Page 11 of Endless Summer: Stories
“No problem!” Dabney said in a false, chipper voice. She would not let this flare up into a loud, messy, emotional brouhaha for Kendall and the other students on the floor to appreciate. “You do what you have to do. I’ll see you tomorrow at ten at the east entrance, okay?”
“Okay,” Clen said. His voice still held a strain of uncertainty, she thought. What could this mean?
“Okay,” Dabney said. She paused, waiting for him to say it first.
“I love you, Cupe.”
“And I you,” Dabney said. “Bye-bye.”
She replaced the receiver at 4:00 on the nose. “It’s all yours,” she said to Kendall.
Her small overnight bag contained her nightgown, toothbrush, clean underwear, and a pink oxford shirt for Sunday. Dabney had returned the black outfit and purse to Solange with a heavy heart.
“I won’t need it after all,” Dabney said. “We aren’t going out.”
“Merde!”Solange said. “How come?”
Dabney shrugged. She was too dejected to explain.
Solange, realizing this, pulled the silver dollar out of her grandmother’s cocktail purse and pressed it into Dabney’s palm. “Take this though, okay? You can give it back to me on Monday.”
Dabney put the chicken salad sandwiches and the rest of the picnic in her laundry basket with some strategically placed ice packs. She took one of the Valiums Dr. Donegal had prescribed for emergencies. The silver dollar was deep in the front pocket of her jeans.
She was ready.
Jason had a sign in the window of his Camaro that saidYALE BOWL OR BUST!Mallory was already in the front seat working the radio when Dabney climbed in. Mallory was wearing a crimson Harvard hooded sweatshirt and she had woven crimson ribbons through her blond hair. There was a cooler of beer in the back seat, a fact that Dabney initially found alarming—for the past few years the most popular public service announcement had beenDo not drink and drive—but all around them, people in similarly decorated cars were waving cans of Miller Lite out of windows, and strains of very loud Tears for Fears competed with even louder Spandau Ballet. It was a tornado of crimson-red fun and Dabney was in the swirling middle of it. This was a novelty; in going home to Nantucket every weekend, Dabney had missed much of college party life. She occasionally went to a party at Owl or Porc on a Thursday night, but that usually meant a disjointed conversation with a couple of upperclassmen/guys/boys about whether Simone de Beauvoir was a genuine intellect or just a slut. Dabney was always back in her room by midnight.
Now Dabney let herself be swept away. She reached over and grabbed a Budweiser from the cooler. “Yale Bowl or bust!” she cried out.
“Whoa there, sister,” Mallory said. “Easy now.” She settled the radio on “The Boys of Summer,” which was a pretty good choice for Mallory.
Jason said, “I like seeing your wild side, Dab.” He grinned at her in the rearview mirror.
Mallory swatted Jason’s arm. Dabney cracked open her beer and sucked off the foam. She hadn’t eaten any breakfast; the only thing in her stomach was the Valium. Jason pulled onto the Mass Pike.
“Better Be Good to Me,” Tina Turner.
“Material Girl,” Madonna.
“Change this, please,” Dabney said. “This song makes me ill.”
“Summer of ’69,” Bryan Adams.
“California Girls,” David Lee Roth.
“He ruined a perfectly good song,” Dabney said.
“Agreed,” Jason said. “You know, I was thinking of writing my thesis on the phenomenon of the cover song—which artists enhanced the originals, which artists desecrated them, which artists equaled them. Do you think that’s meaty enough?”
Like many athletes at Harvard, Jason was an American studies major, which was another way of saying “anything goes.” But a thesis aboutcover songs?
No, Dabney thought. However, her brain had been hijacked by the Valium and the beer, so the answer that came out of her mouth was “Yes! That’s so creative. It will definitely get approval.”
Mallory said, “I hate it when you guys talk over me.”
Dabney said, “Oops, sorry, you’re right.” She sank low in the back seat, resting her legs over the cooler.
“Careless Whisper,” by Wham!
