Free Matheson, Richard - ss by Dance of the Dead Page A

to—"
    "Hey, frosh never saw the loopy's dance!" Bud yelled back.
    Lips parted, slurping; skirt was adjusted with blasé aplomb. "No kiddin'!" Len fired up the words. "Girl, you haven't lived!"
    "Oh, she's got to see that," said Barbara, buttoning a button.
    "Let's go there then!" yelled Len. "Let's give frosh a thrill!"
    "Good enough," said Bud and squeezed her leg. "Good enough up here, right, Peg?"
    Peggy's throat moved in the dark and the wind clutched harshly at her hair. She'd heard of it, she'd read of it but never had she thought she'd—
    Choose your school friends carefully darling. Be very careful.
    But when no one spoke to you for two whole months? When you were lonely and wanted to talk and laugh and be alive? And someone spoke to you finally and asked you to go out with them?
    "I yam Popeye, the sailor man!" Bud sang.
    In back, they crowed artificial delight. Bud was taking a course in Pre-War Comics and Cartoons—2. This week the class was studying Popeye. Bud had fallen in love with the one-eyed seaman and told Len and Barbara all about him; taught them dialogue and song.
    "I yam Popeye, the sailor man! I like to go swimmin' with bow-legged women! I yam Popeye, the sailor man!"
    Laughter. Peggy smiled falteringly. The hand left her leg as the car screeched around a curve and she was thrown against the door. Wind dashed blunt coldness in her eyes and forced her back, blinking. 110—115—120 miles-per-hour. ST. LOUIS—3. Be very careful, dear.
    Popeye cocked wicked eye.
    "O, Olive Oyl, you is my sweet patootie."
    Elbow nudging Peggy. "You be Olive Oyl— you."
    Peggy smiled nervously. "I can't."
    "Sure!"
    In the back seat, Wimpy came up for air to announce, "I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."
    Three fierce voices and a faint fourth raged against the howl of wind. "I fights to the fin -ish 'cause I eats my spin -ach! I yam Popeye, the sailor man! Toot! Toot!
    "I yam what I yam," reiterated Popeye gravely and put his hand on the yellow-skirted leg of Olive Oyl. In the back, two members of the quartet returned to feeling struggle.
    ST. LOUIS—1. The black car roared through the darkened suburbs. "On with the nosies!" Bud sang out. They all took out their plasticate nose-and-mouth pieces and adjusted them.
    ANCE IN YOUR PANTS WOULD BE A PITY!
WEAR YOUR NOSIES IN THE CITY!!
    Ance (anse), n., slang for anticivilian germs; usage evolved during W.W.III.
    "You'll like the loopy's dance!" Bud shouted to her over the shriek of wind. "It's sen saysh!"
    Peggy felt a cold that wasn't of the night or of the wind. Remember, darling, there are terrible things in the world today. Things you must avoid.
    "Couldn't we go somewhere else?" Peggy said but her voice was inaudible. She heard Bud singing, "I like to go swimmin' with bow-legged women!" She felt his hand on her leg again while, in the back, was the silence of grinding passion without kisses.
    Dance of the dead. The words trickled ice across Peggy's brain.
    ST. LOUIS.
    The black car sped into the ruins.
    · · · · ·

    It was a place of smoke and blatant joys. Air resounded with the bleating of revelers and there was a noise of sounding brass spinning out a cloud of music—1987 music, a frenzy of twisted dissonances. Dancers, shoe-horned into the tiny square of open floor, ground pulsing bodies together. A network of bursting sounds lanced through the mass of them; dancers singing:
    "Hurt me! Bruise me! Squeeze me TIGHT!
Scorch my blood with hot DELIGHT!
Please abuse me every NIGHT!
LOVER, LOVER, LOVER, be a beast-to-me!"
    Elements of explosion restrained within the dancing bounds—instead of fragmenting, quivering. "Oh, be a beast, beast, beast, Beast, BEAST to me!"
    "How is this, Olive old goil?" Popeye inquired of the light of his eye as they struggled after the waiter. "Nothin' like this in Sykesville, eh?"
    Peggy smiled but her hand in Bud's felt numb. As they passed by a murky lighted table, a hand she didn't see felt at her leg. She