A Good House by Bonnie Burnard Page B

each other, Patrick guessed it was the irresistible weight of her breasts against those straps, that and nothing much else that had got him through the summer.
    The Casino sat high in the dunes above Lake Huron. It was large and square, cream stucco with a dark red roof. Downstairs there were slot machines on a gritty cement floor, not very clean wash-rooms, and long benches against the cement-block walls. There was a concession where swimmers and sunbathers could buy potato chips or Coppertone for their tans, and, beside it, a big pop cooler. You had to lift the lid and reach down through ice water for a bottle of Coke or Canada Dry or Orange Crush and more than once a kid who had just come in after hours and hours of playing in the afternoon sun stuck an arm down and promptly slumped to the gritty cement floor, out cold.
    Upstairs, the hardwood dance floor was surrounded by a wraparound balcony with shutters that could be dropped quickly if a storm came up off the lake. You could stand out there between dances and listen to the waves lapping on the sand and stare out over the shining water toward Michigan. Or you could look up at the stars and the moon in the dark sky above the water, at the clouds that threatened to obliterate the light as they drifted across it. Patrick had been coming out to the Casino dances since he was fifteen and he had never once been with a girl who didn’t like to do this, who didn’t soften looking out at the water or up at the sky.
    The band was always the same. They played mostly country and western with a few polkas and square dances thrown in, sometimes a jive. On a good night they could be talked into trying “Sixteen Tons” or “Moments to Remember” or “Blue Suede Shoes” or “Heartbreak Hotel.” There was no booze, not inside anyway, not that you could see.
    Patrick and Sandra recognized nearly everyone around them but they danced only together, oblivious to the people they would ordinarily dance with at least once or twice. And no one bothered them because a first date gave you that right, to ignore people you knew, to pretend you couldn’t see their faces, couldn’t hear them speaking even though they surrounded you, same as always.
    On the way home after the dance they didn’t talk as much as Patrick had thought they would. Standing on her porch under a naked two-hundred-watt bulb that lit the entire yard and half the barn, with one of the black Labs thumping its tail eagerly against his legs, he leaned in to kiss her and when she kissed him back, he took his chance to cup her heavy breast in his hand. But she pulled the hand away and wrapped it around her back. He assumed she had a set of rules in mind. Although it was the biggest breast he’d touched, it wasn’t the first. And a guy could be forgiven. The rules varied from girl to girl, more than you’d think.
    The Wednesday night after the Casino dance he took her into Sarnia to a show, a war movie, which they watched low in their seats, holding hands as soon as the plot was well established, Patrick’s arm quickly closing in around her shoulders. On the way home after the show there was finally quite a bit of talk. Sandra started it by saying how sorry she was about his mother’s death and when he tensed up she quickly said she understood how awful it must be for his family. She told him she was sure it would make him feel better to talk about it, that she really believed talking helped. When he reached to turn up the radio, meaning to say that the song shouldn’t be missed, she was obviously annoyed that he wasn’t even going to try to put it into words for her but she went on bravely to more ordinary things: what he was studying, what he wanted out of university, where she herself thought she might want to go when she graduated. The goodnight kisses took place in the dark of the car, although they were still too few for Patrick and his hand was still very firmly guided. He knew what he’d be doing, wasn’t