Free Swimming Sweet Arrow by Maureen Gibbon Page B

one, so it didn’t really affect the time I had to spend with Del, but I did know what was going on. A lot of nights, he and I got home around the same time—me from work and him from the bars. I listened to his drunken storiesas we ate a late meal, and then we showered, screwed, and slept. Or, in my case, lay waiting for sleep.
    Along with all the other wives and girlfriends, at times I got invited to the crew parties. While I came to know the other women, I never really became friends with any of them. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the difference in ages, maybe it was something else, but I never really let loose around those people. That made the other women think I was a snob, when all I really felt was shy. I did become kind of friendly with one woman, named Vicki, the wife of a guy named Len. She was in her late twenties and she was unlike anyone I had ever seen around Mahanaqua. She had this different way of dressing, and she gave me an idea of what I wanted to look like when I got older. The main thing about her look was she wore jackets—blazers, I guess you’d call them —with no shirt under them. The blazers looked normal at first, but when Vicki moved her hand to sweep back her hair or reach for a glass, the neckline shifted and plunged. The look showed off her chest and her lace bras and the pretty gold chains she wore. I figured when I got a few years older, I’d put away my tight jeans and lace-up shirts and go for Vicki’s look.
    Del knew how shy I felt around those women, but he still could not understand why I couldn’t get along with them. The night of one particular kegger, I told him, “Go and have a good time without me.”
    “Come on. Vicki is going to be there. You can talk to her and get deep.”
    That made me laugh, because that’s how Del describedany conversation I had with a woman, yet he was right, too, because when Vicki and I got talking, it was about when we got our first periods, and how Vicki got together with her husband, and all that kind of thing. For as good a time as I had talking to Vicki, though, it was never like talking to June, and all those “deep” conversations made me miss my friend.
    “All right, I’ll go,” I said. “But I don’t want to stay long.”
    “We’ll leave whenever you want.”
    Of course Del headed off to the keg as soon as we got to the party, and I looked around for Vicki. It turned out she wasn’t there, and I got stuck standing on the edges of a lot of conversations, smoking and nursing my beer. I did that for about an hour and a half, but then I couldn’t take any more conversations about kids and who was getting divorced, and I went looking for Del. I felt like a dog sniffing for its owner.
    He was drinking shots of Southern Comfort there at the keg. When I came near, I heard one of his friends, a guy named Kutz, say, “Here comes your woman, Pardee. Drink up.”
    When I got up to the keg, Kutz said to me, “What, don’t you drink?”
    “I drink.”
    “You look stone-cold sober to me.”
    “I’m fine.”
    “You ought to loosen up. Good-looking woman like you ought to have a good time.”
    “I’m having a good time. I have to work tomorrow.”
    “Hell, you’ll be working your whole life! You don’t see that stopping us, do you?”
    I saw Del stick one finger in the air at Kutz, and as soon as I saw that, I knew Del was drunk. He speechified a lot when he was drunk, and a lot of times it started with a finger pointed in the air.
    “Kutz,” he said. “My woman’s the hardest-working bitch you’ll ever meet.”
    I let that one wash over me for a few seconds, and then I turned to Del and said, “Come get me when you’re ready.” And I went back to where some of the women were, and I sat down on the edge of a conversation and I made myself listen and smile.
    In a little while Del came over and handed me his keys, and I took the both of us home.
    I knew Del had to be a different kind of person at work, too. I knew he had