packed with ice cream that was drenched with chocolate sauce and topped with whipped cream, jimmies, chopped peanuts, and a maraschino cherry.
“Can’t travel on an empty stomach, Duke.”
“Where to?”
“The dunk tank.”
They headed up the boardwalk, eating their Super-Waffles. Though he saw plenty of sleazes, roughnecks, and bums, he no longer felt threatened by them. He had Cowboy with him now. If anyone got funny, he wouldn’t have to face it alone.
Cowboy strode along, sometimes calling out to friends he spotted, including a few who were working the game booths. He seemed to know a lot of people—including girls. Plain girls, cute girls, and some who were totally beautiful. And they all acted as if they liked him.
This is great, Jeremy thought. If I can be his buddy, I might meet some of them.
He’d never had a buddy like Cowboy. His best friend in Bakersfield, Ernie, was a skinny, shy kid whose glasses were usually taped together from catching a ball in the face (one that any normal guy would’ve caught) or a fist (because something about him just pissed off every jock in school), and whose idea of a good time was raising Anchorage, Alaska, on his ham radio.
A nice guy, but a real loser.
According to Ernie, all the popular guys in school were inane assholes, glandular cases, or throwbacks. The good-looking girls were vapid twits who thought their farts smelled like roses.
With a best friend like that, you didn’t stand a chance. With a guy like Cowboy, though…
“Hey there, gorgeous!” Cowboy suddenly yelled, startling Jeremy from his thoughts.
A girl smiled at him and waved through the bars of a cage. She sat on a narrow platform, swinging her legs. Below her bare feet was a water-filled tank with a glass front.
Even as she waved, a pitched ball struck the bull’s-eye, knocked back the metal arm, and collapsed her perch. She squealed and dropped, splashing into the deep water. Through the glass, Jeremy saw her descend in a sudden froth of bubbles. Like a wind from below, the water pushed her T-shirt up her belly, lifted her long black hair above her head. She squatted for a moment at the bottom of the tank, cheeks bulging with trapped air, shirt and hair slowly drifting down, and shook her fist at the guy who’d dunked her. Then she stood. Water swirling around her shoulders, she waded to the metal-rung ladder at the side of the tank. She climbed up.
Her wet legs were shiny. Jeremy saw the outline of her panties through the clinging seat of her shorts. Her shirt was plastered to her back, her pink skin showing through the thin fabric. Her hair hung thick and glossy between her shoulder blades, almost long enough to reach the cross-strap of her bra.
Leaning away from the ladder, she raised the shelf. Its braces locked, and she climbed onto it.
“Just a lucky throw, hot stuff!” she yelled.
“Yeah? Watch this!”
“I won’t hold my breath.”
Hot Stuff threw the ball at the target beside her cage. It missed and whapped the canvas backstop.
She smirked at him and clapped.
Jeremy thought it was too bad about her face. She was one of those gals who look terrific from behind, slender and shapely, but when you saw her from the front, she was a letdown. As if God had decided he’d blessed her enough from the neck down, so he skimped on her face. She wasn’t exactly ugly, but her eyes seemed too close together, her nose small and upturned and a little piggish, and her mouth too wide. Her front teeth jutted out of her gums like white marble slabs.
Another ball missed the target.
“Nolan Ryan you’re not, Bozo!”
The guy flapped a hand at her, put an arm around his girlfriend, and walked away.
“Come on,” Cowboy said. He stepped over to the man running the concession and passed his Super-Waffle to Jeremy. “Let me have three of those balls, Jim,” he said, handing the man three dollars.
“Couldn’t hit the broad side of an outhouse if you were inside it!” she called.
“Get ready to bite the drink, Lizzie!” He hurled the first ball. It slammed the metal target. Lizzie dropped.
Climbing out, she looked over her shoulder at him. “Nice shot, tenderfoot. Who’s your friend?”
Jeremy felt heat rush to his face.
“My pal Duke. New in town. We just met.”
“Nice to meet you, Duke.”
“Thanks.”
She sat on the platform. Cowboy threw. She hit the water again.
Cowboy smiled. “Only way to get her clean. She never takes a bath, filthy scrug.”