Prom Night in Purgatory (Slow Dance in P)

~13~

A Time to Embrace





“She’s going to be worried about me,” Maggie murmured to herself.

“Who?”

“Lizzie Honeycutt. The car back there? It’s their housekeeper’s car. Lizzie and I thought she would never never notice it was gone. I was going to bring it back, really.”

“You stole the Honeycutt’s housekeeper’s car? Oh, this is rich,” Johnny sighed, a smile playing around his lips. He swung into The Malt’s parking lot.

“Maybe you should stay in the car, Bonnie. We don’t want any witnesses.” Johnny stepped out of the car, shutting the door firmly behind him. Maggie decided to stay put. He was back about ten minutes later, a brown bag of food in one hand and two glass bottles of coke in the other.

A car pulled up beside them in front of the diner. For a brief moment, Irene Honeycutt’s pale face was illuminated in the light pouring out of The Malt’s windows. Irene looked right at Maggie, and Maggie stared back, transfixed. Then Roger opened his door and stepped out, obscuring Maggie’s view, and Johnny backed out of the space and headed out of the lot. Maggie quickly rolled the window down, calling for Johnny to stop.

“Irene! Irene Honeycutt!” Maggie called. Irene stopped, confused, and looked around in surprise.

“Hold on, please!” Maggie implored Johnny.

“Maggie--”

Maggie jumped out of the car and hurried back to where Irene stood, Roger at her arm, watching her run across the lot toward them.

“Irene. Please tell Lizzie I’m just fine. Tell her not to worry; tell her I’m with Johnny,” Maggie blurted out when she was within ten feet.

“Wh-what?” Irene stammered.

“Just tell her, please? She’ll understand.”

Irene looked at Roger and then back at Maggie. Roger smirked at Maggie and turned to go inside.

“Oh, and Irene?”

“Yes?” Irene looked extremely dubious, and she kept eyeing Maggie’s dress suspiciously.

“You need to get a new boyfriend. That one’s bad news.” Maggie’s voice was loud enough for several other couples entering the restaurant to hear. She tossed her head toward Roger, who had stopped in his tracks and was staring at her open-mouthed. Irene looked like she’d been slapped. Maggie didn’t know if it would make a difference, but she had to try. “If you don’t, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

She couldn’t say more. The insistent tugging from the pit of her stomach had started as soon as she had opened her mouth to warn Irene. Frantically, she turned and ran back to Johnny’s car. He had stepped out of the still running Bel Air and stood framed in his open car door, hands in his pockets, waiting for her. She could tell by the expression on his face that he’d heard the entire exchange. She hustled to the passenger side and got in as he slid back in beside her.

“Will you hold my hand for a minute...please?” Maggie gasped. The pull had grown stronger. She was paying for her interference. NO! She couldn’t leave now!

Johnny looked at her, his eyes serious and his head cocked to one side. Without a word, he stretched his hand out and she grasped it, clinging to it with both hands. It was big and calloused and warm. She focused on the ridges and grooves, the length of his fingers and the width of his palm. She rubbed slow circles into his skin with her thumbs, the back and forth motion soothing her and quieting the intense quickening within her.

Johnny let her be for a few minutes, but then pulled on his hand, silently asking her to let go. She did so immediately, but felt the loss acutely, as if he were a lifeline in a raging storm. He tossed the food onto the seat behind them and with one steady motion leaned over and pulled her up tight against his side. Oh, the advantages of a bench seat.

“I need my hand for a minute, but you hold onto me if you need to.” His voice was gentle and without reproach, and Maggie thought, not for the first time, how unthreatened he seemed by her wild behavior. She had blown into his life less than an hour ago...and brought havoc in her wake. He hadn’t even batted an eye.

“Where are we going?” Maggie asked, burrowing into his side. She really didn’t care. For the moment she felt safe and exactly where she belonged.

“My favorite place to think and talk, or just be left alone, is the reservoir. There are some big trees, and a cool breeze comes up off the water. It’s not too hot yet, but it will be in another month, and the place will be hoppin’. It should be quiet tonight, though.”

