CHAPTER 3
The Top Deck was in an old high-ceilinged building that had once been a department store. The parking lot across the street was full. I saw Neal Nance's Ford, Nick's only competition at the drag strip, parked slanted under a light so no one would bang a car door against his black paint job. Liz Daly's red Edsel - she supposedly screwed the whole football team after last year's homecoming game - sat next to Joe Crump's banged-up '57 Chevy. Crump was intense and moody and liked to fight; a little off in the head, everyone figured. There was a group of motorcycles parked by the front door, a couple of Triumph 650's, a BSA, and a couple of Harleys. Hardly anyone rode Jap bikes back then.
A cop at the door gave everybody the skunk-eye as they paid their dollar to get in. The club was hot and crowded and noisy and there was an electricity in the air that I could feel when I walked inside. The place was dimly lit; the ceiling faded away in the smoky gloom, and the floor throbbed with the beat of the five-piece band that was playing on the stage at the far end. Ricky produced a crumpled pack of Marlboros and we lit up and began cruising the perimeter of the dance floor, like about a hundred other guys, eyeing the leg and trying to look cool.
"That's the Teen Tones," Ricky said, nodding at the band. "From Cincinnati. Good band."
They were doing a good job on "Long Tall Sally". They had bass, drums, electric piano, and two guitars. The piano player played piano with his left hand and trumpet with his right hand on a couple of songs. Real neat, that was. And he sang great. There was a gaggle of girls crushed together in front of the bandstand watching them play. Yeah, I needed to start practicing the guitar a whole lot harder.
"Hey, Ricky!" Someone hollered.
"Hey, Kenny, whaddya say?" Ricky said to the tall, beak-nosed guy who came up to us. "'Smy cousin from Chicago," he pointed at me. I shook hands with Kenny.
"Big city, huh?" Kenny had a funny eye, and I couldn't really tell where he was looking.
"I live in the suburbs, really." I had only been downtown a couple of times, and one of those times didn't really count, as it was with my social studies class and Mr. Farr wouldn't let us have much fun, or even be very social.
I was wondering why Kenny was wearing a jacket in that hot club, and I found out when we went into the men's room and he pulled out a pint of Southern Comfort and passed it around. It was the first time I had ever tried whiskey. I took a big hit that brought tears to my eyes. For a moment I was afraid that it would come back up.
"Smooth," I gasped.
Ricky knew a lot of the kids there, mostly from school.
"There's Dodie Moss," he said, pointing out a girl with reddish hair teased up high on top and cut short in the back. The sides of her hair came down in front of her ears like pointy little sideburns and curled around her cheeks. "They call her Dodie Frog, 'cuz she jumps from bed to bed. Ha! Ha!"
"Shit, how would you know?" Kenny snorted.
"Hey, man, I been there."
"Your dyin' ass."
"Your dyin' ass!"
"Hey you guys, cut the shit." This came from a little guy with horn-rimmed glasses who had just walked up.
"Hey, it's Albert!" Kenny said, laughing and slapping the kid on the back.
"Whaddya say, gentleman," Albert said.
"Straight A's," Ricky said to me. "His name's Joey Milner, but everybody calls him Albert. Like in Einstein."
I was busy watching Dodie Frog dance. She had a really nice little butt, and she had a real good idea how to shake it. Maybe I could get hold of her on the next slow dance. Actually, I wasn't much of a dancer; all I could do was grab a girl and move around in a little circle when they played a slow one. But that was a lot more fun than fast dancing, anyway.
"You appear to be an admirer of female pulchritude," Albert said to me, grinning.
"He means you like pussy," Kenny laughed.
"Yeah, I guess you could say that," I said brightly, trying to sound like I had tried it and found it satisfactory. I had always figured I would like it - if I ever got any, that is.
A couple more guys drifted up and we all stood around smoking cigarettes, watching the girls, and talking about school and cars and shit. I was still waiting for a slow song, but when they played one Dodie was dancing with Joe Crump and I wasn't about to try to cut in on that crazy bastard. He wasn't real big or anything, but he was on the wrestling team and he was a strong sonofabitch. I'd seen him pick up the back end of a Volkswagen once. He had a flattop haircut with a bald spot on top and had it cut real high around his ears. When he wasn't around we said he had radiused earwells.
