KOI 02 Down at the Drive In
Mulroney's weird girlfriend, Mulroney, much beer, and me
South St Louis. Fall, 1968
KOI segue: The numbers game started up almost as soon as our talk after the drive-in double-date with Abner and Connie. Becca had an almost unwholesome curiosity about what I was into before I met her. In contrast, she was strangely shy when describing her own past affairs. From her accounts, I measured myself two ahead of her at the time we met. I suspected, though, that she was holding out on me.
All that belongs in another volume.
But there was one bit, earlier in my solo career, which might help to explain why I took to multi-part arrangements with relative ease. It's another drive-in movie story. And it introduced me to a certain kind of couple that Becca and I would see a lot of in later life.
Mulroney was a senior in Mr Wicker's biology club, when I was but a lowly high school freshman. Mulroney was a consummate outsider. He impressed us frosh with his Big Daddy Roth attire, all furry vests over plaid, with big shitkicker boots and pegged pants and an attitude toward haircuts that pushed the envelope of our mid- Sixties school dress code. He belonged to no clique; there was no clique that would have him. But despite his loner status, Mulroney was a cheery, outgoing guy.
As far as we knew, Mulroney had no truck with girlfriends. So it was a little surprising at the biology club's spring campout, when he confessed to losing his virginity the month before.
"We were just sitting around her place," said Mulroney, "and her parents were out of town.... She said there was nothing else to do, so I let her do me.
"Then later she said she was still bored, and she let me do her.
"We're bored a lot together, these days."
After Danny graduated, I lost track of him for a while. He found a draft dodge, zipped through the first data processing program ever offered at the junior college, and by the time I caught up with him again in the early fall of my senior year of high school, he was a classy Computer Operator, living in a comfy shotgun cottage just west of Bellerive Park in South St Louis, and working on his latest brace of cars in his spare time. He was excited about his most recent acquisition, a '63 Cadillac.
"Always dreamed of owning a Cadillac," he explained. "The ultimate gross-out car."
But his pride and joy was his old, landlocked Ford woodie. He had bought it back in high school and was still nursing it along. The bus-like station wagon figures in this story.
In the Senior Fall of '68, I'd just broken up with my Second True Love. It felt worse than the first time. Mulroney was sympathetic.
"My girlfriend has this girlfriend..." he started out.
There was some scumbling in a bookcase laden with old textbooks and automotive manuals, and Mulroney pulled out a '68 yearbook from ----- High, the school just east of mine.
"This is Linda's book," said Mulroney. "This is Leila."
The girl in the gallery of juniors looked okay. Okay, I said. What the hell. Thanks.
"Here's Linda." Mulroney's grease-stained forefinger traced down the row of photos to a longish-faced blonde with a sweet, tough smile.
Linda looked okay, too. A little trashier than I was used to. The straight straw-blond hair was an obvious dye job. Linda's brows were dark, arched below a thin forehead from which the hair was pulled straight back by a band. Her eyes were bright, mischievous in a General Track sort of way. A longish face, small-mouthed, small-chinned, a little flat in the cheeks but nice nose.
"Hey, okay," I smiled.
"You like?" asked Mulroney. He seemed really gratified by my reaction.
I never even got to talk to Linda's girlfriend. Mulroney called me later that day, telling me that a drive-in date had been arranged for the following Saturday. He was telling the truth, too.
But the bad news was delivered only after Mulroney and Linda growled up my parents' driveway in his woodie. Linda's friend had suddenly come down with the flu, or something.
"Ah. Well," I floundered at the car's open door. The twilight breeze was warm, and it smelled of dying leaves.
"Oh, crawl in here," rasped Linda's South Side voice over the noise of Mulroney's engine. "I really want to
watch
this movie."
The interior of the wagon was huge, and redolent with Mulroney's flawless sense of automotive kitsch. A dashboard of carpet and chrome. The classic fuzzy dice off the rearview mirror. Behind the broad, cracked-vinyl front seat, any other seats had been removed and a quarter-acre of luggage space lay flat, padded with some Sixties prototype for shag rug. A beer cooler was tucked into the near right corner of the wagon's back room. Even the cooler was carpeted. There were a couple of cushions scattered around the back.
