smiled disdainfully at a fifteen-year-old girl still staring openmouthed at the door through which Lucy had left.
"Catching flies, Dora?"
The girl flushed. It was awful to be mocked by Opal, the acknowledged Queen of the after-the-movie bunch at Drake's.
Opal, her self-confidence restored by the humble smile of a subject, led the chorus of jeering laughter, then yawned, tapping the fingers of her right hand to her mouth genteelly albeit belatedly in a gesture of refinement recommended by The Gentlewoman.
"I get awfully tired of Drake's. It's such a kid hangout," she said to Freddie as they were leaving.
Freddie looked at her, perplexed. Not to want to come to Drake's after a movie was heretical. Where else was there to go except—Except was a ramshackle street where to jangle, bang, and saxa-moan that razzle dazzle 1919 jazz beat out a new syncopatic rhythm.
| " | I wanta go back |
wailed those who had no such intention.
But you didn't take the girl you're going to marry to honkytonks, decided Freddie. A hot chick like that Lucy now—imagine a squirt like Frank with a hot number like her on a dark street.
Oh, Boy!
Ghostly vapor from paleozoic chasms crept through Denver's streets to penetrate Lucy's ribs. She quickened her pace knowing it annoyed Frank. The patent leather pumps, a little small for Mother and a little large for herself, kept slipping and she clenched her toes to hold them. Heel clatter resounded in the thin mountain air.
"My goodness, I'll wake the whole neighborhood. Hurry up, Frank, I'm cold."
To bridle her haste he took off his coat and put it around her shoulders and felt her snuggle into his warmth. He wanted to talk to her but could think of nothing to say because his only tongue-tying thought was would she let him kiss her again. She seemed to like it. When he took his coat that would be the time to do it. When he was with the kids there was always a lot to say. You know, kidding the girls, feeling them in roughhousing, yelling, singing. He took two sticks of gum from his pants' pocket, handed her one, and