Neal Nance was leaning against the wall with a couple of his buddies drinking a Coke. He was already losing his hair, and he usually wore a hat. Tonight he had on a straw pork-pie job that made him look like Sam Snead. He had run his Ford against Nick a few times at the strip and had turned in a respectable E.T. Not good enough to beat Nick, though. He'd had a little tantrum the last time, and had come running after Nick in the pit screaming that he was going to blow his doors off next time.
There was a concession stand next to the entrance and I walked over to get something to drink. My throat still burned a little from the whiskey, but I had a little buzz in my head and I felt great. I stood in line behind a couple of fat girls with pimples who were whispering at each other and giggling. Ricky and Kenny pointed at them and then to me and then to them again, laughing, and I shot them a bird.
"Yes?" It was the girl behind the counter asking me what I wanted.
"Uh..." I said. She was beautiful. Incredibly beautiful.
"What can I get you?" she asked, arching her eyebrows.
She had long straight black hair and high cheekbones, like an Indian. She had dark eyes and her skin was tanned and smooth.
"Uh, a Coke, please." My voice sounded squeaky and I dropped my money on the floor.
"Twenty five cents," she said, pushing the Coke across the counter to me. I retrieved my quarter and handed it to her. She smiled at me and I picked up the Coke and said "Uh" again, trying to think of something to say. She must be dazzled by my wit by now. She turned to wait on another customer and I banged into a tall gawky girl with braces as I turned to leave.
"Ricky!" I said, elbowing him in the ribs. "Look at that girl behind the concession counter. I'm in love!"
"Yeah, you and half the guys in here."
"Who is she?"
"Shauna Hughes. Been working here all summer."
Shauna Hughes. What a beautiful name. I had a sudden urge to get to the nearest tattoo parlor and have it engraved on my arm.
"You know her?" I asked.
"Yeah. She was in my biology class last year. Now, there's a subject I'd like to study with her."
"I'd like to study her," I said. Actually, I was studying her. She was about 5'4" from her head to the ground and had an oval-shaped face and luscious-looking lips. She had on a yellow sleeveless blouse and a yellow ribbon in her hair, which hung down to her shoulders and was cut in feathery bangs across the front. She wasn't wearing much makeup and didn't need any.
"Is she going with anyone?" I asked. Of course, she was.
"Rod Mathews. But he's in the service. Stationed in New Jersey."
"She's an iceberg, man," Kenny said, grimacing.
"She turn ya down?" Ricky laughed.
"Hell, she turns everybody down."
"Well, she's supposed to be engaged to Rod, I guess," Ricky said.
"I wanna have her baby," I said fervently.
"Good luck, man," Kenny hooted.
"Hey, there's Connie," Ricky said, waving to a chesty little blonde in a short plaid skirt. "Le’me go say hi."
The band went into "You Send Me", my favorite Sam Cooke song, and Ricky grabbed Connie and led her out onto the dance floor. She was a real cute girl he'd been going out with lately. Her dad was a fireman and had let Ricky ride on the fire truck one day when they went out to take care of a small brush fire. She was with a couple of girls that looked pretty neat, but I was still watching Shauna sell drinks and popcorn.
"Some nice piece there," Kenny said, watching Ricky and Connie dance. Ricky had a hand on her butt.
"Yes, she has a very attractive gluteus maximus," added Albert, polishing his glasses on his shirttail.
I looked around for Dodie Frog, but she was nowhere in sight. Off hopping around somewhere, I guessed. Suddenly there was a rush of people as the band started into "Tequila" and we looked to see what was going on. "Fight!" someone hollered.
It was over behind the bandstand by the rest rooms. Two guys were slugging it out while an ever-growing circle of kids surrounded them. One was dressed in jeans, an orange and black T-shirt, and engineer boots. I had seen him earlier hanging around with a bunch of other JD-looking guys with greasy hair and cigarette packs rolled up in the sleeves of their T-shirts. His hair was in his eyes and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. The other guy was Joe Crump, wild-eyed and swearing, clearly on the offensive. He made a rush at his opponent, fists flailing. But the greasy guy side-stepped the attack and gave Crump a fist in the stomach, doubling him over. But before he could hit him again Crump butted his head into the guy's stomach, knocking him against the water fountain. The guy grimaced in pain - the water fountain had got him in the small of the back - and Crump, screaming like a banshee, straightened up and gave him a right on the jaw. The crowd was cheering, drowning out the band, and Crump hit the guy again.
