‘I’m Tina.’
She manages to say this in a tone of voice that’s almost normal, but doing so isn’t easy. Jerome is tall, Jerome is broad-shouldered, Jerome is extremely handsome, and Tina Saubers falls in love with him immediately. Soon she will be calculating how old she’ll need to be before he might look upon her as something more than a little ma’am in an oversized apron, her hands all sticky from making popcorn balls. For the time being, however, she’s too stunned by his beauty to run the numbers. And later that evening, it doesn’t take much urging from Barbara for Tina to tell him everything. Although it’s not always easy for her to keep her place in the story, with his dark eyes on her.
3
Pete’s Saturday afternoon isn’t nearly as good. In fact, it’s fairly shitty.
At two o’clock, class officers and officers-elect from three high schools crowd into the River Bend Resort’s largest conference room to listen as one of the state’s two U.S. senators gives a long and boring talk titled ‘High School Governance: Your Introduction to Politics and Service.’ This fellow, who’s wearing a three-piece suit and sporting a luxuriant, swept-back head of white hair (what Pete thinks of as ‘soap opera villain hair’), seems ready to go on until dinnertime. Possibly longer. His thesis seems to be something about how they are the NEXT GENERATION, and being class officers will prepare them to deal with pollution, global warming, diminishing resources, and, perhaps, first contact with aliens from Proxima Centauri. Each minute of this endless Saturday afternoon dies a slow and miserable death as he drones on.
Pete couldn’t care less about assuming the mantle of student vice president at Northfield High this coming September. As far as he’s concerned, September might as well be out there on Proxima Centauri with the aliens. The only future that matters is this coming Monday afternoon, when he will confront Andrew Halliday, a man he now wishes most heartily that he had never met.
But I can work my way out of this, he thinks. If I can hold my nerve, that is. And keep in mind what Jimmy Gold’s elderly aunt says in The Runner Raises the Flag.
Pete has decided he’ll begin his conversation with Halliday by quoting that line: They say half a loaf is better than none, Jimmy, but in a world of want, even a single slice is better than none.
Pete knows what Halliday wants, and will offer more than a single slice, but not half a loaf, and certainly not the whole thing. That is simply not going to happen. With the notebooks safely hidden away in the basement of the Birch Street Rec, he can afford to negotiate, and if Halliday wants anything at all out of this, he’ll have to negotiate, too.
No more ultimatums.
I’ll give you three dozen notebooks, Pete imagines saying. They contain poems, essays, and nine complete short stories. I’m even going to split fifty-fifty, just to be done with you.
He has to insist on getting money, although with no way of verifying how much Halliday actually receives from his buyer or buyers, Pete supposes he’ll be cheated out of his fair share, and cheated badly. But that’s okay. The important thing is making sure Halliday knows he’s serious. That he’s not going to be, in Jimmy Gold’s pungent phrase, anyone’s birthday fuck. Even more important is not letting Halliday see how scared he is.
How terrified.
The senator winds up with a few ringing phrases about how the VITAL WORK of the NEXT GENERATION begins in AMERICA’S HIGH SCHOOLS, and how they, the chosen few, must carry forward THE TORCH OF DEMOCRACY. The applause is enthusiastic, possibly because the lecture is finally over and they get to leave. Pete wants desperately to get out of here, go for a long walk, and check his plan a few more times, looking for loopholes and stumbling blocks.
Only they don’t get to leave. The high school principal who has arranged this afternoon’s endless chat with greatness steps forward to announce that the senator has agreed to stay another hour and answer their questions. ‘I’m sure you have lots,’ she says, and the hands of the butt-lickers and grade-grubbers – there seem to be plenty of both in attendance – shoot up immediately.
Pete thinks, This shit don’t mean shit.
He looks at the door, calculates his chances of slipping through it without being noticed, and settles back into his seat. A week from now, all this will be over, he tells himself.
The thought brings him some comfort.
4