Hearts in Atlantis (1999) by Stephen King

Author:Stephen King [King, Stephen]
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2010-12-19T00:42:21.656000+00:00

10

I punched out at six-thirty, walked down the ramp behind the kitchen with one last bag of garbage, and dropped it into one of the four Dumpsters lined up behind the Commons like snubby steel boxcars.

When I turned around, I saw Carol Gerber and a couple of other kids standing by the corner of the building, smoking and watching the moon rise. The other two started away just as I walked over, pulling my Pall Malls out of my jacket pocket.

'Hey, Pete, eat more Maine beans,' Carol said, and laughed.

'Yeah.' I lit my cigarette. Then, without thinking about it much one way or the other, I said: 'There's a couple of Bogart movies playing at Hauck tonight. They start at seven. We've got time to walk over. Want to go?'

She smoked, not answering me for a moment, but she was still smiling and I knew she was going to say yes. Earlier, all I'd wanted was to get back to the third-floor lounge and play Hearts. Now that I was away from the game, however, the game seemed a lot less important. Had I been hot enough to say something about beating the snot out of Ronnie Malenfant? It seemed I had the memory was clear enough but standing out here in the cool air with Carol, it was hard for me to understand why.

'I've got a boyfriend back home,' she said at last.

'Is that a no?'

She shook her head, still with the little smile. The smoke from her cigarette drifted across her face. Her hair, free of the net the girls had to wear on the dishline, blew lightly across her brow. 'That's information. Remember that showThe Prisoner? "Number Six, we want . . .information. "'

'I've got a girlfriend back home,' I said. 'More information.'

'I've got another job, tutoring math. I promised to spend an hour tonight with this girl on the second floor. Calculus. Ag. She's hopeless and she whines, but it's six dollars an hour.' Carol laughed. 'This is getting good, we're exchanging information like mad.'

'It doesn't look good for Bogie, though,' I said. I wasn't worried. I knew we were going to see Bogie. I think I also knew there was romance in our future. It gave me an oddly light feeling, a lifting-off sensation in my midsection.

'I could call Esther from Hauck and tell her calc at ten o'clock instead of nine,' Carol said. 'Esther's a sad case. She never goes out. What she does mostly is sit around with her hair in curlers and write letters home about how hard college is. We could see the first movie, at least.'

'That sounds good,' I said.

We started walking toward Hauck. Those were the days, all right; you didn't have to hire a babysitter, put out the dog, feed the cat, or set the burglar alarm. You just went.

'Is this like a date?' she asked after a little bit.

'Well,' I said, 'I guess it could be.' We were walking past East Annex by then, and other kids were filling up the paths, heading toward the auditorium.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.