he had done had taken monumental courage. It's a small thing, a date, but in our society there are all sorts of charged forces swirling behind that simple concept - I mean, there are kids who go all the way through high school and never get up enough courage to ask a girl for a date. Never once, in all four years. And that isn't just one or two kids, it's lots of them. And there are lots of sad girls who never get asked. It's a shitty way to run things, when you stop to think about it. A lot of people get hurt. I could dimly imagine the naked terror Arnie must have felt, waiting for Leigh to come to the phone; the sense of dread amazement at the idea that he was not planning to ask just any girl out but the prettiest girl in school.
'She answered,' Arnie went on. 'She said "Hello?" and, man, I couldn't say anything. I tried and nothing came out but this little whistle of air. So she said "Hello, who is this?" like it might be some kind of practical joke, you know, and I thought, This is ridiculous. If I can talk to her in the hall, I should be able to talk to her on the goddam phone, all she can say is no, I mean slid can't shoot me or anything if I ask her for a date. So I said hi, this is Arnie Cunningham, and she said hi, and blah-blah-blahdy-blah, bullshit-builshit-bullshit, and then I realized I didn't even know where the hell I wanted to ask her to go, and we're running out of things to say, pretty soon she's going to hang up. So I asked her the first thing I could think of, would she want to go to the football game on Saturday. She said she'd love to go, right off like that, like she had just been waiting for me to ask her, you know?'
'Probably she was.'
'Yeah, maybe.' Arnie considered this, bemused.
The bell rang, signifying five minutes to period five. Arnie and I got up. The cheerleaders trotted off the field, their little skirts flipping saucily.
We climbed down the bleachers, tossed our lunchbags in one of the trash barrels painted with the school colours orange and black, talk about Halloween - and walked toward the school.
Arnie was still smiling, recalling the way it had-worked itself out, that first time with Leigh. 'Asking her to the game was sheer desperation.'
'Thank a lot,' I said. 'That' s what I get for playing my heart out every Saturday afternoon, huh?'
'You know what I mean. Then, after she said she'd go with me, I had this really horrible thought and called you remember?'
Suddenly I did. He had called to ask me if that game was at home or away and had seemed absurdly crushed when I told him it was at Hidden Hills.
'So there I was, I've got a date with the prettiest girl in school, I'm crazy about her, and it turns out to be an away game and my car's in Will's garage.'
'You could have taken the bus.'
'I know that now, but I didn't then. The bus always used to be full up a week before the game. I didn't know so many people would stop coming to the games if the team started losing.'
'Don't remind me,' I said.
'So I went to Will. I knew Christine could do it, but no way she was street-legal. I mean, I was desperate.'
How desperate? I wondered coldly and suddenly.
'And he came through for me. Said he understood how important it was, and if . . .' Arnie paused; seemed to consider. 'And that's the story of the big date,' he finished gracelessly.
And if . . .
But that wasn't my business,
Be his eyes, my father had said.
But I pushed that away too.
We were walking past the smoking area now, deserted except for three guys and two girls, hurriedly finishing a joint. They had it in a makeshift matchbook roachclip, and the evocative odour of pot, so similar to the aroma of slowly burning autumn leaves, slipped into my nostrils.
'Seen Buddy Repperton around?' I asked.
'No,' he said. 'And don't want to. You?'
I had seen him once, hanging out at Vandenberg's Happy Gas, an extra-barrel service station out on Route 22 in Monroeville. Don Vandenberg's dad owned it, and the place had been on the ragged edge of going bust ever since the Arab oil embargo in '73. Buddy hadn't