I’m your tiger, you’re my mate!
Hurry up, buttercup, and don’t be late!
Lon turned off the ignition and waited in the old Plymouth, wondering why she had come here alone, where no one came alone. Not knowing what she waited for on the outer edge of the parked cars. Still, a lonely voice inside was telling her she had pulled into Luigi’s because this was one of the restless evenings when the Island was not big enough to hold her, and where else was there to go? So she had come where the music jumped and the cars bulged with kids delirious with the prospect of three undisciplined months spreading out before them.
Jumping, too—with menus for the heap with blinking headlights, and a tray of Luigi-Burgers and malts for the gang in the dago-ed Ford—was a curved and compact doll, all five feet of her crammed into the Air Force blue slacks and vivid red bolero that identified a Luigi car-hop. Her face was buried somewhere beneath layers of pinkish pancake. Yet Lon was certain that under the thick make-up, the girl’s complexion would be genuinely pink and white. Mascara-weighted lashes fluttered provocatively over lavender-blue eyes that, like the rest of her, were round. For her face was round, the breasts that strained against the scarlet monkey jacket were round, and her hips in the tight gabardine slacks were just wonderfully round. Too, she had a round button nose. Her mouth, when she was not smiling to reveal even white teeth, formed a perfect O. And under the round gray-blue cap, her face was a pretty pink moon.
But the hair, Lon thought. The hair out of some technicolor nightmare, untamed by the required hairnet and falling midway between the girl’s chin and shoulders, assaulting the eyes with a shade that hovered between lavender and violet.
And it was, “Hey, you, Vi’let!” that the boys howled from the parked cars. “You with the purple mop!” “Wha’ hoppen’ ta the ketchup fer my fries?” Roaring like the tiger looking for its mate: “Is it purple all over, Vi’let?” “Prove it, honey. I only want the facts, man!”
The girl replied with winks, responded with smiles. And the boys who asked for proof were rewarded with sidelong glances. She gloried in her upstage role and Lon thought, she’s not beautiful. Not actually beautiful. But she acts as if she is and so nobody can be sure she isn’t.”
Not actually beautiful, but seeing the girl through the girl’s round eyes, Lon shivered a little, felt her tongue turn to balls of wool as Vi finally got around to the old tan crate in the back row.
“Hi. Sorry it took so long.” She shoved an oversized menu at Lon.
“It’s okay. No hurry.” Lon pretended to study the glossy card.
“They sure give me a hard time about my hair,” the girl complained proudly. Wrinkling the little round nose, pleased with the hard time. Her voice was coarse and she spoke with a practiced attempt at sexy intonation. Lon felt an unaccountable swell of disappointment.
“I notice.”
“At first Luigi said to let it grow out natcherl or blow. The crust! I said he could take his lousy job an’ shove it. One night, on’y one night I worked with it like this and he’s beggin’ me to leave it alone. Guys come around jest to see me an’ don’t he know it!”
The girl studied Lon while speaking, looking Lon over carefully. Faded red of the cotton T-shirt, mostly. Sizing me up as a weirdo, Lon told herself. And said aloud, “It’s very pretty.”
“I bleach it first an’ then I put on this stuff I mix myself. Jest food coloring, that’s all it is. Red an’ blue. Holy Jeez help me I ever get caught in the rain, huh?” She laughed, catching Lon’s eyes with the lavender-blue discs and holding them uncomfortably long. “It goes with my name. My name’s really Vi’let. You dig?” She was quiet then, waiting for her order, staring in a strange, knowing sort of way.
Muscles tightened under the red shirt, a spasm of remembering for no special reason the agony of undressing in the gym locker with perspired, perfumed bodies crowding her against the steel cabinets, the gagging, hot-faced bewilderment of her own nakedness and theirs. “It’s sharp. I mean, it goes together.”
A horn sounded and the girl spoke again. Under the heavy black lashes, the pastel eyes looked vaguely amused. “Listen, I gotta go. What’ll it be tonight—butch?”
Lon handed back the menu. “Large chocolate Coke.”
Violet didn’t move. “You heard me.”
“I said, large chocolate Coke.”
“Oh, Christ, come t’ the party. You slow on the uptake, butch?”
“My name’s Lon Harris.”
“Lon. Hey, that’s cute. You just cruisin’ or did somebody tell you ‘bout me?”
“I just got a taste for a Coke.”
“Sure you did!”
“I did.” Lamely, Lon added, “I hadn’t much else to do.”
“I bet you didn’t know I work here,” the girl teased. “No, not much.”
Helplessly, Lon sensed insinuation. “What difference would that make? I don’t know anybody you know. Anyway, what difference would it make?”
Violet’s eyes widened. “No kiddin’, you don’t know any of the kids?”
“Oh, I know kids, but….”
“Our kind a kids?” Then with something like awe. “Holy Mother, you ain’t that dumb! I’d a swore …! Oh, Jeez, I woulda swore!” She looked over her shoulder as if to check the nearness of others. “I hang out at The 28%. Ever hear of it?”
“What’s the 28%?”
“Gay joint. Private, jest girls. I know all the kids hang out there.” She lowered the hoarse voice. “Wanna go?”
“When, tonight?”
“Crazy. I get off ten-thirty.”
“I don’t know.” Lon’s glance fell to the low-slung jeans. “I’d have to go home and change.” And added sheepishly, “I didn’t bring … money.”
“I get paid tonight. Go on me.”
“What is it, some kind of girls’ club?”
“Yeah, a gay club. Where the kids c’n dance. They have beer an’ Coke—you know.”
“I’d have to change,” Lon said again.
“Nah, what for? Saturday night the butches wear good pants, but Friday night who cares?” She reached through the window to pat Lon’s cheek. “Stick around, hon.”
A blast from a front-row M.G. shook Violet from the window. “Ah, have y’self a hemrich, why dontcha?” And then to Lon, with the soft sound of old intimacy, “I gotta hop, sweetie. Don’t go. I mean after, when you drink your Coke. Stick aroun’!”
Lon stuck around. Stuck after the syrupy drink tasted like melted ice and after three visits from the girl whose brows were a thin black pencil-line.
