Walk on the Wild Side - By Karl Edward Wagner Page 0,84

welcomed back the Pine Hill High School Class of 1963 to its 25th Class Reunion. A moderately bad local band was playing a medley of hits from the 1960s, and many of the middle-aged alumni were attempting to dance. In an eddy from the amplifiers it was impossible to carry on a conversation.

They were Marcia Meadows (she had taken back her maiden name after the divorce), Fred Pruitt (once known as Freddie Pruitt and called so again tonight), and Grant McDade (now addressed as Dr McDade). The best of friends in high school, each had gone his separate way, and despite yearbook vows to remain the very closest of friends forever, they had been out of touch until this night. Marcia and Grant had been voted Most Intellectual for the senior class. Freddie and one Beth Markeson had been voted Most Likely to Succeed. These three were laughing over their senior photographs in the yearbook. Plastic cups of beer from the party keg were close at hand. Freddie had already drunk more than the other two together.

Marcia sighed and shook her head. They all looked so young back then; pictures of strangers. “So why isn’t Beth here tonight?”

“Off somewhere in California, I hear,” Freddie said. He was the only one of the three who had remained in Pine Hill. He owned the local Porsche-Audi-BMW dealership. “I think she’s supposed to be working in pictures. She always had a good—”

“—body!” Marcia finished for him. The two snorted laughter, and Grant smiled over his beer.

Freddie shook his head and ran his hand over his shiny scalp; other than a fringe of wispy hair, he was as bald as a honeydew melon. A corpulent man—he had once been quite slender—his double chin overhung his loosened tie, and the expensive suit was showing strain. “Wonder how she’s held up. None of us look the same as then.” Quickly: “Except you, Marcia. Don’t you agree, Grant?”

“As beautiful as the day I last saw her.” Grant raised a toast, and Marcia hoped she hadn’t blushed. After twenty-five years Grant McDade remained in her fantasies. She wished he’d take off those dark glasses—vintage B & L Ray-Bans, just like his vintage white T-shirt and James Dean red nylon jacket and the tight jeans. His high school crew cut was now slicked-back blond hair, and there were lines in his face. Otherwise he was still the boy she’d wanted to have take her to the senior prom. Well, there was an indefinable difference. But given the years, and the fact that he was quite famous in his field...

“You haven’t changed much either, I guess, Grant.” Freddie had refilled his beer cup. “I remember that jacket from high school. Guess you heart surgeons know to keep fit.”

He flapped a hand across his pink scalp. “But look at me. Bald as that baby’s butt. Serves me right for always wanting to have long hair as a kid.”

“Weren’t you ever a hippie?” Marcia asked.

“Not me. Nam caught up to me first. But I always wanted to have long hair back when I was a kid—back before the Beatles made it okay to let your hair grow. Remember Hair and that song? Well, too late for me by then.”

Freddie poured more beer down his throat. Marcia hadn’t kept count, but she hoped he wouldn’t throw up. From his appearance, Freddie could probably hold it.

“When I was a kid,” Freddie said, becoming maudlin, “I hated to get my hair cut. I don’t know why. Maybe it was those Sunday school stories about Samson and Delilah that scared me. Grant—you’re a doctor, ask your shrink friends. It was those sharp scissors and buzzing clippers, that chair like the dentist had, and that greasy crap they’d smear in your hair. ‘Got your ears lowered!’ the kids at school would say.”

Freddie belched. “Well, my mother used to tease me about it. Said she’d tie a ribbon in my hair and call me Frederika. I was the youngest—two older sisters—and I was always teased that Mom had hoped I’d be a girl, too, to save on buying new clothes—just pass along hand-me-downs. I don’t know what I really thought. You remember being a kid in the 1950s: how incredibly naive we all of us were.”

“Tell me!” Marcia said. “I was a freshman in college before I ever saw even a picture of a hard-on.”

“My oldest sister,” Freddie went on, “was having a slumber party one night for some of her sorority sisters. Mom and Dad were out