Free Asa, as I Knew Him by Susanna Kaysen

hissing street lamp forty feet away. At least he claimed to have done this. He made them promise to keep it a secret. “Next time,” he’d said to Parker and Asa, “you’ll come along. It’s wonderful up at the top. They’re going to build something around the corner from this apartment building—I saw them digging up the ground. Let’s hope it’s fifteen stories.” Asa hoped it wouldn’t be.
    “Where did you get that idea?” he asked her.
    Jo smiled again. “You know he’s very rich. I mean, he’s got his own money, and when he’s twenty-one he’ll have more. Not rich the way you and I are—”
    Are we? thought Asa.
    “—but like movie stars. He’s sixteen, isn’t he?”
    “Yes. But he’ll be seventeen next week. This is an advance birthday party. His birthday’s on Tuesday.”
    “You watch, he’ll buy a car on his birthday. His own—you see? I can’t do that. My parents will give me a car, but I don’t have my own money to get one.”
    “What sort of a car?” Asa thought of a wonderful car, a tapered, bottle-green Chevy with the softest backseat in the Northeast, long enough to stretch Jo out on while he skillfully undid the buttons of her blouse.
    “And because they’re Jews,” Jo continued, “he’ll get the fanciest car he can find.”
    “Why? Why does that mean …” He put his finger in the cooling puddle of tomato sauce on his plate and drew a circle in it.
    “Oh you! You don’t understand anything!” Jo laughed at him, and it was not a pleasant laugh. “We’re cousins, aren’t we? Aren’t you and Clemmy cousins?”
    “Not first cousins. Second, I think.”
    “And I’m Clemmy’s cousin—”
    “He said third. That’s barely cousins. That means we’re fifth cousins.”
    “Well, you know what I mean. We’re related.”
    “So what?” said Asa. He stared at her eyes, which were yellow again. “Does that mean I can’t kiss you?” He blushed. Jo, however, did not blush.
    “Try it,” she said. It was a dare.
    “I have to get back to work,” said Asa, and he made a pile of nickels on the table.
    “You are a responsible little fellow.”
    “How old are you?” Asa was standing up, and angry. “You’re my age, aren’t you?”
    “Sure,” said Jo. “Or maybe just a bit younger. It’s good for the girl to be younger, isn’t it?”
    Then she stood up as well, and came near him, so he could smell her and feel the warmth of her limbs. She smelled of onions and smoke. He moved away. “I’m late,” he said. “I’m sorry, I must get back.”
    “I’m coming, stop rushing me.”
    Walking down the block to the gas station they were silent. Asa’s hand brushed hers for a second, but she neither flinched nor turned her palm toward his. The air smelled of hot rubber and gasoline. The night to come, which earlier had seemed a chilly-blue oasis—the water in the pool, the music soaring out of the speakers that hung off the garage, the fellowship of himself and Reuben and Parker contrasted with the dozens of strangers in whose company, bolstered by his friends, he would be at ease—now might be as steamy and restless and incomprehensible as the day, all because of Jo.
    “So you’re coming tonight,” he asked, as she got into her car.
    “Oh yes,” she said. She looked at herself in the rearviewmirror and blew herself, or maybe him, a kiss. “I’ll be there, looking great.”
    “Okay,” said Asa. Okay, what? he asked himself. Okay, she can look great? Okay, she can come tonight? He wished that she would break her arm playing tennis or that Clem would whisk her off to a fancy restaurant in Boston where they wouldn’t eat dinner until ten. He wanted—was it privacy with Reuben? Perhaps relief from her attractiveness. “See you later, then.”
    She left, in her slow, deliberate way, and gave a honk as she turned the corner.
    At ten o’clock the party was rising to its crest. The fifty or so guests had passed through the stages of entry, huddling with