knocking down all the pins made bowling more thrilling than it had ever been.
“Hey, you’re the one who thinks the Crawfords are gross, ” Alex finally retorted. “You’re the one who likes ‘em flat. ”
Chuck scowled at Alex as he walked back, sat down, and penciled in his score. He was pissed. I was thrilled. (I was flat.)
The carnal tang of our Bond hobby was undoubtedly part of why we found reasons to put off the next mission for most of the summer. We were all busy. I had summer school in the mornings—touch typing and, as a sop to my mother for leaving the Church, advanced Esperanto—plus, I worked afternoons at my uncle’s law firm in Evanston. Alex had youth theater and took two family vacations, to Toronto and Acapulco. Chuck mowed lawns almost every day.
One Saturday morning when Alex was in Canada, Chuck phoned.
“I’m going down to Evanston to see the first showing of The Great Escape. Want to come with?”
Finally. Not lunch in the cafeteria or an after-school snack at Bob’s with Chuck and Alex, or a study session at the library with Chuck and Alex, or watching TV with Chuck and Alex, or a mission. A movie. With Chuck. I grinned. I tingled.
“Sure!” I said, already imagining us making out, as I had imagined many, many times during the previous three months.
“Great.”
Yes: great.
After the movie, Chuck and I wandered toward Northwestern. Being by myself with him—really by ourselves, outside school, outside Wilmette—made me nervous, which I attributed to his sudden, shocking maleness. I opened my purse and took out Dad’s transistor radio, which I’d borrowed for the day to deal with exactly this one-on-one contingency. Music could fill the dead air.
But Chuck was talkative. The movie had made him jitter with boy-man excitement, the way he got after missions. “God,” he said, “that was so unbelievably great, wasn’t it? I think it’s the best movie I’ve ever seen.” The last best movie he’d ever seen, a year earlier on TV, was Rebel Without a Cause. He was grinning and breathing heavily. “And Steve McQueen not getting away at the end, back in the camp, back in the cooler with his baseball and glove! Man oh man. Can I have a cigarette?”
Chuck, who swam competitively, had been conscientious about smoking only on missions. A few months earlier, I would’ve teased him about this transgression. He leaned in toward me and I lit him, his hands cupped around mine to keep the flame from blowing out, his fingers touching my skin for three, four splendid, breathless seconds.
“Thanks,” he said, smiling, then stepping back and taking a deep drag.
It was as if we had just made love. Ian Fleming had taught me that people smoke after having sex.
“I liked it a lot better than Dr. No, ” I said, “because it was actually funny and actually serious. Instead of never quite funny and never quite serious.”
“Yes, right, that’s exactly right, Karen.”
Exactly right. And not Hollaender— Karen.
“That’s a problem with Bond, you know?” he said. “Not just the movie but the books get so unbelievable. I mean, this was so cool because that actual story, The Great Escape, it really happened.”
“Yeah. But SMERSH was real. MI6 and the KGB are real. Ian Fleming did intelligence and espionage.”
“Yeah, twenty years ago, during the war. Everything about the Russians, he probably makes up. And SPECTRE? Come on. It’s such phony baloney. Also? Every single mission Bond goes on, he gets caught by the villain.”
That afternoon, two years into our worship of Bond, I found his heresy exciting. “Alex’d be going nuts if he were here,” I said. “His ‘Fiction can be truer than facts, you retards,’ and all that.”
“Yeah, well, he’s not here, is he? And I’m not saying the missions haven’t been fun.”
Secrets from one another within our secret cabal, doctrinal fissures, Chuck entrusting me alone with his doubts. Thrilling. Almost too exquisitely
“Hey, you’re the one who thinks the Crawfords are gross, ” Alex finally retorted. “You’re the one who likes ‘em flat. ”
Chuck scowled at Alex as he walked back, sat down, and penciled in his score. He was pissed. I was thrilled. (I was flat.)
The carnal tang of our Bond hobby was undoubtedly part of why we found reasons to put off the next mission for most of the summer. We were all busy. I had summer school in the mornings—touch typing and, as a sop to my mother for leaving the Church, advanced Esperanto—plus, I worked afternoons at my uncle’s law firm in Evanston. Alex had youth theater and took two family vacations, to Toronto and Acapulco. Chuck mowed lawns almost every day.
One Saturday morning when Alex was in Canada, Chuck phoned.
“I’m going down to Evanston to see the first showing of The Great Escape. Want to come with?”
Finally. Not lunch in the cafeteria or an after-school snack at Bob’s with Chuck and Alex, or a study session at the library with Chuck and Alex, or watching TV with Chuck and Alex, or a mission. A movie. With Chuck. I grinned. I tingled.
“Sure!” I said, already imagining us making out, as I had imagined many, many times during the previous three months.
“Great.”
Yes: great.
After the movie, Chuck and I wandered toward Northwestern. Being by myself with him—really by ourselves, outside school, outside Wilmette—made me nervous, which I attributed to his sudden, shocking maleness. I opened my purse and took out Dad’s transistor radio, which I’d borrowed for the day to deal with exactly this one-on-one contingency. Music could fill the dead air.
But Chuck was talkative. The movie had made him jitter with boy-man excitement, the way he got after missions. “God,” he said, “that was so unbelievably great, wasn’t it? I think it’s the best movie I’ve ever seen.” The last best movie he’d ever seen, a year earlier on TV, was Rebel Without a Cause. He was grinning and breathing heavily. “And Steve McQueen not getting away at the end, back in the camp, back in the cooler with his baseball and glove! Man oh man. Can I have a cigarette?”
Chuck, who swam competitively, had been conscientious about smoking only on missions. A few months earlier, I would’ve teased him about this transgression. He leaned in toward me and I lit him, his hands cupped around mine to keep the flame from blowing out, his fingers touching my skin for three, four splendid, breathless seconds.
“Thanks,” he said, smiling, then stepping back and taking a deep drag.
It was as if we had just made love. Ian Fleming had taught me that people smoke after having sex.
“I liked it a lot better than Dr. No, ” I said, “because it was actually funny and actually serious. Instead of never quite funny and never quite serious.”
“Yes, right, that’s exactly right, Karen.”
Exactly right. And not Hollaender— Karen.
“That’s a problem with Bond, you know?” he said. “Not just the movie but the books get so unbelievable. I mean, this was so cool because that actual story, The Great Escape, it really happened.”
“Yeah. But SMERSH was real. MI6 and the KGB are real. Ian Fleming did intelligence and espionage.”
“Yeah, twenty years ago, during the war. Everything about the Russians, he probably makes up. And SPECTRE? Come on. It’s such phony baloney. Also? Every single mission Bond goes on, he gets caught by the villain.”
That afternoon, two years into our worship of Bond, I found his heresy exciting. “Alex’d be going nuts if he were here,” I said. “His ‘Fiction can be truer than facts, you retards,’ and all that.”
“Yeah, well, he’s not here, is he? And I’m not saying the missions haven’t been fun.”
Secrets from one another within our secret cabal, doctrinal fissures, Chuck entrusting me alone with his doubts. Thrilling. Almost too exquisitely
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