Page 14 of Endless Summer: Stories
Clen set the laundry basket down on the tailgate of the wagon and ushered Dabney forward. “My girlfriend, Dabney Kimball.”
Henry Wallace was tall with curly brown hair and square black glasses. Like so many people Dabney had met in the past year, he had the unmistakable air of the well-bred prep-school eternally privileged set. He took Dabney’s hand and kissed it.
“A real live Cliffie in our midst,” he said. “I’m Henry David Thoreau Wallace, fellow citizen of your fine commonwealth. Lovely to meet you.”
“Lovely to meetyou,” Dabney said. “I’ve heard all about what a genius you are.”
“Cupe,” Clen said. He sounded embarrassed, and Dabney grinned at Henry.
“He talks about you all the time,” she said. “I’ve grown quite jealous of you, you know. Although I’m mad as the dickens that you have my beau on deadline this weekend.”
“Deadline?” Henry said. “The only person on deadline this weekend is the sports editor.” He searched over Dabney’s head. “Reese better be in the stadium getting his pregame interviews, not out getting wasted on bloodies.”
No deadline?When Dabney turned to Clen with the question in her eyes, he shook his head and handed her a plastic cup. “Vodka tonic,” he said. “For my Cliffie.”
Dabney said, “Are you still on deadline?”
But before Clen could answer, they were interrupted. “You brought a picnic to a picnic?” A girl with long, dark, straight, shiny hair was peering into the laundry basket. Her hair was so beautiful it was impossible not to stare. If Dabney had hair like that, she would have felt immodest leaving it loose.
“Maybe you think a Harvard picnic is naturally superior to a Yale picnic,” the girl said. “But I don’t think anything from Harvard is superior.”
Dabney immediately felt defensive. This girl wore jeans, a camel-colored cashmere wrap, and large gold hoop earrings. She was pretty—gorgeous, actually. Her eyes were dark blue. Some of her luscious hair fell over her face as she gazed up at Clen.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me, Hughes?” she said.
Dabney glanced at Clen. He looked supremely uncomfortable, and Dabney felt an unfamiliar rumbling in her gut. Jealousy, she realized.
“Jocelyn Harris, this is Dabney Kimball. Dabney, this is Jocelyn. Our arts editor.”
“Hi,” Dabney said. She offered a hand and Jocelyn shook it quickly, as though a Harvard hand might give her a communicable disease. Then she reached into her buttery leather shoulder bag and brought out a pack of Newports and a matchbook that Dabney couldn’t help noticing was from Mory’s Temple Bar. Jocelyn lit two cigarettes and held one out to Clen, but he waved it away.
“No, thanks.”
“What, all of a sudden you don’t smoke?” Jocelyn said. She offered Dabney a poisonous smile. “You don’t smoke, do you, Dabney?”
Mute, Dabney shook her head. She wanted to say,Clen doesn’t smoke either.Except clearly he did smoke. He smoked with this girl, Jocelyn. Dabney located a second Valium in her jeans pocket, right next to the lucky silver dollar. She didn’t want to be here. She would rather have been at Harvard in Solange’s room, sitting on the persimmon silk pillow. Dabney washed the Valium down with some of her vodka tonic. She had consumed nothing that day except pills and booze; she was turning into the Joan Collins character inDynasty,minus the glamour.
Jocelyn shook the cigarette insistently at Clen. “Just take it, Hughes.”
“I don’t want it, thanks.”
Jocelyn scoffed. “I don’t get it. You’re afraid to smoke in front of your friend here?”
His girlfriend,Dabney thought.I’m his girlfriend.It suddenly seemed imperative that Jocelyn know this. She realized that Clen had not introduced her as such. He had just said,This is Dabney Kimball.
Clen sighed. “Be nice, Jocelyn.”
At that second, Henry Wallace swooped in and took the cigarette from Jocelyn. He grinned at Dabney. “Our arts editor has a flair for the dramatic,” he said. “Which is why I hired her. I, for one, can’t wait to taste a Harvard picnic.”
Dabney set out her picnic on the rickety card tables with a sense of purpose, relieved to have something to do with her hands while her thoughts fell to pieces. Clen didn’t have a deadline, at least not one the editor in chief knew about. Or maybe Dabney had misunderstood. The Valium was making her fuzzy. She felt like she was forty years old, matronly and persnickety; at that point, she would be in charge of children’s birthday parties and soccer-team potlucks while this Jocelyn roamed the streets of Florence antiquing or hopped from gallery to gallery in SoHo. Jocelyn had glamour—that hair, that sneer, those eyes like pure, hard sapphires. And the way she’d pushed a cigarette on Clen, something she had held briefly in her mouth that would then go into his mouth. Dabney got it, or at least she thought she got it.Trust. Cheat.Jocelyn and Clen had been together.
She set out the sandwiches, the chips, the onion dip, the cheese and crackers, the salted almonds, the grapes, the plump, glistening olives. Thiswasa better picnic than the Yale picnic, she thought. The Yale picnic consisted of tortilla chips and jarred salsa, a box of Triscuits, and a bowl of microwaved popcorn.
Glory was hers when the flocks descended on her sandwiches, devoured her dip. “God, what isinthis? Heroin? It’s out of this world!”
Clen wolfed down two sandwiches without even breathing, saying, “Really good, Cupe. Really damned good.” He went over to the bar that was set up on a card table to make them some more drinks, and Dabney followed him. Somewhere, a marching band played.
She said, “So tell me about Jocelyn.”
