Then there they were, standing in the little alcove outside the door of The Clock, hugging tight. Robert kissed Bill on the cheek, something that might have been uncomfortable under other circumstances but which seemed quite natural at the time.
“Keep in touch,” Robert said.
Bill knew he would not keep in touch. Bill knew it was one of those moments, one of those things. He’d already had some like this one, not quite as deep, but similar, when he’d said goodbye to several of his friends upon heading off to Columbus, and before that too, with friends and even relatives on his mother’s side who he’d lost contact with after his mother died.
There was so much to remember, even then in his short twenty years of life.
Trish had asked him if he could fix Patsy’s grade. She’d stood there with those black lips in those high-heel, open-toe, open-heel mules, in just a full, black slip and no underwear. She’d already told him that.
She was hot just the way she was. But as she asked him about Patsy’s grade, she sucked at one of her fingers and fussed with the bottom of her slip, lifting it ever-so-suggestively.
“Please?”
“I don’t know.”
“Pretty please.” She’d drawn her knees together, then let them separate, looked at him with puppy-dog eyes. “I’ll do anything for it.”
“Like what?”
“Like your wildest dreams. And I do mean anything. From tying me up to…” She’d leaned in on over the trunk that separated them to whisper in his ear.
He could see the slip fall away from her body, could see her tiny breasts with their prominent nipples. He remembered thinking he’d died and gone to heaven, or something to the effect of how lucky he was at the moment.
What she’d whispered in his ear had been so far from his dreams it might never have come into his mind, just like being a cook had never come into his mind until the moment Robert stepped into Bailey’s office that morning and whisked him off to Suburban West.
“Well,” Bill said, “for that I might just be able to fix that grade.”
“I know you can,” Trish said. “I know you will. I know you would even if we didn’t do anything here tonight. I know, knowing you now, that you wouldn’t let Patsy fail if there was anything you could do about it.”
“You think I’m that much of a softy?”
Trish just smiled at that.
They spent the night together. They drank some wine, smoked some weed, popped more Quaaludes than they should have. Then they drank more wine and got so wasted they could hardly stand up.
They sat a long time on the sofa making out. Petting. Petting in that old sense of the word. They kissed and they touched and then they kissed and touched some more.
And then they walked hand in hand, very late at night/early in the morning, into Bill’s bedroom where Trish pleased herself with him in every way she wanted while Bill let himself enjoy what would end up being one of the very best nights of his life.
Patsy could never get an A. Bill fixed it so Patsy went to talk to Hank who told her he couldn’t just give her a grade, but that since she was having such a hard time with the exams, he could arrange for her to write an extra paper. He even allowed her to be able to get help with the paper. She had to write it, but she could get help.
That, of course, was an allusion to Bill’s helping her with the paper. Which he did. Which, mostly, he wrote for her sitting outside in the backyard while she and Trish sunbathed. For which Patsy was ever grateful in ever so many ways. And Trish too.
Leaving Columbus meant leaving so many memories.
