Chapter 58
Ron finished tutoring a little before 2 pm on Saturday. He drove down to his mother’s car and traded his two door for Lois’s hatch back Nissan. The hatch and the collapsible back seat gave him enough room for the plaster casted pieces that he would load into the back and the excellent springs on the new car made the ride smooth enough so that he didn’t have to worry about breakage.
Denise gave him very precise directions to her family’s house in the Forest Hills section. It was one of the only remaining upscale sections left in Newark and Ron pulled into a driveway that was short and elevated up to a modern looking home with a statue of the Blessed Virgin outside in front of the house. The statue was clad in blue and Ron felt queasy when he looked at it. He wondered if his teaching at the Catholic school had perhaps given Denise and her mother the wrong idea.
Denise was wearing a matching shorts and top set that was blue and covered in daisies. Her white strapped sandals also had daisies on the crossing strap.
When she got into the car, Ron said with a grin. “You’re looking fresh.”
She held out up her right foot and fingered the plastic flower. “As a daisy, right?”
“That’s what I was thinking,” said Ron.
“Well, a girl’s got to be coordinated.”
“Why?”
“Because, Ronald,” she said with a teasing grin, “when I look good on the outside it helps me to feel good on the inside.”
“I never thought about it.”
“You’re a guy. Most guys don’t think about it that way.”
“I used to,” said Ron. “When I was a kid and worked for Ripley Clothes, I did the whole bit. I wore the high rolls and I had a leather and a suede from Cooper Leather. I sent everything that I wore to the cleaners.”
“What happened?” she asked with sincerity and a serious gaze.
“Well, we moved for one thing.”
She put her arm lightly on his shoulder and said, “You can take the boy out of Newark but you can never really take the Newark out of the boy. That’s what I think anyway.”
There was something about the boy girl thing that she kept doing that Ron was finding disconcerting. It was like she had this manual in her head about the way that things were supposed to be. “Do you really believe all that?”
“I don’t know if I believe all of it. I know that if I was walking down the street with a guy like you that I would feel safe. I don’t think that part of you is changeable.”
Ron thought about that. Robin had always said that she felt very safe with him. Zoe had said that he wanted to protect her. Maybe she had something.
“I think college changed me,” said Ron.
“Was it a good change?”
“Yeah,” said Ron. “I think I would have gone crazy without it. Not that I’m not fairly fucked up now, but I mean really crazy.”
“Do you always use that language?” she said quickly.
“What language?”
“You know. That word.”
Ron laughed. “We used it all the time in Newark.”
“But not on a first date,” said Denise.
They were on the Parkway heading south and Ron wished that he could turn to look into her eyes but he was going too fast for that. “One of the things that I learned in college was that there is no such thing as a bad word, Denise.”
“My Dad says that college people think too much.”
All at once Ron felt like he was with a being from another planet. It was Planet Pasta where everyone had statues of saints and never shit where they ate. It was the world of frozen behaviors where people acted out the same melodramas over and over. He felt superior. But then again, didn’t she want him to feel superior? Wasn’t that one of the rules on Planet Pasta?
Ron turned on the radio. “What kind of music do you like?” he asked.
“I like all kinds but mostly I like the oldies,” said Denise.
Of course you do, thought Ron.
Then Denise added, “But Sinatra is still the best.”
This last comment threw Ron into confusion. In his heart he loved Sinatra, but he kept this passion well hidden from his friends. They would never understand and the one time he had talked with Chris about it, he had made a dismissive face and said “Strings make me sick.”
“I was raised on Sinatra,” said Ron.
“Me too,” said Denise.
Then Ron said very quietly, “His politics suck.”
“I don’t know what his politics are,” she said. “But what have they got to do with his music?”
“I like music that is sung by the people who wrote it. It makes me think that it is really what they feel and think.”
“How do you know that it isn’t what he feels and thinks?”
“It could be,” said Ron. He felt some inner confusion and turmoil that he didn’t want to feel. It dismissed it all saying, “It’s my mother’s music. It’s World War 2 music. It’s over. It’s music for a different time.”
“Whose music do you like to listen to?”
“Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Leonard Cohen.” Ron recited from his internal pantheon.
“I’ve heard of Bob Dylan but I don’t know the rest of those people.”
“Joni and Jackson are kind of the California sound.”
“Like the Beach Boys?” said Denise. “I like their music.”
“Not quite like the Beach Boys,” said Ron patiently. Internally he was feeling guilty about rolling his eyes when he said it. He couldn’t help but remember the hours that he spent playing Help Me Ronda and I Get Around and he even liked the Sloop John B. but that wasn’t serious music, not the way that his music was serious.
“Ron, do you think that you’re a snob?”
Ron laughed and said, “I think that I probably am and I worked hard to get this way.”
“Why did you do that?”
Ron thought for a moment. Somewhere deep inside of himself a voice said that it was because he wanted to be accepted, but he dismissed that response with a cynical voice that said he should never disclose anything like that on a first date. Quietly he said, “Because I didn’t want to be second rate and backward anymore.”
