'A dime root beer,' she told Hubie. Hubie had genuine draft root beer, and he served it in huge, frosted 1890s mugs. She had been looking forward to tipping a long one while she read a paper novel and waited for Tommy - in spite of the havoc the root beers raised with her complexion, she was hooked. But she wasn't surprised to find she'd lost her taste for this one.
'How's your heart, Hubie?' she asked.
'You kids,' Hubie said, scraping the head off Sue's beer with a table knife and filling the mug the rest of the way. 'You don't understand nothing. I plugged in my electric razor this morning and got a hundred a ten volts right through this pacemaker. You kids don't know what that's like, am I right?'
'I guess not.'
'No, Christ Jesus forbid you should ever have to find out. How long can my old ticket take it? You kids'll all find out when I buy the farm and those urban renewal poops turn this place into a parking lot. That's a dime.'
She pushed her dime across the marble.
'Fifty million volts right up the old tubes,' Hubie said darkly, and stared down at the small bulge in his breast pocket.
Sue went over and slid carefully into the vacant side of Chris's booth. She was looking exceptionally pretty, her black hair held by a shamrock-green band and a tight basque blouse that accentuated her firm, upthrust br**sts.
'How are you, Chris?'
'Bitchin' good,' Chris said a little too blithely. 'You heard the latest? I'm out of the prom. I bet that cocksucker Grayle loses his job, though.'
Sue had heard the latest. Along with everyone at Ewen.
'Daddy's suing them,' Chris went on. Over her shoulder; 'Billeee! Come over here and say hi to Sue.'
He dropped his magazine and sauntered over, thumbs booked into his side-hitched garrison belt, fingers dangling limply toward the stuffed crotch of his pegged levis. Sue felt a wave of unreality surge over her and fought an urge to put her hands to her face and giggle madly.
'Hi, Suze,' Billy said. He slid in beside Chris and immediately began to massage her shoulder. His face was utterly blank. He might have been testing a cut of beef.
'I think we're going to crash the prom anyway,' Chris said. 'As a protest or something.'
'Is that right?' Sue was frankly startled.
'No,' Chris replied, dismissing it, 'I don't know.' Her face suddenly twisted into in expression of fury, as abrupt and surprising as a tornado funnel. 'That goddamned Carrie White! I wish she'd taken her goddam holy joe routine and stuff it straight up her ass!'
'You'll get over it,' Sue said.
'If only the rest of you had walked out with me ... Jesus Sue, why didn't you? We could have had them by the balls. I never figured you for an establishment pawn.'
Sue felt her face grow hot. 'I don't know about anyone else, but I wasn't being anybody's pawn. I took the punishment because I thought I earned it. We did a suck-off thing. End of statement.'
'Bullshit. That f**king Carrie runs around saying everyone but her and her gilt-edged momma are going to bell and you can stick up for her? We should have taken those rags and stuffed them down her throat.'
'Sure. Yeah. See you around, Chris.' She pushed out of the booth.
This time it was Chris who coloured the blood slammed to her face in a sudden rush, as if a red cloud had passed over some inner sun.
'Aren't you getting to be the Joan of Arc around here! I seem to remember you were in there pitching with the rest of us.'
'Yes,' Sue said trembling. 'But I stopped.'
'Oh, aren't you just it?' Chris marvelled. 'Oh my yes. Take your root beer with you. I'm afraid I might touch it and turn to gold.'
She didn't take her root beer. She turned and half-walked, half-stumbled out. The upset inside her was very great, too great yet for either tears or anger. She was a getalong girl, and it was the first fight she had been in, physical or verbal, since grade-school pigtail pulling. And it was the first time in her life that she had actively espoused a Principle.
And of course Chris had hit her in just the right place, had hit her exactly where she was most vulnerable: She way being a hypocrite, there seemed no way to avoid that, and deeply, sheathed within her and hateful, was the knowledge that one of the reasons she had gone to Miss Desjardin's hour of calisthenics and sweating runs around the gym Floor had nothing to do with nobility. She wasn't going to miss her last Spring Ball for anything. Not for anything.
Tommy was nowhere in sight.
She began to walk back toward the school, her stomach churning unhappily, Little Miss Sorority, Suzy Creemcheese, The Nice Girl who only does It with the boy she plans to marry - with the proper Sunday supplement coverage, of course. Two kids. Beat the living shit out of them if they show any signs of honesty; screwing, fighting, or refusing to grin each time some mythic honcho yelled frog.
Spring Ball. Blue gown. Corsage kept all the afternoon in the fridge. Tommy in a white dinner jacket, cummerbund, black pants, black shoes. Parents taking photos posed by the living-room sofa with Kodak Starflashes and Polaroid Big-Shots. Crepe masking the stark gymnasium girders. Two bands: one rock, one mellow. No fifth wheels need apply. Mortimer Snurd, please keep out. Aspiring country club members and future residents of Kleen Korners only.
The tears finally came and she began to run.
From The Shadow Exploded (p. 60):
The following excerpt is from a letter to Donna Kellogg from Christine Hargensen. The Kellogg girl moved from Chamberlain to Providence, Rhode Island, in the fall of 1978. She was apparently one of Chris Hargensen's few close friends and a confidante. The letter is postmarked May 17,1979:
'So I'm out of the Prom and my yellow-guts father says he won't give them what they deserve. But they're not going to get away with it. I don't know what exactly I'm going to do yet but I guarantee you everyone is going to get a big f**king surprise . . .'