"Wow. What luxury!" It was a mobile bachelor pad.
Mulroney smiled a loner's little smile, and flipped his cigarette butt out the window into the autumn night as we drove toward Ronnie's Drive In.
We stopped at Steak'n'Shake on the way. Mulroney, the working guy, sprung for my burgers on the condition that I share in the beer with Linda and him. I still hadn't gotten used to the taste of the stuff, but I popped a bottle to be polite and tried not to study Mulroney's girlfriend too closely in the easy atmosphere of the wagon's wide front seat.
Linda Kinshalow was not untypical for the period. Her hair was colored a soft golden yellow, pulled back with that white band; it fell straight until it flipped "naturally" just past her shoulders. She was skinny in a short linen skirt and polyester sleeveless blouse, and next to big Mulroney she looked small in the glare of parkinglot lights. Linda had already kicked off her sneakers. There was a flower-citron scent throughout the car... smelling as much of perspiration as perfume. But Linda's sleek, goldenolive skin was dry. The dark hairlets on her slender forearms reinforced the dyed-blond-hair effect. No, I didn't wonder about the color of her bush. Her legs had that nice, thin-legged sexiness. Trim tan thighs extruded almost squarish from the skirt, but the modulation at the well-carved little knees to long-seeming calves was not jarring, given the petite size of the whole package. Fine bare feet, the toenails painted with the same pearl-pink varnish as her fingernails.
The second beer hit me nice. I really hadn't much experience with drinking. Mulroney and Linda were at least a bottle ahead of me by the time we left the burger lot. We really liked everyone in the car, by then.
As we coasted into the drive-in theatre, Linda leaned against Mulroney and tucked her feet under my left thigh. Mulroney parked in a relatively secluded section, well behind the concession stand.
"My feet are cold, all right?" Linda drawled from beneath Mulroney's sheltering arm.
"Think nothing of it," I replied, suavely.
Mulroney flashed that smug smile in my direction. Linda's toes dug into my leg.
"Hey, that tickles!"
Linda pushed harder, and I lifted my leg to slap at her instep. Linda jumped with me, jouncing against Mulroney as I thumped against the wagon's door. Both her feet wound up between, under my legs, and my left hand wrapped around one thin long pedal. I let it go. Linda's feet remained where they were.
"You tickle
there
," said Linda, " ' means you like girls."
"I guess." I reached back to the cooler and popped a third bottle of Budweiser with the churchkey Mulroney had dangling from his radio knob. Linda's right heel adjusted itself firm to my prostate as I found a more comfortable position in my seat. I saw no reason to complain. "Do you like
all
girls," went Linda, "or do you 'fall in love'?"
"Don't ask," I moaned. A vision of my Second True Love appeared before me, superimposed on the Coming Attraction trailer just beginning to flash on the screen in front of us.
"I told you," Mulroney mumbled to Linda, "Leila's blown her big chance, tonight."
Mulroney fiddled with the volume knob on the drive in's car speaker.
"Hand us a couple more beers, will you?" he asked me.
Linda took a real interest in the first movie up. It was a third-run release of
Bullett
. Her dark eyes remained glued to the screen as she and Mulroney absentmindedly undid one another's shirts and groped torsos for the first hour of the film. I'd seen the picture before, but with the fourth beer I was experiencing a new exhilaration from the Cinematic Experience. Linda's feet were out from under me and in my lap. I liked the way she let me massage them; it was all very friendly-like. But eventually I felt the need to relieve the growing pressure in my bladder.
"Me gotta go," I said. I turned from the screen, and I was surprised at the slight spinning sensation in my head as I looked toward the pair.
Linda and Mulroney readjusted themselves at the sound of my voice. Linda's feet slid down my leg to the floorboard. Linda said something to me and smiled. I didn't catch what she said, the car speaker's noise muffling her words.