He saw her wince and felt her recoil as surely as if he had slapped her in the face. He felt the need to continue. “When I got to college, I realized just how ignorant and ill prepared I was and made a promise to myself that I could be better.”
She touched his shoulder again and said, “I admire your drive.”
Street Fighting Man came on the radio and Ron prayed that she would not ask him if he thought that Mick Jaggar really believed in his heart the things that he was singing about.
The ceramics warehouse was a large, dusty hanger that looked like it used to house much larger equipment. The unpainted, unfired pieces were stored on long low shelves that stretched along all of the walks and made aisles in the center of the structure. Ron had a shopping list and a flat bed, two tiered trolley on which he would carefully place each piece after inspecting it for cracks or chips. It was definitely a buyer beware situation and Ron had learned to inspect each piece with a careful eye. Denise walked in back of him and he could feel her eyes on him as he lifted the pieces up and ran his finger gently across the surfaces and the bases of the soon to be ceramic projects. He felt responsible for this phase of the business and both Lois and his mother would praise his eye and the care that he used to make sure that they only got those things that they could sell.
When they passed by the eagles and the owls, Ron grinned teasingly and said, “I can see these in your future.”
Denise started to say that she liked the owls but then she stopped herself when she saw the slight smirk and twinkle in his eyes. She would have to learn when he was teasing her or else she would never feel like she had firm footing. Maybe she should let him enjoy teasing her. Maybe he would like that. It was kind of exciting that she wasn’t sure what he was thinking, but it also made her nervous. She supposed guys needed to be a little bit arrogant. It was who they were. But it was better when their egos were more transparent, like when he stared at her body with that lust filled look, but he hadn’t looked at her that way once since they had come into the warehouse.
Denise moved in front of him and bent over at the waist for apiece on one of the lowest shelves. She smiled to herself when she felt his eyes on her. There it was. He was still interested. She lifted a pumpkin up and said, “Do you like Halloween?”
“Not so much,” said Ron.
After they checked out and he loaded the pieces into the hatchback, he said, “Would you like to walk by the ocean?”
She took his hand and said, “I would love that.”
She watched as he took off his shoes and socks. She frowned when she saw the bear claws that he had for toenails but didn’t say anything about them. She slipped off her sandals and they walked along the sand. Ron had his shoes in one hand with the socks stuffed inside of them, and she held her sandals and felt his hand slide around her waist and rest low on her hip. His hand was a little bit too low on her hip and she tried to raise it up to her waist, but compromised by moving closer so that her hip pressed against his as they walked.
Ron could not help but think of Robin and the way that the two of them had always fallen into a perfect rhythm when they walked. He grew quiet and stared at the water.
Denise said, “I know that I’m changing my ideas about things, but the changes don’t happen overnight and, with work and all, it’s real easy to get into a pattern.”
“Do you think that your patterns are good for you?”
“I never thought about it. They just are there and I go along with them.”
“You can’t change if you go along,” said Ron. Then he stopped in the middle of the beach and kissed her.
She had wanted him to kiss her. She felt her heart speed up at the feel of his lips on hers but then he was opening his mouth and his hand was sliding lower on her hip and squeezing her behind. She stiffened and broke the kiss off and stepped back. “Ron, I just met you.” She saw the disappointment on his face. He looked like her father did when her mother said that they were having chicken for dinner. “I liked kissing you,” she said in a conciliatory tone.
“Let’s go back to the car,” said Ron.
She wanted him to say something else. She wanted him to ask her one of his hard questions that would make her think and she could feel like she was learning, but he wasn’t saying anything. The kiss was hanging over them like a dark cloud that wasn’t doing anything but blocking the sun. “Don’t be mad at me,” she said.
When he started the car, Ron said, “When I was seventeen I went out with this girl named Patty. I really liked Patty. I thought she was one of the prettiest girls I had ever seen”
Denise was happy that he was talking but why was he talking about an old girlfriend? That wasn’t exactly the conversation that she was hoping to have.
“Anyway, you remind me of Patty. She had rules too.”
“Everyone has rules, Ron.”
“That’s true,” said Ron. His jaw tightened and she saw those high cheekbones, and the way that they gave a hollow to his cheeks and seemed to darken his eyes. “My rule is not to make a game out of intimacy.”
Ron knew, of course, that this wasn’t true. He just liked different kinds of games, and the idea that on the second date that he got to squeeze her tits and maybe by date five she might brush her hand over his cock was his idea of a gigantic waste of time. She would kiss him passionately before the night was over but anytime he went to touch one of the hotspots on her body, her “good girl” would kick in and she would stop him. What was he doing here? He was truly a moonlight mile further down the road than this.
“It’s not that it’s a game. It’s what I feel comfortable doing.”
Ron smiled at her but there was sadness in his smile. “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry that I offended you.”
“I wasn’t offended,” she protested. Now she was confused. He was making her feel like she was a silly kid and she didn’t like the feeling. “I guess that I’m just a traditional girl.”
“I gave that up a long time ago,” said Ron. “I think it would be pretty impossible for me to go back to it.