In Maggie’s time, the reservoir had been closed to the public. Some tiny fish with a funny name had been discovered in the reservoir and a wildlife organization had come in and claimed the guppy-like fish was at risk of extinction. The government had stepped in and made it a preserve. So now the only creatures to enjoy the reservoir were the four-legged kind or the itty bitty three-finned variety. Kind of sad, Maggie thought. The reservoir was manmade, but that hadn’t mattered, apparently. As a result, she had never even seen the reservoir.

“I heard a story about you, this car, and the reservoir. It was a pretty cool story.”

Johnny looked down at her in wonder. “You heard that story?”

“I did,” Maggie smiled. “Your reputation preceeds you.”

“Boy, I hope not,” Johnny grinned. “And here I know nothing about you...well, other than you steal cars, you’re beautiful, and you don’t like Roger Carlton. Of course, I find all three of those attributes almost impossible to resist.”

It was Maggie’s turn to laugh, and laugh she did. “Is that why you called me Bonnie back there? Like Bonnie and Clyde?”

“Yes, ma’am. Bonnie was a beautiful woman, too. And she was also a famous thief. I’m not volunteering to be Clyde, though. Those two ended up getting shot to death in their vehicle, didn’t they? I like my car too much to take that kind of a chance.”

“I don’t think there would have been a Bonnie without Clyde.” Maggie flirted a little.

“Oh you don’t, do ya? Well you might be right about that. Behind every bad man is a woman who can’t resist him.”

Maggie didn’t respond. There was a story in that comment, though his voice suggested he was kidding.

Johnny drove the car up a long bumpy incline that finally leveled out at the top. Slowing to a stop, he put the car in park. The moonlight spilled softly onto the surface of the lake, and Johnny cranked his window down, letting the night air brush their cheeks and fill the interior of the car. Maggie scooted over and out the passenger side, and Johnny pulled their food from the back seat. He popped the trunk, pulled out a scratchy army blanket, and spread it out on a relatively flat area several yards from the car.

They made short work of the chicken, potato logs, and coleslaw. Maggie had thought she might not be able to eat, but the food actually steadied her, and the tugging eased and then ceased altogether as she ate her fill. Everything was delicious, and the Coke in a glass bottle was a treat. It tasted a little sharper than the Coca Cola of 2011, but she liked the difference.

Johnny finished before Maggie, and he removed his bow tie and pulled off his sports coat, setting it behind him on the blanket. He made short work of the cummerbund as well. Rolling up his sleeves and unbuttoning the top buttons of his white dress shirt, he lay back and sighed like he’d just been released from shackles and chains.

Maggie wished she could unclip her nylons from the garter belt and roll them off but thought it might create the wrong impression. She settled for slipping off her shoes and laying back beside him, a couple of feet between them, looking up into the firmament.

“So what was that all about -- the scene with Irene Honeycutt and Roger Carlton? I think you made an enemy out of Roger, maybe out of both of them.”

“Irene is family. It’s complicated,” Maggie sighed, knowing that if she were going to stay beside Johnny under the moonlit sky, she would have to tread very carefully. “Her little sister is afraid of him, which is always a warning sign. Kids and dogs, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, when kids or dogs don’t like someone, it’s usually a pretty a good indication of a person’s trustworthiness.”

“So you just decided to call him out and tell Irene he was no good based on that?”

“It was the truth,” Maggie declared vehemently, and dared him to deny it.

“Hell, yes, it was,” Johnny agreed, and laughed a little. “Remind me not to get on your bad side, Bonnie.”

“I don’t know how long I’ll be here! I had to speak up when I had the chance,” Maggie defended herself lightly.

“So you’re new in town, and you don’t know how long you’ll be here. How did you find yourself at the prom, without a date, in a stolen car?”

“I had an amazing dress.” Maggie stalled.

Johnny just turned his head and looked at her, his face patient, waiting.