A bunch of the greasy guy's pals were gathered close to the action, looking a little worried about their friend, and I wondered if Crump had any reinforcements handy.
Suddenly the cheers turned to boos, as two uniformed cops broke through the crowd and grabbed Crump as he was drawing back to hit the guy again. The guy saw his advantage and gave Crump a boot in the belly before the other cop could get a grip on him. It looked pretty bad for the cops for a second, but then a third cop appeared, nightstick drawn, and that finally settled things down.
The Teen Tones had never stopped playing during the melee, and were now well into "Wipeout." I guess they figured another instrumental was appropriate fighting music; nobody would be listening to lyrics, anyway.
The cops broke up the crowd and the one with the nightstick got Crump off to one side and gave him hell. Crump and the cop were pretty good friends, I knew, and I guess the cop wanted to make it look good.
I bought some more stuff from Shauna and got to know her a little. She was 15, her favorite color was blue, her favorite singer was Ricky Nelson, and she wanted to live in a big house with a white picket fence and have lots of kids when she got married. I was on my fourth Coke, listening to "Sheila" and watching her work, when Ricky found me.
"Hey, Cuz, whatcha doin'?" he said.
"Watchin' the scenery."
"And might nice scenery it is, too." He had a goofy look on his face and his shirt tail was hanging out.
"Where you been?" I asked.
"Outside."
"Outside where?"
"In Kenny's car."
"Doin' what?"
"Gettin' a little."
"Shit."
"Oh, yeah. Really."
"With who?"
"Connie."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
Everybody but me. Whoopty shit.
"Congratulations."
"What's been goin' on?" he asked, tucking his shirt tail in and running a comb through his hair.
"Saw a fight."
"Yeah, heard about it. That Crump's a mean bastard."
"He was beatin' the shit outta some motorcycle-lookin' guy."
"Yeah, that was Blade. One of the Caretakers."
"He looked like a Caretaker."
The Caretakers were a gang of bad-asses who rode Harleys and rumbled a lot. In the winter they wore 3/4 length black leather coats and in the summer black leather vests. They were OK if you got on their good side, I guess, but you didn't want to piss them off. Their leader was a fat guy covered with tattoos named Dover. He didn't seem to ever have a job, Ricky had told me, but he always had plenty of money to spend on motorcycles and shit. He rode an old Panhead that was fixed up really cool, and he had another bike that he raced at the strip.
Dover lived in a run-down neighborhood out by the river that was known as Dogpatch. Like in Lil' Abner. It was a hot bed of in-breeding and nearly everyone who lived there was related in some way, and there were plenty of goofballs and retards running around. Ricky had summed it up neatly when he wondered if it was against the law in Dogpatch to marry your widow's sister. Outsiders ran a risk when they went there.
Dover had a younger sister, or cousin, or something, named Mary Kay who got after Ricky once. Thought he was cute, I guess. Anyway, Ricky didn't really want anything to do with her; she was about half goofy and not all that good looking, and he had a hell of a time getting rid of her without pissing off Dover and the rest of the family.
The older Caretakers, mostly high school drop-outs, hung out in bars. Some of the ones who had jobs worked at the refinery. The younger ones still in school came to the Top Deck every week end. They usually didn't start any trouble unless someone was crazy enough to give them some shit.
"Wonder what they were fighting about?" I asked.
"I guess Blade said something about Crump's sister."
"Horse Face?" I laughed. Crump's sister was about as good looking as he was.
"Yeah, that's what he said."
"Everybody calls her that."
"Not around Crump. He can hear pretty well, what with those radiused earwells of his, y'know."
We all laughed at that.
Debbie Shelton showed up later with her older sister, Donna, and two girl friends, Sherry and Joy. Debbie was looking fine in a dark blue just-above-the-knee skirt and a blue and white blouse. She had her hair pulled back in a pony tail tied with a white ribbon. On her left wrist she wore a gold ID bracelet. They got cherry Cokes from Shauna and danced some fast dances with each other while I admired her from across the room.
"There's your girl friend; let's go say hi," Ricky said, grinning. He knew how backward I felt around Debbie sometimes. "Besides, I wanna dance with Sherry."
"What's Connie gonna say about that?"
