The Books of Fell by M.E. Kerr

compartment?”
    “Any evidence I could find of you.”
    “Why?”
    “I’m curious about you.”
    “Are you glad I’m not the preppy you thought I was?”
    “I like preppies.”
    “What do you like about them?”
    “I like the ones who go to all-male schools.”
    “Why them?”
    “They’re starved for women, so they’re eager to please and shyer, but they have more dignity than other guys.” She bit into the tip of the chocolate custard. “I like all three traits.”
    “You like eager to please, shy, and dignified?”
    “Yes. Are you any of those?”
    “I’m eager to please, and I’m dignified.”
    “I’ll make you shy,” she said.
    I laughed painfully. “It’s worth a try.” I managed to sound my idea of suave. Maybe not hers. I started the car.
    “Could you ever use that gun?”
    “I could. I know how to shoot. I learned to shoot when I was thirteen.”
    “Guns scare me,” she said, “but they fascinate me, too. This is awful. When I saw that gun in there, it turned me on.”
    “This
is awful,” I said. “It turns me on that it turned you on.”
    We both laughed. I took her left hand with my right.
    I wished I had a convertible. We should have been speeding down toward the sea in a convertible. I’d never had that kind of thought with Keats. I suppose that was because there was only one thing I could do with Keats that Daddy and she hadn’t already done, including speed along Ocean Road in a little blue Benz, top down. But with Delia Tremble I felt there were things I could show her, maybe not then and there, but there was the feeling she hadn’t seen it all. She’d already said she hadn’t been many places. Keats had been to Europe three times, India, the Orient, even China. I couldn’t begin to name all the islands in the Caribbean she’d carried her tube of Bain de Soleil down to and come back bronze from.
    Delia let go of my hand and reached into her pocket for a cigarette. I pushed in the lighter. She had on a bright-blue cotton blazer with the sleeves rolled up, over a dress with big blue and white flowers all over it. The same hoop earrings; the same gold rings. She had white low-heeled sandals on, so she was shorter than I was this time.
    I had on some khaki stone-washed pants that Keats had given me last summer. It seemed like way back last summer with Delia beside me and something new starting. Something good.
    When the lighter popped out, I held it up for her.
    “Thanks,” she said. “Fell? Do you miss anyone now?”
    “No. Do you?”
    “Not now. Thanks for taking me dancing, Fell.”
    I couldn’t remember any girl ever thanking me for taking her somewhere, on the way there.
    She shifted her cigarette to her right hand and held my right hand again.
    I looked over at her. I decided to try out my father’s old imitation of Humphrey Bogart. I sucked down my lower lip and said, “This is just the beginning of our travels, kid.”
    “Don’t,” she said.
    “Don’t what?”
    “Do the Bogie bit. I don’t like bits. I always think men pull that stuff when they’re afraid to show any emotion.”
    So
there,
Dad.
    I said, “Why shouldn’t we be afraid to show emotion? Show emotion and die.”
    “No. That’s see Naples. See Naples and die.” She laughed. “Show emotion and take your chances.”
    • • •
    Delia Tremble was a real good dancer. When you danced with her, people watched. Not you. Her. Some people watched her and danced. A few couples stopped to watch her.
    She had all sorts of moves, and she’d heard every song whether it was a hard rock disco song or the softer kind that came rarely and only at the end of a set. She did things with herself that were graceful and hot and new to me. New to a lot of us. What I liked was she didn’t dance for them, and she didn’t dance for herself like some girls do. Some girls dance in a way you could go down to the corner and back and they wouldn’t know you’d been gone. Delia danced for me, and with me,