Jack and Diane [part II]

Continued from part I

So the girl and the boy she called Jack worked together all the long, long, days of that long, long summer.

The girl found she was spending more time at the office than she was spending at home. Too much time. This was partly because she was, by now, enrolled in grad school, taking evening courses in accounting and finance and marketing at the university that was much closer to her office than it was to her home. So why go home in between, she reasoned. Besides, at the office she had a printer and a computer, and could work on her school assignments more easily.

At least, this was how she resolved the cognitive dissonance she sometimes felt. She knew, deep down, that she was spending too much time with Jack. That this was not right. That the boy she loved and who loved her so very much would be ever so deeply hurt if he were to find out.

So she took great pains to make sure he'd never find out.

* * *
One morning, Jack appeared at the girl's desk and said, "Come," and so she left her work and followed him out to the parking lot.

"Look," he said, pointing to a shiny black BMW sedan. "Isn't she a beauty?"

"She sure is," the girl agreed. "Hello, Beauty." She patted the car on its hood. "But she's no match for my Baby."

Jack burst into laughter. He wasn't laughing at her, though. He affected a southern drawl: "Looky here, Sassafras," he grinned, "Y'all's car is mighty fine. Mighty fine, indeed. But — no disrespect intended to your not inconsiderable feminine charms — this here's a man's car."

"Oh yeah?" was her clever riposte.

"Yeah."

"I can take you." She looked him straight in the eye, then. Challenging him.

"No."

"Come on — right now, let's go, out on 86 North." She patted her pockets. "Where are my keys?"

But Jack was smiling down through the lashes of his steel blue eyes, at Beauty.

Then the girl heard a Zippo snap, and said, "Give me one of those."

* * *
In July, it was hot hot hot. The girl went to the office on a Sunday afternoon to work on an assignment in the peace and quiet and air conditioning. She worked diligently for several hours, speaking to no one, hearing nothing but the clicking of her keyboard. Then, the click of a door, and footsteps, and there was Jack.

"Hey, you," he said.

"Hey," she replied.

"Need a break?"

"In a bad way. And a smoke, if you got 'em."

"Of course."

They went out back to the swingset, which wasn't really a swingset at all but only a picnic table in the grass at the far end of the parking lot. He lit two cigarettes with his Zippo, and passed one to her. They sat in silence, in the beating sun, watching the railroad tracks that ran past the building.

"Have you ever seen a train go by?" she asked.

"No," he replied. "Let's go for a walk."

They walked along the railroad tracks, both of them thinking about the same Stephen King story that had been turned into a great movie, but neither wanting to admit to the other having ever read anything less Shakespearean than Shakespeare.

They didn't know where they were headed. They followed the tracks for several miles. They passed trees and ponds, and then a small subdivision. They could hear children playing in the street on the other side of the houses. There was something in the grass.

"Look," she said, and pointed.

It was a hobby horse, its head made of burlap and stuffed with straw, and mounted on a broomstick. It hadn't come from any store. Someone had made this for a child.

Jack picked it up. The girl pretended not to notice that his lower lip was quivering.

"Why?" he asked. "Why doesn't the child for whom this was made love it anymore?"

"Perhaps he grew up," she said. "Perhaps he left it out here one day, and now he can't find it, and he's very sad, but he'll never forget his Horse."

"Perhaps."

"Have you ever read The Velveteen Rabbit?" she asked.

"No," he answered.

"Maybe you shouldn't, ever."

It started to rain. Then it started to pour. There was an overpass not far ahead, and they ran toward its shelter. They sat high in the corner of the angled concrete, listening to the cars rumble overhead, and watching the water fall on either side. They were soaked, and shivering, and Jack put his arm around the girl to keep her warm.

Then they told each other secrets, though they made each other no promises, and they never said that thing they never say. And he sang her a song, "The Water Is Wide," and she cried, because she knew she couldn't have this.

"Don't cry, Sassafras," he said.

* * *
When she returned to her home that night, the boy who loved her very much was angry.

"Where have you been?" he asked.

She lied.

"Stop lying to me," he said. And so she told him the truth.

"Choose," he demanded. And she chose him.

And she promised never to see Jack again.

* * *
They met one last time. They went for a long, long, ride in Beauty. Jack let the girl drive. She drove all the way to Lake Ontario, and found a beach with big rocks. She liked to sit on rocks and skip stones. She used to do this with her father when she was a little girl.

"I am going to California," he said. Then he said nothing for a long while.

The girl was silent, too. She fixed her eyes on the middle distance, on the coruscating water.

"Come with me," he said.

"I cannot," she said.

They drove home in silence. The girl did not cry. Not then.

They were back in the parking lot. He pulled Beauty beside her car. The two beautiful, black cars had spent many hours together that way. In the sunshine. In the dark. In the bitter rain.

Jack opened her door, and took her hand as she got out of Beauty for the last time. The girl was trembling, just a little. Jack wrapped his arms around the girl and held her until she was still. Then he took a step back, so that he might look into her face.

"I will never love another," he said.

And then he left her.

* * *
Go to Jack and Diane [part III]