"Hell, we ain't married. She can't say nothin'."
So we walked over and said hi.
"Hi, yourself," Debbie said, twirling her pony tail. God, what a sexy bitch. Her blue eyes were kind of smoldering behind her mascara-ed lashes.
"How's every little thing, cutie?" Ricky said, putting his arm around Sherry and looking pointedly at her breasts, which were nice, but not real huge. Like, Jayne Mansfield didn't have anything to worry about.
"Every little thing's just fine, thank you," Sherry answered archly, worming away from him. You could tell she liked it, though. She was a little taller than Debbie, and not quite as round in certain places, but she was definitely a looker. She had dark hair, kind of curly, and a cute little nose sprinkled with a few freckles.
We told them about the fight and they made faces and said they didn't like fights and why couldn't people behave themselves.
"Speak for yourselves," Debbie said to her friends, popping her gum. "I bet it was a bitchin' fight."
"Yeah, it was," Ricky said. Hell, he hadn't even seen it.
"Which Caretaker was it?" she asked, and we pointed Blade out to her. He was leaning against the far wall, cleaning the grease from under his fingernails with a pocket knife, jawing with his motorcycle buddies. "Ooohh, he looks mean," Debbie said.
"Crump woulda taken him if the fuzz hadn't shown up," I said.
"Oh, that Joe Crump's such a ruffian," Sherry said.
"He went all the way to the state finals in wrestling last year," Donna said.
"Hey, Sherry, ya wanna dance or what?" Ricky said, grabbing her hand. The band was playing "The Wanderer". Ricky kind of identified with that song. He was always saying that he was going to get a sax and learn how to play the solo. Ricky was the Wanderer.
"Sure, Ricky," she said, smiling and letting him lead her out onto the dance floor.
"Hey, C'mon, Cuz," he hollered at me over his shoulder.
I looked at Debbie and she raised an eyebrow at me. "Wanna?" I asked.
"Sure, 'Cuz'," she grinned.
Like I said, I wasn't much of a dancer, but I guess I would have to try. Debbie being such a great dancer just made it worse, and I maneuvered her to a place on the floor where I hoped nobody I knew would see me. It didn't turn out too badly. She said I did fine, and then offered to teach me some steps in her basement sometime. Now, wait a minute. If I was doing fine, then why did I need lessons? But, on the other hand, here she was inviting me over to her house.
I noticed Connie giving Ricky the hairy eyeball as he danced with Sherry. She looked pretty pissed off, but I didn't think Ricky was sweating it. He'd been waiting for a chance to get next to Sherry for quite a while, I knew, and he looked pretty happy.
Nick showed up alone toward the end of the night. He was wearing a white T-shirt, black pants and black boots. He stood at the entrance dragging on a cigarette and surveying the scene. A couple of girls came up to him; he grinned a little at them. Another one came up and he kissed her. A couple guys waved at him; Neal Nance stood across the room watching him. He bought a Coke from Shauna, stopped to talk to a few people, and came over and leaned against the wall next to Ricky and me.
"Hey, big guy, what's goin' on?" I said, glad to see him.
"You are, Champ."
"Where's the ol' lady?" I asked, meaning Reba.
"Baby-sitting for Marge."
Marge was Reba's older married sister.
"Ah, ha! So you're out checkin' the traps," I said with a leer.
"Sure," he said sarcastically.
A knot of girls across the floor was staring at us and giggling. I don't mean at us, I mean at Nick. He showed no interest, just smoked and patted his foot in time to "Blueberry Hill".
We told him about the fight.
"That Crump's a crazy sonofabitch," Nick said. "Little too sensitive about his sister."
I suddenly remembered Nick's sister. I hadn't thought about it the whole night. I wished I hadn't said anything about the fight.
When the band announced the last song of the night there was a rush to the dance floor; the guys wanted one more chance to get lucky. I looked at Shauna closing up shop and then got out in a dark corner with Debbie as the band went into "Cherry Pie". She was wearing something that sure smelled good, and I nibbled on her neck a little as we danced.
"Ooooh, stop that," she giggled, shivering.
"What?" I asked innocently. I held her a little tighter and felt her yield a little in my arms.
"Don't be goofy," she said, and I chuckled to myself, remembering Mickey and Minnie's divorce.
"What's funny?" she asked, popping her gum in my ear.
"You're funny."
