City Boy by Jean Thompson Read Free Book Online

mean, who are you, one of those guys who works on the literary magazine and wishes
On the Road
didn’t exist so you could write it yourself?”
    Jack fell backward, clutching his heart in mock dismay in order to hide his actual dismay. He did, in fact, envy
On the Road
. “That’s me,” he said. “Callow to the core.”
    “I’m sorry, that was rude of me. It’s just, the writers I’ve met here can be so predictable. The same books, the same tired old poses. Always responding to past forms instead of creating new ones. Art has to be a revolutionary process, it can’t be content with stasis. That’s what I was trying to say in class when that asshole mugged me.”
    Jack noted that she must not have drunk much, to be able to jump right into an argument this way. He could have volunteered his own thought, that new forms were always a response to past forms, but that really wasn’t the direction in which he wanted to steer things. “I felt bad about that. He shouldn’t have lit into you. It was pretty hostile.”
    “I thought about staying in the class, just to force him to confront his totally regressive thinking, but I decided it wasn’t worth it. He’s obviously happy there in the poetry museum.”
    “Actually, it’s a pretty good class. But it would have been even better if you’d stayed.”
    It was the first mildly flirtatious thing he’d said to her, or at least the first one she’d heard. She didn’t answer, just flattened her lips in a perfunctory smile. Jack reminded himself that she was a girl who heard her share of come-ons and cheesy lines. He felt he’d lost ground and didn’t know how to regain it. The party still surged around them with its noise and commotion. He was trying to think of a way to ask her if she wanted to go somewhere quiet and talk, without actually using those words.
    The Mormon missionary guy came bounding up then. “God, it’s getting ugly here. There’s a girl in the bathroom trying to scrub off a tattoo with Comet.”
    “What did the tattoo look like?” asked Jack, but the missionary had decided to ignore him.
    “So if you’ve had enough fun for one night—”
    “It could also be kind of important just where the tattoo is. Because there’s some body parts you really don’t want to treat with Comet.”
    Chloe said, “Dex, this is Jack. Jack, Dex.”
    “How ya doin,” said Dex, indifferently.
    “Mucho gusto.”
    “I’ll get the coats, meet you at the front door.”
    “It was a genuine pleasure,” Jack called to his retreating back, then, turning to Chloe, “Who’s he?”
    “A friend.”
    “Uh-huh.” Dead end. Jack watched her getting ready to take her leave, and just as she said “Well … ,” he said, “how about I give you a ride?”
    “To where?”
    “Wherever you’re going. Dex too. I wouldn’t want him to feel left out or anything.”
    He waited while she made up her mind. He tried to see himself in her eyes. This tall boy with the hopeful, foolish smile, willing himself to be brave. Yes, brave, he’d forced himself to be so, as if this was his true self at last and she had called it forth. She could just as easily dismisshim and send that self back to where it came from but she didn’t, she said, “Sure, thanks, we could use a ride.”
    Forty minutes later Jack was sitting at a table in between Chloe and Dex in a Chicago bar of the fancy sort that his old self would not have had the nerve to enter. He ordered a beer and didn’t get carded. Sooner or later he was going to have to cop to being barely twenty years old but not, thank God, tonight. Tonight he was on a roll. He felt like a spy who’d bluffed his way into the palace. He studied Chloe’s hands on the blond wood of the table. They were restless hands, shredding a paper napkin, tapping, tracing those invisible spirals. Her nails were blunt and the skin was stretched tight over the small bones and knuckles. Warm hands or cold? He decided it was even a good thing Dex was