So that the apartment was like a penitentiary, with everyone in a separate cell. Cloris couldn’t take it anymore. Nor could she take school, which she’d always hated!
“Let’s get going,” she said to Verna and Buddy.
Behind a locked door she’d packed two bags last night, moving quietly so as not to be heard. They would drive by the house to pick them up now . . . then onto the freeway and off to Hollywood! She had made a reservation at a motel on Sunset Boulevard; picked it out of the Yellow Pages. The rates were low compared to places like Holiday Inns or Howard Johnsons or other big chains.
Sunset Boulevard! Tonight she’d be walking along Sunset Boulevard! On her own! With the whole world opening up before her!
She jumped up. “We’re off to see the wizard!” she sang, and ran to the door, her long yellow hair swirling, her ripe figure rippling inside the tight white linen pants and tighter blouse. So that the counterman paused to stare and wet his lips. So that Verna and Buddy laughed and ran after her.
Later, half-dozing in the back seat of the car, her luggage jamming her into one corner, she thought of how someday Freddy would go to the movies in Massachusetts where his college was, and he’d see her dancing and singing and acting. Then he’d come home on vacation and try to visit her at the studio where she’d be working, but her agent wouldn’t let him get near her dressing room. Her famous actor sweetheart, or maybe a rock star like Rod Stewart, would walk out with her, past Freddy, who would look at her, tears streaming down his face, and whisper. “I’ve always loved you, Cloris darling, you know that. My parents forced me to go to school so far away, and forbid me to write or call you. I meant all those things I said on your Sweet Sixteenth, when you gave your virgin self to me. I want to marry you, if you’ll only accept me.”
She would turn to her famous escort and say, “Did you hear that, Rod honey?” and walk off, pealing laughter.
Or maybe she would forgive him, a little, and allow him to date her once in a while.
She remembered her Freddy. She remembered loving him. And her seventeen-year-old heart ached and she wanted him more than Rod Stewart or Burt Reynolds or anyone on God’s earth. Wanted him as she had once wanted the father who had used his officer’s status in the Army Reserve to run away from a marriage that had stifled him to a “small war” that had killed him.
She put her head down in the seat so neither Verna nor Buddy could see and cried very quietly.
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