Free KooKooLand by Gloria Norris Page B

twenty-seven, Shirley didn’t look like an old hag, but she wasn’t married either. She’d been engaged once, but that didn’t pan out. Most people in Tusket thought she’d end up an old maid. She was starting to think so herself. She got a job as a shopgirl in the nearest town and spent hours gazing at movie magazines and daydreaming about the States. She talked about the States so much that Grammy saved a little money every week from selling butter and eggs and bought Shirley a boat ticket to go visit her Aunt Cora in Massachusetts.
    Jimmy was working on the boat and was looking for an old-fashioned girl like in the old country. He had just gotten divorced from the one who mouthed off like Susan’s mother.
    He spotted Shirley right away.
    She had dark hair and was tall and had a shy way of going. She was dressed real nice but not too flashy, not too much makeup and not showing too much of her pretty long legs. She was talking to another passenger, a high yaller named Birdy who she’d just met and didn’t even know was half-colored. Birdy was Jimmy’s pal Be-bop’s girlfriend, so Jimmy went right over and introduced himself. He told Shirley to come to the back of the ship that night, to the kitchen where he worked as a cook, and he’d make her a meal fit for a queen. He mentioned a filet mignon steak and Shirley thought that sounded real fancy. She mostly had deer meat on the farm, and she was sick to death of that.
    So Jimmy made her the filet mignon and some duck with an orange sauce and some big, fat shrimp that tasted like the sea they were sailing on and something for dessert that he lit with a match.
    He got her number.
    He told her he’d take her for the thrill of her life. He’d take her to the backstretch ’cause he was known at the track and could get back there. He’d show her some beautiful horses. Didn’t all girls like horses?
    I like horses fine, said Shirley, who had seen more than enough of them on the farm and would rather go to a Red Sox game but didn’t want to seem rude.
    After that, we’ll go dancing, he said, and Shirley perked right up. I’ll show you the nightlife. I know all the jumpin’ joints.
    It was sounding better and better to Shirley.
    But Shirley’s Aunt Cora didn’t like the looks of Jimmy one bit.
    He looks like a sharpie, Aunt Cora said.
    Shirley didn’t care what old Aunt Cora said. She went on a date with the sharpie and even fell in love with those horses when they flew past her in the backstretch carrying their jockeys in their bright shiny shirts. She loved those horses even more when she saw Jimmy coming back from the betting windows with a stack of tenners and double sawbucks and when he gave her a tenner ’cause he bet a long shot for her that paid off big.
    He took her to meet YaYa and Papou and told her they owned a restaurant. Nick’s Cafe.
    She asked Jimmy after they left if something was wrong with Papou ’cause he didn’t smile or anything.
    No, Jimmy said, he’s just a tough hombre. That’s how you gotta be in America. You just don’t know any operators like him. You grew up in Hickville.
    Tusket, Shirley corrected him.
    There was something about Jimmy’s tone of voice that didn’t sit right, but she brushed it aside. American men are different, she told herself. They talked a language that she couldn’t understand ’cause she was a strawberry farmer’s daughter who didn’t get past the eighth grade.
    On the way back to Aunt Cora’s, he pulled over and kissed her. It felt pretty good, but not as good as the kisses of the air force lieutenant she’d been engaged to. The one who had turned out to have a wife someplace else and who had broken her heart so bad she couldn’t get out of bed for two weeks. The one she had taken this trip to forget.
    Shirley pulled away from the kiss.
    Jimmy smiled. That’s OK, he said, I can