Maggie decided to go all in. “I went to the dance to find you.”

Johnny sat up slowly and looked down at her, laying with her hair spread around her, skin porcelain in the darkness.

“You better be careful, little girl,” Johnny’s voice was quiet, but his eyebrows were drawn together over his deep set eyes, eyes that were colorless in the white light of the moon. “You’re all alone out here with someone you really don’t know, saying some pretty serious things. You could give a boy the wrong idea.”

Maggie felt frustration well up inside her and tears gather in her eyes. Gravity betrayed her, and several leaked out the corners and hurried straight down to pool in her ears.

Johnny reached out and wiped one damp trail with the pad of his thumb. “Don’t cry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Maggie just shook her head a little, and his hand fell away from her face, but he braced it next to her head and continued looking down at her.

“Have you ever been somewhere, doing something when all at once you swear you’ve done it all before? Everything feels like it’s repeating itself all of a sudden?” Maggie asked hesitantly.

“Like Deja vu?” Johnny answered

“That’s what some people call it. My friend Gus told me that his grandma said Deja vu is actually time changing its mind.”

“What do you mean?”

“She described it as time making a shift from the way things were to the way things are, and sometimes we feel that shift, or briefly remember how things were....before.”

“Before what, Maggie?” Johnny’s voice was hushed, but he didn’t sound frustrated or even confused. He was just listening.

“Before someone or something caused time to change.”

They gazed at each other for several heartbeats, until the crickets started up softly and other night sounds wafted around them. Johnny seemed to be mulling over what she had said.

“Have you and I met before?” he asked finally.

“Yes....and no.”

Johnny waited again.

“If time is sequential, then tonight is the first time we’ve ever met. But if time is just one eternal circle, it’s hard to know when ‘before’ ends and ‘after’ begins.”

Johnny stood up abruptly and walked down to the water’s edge. He set his hands on his hips and stared out, facing away from her. He was silhouetted against the silver glass of the lake, youthful and strong, and still doomed by fate. Maggie knew she was talking in riddles, making absolutely no sense.

Maggie slid her feet into her shoes and made her way across the rocky shore and down to the hard packed sand, stepping gingerly in the high red heels to keep from twisting an ankle. She too stopped at the water’s edge, just out of reach of the lapping tide.

“What do you call a smart blonde?” she blurted out awkwardly.

Johnny’s head swiveled around in confusion.

“What do you call a smart blonde?” she repeated.

“I don’t know,” Johnny hedged, his eyebrows high, waiting.

“A golden retriever.”

Johnny threw back his head and laughed. “What?!”

“Well, I thought the time space continuum might be a little heavy for the first date.” Maggie wrinkled her nose at him sheepishly. “I thought I’d tell you a joke to lighten things up.”

“I see.” Johnny grinned down at her. He was quiet for a moment, his wheels turning. Then he offered a joke of his own.

“You heard about the blonde coyote that got caught in a trap, didn’t you?” Johnny was pretty quick on the uptake. Blonde jokes were not a fifties phenomenon.

“No, I didn’t hear about that,” Maggie smiled, waiting.

“Yeah, it gnawed off three of its legs and it was still stuck.”

Maggie’s laughter peeled out over the water and they were off, shooting jokes back and forth, the weighty conversation of minutes before long forgotten. They bantered like that for almost an hour with silly things and questions designed to get to know one another. Maggie recognized the Johnny she had come to know and love, but she also enjoyed the Johnny who was not yet weighed down or aged by the years he’d been imprisoned in Purgatory. She didn’t return to the topic of her appearance at the prom or why she had no place to go. She lived in the moment with him and resolved to will herself home when and if the moment passed. And of course the thought niggled at the back of her brain...what if she could stay?

“All right, the question that everyone asks eventually...favorite color?” Maggie intoned.

“Pink,” Johnny replied seriously, without pause.

“Really?” Maggie had asked him this question before....or after. She shook her head, her mind swimming. In Purgatory he’d told her his favorite color was white. He said white felt safe.

