Driving Lessons
Chapter 3
Candy pulled me along until we were a block away and abruptly stopped. "You have a zillion questions, I bet."
I just looked at her.
"Sometimes the guys are mean and say two bits a piece or something like that and the girl has to accept it. She doesn't know until afterwards. The girl, back there," Candy swung her hand, "made $45 for her family. Her dad's laid off and times are hard for a lot of people around here, but maybe you hadn't noticed. Next time might be only a couple of dollars. Those old farts can afford it. If you'd said ten dollars, there would have been groans, but they'd have paid. Even fifteen or twenty. But it's best not to push it. So she has $45 and that'll go for rent, food for the table, and she'll get maybe a barrette or a lipstick for her effort.
"Come on." She pulled me on.
"Have you ever-"
"I told you I'm a virgin. Does it matter? I don't want to get pregnant but there are ways-does it matter?"
I couldn't answer as she pulled me along. There were girls in school who had reputations for doing it and girls who did it pretty indiscriminately. But I'd never heard of a girl doing like back there. Selling themselves to a group of men.
Doing it with men, doing it with anyone, doing it with nearly a dozen, how many times? For a couple of dollars or a hundred? And doing it what ways? To not get pregnant?
Candy asked me, "Did you kiss her?"
I blushed which she must have been able to see because she smiled.
She dropped my hand and came closer. "I'd like to kiss you. I wanted to earlier. At school. At four. At eight. A few minutes ago. I think I show remarkable restraint, don't you?" Her face was lifted up to me.
I couldn't see her eyes but it didn't matter anyway. I kissed her and it was good. Her mouth opened and our tongues touched and played tag. I couldn't help but imagine the girl back at the pizzeria, her bag off.
I can't remember how long that kiss lasted. What I do remember is the impact it had on me. I'd kissed girls since I was fourteen. I'd kissed Beth while making love which was better still. Kissing Candy on that poorly lit street was an entirely new experience. I was giddy afterwards and wanted to laugh and jump. My body was suffused with an erotic charge and heat that didn't seem to diminish.
Earlier that evening I'd been immersed in an entirely different type of erotic experience. New to it I felt awkward and self-conscious. My communication with the girl on the mattress was perfunctory. The experience was almost entirely internal, much like masturbating but much more intense. This earlier experience surely influenced how the kiss affected me, witness my momentary disassociation.
What I did after the kiss was pull her close to me and kiss her again, this time our bodies touching. So I felt her thighs against mine, her breasts and the soft angularity of her shoulders.
We held hands while I walked her home. I couldn't have remembered the way we were going and afterwards was blissfully lost for a half hour as I wandered in a daze, not really caring if I made it home that night or next week.
We talked but I have no memory of what was said. Each word was intensely significant, made ephemeral by the next. I felt she understood everything I said.
We kissed on her doorstep and she went in.
My time with Beth was intense and how I felt, when things were good, this feeling carried over into every moment, waking or sleeping, we were apart. I despaired of ever feeling that again, and yet here I was.
There was a snake in the grass, though I only stumbled in a dream I couldn't remember afterwards. I woke chilled to the bone with a feeling that the night's events actually held more strangeness than bliss. That I'd better be aware and be careful. Things were happening that I didn't understand.
Questions came at me from every side. Who was the girl on the mattress? What was her relationship to Candy? What was Candy's involvement with what went on in that room? How could Candy have set me up, happily, to sleep with this girl and kiss me afterwards? The girl herself baffled me, her reason for being there. What had she gotten from it? How did she feel before, during and afterwards? She'd been responsive with me, yielding and aware of my movements, mirroring them with her own, matching me, thrust for thrust, though weakly.
Disease wasn't talked about much, more as a bugbear than a real threat. Obviously the girl wasn't a virgin. Obviously she'd had sex with other men. Whether she were a whore or not was moot. I hadn't picked her off a street corner. Frankly, I'd never seen a woman on a street corner waiting for a pick up. Such things may be happening in New York City or Paris but not here.
The other men hadn't cared, but maybe they already had it. I was an easy mark. I realized I didn't know much at all.
This went on for over an hour, to the point where I both dreaded and desired to see Candy again. I fell asleep when the room began to lighten from the predawn glimmer, to wake minutes later when my alarm went off.
Dazed and confused I didn't recognize Candy when we bumped into each other passing in a crowded hall in school. She touched my arm and smiled at me. I hadn't realized who it was until she was gone. I stood still for a moment, watched her walk away until I was bumped forward to my next class.
I have to admit every red haired girl had a special fascination for me. Was she the one I'd seen last night?
Candy waited for me at lunch, on the bench outside the gym.
"Hi, Brian." She said my name as if she were singing it.
"Candy." I reached out my hand. "About last night."
"Not here, okay? After work at ten again. No pizza tonight, I'm afraid." She said the last with a smile.
I was sitting there, lost, trying to imagine what she looked like under her sweater. "Okay. You start work at four?"
She nodded.
"I'll be there."
"Sure. That'd be nice. Maybe a coke. It doesn't get busy until dinner time. No book to read?"
"Forgot it." I blushed which she seemed to find sweet for some reason.
"Saturday's our busiest night, but I'm off till four. Things to do around home, but I can meet you, say around two. We can do stuff." She gave one of those atrocious winks.
Just then Marianne came up again. "When you're not busy." She took a moment to study me and walked away.
"A pretty girl like that shouldn't have problems," Candy said, "but she does in trumps." She looked back to me. "Maybe some special pizza again tomorrow night. Interested? I'll pay if you are." She said this innocently.
"I'm not sure."
"That's okay. Free tonight? No studying or anything?"
"The paper is finished. Just the usual. After dinner we watch TV. You know. Why?"
"Just asking. Let me go see what's bothering Marianne and I'll be right back." She left and talked with Marianne down the hall. It was just a minute.
Candy was an inch or two shorter. Her straight dark hair contrasted with Marianne's blond curls. Her obscuring apparel contrasted with Marianne's tight sweater and skirt as short as was legal.
Candy came back with a smile. "Well, that was simple. She'll pick you up at seven. Tell me your address and I'll get it to her before school lets out. She has a car and is going to teach you how to drive. In return, you'll take her to a movie." She said this while digging in her purse. "Here's money for your tickets. No. You must take it. After all, I sprang this on you."
"I-"
"Come on. Do it. You learn to drive, there's a job for you. Marianne is a nice girl. You'll have fun with her and if you get caught up and can't make it at ten, I'll understand. I'd frankly be surprised to see you. It would mean a disaster of some sort, wouldn't it? I'll see you tomorrow, meet in front of Piacevole's at two. We'll have some cokes and you can tell me how your lessons are going."
She was doing it again and there wasn't anything I could say. I wouldn't be a red-blooded male if I turned down a date with Marianne, though why they were doing this I couldn't fathom.
"You can write your address here. And phone number." Candy put her notebook on my lap, handed me a pen.
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