Prisoner's Dilemma by Richard Powers

Author:Richard Powers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Published: 2021-05-24T00:00:00+00:00

11

Buffalo gals won’t you come out tonight . . .”

Eddie, Jr. had left Pop beached on the front porch, abandoned his mother and Lily to the shipwrecked house, and let Artie and Rach drift out of town on Illinois 5. He had felt no qualms about making his own emergency exit in the company of friends. Pop had promised to turn himself in in a couple of weeks. Eddie Jr. could do nothing between now and then but give in to November at eighteen.

And that came as easily to him as the answers in the back of an algebra book. At the end of the evening, warm in the belly of his friends, Eddie paired off with the prettiest, a junior named Sarah. He had talked her into seeing the second showing of Fantasia at the Egyptian, De Kalb’s 1930s Deco revival theater. Now he walked her back home, singing in two-part harmony, “And dance by the light of the moo-oon!”

The duet, flush with possibilities, hung on the deserted street. Eddie grabbed Sarah around her willowy waist on the cadence. “God, that was great. I had no idea you could sing. You sound just like Donna Reed.” Sarah, lovely in the limpid darkness, looked puzzled. “Donna Reed. You know. From It’s a Wonderful Life.” Astonished at not yet ringing the bell, he added, “Tell me you don’t know it! Impossible. It’s on a hundred times every Christmas. What were you, born yesterday?” And answering her mumbled, tentative rejoinder, “No, that’s Judy Holliday, nit.”

Eddie shook her lightly by still unknown shoulders, scolding her in pantomime. “Know what my pop’ll say when he finds out his flesh and blood spent the evening with a woman who confused Donna Reed with Judy Holliday? ‘Out of this house! You’re no son of mine.’”

In fact, the only response Dad ever made regarding any of the girlfriends Eddie brought home was the sad, cryptic chant, “Girls, girls, girls.” Once he had said, confidentially, “Remember, son. Forty million Frenchmen can be wrong. Would you trust an appraisal of the fairer sex from the folks who gave you the Maginot Line?” That was the closest the two had ever come to discussing romantic love.

Sarah lifted her head to him and said, “I’m sorry. I haven’t seen very many of the classics.”

Eddie, hearing only her eyes, slipped his hand down into Sarah’s floppy jacket pockets and played there. “Who said anything about seeing them? I haven’t seen three quarters of the old films I talk about. You just have to know about them, is all.”

“So how is it that you know all about them?”

“Blame it on my folks. They raised me on old-movie references.”

“Just a slave to your upbringing, I suppose,” Sarah said archly. Eddie felt convinced of his suspicion that she was somewhat smarter than he, and infinitely more cultured. She played the cello, for God’s sake. He had to step lightly or he’d end up in deep mischief. The kind of over-his-head treading for dear life that he lived for.

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