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He listened. She did not seem interested in talking to him. He got cleaned up and dressed for his job. He thought to say good-bye to her, but she seemed so absorbed in playing piano that he left without a parting word.
He tried not to be absent-minded at the golf course. If you seemed off in another world, the men who hired you didn’t like it. He had learned in the two summers he worked there that they wanted you to be absorbed in their game. He could see why. A caddy observed and, when asked (and only then), might give advice. He concentrated on his patron’s game, trying to keep his mind from drifting away to Belinda. The memory of her in the tub, in bed with him, at the piano, rose up to engulf him. He fought to concentrate and found himself exhausted after his patron finished eighteen holes. He gave him a thirty-buck tip, which was good. Caddies worked for tips. The club did not pay them any kind of salary.
At lunch, he called her. No one answered the phone. He did not know if she were away or if she simply did not want to answer. His friends were full of talk about the marijuana bust. Two people he knew got busted and spent a night in jail. He hated to think what it would be like when their fathers came to pick them up. Nothing looked as bad as a drug bust on your record when you tried to get into Stanford or when you applied for a job at a corporation. He resolved never to go to a party where there were drugs again. He wondered what Belinda was doing there and if she did dope a lot. He thought his two friends would keep quiet about his having been there, but you never could tell. They would provide names if it came to a plea-bargain.
His second patron was Ray Miller, a laconic man who hardly spoke except to curse when he hit a bad drive or missed an easy putt. The game passed mostly in silence. Clinton could think about Belinda.
It seemed stupid for him to be hanging with such a girl. That he had a live-in would soon be known by all his friends. He seemed to remember seeing Belinda at school, but she certainly had not run with his circle. She must have been a hippie girl back then, one of the long-hair artsy crowd that the football players liked to sneer at and bully. Clinton realized there would be some fallout with the women he had been seeing during the school year and early part of the summer. Regina would be incensed and not speak to him. Betsy would be cool and do research on Belinda to find ways to insult her. He would be in the middle of it. It suddenly seemed stupid to have let her move in with him. Why had he invited her?
When he got home she was lying on the couch reading. He walked up and looked at her book.
“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” he read, holding it up. “What is it?”
“It’s a science fiction novel.”
“What’s an ‘android’?”
“It’s a robot but one that looks exactly like a human being.”
Clinton gazed down at the cover. Weird art covered it — curly cursive writing — a decapitated sheep and several panels with strange drawings in them.
He remembered how as a young boy he had liked comic books. In fifth grade he had asked a group of students in the cafeteria, “If you could have any superpower of a superhero, what would it be?” Immediately a six-grader scornfully asked, “Do you still read that kind of stuff?” The conversation never got going, and he had abandoned comic books and sci-fi from then on. He wondered what she would have to say about it.
“You read this kind of stuff?”
“Sure I do. Don’t you?”
“I haven’t for a while.”
“Did you ever?”
He would have to get used to her abruptness. It knocked away at his defenses so that he had to speak honestly and could not think of ways to get around her questions.
“I used to like comic books, but kids started making fun of me for reading them. I quit.”
“Why do you care what other kids think of you?”
“Don’t you — or didn’t you? Come on, Belinda, be honest.”
“I did once. But I kicked the habit. It’s a hard habit to kick. You want to read together?”
This surprised him. He nodded. She sat up and patted the couch cushion. He sat down next to her.
They read until 2 a.m. Clinton always remembered the fascination of that night — and the magic of it. The book, about earth after a nuclear war where almost all animals had gone extinct so it was a status symbol to own an animal, and robots (androids) posed as humans; where bounty hunters stalked illegal androids and travelled in flying cars and regulated their emotions by machines. More than that, he remembered Belinda’s voice. He could close his eyes and see her, stretched out on the couch in her little black skirt, white blouse and bare feet above him as he sat on the floor, listening and reading in turn; the trajectory story she read that night taking him into new imaginative territory, into fascinations and intrigues he had not imagined could captivate his attention. When Belinda’s voice finally gave out, they went to bed and fell asleep.
* * *
He had lived with Belinda two months when Raymond Miller saw the two of them sitting together in the cafeteria at the country club. She had taken his car that day to run some errands and met him there for lunch.
He smiled at them at first. Cute, his look seemed to say, to see a guy and girl sharing lunch. His face darkened when he recognized Belinda, his smile evaporating in an instant. He walked up to them.
“Belinda, isn’t it?” he asked. “You never answered my question.”
She gave him a haughty look. Clinton thought she might not reply but she said, voice clipped and frosty, “Yes, my name is Belinda. Your daughter called me.”
“She was allowed one phone call. I suppose you were the one to call because you invited her to that party. She said you were there.”
“I was there. I tried to talk her into leaving.”
He sneered. “You expect me to believe that?”
“You can believe whatever you want to believe.”
“I’ve told the police you were at that party.”
“It isn’t a crime to be at a party?”
Miller stabbed his finger at her. “It is if the people there are using drugs.”
“I didn’t take any drugs there.” Belinda tilted her face up, looking defiant.
“Do you take them elsewhere?”
“That’s none of your business.”
Clinton watched the confrontation, his mind frantically reaching for something to say. Miller seemed angry enough to hit Belinda, who looked very much the hippie girl in a bright tie-died minidress, sandals, and a headband. Clinton decided he had better say something.
“Look,” he put in, “I think we all need to step back a little.”
Miller ignored him.
“My daughter was okay until she met you,” Miller said, his eyes full of anger.
About David W. Landrum