“Yep. Think about it. Everything that’s pink is usually soft, pretty, and it tastes good.” Johnny’s voice was husky, and he drew his words out slowly. She knew he was flirting, that he had possibly used the line before, but it didn’t matter. His words made her hot inside, and she wished for a second that she was the kind of girl who would take what she wanted and to hell with the consequences. But she wasn’t. Life had taught her that consequences were ugly and painful, and seldom worth the pleasure they had been bartered for.

“It’s your turn.”

“Huh? Oh. Yellow,” she supplied. “Yellow is happy.”

“Put yellow and pink together, and it makes peach....soft, pretty, tastes really good, and makes you happy.”

“Perfect. Then we’re meant for each other.” She sighed and batted her eyes, and he laughed again.

It was his turn for a question. He asked her for her favorite movie. He’d just seen Hitchcock’s Vertigo and liked it - Maggie had no idea what to say. So she offered Rebel Without a Cause.

Johnny groaned. “All the girls say that. James Dean isn’t really that good looking, is he?

“I think he looks a little like you,” Maggie grinned.

“Well, then. I guess he is pretty irresistible.”

“I guess so,” Maggie snickered.

Favorite song? Johnny liked too many to decide. Maggie scrambled to claim a favorite from his decade and blurted out “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”

Johnny shook his head. “I don’t know that one. Kinda funny title. Sing a little for me, and maybe I’ll recognize it.”

“It’s an oldie, but it’s probably still the best love song I’ve ever heard.” Maggie grimaced. She didn’t know when that song actually came out. She shouldn’t have said it was an oldie. She tried to change the subject.

“I can’t sing it to you because I sing like a frog. I’m a dancer, not a singer.”

Johnny got a speculative look on his face and without warning, he loped back up the hilly incline to the car. He started it up and flipped on the lights and within seconds Ray Charles was groaning out “A Fool For You,” the gritty longing pouring out of the windows and touching her like a caress. Shutting the doors, Johnny walked back down the hill, and just liked he’d done earlier in the evening, he held out a hand to Maggie.

“You only got to dance to two songs before the heat caught up to you.” Johnny’s lips turned up at the mention of ‘heat.’ “Would you like to dance?”

Maggie slid into his arms like she had never left, and he immediately spun her out again, and then pulled her close, locking her up tight against him. Maggie caught her breath. The song was sexy and sinuous, and Maggie closed her eyes and moved with him. Freed from the confines of a crowded gymnasium, neither of them seemed willing to maintain a respectful distance. But in spite of their proximity, the music was not an excuse to simply hold one another, and they danced, gliding around the hard-packed beach with the car lights creating a spotlight that blotted out the rest of the universe.

One song led to another. “In the Still of the Night,” “You Send Me,” “Stardust,” and “Mona Lisa” echoed out across the glassy water. Maggie was grateful for the melancholy radio announcer spinning out love song after love song, mournful ballad after mournful ballad, giving them words when it was too soon to speak them.

“And here’s to all the young lovers, wherever you are - so many people have sung this one...but I like the way Frank sings it best. Here’s ‘Where or When.’”



The opening bars of a song Maggie had never heard before rang out and wrapped around them in silky persuasion.



It seems we stood and talked like this before

We looked at each other in the same way then,

The clothes you’re wearing are the clothes you wore

The smile you’re smiling you smiled then

But I can’t remember when.



Some things that happen for the first time

Seem to be happening again

And so it seems that we have met before

And laughed before

And loved before

But who knows where or when





Maggie tipped her head up to look at Johnny. He didn’t break his gaze as his legs moved against hers, her skirts wrapping around him as they danced. His arm was firm on her waist, her hand tucked against his chest, his eyes on hers. The last notes rang across the distance, and Johnny dipped Maggie so low that her hair brushed the beach before he swung her back up against him.

