688: “I wish . . .”
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 19 begins
19
“I WISH I could capture the atmosphere of Sunrise Cove after Guy took charge,” she said. “It was as if we were in one of those upbeat movies that came out in the thirties, with aging child actors still playing kids, hanging around the soda fountain and saying ‘swell’ and ‘gee’ a lot.”
“Guy would have been the fellow that all the other kids looked up to,” I suggested.
“Probably,” she said.
“Captain of the football team.”
“Sure.”
“Chairman of the annual Thanksgiving drive to fill baskets for needy families.”
“Well—”
“He would have smoked a pipe and his brow would furrow when he thought about the gol-darned unfairness of it all.”
“Maybe.”
“And he would have had a runty sidekick everybody called ‘Pete,’ who cracked jokes and never got the girl.”
“All right, lay off it.”
“Okay.”
“You’re right about Guy, though. He was so square-jawed, and he had a big grin with lots of teeth, and he wore suits with wide shoulders—not exaggerated, you understand, but wide, solid. He should have been in pictures.”
“And I can imagine that in this context you seemed to take on certain motion-picture qualities yourself. You had the equipment after all, the perky breasts and tight buttocks of the ingenue.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did.”
“You know, we girls were in pretty good shape back then. Better than a lot of girls are now. We did a lot of walking—people in general did more walking then—and we had our cute little bottoms. And legs. My legs were—”
“—are—” I said, and she hiked her skirt up for me.
“—dazzling. And, you know, I would have been cast as one of the bad girls—from the wrong side of the tracks—and we bad girls liked to put it all out there on display.”
“Those tight skirts. Those little shrug sweaters.”
“We were terrified of looking like our mothers. They all had wide bottoms and big bosoms, and girdles—and regrets.”
[to be continued]
In Topical Guide 688, Mark Dorset considers Popular Culture: Movies: College Comedies and Popular Culture: Pulp Fiction: Stock Characters: Bad Girls from this episode.
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