Chapter 4: Paint Fades

It was all planned. After our dinner date we would go back to the apartment. This was to be the night

While waiting for Shirley to shower, I tried to talk to her roommate Tammy, but she seemed obsessed with Jason. Jason was the man she had met at the beginning of the summer. Jason was her boyfriend. Jason was her lover. She talked incessantly about how they had met, how he had swept her off her feet and how he had seduced her.

The talk about Jason made me uneasy but I pretended to give her my full attention as I looked through Shirley's wardrobe.

"What do you think about this?" I asked, holding up a cream colored dress with an excessive amount of buttons.

Tammy glanced at the dress and shook her head.

"I didn't think so, either," I said, putting the dress back in the closet and looking for softer material that would offset her eyes.

"I wore a dress like that on our forth date," Tammy said. "I got grass stains on the ass and Jason told me to never wear it again."

"How about this one?" I asked, holding up a light blue dress. The material was thin and soft, like silk.

When I headed towards the dresser, Tammy jumped off her bed. "That's it! I'll find a bra and panties. You can pick out the shoes."

Did Shirley have something hidden in her underwear drawer that she didn't want me to see? Or at least something that Tammy didn't think she'd want me to see. I found a pair of white shoes with three-inch heels and put them on the floor next to her bed.

"I have a dress like that; Jason loves it," Tammy mused, dreamily.

"Does he tell you what to wear?" I asked, trying to sound interested in the endless talk about Jason.

"Not like you're doing for Shirley. He never came into my bedroom. My mother wouldn't allow it."

"Where did you... where did he... ?"

"Have sex?"

"Yeah, where did he seduce you?"

From the way her voice became raspy it sounded like I had hit on a subject that was dear to her heart. "The first time was in a hotel room but we did it in a lot of other places... you know... park benches... on a blanket and that one time when I got grass stains on my dress, it started on the blanket but ended up... you know."

I think Tammy would have gone into greater detail about her sexual encounters if Shirley hadn't come out of the bathroom just then.

"What's this about a blanket?" Shirley asked. She was using the towel to dry her hair.

"Do you like her that way, Sammy? I wonder if Jason would like me like that?" Tammy asked.

I looked at her, questioning.

"Down there. I can't decide if I think it's sexy or not. Do you think it's sexy, Sammy?"

"I like it very much," I said when I realized she was referring to Shirley's shaved pussy.

"He did it for me," Shirley informed her roommate. "What were you saying about a blanket?" She was stepping into the panties Tammy had laid out for her.

"I would do it if Jason wanted me to. I'll write to him and ask if he wants me to shave my bush. Is it hard to do?" Tammy asked, looking at me for the answer.

"It's not hard. You have to concentrate, that's all. If Jason decides he would like for you to shave, I could help," I offered and cracked up when I saw Shirley glaring at me. She turned for me to fasten the bra.

"What made you do it, Shirley? Do you like it? Doesn't it feel strange?"

"Sammy wanted to shave me and I like it. It felt strange at first but doesn't now." Shirley said as she sat down at a dressing table and began brushing her hair. "What were you saying about the blanket?"

"Jason was fucking her on a blanket but they ended up on the grass and she got stains on her dress," I said, embarrassing both girls, Tammy more than Shirley.

"Sammy, how can you be so crude? It wasn't Jason's fault that I moved off the blanket. I should have been more careful."

I looked at the mirror over the dressing table and saw Shirley grinning at me.

"Why were you wearing a white dress on a picnic?" I asked just to keep her talking about Jason.

"It wasn't a picnic. I wore the dress because I thought we were going to see a movie but Jason had other plans. He keeps an old blanket in his car for special occasions. It was my fault. I should have taken the dress off before we started fooling around."

I was getting a little worried that this sounded like a familiar pattern and was almost surprised Shirley wasn't seeing it too. Maybe I was all wrong. I hoped I was wrong, but I certainly wasn't going to say anything to Tammy about it.

Shirley lifted the dress over her head and smoothed the skirt as if fell. She exchanged the shoes I had chosen for white sandals without commenting.