"I am not."
"You're sexy."
"Mmmm."
She touched the back of my neck lightly with her fingertips and chills ran down my back. I buried my face in her neck, inhaling her perfume, and squeezed her body close to mine and we stopped dancing and just stood there swaying a little. I was feeling a little dizzy when the band ended the song and the lights came up. Debbie gave me a little kiss on my mouth and patted my warm cheek. "Thanks for the dance," she said, holding my eyes with hers for a second or two. I tried to say something, but my throat had dried up and I couldn't get anything out. "See ya later," she said, and ran off with her girl friends.
"Whew, pretty hot action out on the dance floor," Ricky said.
"Yeah, boy," I said, adjusting my jeans, which had gotten a little tight.
"And you let her get away!" he said, laughing.
"Hey, I did my best."
Nick gave Ricky and me a ride home. He drove carefully, sipping a beer, and kept the music going on the radio, changing stations when commercials came on. We could get WLS in Chicago at night.
Nick's face was granite-like in the glare of the oncoming headlights. He didn't say anything, and Ricky and I kept quiet, listening to the music. "Mecca" by Gene Pitney, "Abilene", George Hamilton the Fourth's new one, "Why Do Fools Fall In Love", a mouldy oldie by Frankie Lymon.
We dropped Ricky off and then drove the two blocks to my Grandparents' house. We pulled up in front and Nick cut the engine, got out two more Hudepohls, gave me one, and we both lit smokes. Elvis came on the radio. An owl hooted down by river. It was dark and still.
"Looked like you're doin' pretty good with Debbie tonight," Nick said, chugging half his beer in one gulp.
I was feeling pretty good about that, as a matter of fact.
"Yeah, we danced a little. She wants me to come over sometime and she's gonna teach me the Watusi." I took a sip of my beer.
"You've always been hot for her, haven't you?" he said, killing his beer and reaching for another one.
"Yeah, man, she really knocks me out. But did you see the girl behind the refreshment counter?"
"Yeah, the dark-haired chick?"
"She's the one, Shauna. What a chick!"
"Huh. You better stick to one at a time."
"Or stick it to one at a time."
A grin flickered across Nick's face for half a second.
We talked a little more and Nick polished off another beer. That was three, and I was still on
my first one. I wondered how many he had had before he came to the dance; maybe that's why he was really in a talkative mood. After a while we got to talking about his sister.
"She used to take care of me a lot when we were little," he said, gazing out the car window at the night sky. "My Dad was gone, and Mom'd be ... off somewhere, and I'd come home from school and Carol'd fix me somethin' to eat and we'd watch 'American Bandstand'. She was crazy about dancing."
"Yeah, I used to watch that show sometimes."
"We lived in Indianapolis then." He lit another smoke and blew a big cloud out the window.
"Where was your Dad?"
"Disappeared when I was a baby. I never knew him. There were some 'uncles', as my Mom called 'em, who came around. Buncha fuckin' losers, man. My ol' lady could really pick 'em. There was this one guy, a sax player who played in these nigger jazz clubs. He was a white guy with red hair and a red goatee. He gave Carol money to let him put his hands down her pants. Shit, she was only about twelve or thirteen. I saw him doin' it once and threw a baseball at him. I told Mom and we never saw the guy again. Carol was really pissed off at me, especially after Mom took a belt to her."
Christ, what a way to grow up. I thought of my home in the suburbs with 2.3 brothers and sisters and a dog and a Mom who made me breakfast every morning and a Dad who took me to Cubs games on the weekends. I had suspected that everybody didn't live like Wally and the Beaver, though.
A car drove by, breaking the quiet of the night. I watched a full moon creeping slowly over the tops of the trees. The bathroom light in my house came on. A commercial came on the radio for Mr. Norm's Dodge dealership in Chicago and Nick didn't even bother to change the station. We both took drinks of our beers. Then he leaned back in the seat, looking out at the moon and gripping the steering wheel in both hands.
"You know what Carol was doin' at Vito's?" he asked in a faraway voice.
"Waitress, wasn't she?"
"She was... hooking." Nick said it softly, through clenched teeth.
"Hooking?"
"She was a whore." He hit the steering wheel with his fist, hard. "A fucking whore," he growled.
