🎧 141: The sky was quite dark ...

16

THE SKY WAS QUITE DARK on the day that Veronica invited me to her house to play. It was a Saturday. Veronica called at noon. My mother drove me to her house and said that she would be back to pick me up before dinner. After I had taken my hat and coat and gloves off and said hello to Mrs. McCall, Veronica led me to the playroom in the basement.
     “This is the playroom,” she said.
     “It’s nice,” I said.
     The floor was covered with red and white squares of linoleum tile. A bar made of blond wood was at one end of the room, and a number of stools stood in front of it. A small pool table was in the center of the room, and to one side was a card table with four folding chairs set around it. We played Monopoly for a while, and then we worked on a picture puzzle. Veronica’s mother brought us some milk and cookies and said that she had to go out to do some shopping. Veronica followed her upstairs. I drank my milk and ate a couple of the cookies. They were the kind with a small amount of peanut butter encased in a crunchy beige cookie, the two halves of which could be pried apart so that the peanut butter could be removed with the tip of the tongue. I heard the front door close, and I heard the car start and drive off. Veronica came back down the stairs. She closed the playroom door behind her and stood with her back against it and her hands behind her back. She tilted her head to one side.
     “What shall we play now?” she asked, and she tossed her head just enough to make her hair swing.
     “How about pool?” I suggested.
     “How about Clothes Closet?” she suggested.
     “Clothes Closet?” I said. “How do you play that?”
     She walked across the room to a door and opened it. “First we go into this closet,” she said.
     I went into the closet. It was used to store toys and games and sports equipment and brooms and mops. There wasn’t a lot of room. When Veronica came in and closed the door behind her, the two of us were squeezed pretty close together. It was very dark.
     “Now what?” I asked.
     “Now we take off our clothes,” she said.
     “Wow,” I said. I started unbuttoning my shirt. A thought struck me. “What if your mother comes back?” I asked.
     “Oh, don’t worry—she won’t,” Veronica said. “You can’t just take off your clothes all at once, you know. You have to follow the rules—”
     “But what if your mother forgot something?” I asked.
     “Don’t worry,” she said. “You have to take off what I say. Are you ready?”
     “Well—”
     “Take off your—shoes!” ordered Veronica.
     “Veronica—”
     “Are you taking off your shoes?”
     “Well, yes, but—”
     “Now you take off your sweater, and I’ll take off my dress. Go!”
     “I haven’t got my shoes—”
     “Hurry up, Peter. You have to keep up with me. Now I’ll take off my undershirt, and you take off your shirt. Go!”
     “Was that a car?”
     “Hurry!”
     “Yeah. I’m hurrying.”
     “Now you take off your pants, and I’ll take off my socks. Go!”
     “Maybe we should start putting our things back on, Veronica. I—”
     “Oh, don’t worry so much, Peter. Have you got your pants off?”
     “Yes, but—”
     “Good. Now what have you got left on?”
     “Socks and underpants,” I said. “Maybe we should start putting—”
     “I only have underpants on, so you should take your socks off.”
     “Why don’t we save this game for—”
     “Peter, a lot of boys have asked me to play Clothes Closet with them, you know.”
     “Yeah, I guess—”
     “Take your socks off.”
     “I am.”
     “Good. Now we’ll take our underpants off,” she whispered. “Ready?”
     “Well—” I said.
     “I’m taking mine off,” she said. “Are you taking yours off?”
     From the way she was wiggling around, I could tell that she really was taking her underpants off, and it seemed to me that it wouldn’t be fair not to do as she was doing, so I said yes and pulled mine off, too.
     “Do you have everything off?” she asked.
     “Yes,” I said.
     “Here,” she said. “Give me your hand.”
     When she groped for my hand, she touched my belly. I swallowed and reached toward her.
     “Honey!” called a voice from upstairs. “I’m home!”
     “It’s my father!” said Veronica.
     “Oh, no,” I said. I began grabbing wildly for my clothes.
     “Don’t worry,” she said. “He won’t come down right away. He never does.”
     “Oh, what are we going to do?” I whined. “What are we going to do? What’s this? Is this my shirt? This is your dress. Oh, if your father catches us like this—”
     “Don’t get all upset,” Veronica said. There was an edge to her voice, but many years passed before I realized that the tense and breathless quality was caused not by alarm but by excitement, that part of the thrill of Clothes Closet for Veronica—perhaps all of the thrill, come to think of it—came from flirting with the danger of being caught by her father, of having him fling open the closet door, gasp, grab the nasty little boy with one hand and Veronica with the other, throw the boy out the front door, drag Veronica to her bedroom, throw her over his knees and spank her bare bottom.
     “Oh, these aren’t my socks,” I wailed. “Here! They’re yours. They don’t fit me.”
     “Peter, the best thing to do is to stop for a minute and take a deep breath, calm down, and then just get dressed the way you do in the morning.”
     “In the morning, I’m not in a closet with you!” I said.
     “Hello-wo!” called Mr. McCall again. “Where’s my little honeybunch?”
     “He’s going to come down in a minute,” said Veronica. “Are you ready?”
     “Yeah,” I said. “I’m ready.”
     When Mr. McCall opened the door to the playroom an instant later, he found Veronica taking aim at the four ball while I stood holding a cue and praying silently that he wouldn’t notice that my shirttail was out and my sweater was on backwards.
     “There you are!” said Mr. McCall. “Didn’t you hear me calling?”
     “Oh, sorry, Daddy,” said Veronica. “I was teaching Peter how to play—pool. I guess we didn’t hear you.”

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