One of my regular duties as a member of the Young Tars was monitoring the boarding of the school buses at the end of the school day. This responsibility meant that I spent some time each afternoon with Porky White, who was at that time driving a bus for the town of Babbington. I remember well the first afternoon that I spent talking with, or listening to, Porky, while we sat in the bus he drove, Bus Six, waiting along with the other bus drivers for the bell to ring, ending the school day. It was a day early in October, a clear, bright afternoon. Talk had turned, as it is likely to turn in any conversation with Porky, to women. He asked me: “You got a girlfriend, Peter?”
“Well—” I said.
“You can tell me,” he said. He looked over my head, at the other bus drivers, and grinned.
I answered, with a little hesitation, “Veronica McCall.”
“Wow!” Porky said. “I’m impressed. You go right after first prize, don’t you? She’s quite a little number.”
“She’s cute, isn’t she?” I asked. I was glowing.
“Cute?” said Porky. He raised his eyebrows and looked at each of the other drivers in turn. “Hey, open your eyes, Peter. She’s more than cute, if you know what I mean. I bet you’ve got a lot of competition from the other guys.”
“Competition?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. “A guy has got to be eternally vigilant if he doesn’t want to lose his girl. You know, there’s always somebody who wants to take your place.”
“There is?” I asked.
“And it’s when you think that you don’t have anything to worry about that you probably have the most to worry about,” Porky said.
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Well, when you start thinking you don’t have anything to worry about, you start taking her for granted.”
“Oh.”
“You stop sending her flowers—”
“Flowers?”
“You stop saying those sweet nothings she likes to hear—”
“Sweet nothings?”
“And pretty soon you start seeing signs that she’s bored.”
“Bored?”
“Sure. You have to remember to keep up the romantic touches, because when you get right down to it, it’s usually not you they like—what they like is romance.’
“Romance?”
“Of course, Peter. Before you know it, some other guy is sending her flowers, some other guy is whispering sweet nothings to her, and pretty soon another mule is kicking in your stall, you know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” I said. I wondered whether Jack had sent flowers to Mrs. McCall.
“When was the last time you took her out for dinner somewhere with candlelight?”
“I’m only in the fifth grade,” I said.
“Oh, yeah,” said Porky, shrugging. “Well, not dinner, then. When was the last time you took her—”
“I’ve never taken her anywhere,” I said.
“You don’t take her out?” asked Porky.
“No,” I said. I couldn’t decide whether Porky was pulling my leg or whether an important facet of fifth-grade life had been entirely hidden from me. “None of the boys my age take girls out,” I said. Porky smiled and patted me on the head. He winked at one of the other drivers. “Do they?” I asked.
I didn’t know what to think. Certainly none of the boys I knew took girls out. Certainly none of the girls I knew went out. Or did they? Suppose they did go out, but they never told me about it. It might be that they had been keeping this going-out business from me because they knew I wasn’t ready for it. I had an early bedtime, after all, even on weekends. Perhaps the boys and girls who went out didn’t have to be in bed until a couple of hours later than I did, and perhaps they were accustomed to rendezvousing, of a Saturday night, at the Gilded Peacock, where they ate egg rolls and spare ribs and danced the merengue while I was asleep. It was possible, even likely, that they kept their nightlife secret from me out of kindness. They didn’t want me to feel left out. Of course, I was left out, but they couldn’t help that, and if I didn’t know that I was left out, at least I wouldn’t feel left out. It was kind of them to keep all this from me, in a way. Not only was it kind, but it was really quite amazing. To think that they could lead such wild lives after dark and manage to conceal all of it from me. I’d never even had a hint that all this was going on. None of my friends ever betrayed any of it. Veronica certainly never gave the slightest—Veronica. Veronica. Did she want to be part of this, did she want to go dancing at night at the Gilded Peacock? Of course she did. The poor thing. I was going to have to start taking her out.
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🎧 169: One of my regular . . .