure essence of adulation. Ross liked to pretend to know everything. "What about Avis Carter?" I asked. "Easy as that," he said, and snapped his fingers. Avis lived with her mother in a dinky rooming house and worked after school and on weekends in Applegate's Drugs. Since her mother had arthritis so badly that she could hardly walk or use her hands, and since her father was dead, she did not count socially, would never insist upon having her own way. So I sat at Applegate's fountain and looked her over, a little like judging 4-H beef: good teeth, abundant dark hair and a pretty face-if her father had been doctor, lawyer, businessman, thief, and present among the living, boys would have dated her openly, and I would not have chosen her as the vessel in which to discard my virginity. She had a good figure too, the kind of girl with large breasts and slender legs, so that when I sat with Ross in Applegate's and she made milk shakes for us, Ross always leered and said he knew the kind he wanted, vanilla, twin size, with a cherry on top, and she would smile and go on dipping ice cream. I smiled too for I knew that those richly-sized breasts were soon going to be mine, all mine. I hung around the drug store so that she would know I was interested in her; I figured that one time out with her would be enough. After a few weeks Ross loaned me his car and one spring night I waited until she was cleaning up the fountain to close it and asked if I could give her a ride home. She looked |
