Page 13 of Endless Summer: Stories
“Itwasreally good,” Jason said. “I gave you a bite.” He offered Dabney a look of apology. “I ate one while you were asleep. I didn’t want to stop at Burger King.”
“No problem, Preppie,” Dabney said.
They stopped and asked a young man in parachute pants for directions. He pointed them the right way.
“Clen better be on time,” Mallory said. “Because I’m not waiting around.”
Dabney scanned the surroundings. So many people.
“Cupe!”
There he was, standing alone, wearing his brown corduroy jacket with the fake shearling collar. He’d owned that jacket forever.
Dabney ran to him.
She was safe. Clen was real and strong and warm; he had a body and eyes and a voice. He had shaved. He smelled like himself. He picked Dabney up off the ground, and the days and weeks and months that she had pined for him evaporated. He was her oxygen. She could breathe.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” he said in her ear. “I. Can’t. Believe. It.” He set her down. “You are in New Haven, Connecticut.” He looked genuinely shocked and delighted, like she was Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny. Dabney was embarrassed. The other ten thousand people present had managed to get here without fanfare. Why was her arrival such a big deal?
But she knew why. She felt like she had flown without wings. It was that astonishing.
“You remember Mallory,” Dabney said. “And this is her boyfriend, Jason.”
Clen stepped forward and shook hands with Mallory and accepted the laundry basket from Jason.
“You’re a lucky man,” Jason said. “That’s some picnic.”
Dabney pulled out sandwiches for Jason and Mallory. “I’ll see you tomorrow at ten sharp,” she said. “I’ll meet you right here.”
“See ya,” Mallory said. She handed Jason her sandwich and turned to go.
Jason, however, being a properly raised Ipswich preppy, offered a farewell. “Have fun, Dab. Thanks for the sandwiches. And hey, nice to meet you, Clen. Great girl you’ve got there.”
Clen said, “I know. Thanks for the safe delivery.”
Elation! They were arm in arm; he was happy to see her. The confusion and hesitancy she had heard in his voice over the phone the day before had been a figment of her imagination or caused by Kendall’s stalking. The first thing Clen did once Mallory and Jason walked away was set the laundry basket down, hold Dabney’s face, and kiss her deeply. God, the rush, the chemistry—it was the same now as it had been during their first kiss at the top of the hill at Dead Horse Valley during an early snowstorm. December 1, 1980, when they were freshmen in high school.
“I want to take you back to my room right this instant,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Take me, take me.”
“But I can’t,” he said. “Because theDaily Newshas a tailgate all set up and we’re expected.”
Dabney felt cranky about the tailgate, even though Clen had warned her this was the first thing on the docket. She wanted him to herself; a ludicrous wish, she realized, as nearly the whole point of her coming to New Haven was to witness his life here, and theYale Daily Newswas a large part of that life. The paper. It was as important as his coursework, possibly more so.
She said, “Maybe we can cut out on the game and go to your room?”
He said, “Cut out on the game?”
Ridiculous, right; she still wasn’t thinking clearly—the Valium, the beer. She sounded like a sex-starved fiend; she should explain, perhaps, that it wasn’t the sex she wanted as much as the time behind closed doors, alone—Clen had a single—his attention shining solely on her.
“We’re over here,” Clen said. He picked up his pace, the laundry basket held out in front of him. Dabney should have scoured the storage closets for a proper cooler. She hurried along, trying to keep up. There was the same woody Clen had driven to Harvard the year before, and next to it was a cluster of card tables that looked like a raft cobbled together by desperate castaways.
“There you are, Hughes!” A guy/boy/man stepped forward. “And you brought your wash!”
“Shut up, Wallace,” Clen said.
It was Henry Wallace, Dabney realized, the editor in chief of theYale Daily News.Clen never stopped talking about him. Wallace had been the one to recognize Clen’s talents and make him a features editor as a freshman.