The lights on the car flickered once and faded sickly. The climactic final note still echoed in her head, but no more music filled the air. Johnny stepped back slightly and dropped his hands to hers. The lights from the car no longer illuminated the dark, but Maggie could still see Johnny’s face, though it was shadowed. He had an inscrutable expression in his eyes, like he was fighting an inner battle of sorts. Maggie stared, not willing to step away, but afraid to step forward. It could be too soon, but it might be all they had.

And then he closed the space and his mouth was poised above hers. His breath fanned against her face, tangling with her own in a heady mix of anticipation and desire. His hands released hers, sliding up the smooth skin of her arms, up her shoulders to cradle her face in his fingertips. He lifted her chin slightly and touched his lips to hers, leaving the barest whisper between their mouths.

“Maggie?” Her name was a question on his lips, and she whispered back the answer.

“Johnny.”

Then the whisper was chased away by the roaring in her ears and the pounding of her heart. He kissed her madly, his hands leaving her face to wrap around her waist, and he lifted her off the ground as his mouth plundered hers in a kiss as thorough and complete as the solitude was around them. The world tilted, and Maggie felt herself go with it, unaligned with the natural order of things, but in complete harmony with the boy in her arms.

“There...” Johnny tore his lips away, gasping. “There...did you feel that?”

Maggie stared up at him, waiting, her chest heaving.

“Deja vu.” They said the word in unison. Johnny shook his head, almost like he needed to clear it.

“Time changing its mind,” he whispered.

“From what was to what is,” Maggie finished, her voice as hushed as his.





The car battery had died but neither of them really cared. Johnny said there would be a park ranger at the ranger station on the north side of the reservoir first thing in the morning now that warmer weather had brought the Sunday crowds. He would run for cables and the attendant’s car and they would be on their way first thing in the morning.

It had grown late, and the summer was still a little more than a month away. The night air suddenly felt cold on Maggie’s bare arms and shoulders, and she was thankful for the nylons she had wished to be rid of only a couple of hours before.

Johnny pulled another scratchy blanket from the back seat of his car and wrapped her in his jacket. They lay side by side on one blanket, pulling the other over the top of them both. He pulled her into his arms, a solid presence at her back, his chin resting on her head, her head cushioned on his shoulder. The blankets smelled of a greasy mechanics shop, but Maggie was too happy to care. Her eyes slid closed, confident that she would be safe from time’s pull in the circle of Johnny’s arms.

“How do you keep a blonde in suspense?” Maggie yawned and let her heavy eyes rest.

“How?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow...”

Johnny laughed, and Maggie felt the rumble against her cheek.

“Well, Bonnie. It’s official. You’ve left the straight and narrow. Car theft, evading the police, and spending the night in a stranger’s arms. All in the space of a few hours.”

“Well Clyde. I guess you’re right...but you helped me evade the police, provided the getaway car, and you are now about to sleep next to a known criminal.” Maggie felt his laughter flutter her hair. She smiled drowsily. She really couldn’t keep her eyes open.

“I like it when you call me Bonnie,” she mumbled.

“Why, Bonnie?”

“My dad used to call me bonny Maggie,” she sighed. “It makes me think of him.”

“Bonny means pretty, right?”

Maggie nodded, almost asleep.

“Maggie? Where are your parents?”

She didn’t answer right away, and Johnny thought she must have fallen asleep. So it almost startled him when she answered softly, her voice heavy with impending slumber. “They haven’t even been born...and when I return - they will already be dead.” Maggie’s voice drifted off as sleep overcame her, and she offered nothing more.

Johnny lay beside her and held her as she slept, his mind a jumble with the impossibility of the girl in his arms and the frightening way he felt about her. She was beautiful, but there were other beautiful girls. She was funny and zany and different from any girl he’d ever met. But even that couldn’t account for the almost desperate attraction he felt after such a short time. Sleep evaded him until the first blush of dawn pinked the eastern horizon, and the birds kicked up their sunrise chatter. Then he fell into an exhausted sleep, where even dreams could not disturb him.