didn’t much want to. Even before the trouble, Walker kept to himself.
At MIT he was a new person. Dean’s list, all that. Easy among people as smart as he was, and there were many. Then Wade phoned. His baby brother took on like Pop was on his deathbed, which wasn’t exactly true. Wade’s ‘emergency’ put Walker right back where he started, in the Pierce Point Garage, finishing the job Pop was doing the day he went belly up in the grease pit.
Lucy came in on his first morning. ‘How soon can you have it back?’ Shredded jeans on her, tie-dyed T-shirt, which was big that year, she was dressed just like everybody else but not. Diamond studs in her ears – her dead mother’s, he learned later; that nice-girl hair held back by prescription sun glasses – how does Walker know? There’s not much Walker doesn’t know. She apologized, the way you would to any man who was doing a job for you, ‘It’s my grandmother’s. She always expects things back yesterday.’
It was graduation week. Turned out this was Wade’s big emergency. He couldn’t deal with Pop because it was Senior Week; he was too busy out at the beach, carousing. Walker said, ‘When do you need it?’
She gave him a nice, indifferent smile. ‘Um, tonight? I’m going to the beach and she won’t let me out of the house until she gets her car back.’
‘Right,’ he said. He did not say: senior houseparties – not Walker in his old man’s coverall, with his hands filthy and his face thick with sludge. Not Walker, who knew as well as anyone what houseparties were, but had never been to one. Not Walker, looking the way he did. Pop was replacing a cracked block when he took queer and Wade rushed him to the E.R.; he had to finish the job.
There was no way she could know who Walker Pike really was. Not that day. ‘If you could do it by six . . .’
Why was she so anxious? You’d think it was her first beach party. He pretended to mull the estimate. In fact, he was taking her in – not the face, not even the body. He was absorbing the truth of her: the intelligence. The touching vulnerability. ‘Six o’clock, no problem. Ride you home?’
‘No thanks.’ She gestured to the road outside. Walker saw that redheaded Chaplin kid out front, idling in his father’s car: brainy Bob Chaplin, he noted. Safe as houses. Apologetic smile. ‘I have a ride.’
Walker drove to the beach that night anyway. In case.
Houseparties, what was he expecting? He wasn’t sure, but he knew what happened to Jessie after one of those things; it ate at him. He pulled her out, but too late. His heart told him to watch out for this one. No. He had to see her. He had to let her see him when he looked like himself, not like a greasy swamp bunny in Pop’s big old coverall. He would never walk into a private party even with an invitation, but everything opened up on the last night of Senior Week. The parties merged for the big bonfire on the beach. All creation would be down there on the sand, partying. Walker hated himself for knowing those things about matters he had moved beyond and could care less about, but he had to go.
On Huntington beach in a crowd that size Walker could lurk without having to explain himself; he could take all the time he needed to scope out Lucy Carteret and watch her from a distance; he would lay back until it seemed like the time was right. Then he’d invent a reason to speak to her. She probably wouldn’t recognize him right away, all cleaned up and looking fine. When he reminded her who he was she’d be surprised. She’d thank him for getting that grandmother’s car fixed in time. Then he could ask where she was going to college in September and the conversation would start. She’d have to ask him where he went. Then he could tell her he went to MIT, which even people down here admitted might be as good as Duke.
Driving out to Huntington beach that night Walker wrote dialog in his head. It’s where all his best conversations take place.
The party wasn’t hard to locate. From the causeway he could see the bonfire staining the night sky. He turned off on beach road and left his car on a side street. He