Early Warning

They both had keys to the hotel room, of course. It was their usual room, 312. Frank went up the stairs while Lydia went up in the elevator. They met at the door, still behaving as if they were strangers, and then Frank unlocked the door, and once they were inside, she pressed herself into his arms, and he carried her to the bed. In every conversation they had had since he first saw her, in the course of every lovemaking, in every hour they had spent after making love, lying tight against one another, she had never alluded to her early life as a prostitute, had never admitted living in Corsica, had never admitted meeting Frank, taking his packet of cigarettes. She admitted only that she was from Milan, was married to Olivier, had come to the United States in 1952, that she was thirty-nine years old. For his part, Frank never said a word about Andy or the kids, about Dave Courtland, or Hal, or Friskie. When he had to go on business to Texas or Caracas, he simply disappeared, and she asked no questions.

If he had doubted that he recognized Lydia’s face (but he never really did) or her posture or the back of her head, Frank knew that he did recognize her crotch, the texture of her pubic hair, the shape and prominence of her labia, the exact way she took him in and held him, the recesses of her vagina. He always preferred the way they had done it that first time, him lying on his back on the bed, so sleepy from the war, and her sitting on him. But they tried different things, just so he could pretend that he wasn’t that boy anymore, that he had had experiences and learned from them. However Olivier Forêt treated her, and she said nothing about that, she seemed to enjoy Frank’s ardor, and his kindness. He never told her that, outside this room, he was not known for kindness.

1964

AFTER HE WATCHED the Beatles on TV, and then got himself into the performance at the Coliseum, Steve Sloan made Stanley and Tim watch the second Ed Sullivan performance together. They were absolutely quiet; Steve watched George Harrison’s guitar playing as closely as he could. The next day, he threw out all of their songs and fired the drummer. Enough “Tom Dooley.” Enough “Banks of the Ohio.” If you wanted girls to scream, then hangings and drownings were not the way. Steve had to admit that when he’d heard “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” he hadn’t been impressed. But the song had a beat, the Beatles had a look, and the girls in the audience were weeping and clawing their faces. Steve’s goal was that they would play at least one set at their senior prom, in June. Between now and then, they had to come up with new songs and a new look — not imitation Beatles, but themselves renovated and renamed: The Sleepless Knights? The Knight Riders? The Colts?

Debbie watched the Beatles at home, with Mom, Dad, Dean, and Tina, and two days later, she came home with a Beatles magazine. Tim laughed at her, but when she wasn’t looking, he glanced through it. He decided that he looked most like John. At school, he noticed that the girls quickly formed into groups — those who preferred John, Paul, etc. The mommy types, like Debbie, preferred George; otherwise, he couldn’t detect a pattern.

Tim had applied to Williams, Amherst, and U.Va. His father had gone to Williams, Amherst was down the road from Williams, and his great-uncle had gone to the University of Virginia two years before his grandfather had gone to West Point. Steve Sloan hadn’t applied anywhere. His plan was to leave home the day after graduation (his eighteenth birthday was in May) and head for New York, guitar in hand. Stanley was a year younger, so he would be working for his father all summer. The prom would be their farewell gig.

They all spent the last two weeks of March writing songs, and, Steve said, the stupider the better. “I Want to Hold Your Hand”? “I Saw Her Standing There”? Not a word about fucking. No wonder the ninth-graders were going bananas. Tim came up with “Come here to me, yeah yeah. Baby, I see you now. Come here to me, yeah yeah, and say hello. Hellooooo. Helloooo. Come here and say hello. Baby, I see you now, please don’t go.” They did it in G, with Tim singing the harmonies. Once they had mastered the first verse, he came up with a second verse: “Walk me down the street, yeah yeah. Baby, take my hand. Stand next to me, yeah yeah, and please don’t go. Don’t gooooo! Don’t gooooo! Walk me down the street, sweep me off my feet, please don’t say no!” Then the first verse again. He was pretty proud of it.

He was sitting in his car in the parking lot of the high school at the end of the day, with the windows closed, practicing this song at the top of his lungs, when Fiona Cannon walked up, opened the passenger’s side door, and got in. She said, “No, sing it. I want to hear.” So, though he warbled and went off key for a note or two, he finished the song.

She said, “Could be worse.”

“The song or the voice?”

She laughed.