Page 9 of Endless Summer: Stories
“I’m going to New Haven,” she announced to Dr. Donegal the Monday before the game.
“Excellent,” Dr. Donegal said. “It’s a big step. I’m proud of you. Are you driving?”
“No,” Dabney said. “I’m afraid if I drive myself, I’ll panic and head for home. So I’m going to catch a ride with my roommate and her boyfriend.”
“Mallory and her boyfriend? The hockey player?”
Dabney loved how Dr. Donegal remembered the details of her life. He was a very good therapist. “Yes,” Dabney said. “His parents just gave him a Camaro for his birthday.” Dabney had a bit of a car fetish and was a devoted Chevy girl. In truth, the idea of riding in Jason’s new Camaro thrilled her, even though she would be smushed like a thirteenth doughnut in the back seat. “Camaros are actually very safe cars.”
“Indeed they are,” Dr. Donegal said. “You’ll be fine.”
“Fine,” Dabney said.
In her weekly call from the pay phone at the end of the third floor of her dorm on Tuesday evening, she told Clen, “I’m coming.”
He said, “I hear you saying that.”
She said, “You think I’m going to cancel.”
There was silence on his end. He was debating, she knew, whether to state the obvious truth—she always canceled—or prop her up with false confidence.
He chose the latter. “I know you’re coming,” he said. “I know there is no way you would cancel on coming to the game. You go to Harvard and I go to Yale. I am your boyfriend. You love me, and you’ll be safe.”
“Safe,” she said.
She planned a picnic for the tailgate party: chicken salad sandwiches, a caramelized onion dip made with real onions andnotdried soup mix, some crackers and good cheese—aged Cheddar, soft Brie—a jar of salted almonds, some plump Italian olives shiny in their oil, and several bunches of good-looking grapes. On Thursday, Dabney prepared everything in the sad, small communal kitchen in the basement of her old freshman dorm, Grays Hall, then posted signs threatening severe consequences if anyone touched it. She could just imagine the softball players on the second floor coming home after a party and devouring the chicken salad.
Next, Dabney considered her outfit. She always wore jeans or a kilt, although for the game, she considered jazzing up her look. But it was November and the forecast for New Haven was sunny and 46 degrees. Jeans, Dabney thought. White oxford shirt, navy peacoat, pearls, penny loafers, headband. That was fine for the game, but Clen had made them a dinner reservation afterward at Mory’s Temple Bar, and Dabney needed something fancier. Luckily, she lived just down the hall from Solange, a sophisticate from New York City who had gone to Spence and whose wardrobe included vintage YSL and Valentino pieces that she’d either stolen or salvaged from her mother’s closet.
Solange was eager to help Dabney find a new look, not only because Solange liked dressing up her housemates like life-size dolls, but also because Dabney had set up Solange with her current boyfriend, the fabulous Javier from Argentina, whose family owned a ranch bigger than the five boroughs and who, like Solange, was majoring in Romance languages. Dabney had seen a rosy aura around Solange and Javier as they walked out of a Camus seminar together, which meant they were a perfect match. Dabney’s special vision had yet to be proved wrong.
Solange rummaged through her closet. Dabney loved how Solange’s room was decorated like something fromArabian Nights—jewel-toned Persian rugs, a silk pillow the color of a persimmon that was big enough for Dabney to sleep on, and an elaborate hookah that the resident dean did not know about.
Solange produced a black sequined batwing-sleeve blouse. When Dabney tried it on, Solange smiled. “Yes,” she said. “Sexy.” Dabney had never worn black in her life—Dabney’s grandmother had been of the opinion that a woman should not wear black until she turned twenty-five.
“And here,” Solange said. “I can’t let you wear that blouse with your Levi’s.” She pulled a pair of velvet cigarette pants out of her closet and a pair of black suede kitten heels with dangerously pointy toes.
Dabney practiced walking around the room in the heels. Was she asking for trouble? Would she trip over herself at Mory’s Temple Bar and face-plant in someone’s cheese soufflé?
“We’re going full throttle here,” Solange said. “There is no way you’re carrying your Bermuda bag. I want you to take this.” Solange handed Dabney a silver cocktail purse that was fringed and beaded like a flapper’s dress. “My grandmother carried this as a debutante in 1923. Look!” From out of the purse she produced a silver dollar from that year. “This is my lucky charm. I want you to take it with you on your special weekend.”
“Okay,” Dabney said. She wondered if lucky charms were transferable. Solange was offering it so earnestly, Dabney decided to believe it would work.
Dabney gazed at herself in the mirror, fully dressed in black. She swished the beaded fringe of the purse so that it looked like the purse was dancing. Dabney no longer resembled herself; she had become someone else—someone exotic and sensual, someone who wasn’t afraid to go new places. Someone who wasn’t afraid of anything.
On Friday afternoon, Dabney was in her room, starting her paper on J. D. Salinger’sFranny and Zooey, when there was a knock on the door. It was Kendall from down the hall.
Kendall said, “There’s a call for you.”
“Call?” Dabney said.
Kendall nodded and tapped the toe of her raspberry-pink Chuck Taylor with clear impatience.
“Is it Clen?” Dabney asked.
“I think so,” Kendall said. “Sounded like it.”
This was highly unusual. Clen and Dabney spoke only on Tuesday evenings. On Friday afternoons, Kendall spoke to her “best friend,” a girl named Alison who went to UNC. Everyone knew that Kendall and Alison were more than just friends. Their phone calls were routinely eavesdropped on because Kendall liked to talk dirty, and every so often Kendall and Alison would have a fight that would be explosive enough to count as high entertainment.