"What's wrong?" I asked when I saw the perplexed look on her face.

"I left the locket in the apartment. We'll have to stop and pick it up."

"Let's not. You don't need it."

"Yes I do. I feel lost without it," she insisted.

At my look, she soothed, "This living arrangement has me mixed up. I never know where anything is. We'll move some more of my things to the apartment tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay, but you don't need the locket tonight. We're just going to dinner."

We said goodbye to Tammy and I explained why I didn't want to go back to the apartment. "When I got back from taking Marcy to the airport, Charlie and Angie were in their bedroom."

Shirley giggled. "You're going to have to warn them we could hear the rocking bed down in the shop."

"What does Aunt Olivia say?"

"She's cool. She's been renting the apartment to college kids for a long time, but doesn't want to scare off any customers."

We parked the car next to the dress shop but didn't go upstairs to retrieve the locket. I didn't tell Shirley that I had found the kitchen table littered with leftovers and dirty dishes, because I didn't want her to become upset. I was upset enough for the both of us.

"I went over to the school and watched Kent play tennis," I said as I took her handand we walked to the restaurant.

"Did you play?"

"No, I didn't want to get sweaty and have to take another shower."

Actually, I didn't want to spend that much time in the apartment.

"Did you see anyone else we know?"

"No, well, Tracy came by. They have an apartment over on Crescent Street with Skip. Kent said they would have us over for dinner or something."

"You didn't say we would go, did you?"

"No, I didn't commit to anything," I laughed.

It was seven pm on a Saturday night and Stella's was relatively quiet, compared to the previous Thursday night when Marcy and I had dined there. We were given a table on the back wall and it amused me when the waiter removed the wine glasses before he even introduced himself. Like most of the help there, he was a business student at the school. Malcolm was going to be a junior.

Shirley told me about her first day at work in the dress shop. There weren't very many alterations to do, so Aunt Olivia let her decorate one of the windows with new fall fashions.

She asked if Marcy's flight had gotten off on time and I told her it had.

"I know what you're really asking," I laughed.

"You do?" she asked, coyly.

"I told her the rest of the story."

Shirley nodded her head, knowingly. She just looked at me, her grey eyes simmering, like the love within could boil over at any time. The contentment I saw told me she just wanted to sit there and let me do the talking.

"She's not nearly as confident as she tries to let on, you know? There's a frightened little girl under that articulate shell. You know what she said as we said goodbye?"

Shirley shook her head.

"She said that we talk on the telephone and tell each other everything that happens to us but we don't know each other very well. She asked if it would always be like this."

The waiter came back to the table. We ordered a salad and trout because it was the first item on the menu.

Shirley waited for me to say more and when I didn't, she spoke.

"Marcy told me she was crying when I called to ask you to come after me. I apologized for breaking up the intimate talk you were having. She's so funny. She said you were a good listener but you don't know how to handle a crying girl."

"She sort of apologized for dumping on me," I said. "But I'm okay with it. I'm glad I can be there for her."

Our salads arrived and Malcolm asked if we wanted anything to drink. We didn't.

"I told her it's a good thing I don't cry," Shirley laughed.

"No, you don't," I observed and that made me think about what I was doing. It was fairly obvious by the way she was looking at me that this was to be the night. If so, it should be her night and I should be paying attention to her, not talking about Marcy's visit.

"Do you think we know each other well?" I asked and watched her play with her salad; thoughtfully moving a slice of tomato from one side of the plate to the other.

"I believe I know you and I've told you things about myself that I've never told anyone else. Don't you think we know each other?"

"I want to know you better. You just admitted that you don't cry but I know you have feelings. I guess I want to know what you feel."

"I have feelings for you," she said, looking at me, fondly, having abandoned her salad. I pushed my plate to the side.

"That's what I'm talking about. I want to know what you feel. Are you're feelings the same as mine Are they different? What do you feel about us?"

Shirley used her napkin to wipe her lips and leaned back in her chair, smiling smugly. "I know you better than you think. For instance, I know that you're talking about feelings because you know it's my favorite subject."

Malcolm brought our main course. The trout looked lonely, spread across the plate. There were two side dishes, a baked potato and asparagus.