"Jesus Christ!" I didn't know what to say. I took a drink and a puff. Nick was always the totally cool guy, the guy with all the answers. Now I felt somehow responsible for him, like there was something I was supposed to do. Or say. But what? All I could do was sit there and listen. Maybe that's all he wanted, just for me to listen.
"She had a heroin habit. She was a fuckin' drug addict. I don't know how she got started doin' that shit - those fuckin' people she ran around with back in Indy, I guess. We didn't live in the best part of town, on Alabama St. by where John Dillinger used to live."
"God..."
"When she got outta high school she kinda went wild, or somethin'. Mom made her go to this Catholic high school for girls and they were real strict. Glad to get away from all those nuns, maybe, and she was stayin' out all night and drinkin' and shit. Her and my Mom used to fight all the time and she moved out and went to stay with this guy she'd been going with, David something, from some rich family in Broadripple. Went to IU and had his own apartment. He was at the funeral this afternoon."
"The blond-headed guy?"
"Yeah. Drove that blue Imperial."
"What was he doin' down here?"
"He'd been down a coupla times to see Carol."
There was an obvious suspect, I thought.
"I s'pose the cops are checkin' him out," I said.
"I guess," Nick shrugged. "Anyway, that relationship didn't last too long and she moved in with some girl who was a dancer in a little joint downtown. Next thing y'know, she's down there dancin', too, shakin' her ass for all these bikers and beatniks and druggies that hung out there. I stopped by her apartment one day after school, surprise visit, and some ratty-ass-lookin' guy told me Carol didn't usually do business in the afternoon, but let me have the ten bucks and she'll be ready in a minute and fuck your brains out. It was her pimp. I went nuts, man. I jumped on that guy and almost killed the sonofabitch. And beat the shit outta her, too. It was funny, I don't even remember doin' it, y'know? Neighbors called the cops and they hauled us all to jail and that's when I came to live with Velma. It was either that or go to the State Farm for Boys until I turned eighteen."
"Whaddya mean?"
"Court ruled my Mom unfit. Gave Velma custody; Mom didn't give a shit. Velma came up and signed some papers and I went back with her."
"What happened to Carol?"
"They found drugs in the apartment and she did six months in jail. When she got out she came down here with some guy she met at the strip club who had connections with Siri."
"Had you seen her after she came down here?"
"Coupla times. Velma had her over for dinner once in a while."
"Did Velma know what she was doin'?"
"Nah."
Nick crushed his beer can in his fist and threw it in the back seat with the other empties. "I'll never forget the way she looked when I came home from school in the afternoon," he said softly. "She always had on this uniform that they had to wear at St. Mary's where she went to school. Blue skirt and white blouse. And she always wore this silver crucifix around her neck that one of the nuns gave her for her First Communion."
The missing crucifix!!
He straightened up in the seat and took out a comb and ran it through his hair. "Ha!" he said sarcastically, the edge back in his voice. "A nice little Catholic girl, huh? She took after our Mom. Maybe Mom could see that and that's why she made her go to St. Mary's." He turned and looked at me like he'd just noticed I was there in the car with him. His eyes looked a little unfocused, and he squinted at me. "Y'know I've got a half brother somewhere around here?"
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, a fuckin' half brother."
"You know him?"
"Nah. My Mom was runnin' around with a lot of guys after my Dad split. Got pregnant and gave it away, never saw him again. That's when we lived in Cincy. I don't remember too much about it. I was in some kind of a foster home for a year or so."
"How come?"
"Mom was in jail."
"In jail? What for?"
"We were livin' with some guy Mom married, but it turned out he was already married to somebody else and the marriage was annulled. Also turned out he robbed hotel rooms and when he got busted she went down with him. When she got out we moved to Indy. Day after my sixth birthday."
"Your Mom still live there?"
"I dunno," he shrugged. "She disappeared after I moved down here with Velma. Never saw her again."
"Oh," I said weakly.
There was a silence while I waited for what came next.
"Sad story, ain't it, Champ?" He chuckled grimly.
I guess I wasn't going to hear what happened to his mother.
The porch light flipped on and off a couple of times. I had to go, and I put some gum in my mouth to cover the beer and cigarette smell.
"I gotta go," I said.
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry, Nick."
"Yeah, I know."
He started the engine and when he grabbed for the shifter, he missed it on the first try. When I opened the door to get out and the dome light came on I could see his eyes shining wetly.