We looked at each other across the table and grinned when the waiter took the salad plates away.

"Describe the feelings you have for me. Do I make you tingle, like you make me or is it a different kind of feeling?"

"Sammy, you don't have to do this? You know I love to talk about feelings but you've already got me. I would jump off a cliff for you," she said, wrinkling her brow for emphasis.

I turned the plate around so the head was facing Shirley, making the tail one hundred and eighty degrees away, thinking I needed symmetry to illustrate my point. "You make me tingle."

She smiled, shyly. "I tingle too."

I sampled the asparagus and she sampled her potato. "I know your walk. When I see you walking toward me I want to run to you but I become petrified, unable to move, just wanting to watch you."

She tried a small bite of the fish and seeing that she liked the taste, I tried it too.

"I love walking toward you and having you watch me. I think to myself, 'Why doesn't he come to me?' Now I know why you don't; I petrify you," she smiled.

Malcolm checked on us and discovering that we were picking at our food, left without asking how everything was. We were playing with the food; we were also playing with each other's minds.

"Did you mean it when you said I already had you?"

Shirley lifted a stalk of asparagus from the side dish to her plate, cut it into three pieces, forked one of the pieces and raised it almost to her mouth before returning it to her plate.

"What is the strongest emotion you feel?" she asked, ignoring my question.

"Love," I said without thinking.

She nodded, satisfied with my answer as if it were what she expected me to say. "How does love stack up with anger?"

I took a sip of water and looked down at my plate. The fish had moved, on its own it would seem, to one hundred and six-five degrees. I lined it up with my fork and when I was satisfied that it was back to one hundred and eighty degrees, I answered the question.

"Love is constant; anger is fleeting. Love is like paint; it sticks. Anger is like rain; it eventually evaporates."

"That's eloquent, but doesn't paint fade?" she asked, like she was toying with me.

"It may fade but it's still there, engrained in the surface. It's just changed a little and things change all the time, sometimes for the better."

Shirley's smile told me that I had hit on something that struck her as poetic. I was proud of myself until she responded. "Rain evaporates but it remains in the atmosphere. Does anger hang over you like a cloud?"

Now it was my turn to smile. "You're too smart for me. Does my inability to reason amuse you?"

"Don't talk that way, Sammy. You amuse me but not in the way you think. I love hearing you expound on an idea. I love everything about you."

I looked down at the fish and discovered it had traveled five degrees. How does it do that?

"I love you too. Ready to go?" I asked and watched her smile.

I left Malcolm a generous tip to show that it wasn't the food that made us leave without finishing our meal.

We walked the short distance to the apartment hand in hand.

"I loved the way you selected this dress for me to wear tonight," Shirley cooed.

"I loved the way you accepted my selection."

"You made a good choice. It fit the mood perfectly," she said as she started up the stairs. I followed until we got to the landing and then used my key to open the door.

She stepped into the kitchen and switched the light on. "Oh, my god!" she exclaimed.

The kitchen table was littered with containers left over from the Chinese food we had eaten the night before. In the center of the table, lying on its side was an empty chardonnay bottle.

"Let's go," I said.

"Where?"

"To the hotel."

It took Shirley exactly two seconds to decide. "I'll get the locket," and she left me standing in the kitchen, anger hitting me square in the face, like a squall.

I surveyed the front room and noticed the additional space where the computer, the chair and my footlocker had been. The rain became a thunderstorm. Lighting was flashing before my eyes.

Shirley's shriek from the bedroom didn't surprise me; I knew that she had discovered the computer, the chair and my footlocker had been moved into the space where our desks were supposed to go.

"I got it," Shirley said as if the shriek resulted from the excitement she felt when she put the locket on. She was carrying the small case that she brought with her the night I picked her up at her dorm.

The hotel wasn't busy but the desk clerk looked askance at me when I told him we needed a room. I recognized him from the college.

"We live over the dress shop and there's a problem with the plumbing. I don't want to call the landlord, it being Labor Day and all."

The desk clerk smiled and accepted my credit card. I heard Shirley sigh.