She spent a few minutes talking with her great-aunt Amelia and Mrs. McGruder, and then we left. I could feel Jim Lamb’s love-sick eyes on the back of my neck.
“How long did you plan on staying there?” Julia asked, nodding at the Winston House as soon as we got into her car. She had seen the way Jim was looking at me, too.
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”
“My great-aunt’s very nice, but the two of them daily would make me a little nuts. Jim Lamb was practically busting out of his skin gaping at you,” she added.
“Tell me about it. Maybe I will start looking for a small apartment.”
“Good idea. I’ll help you look when I have time,” she said. “Clifford found a very nice apartment in a complex called the Forefathers’ Gardens. Maybe there’s an opening for another. I’ll have him check.”
“Thank you.”
“So, tell me about yourself and about California. I haven’t been there yet. Is it as great as everyone claims?”
“I don’t know what they claim. We lived in a few places other than California.”
“Where?”
“Well, I lived in upstate New York and then Nashville before we moved to Los Angeles. The best thing about Los Angeles was that we weren’t far from the ocean. You can be swimming one day and drive up to Big Bear and go skiing the next. The traffic’s depressing, though.”
“It’s not bad right here, but it’s no walk in the park to drive to Boston and back during rush hour, either. And besides,” she said, “even in a smaller city with less traffic, what’s the first thing that happens to you? A car accident.”
I was silent.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Let’s not bring up one sad thing tonight. I’m not going to ask you one other thing about your past. I know you had a painful time with your father and his new girlfriend—who I understand is now his wife?”
“Yes. But I agree, let’s not dwell on the past. You have your burden, too.”
She beamed a smile with her eyes wide with excitement, the sort of smile that can be contagious. “Exactly. Let’s just let loose a bit and enjoy ourselves. Moving into a new town must be like getting into a hot bath. You’ve got to do it very slowly.”
I laughed. “It is, especially for me,” I said, and left it at that, even though I could see that she was dying to know why.
The Underground, the dance club and restaurant Julia took me to, was larger than any I had ever seen, not that I had seen many. It had a huge horseshoe-shaped bar composed of some translucent material. Multi-colored lights thumped and rotated beneath it. In fact, the entire place seemed to move in sync with the rhythm of the disco music. Against one side of the club were tables and booths for those who wanted to eat farther away from the frenzied activity at the bar, and on the other side of it was a floor made of the same material as the bar and with its same rainbow of colors thumping and rotating beneath the feet of those dancing, if you could call it dancing. Some of them looked as if they were in some sort of convulsion, trying to toss their arms and hands off their torsos. Waitresses in abbreviated rainbow-colored uniforms glided somehow gracefully through the crowd and around the tables, carrying trays of drinks and plates of food. We stood inside the entrance, taking it all in.
“What do you think?” Julia asked, shouting to be heard over the music. I could see that after a few drinks, most people didn’t notice or care about the volume.
“I could make a fortune selling cough drops at the exit,” I shouted back, holding my hand over my throat, and she laughed. “It’s fine.”
“I have a table booked.”
“Great,” I said.
We were led to a booth at the far end just before the bar started to curve. Julia opened the drink menu first.
“This is pretty good and potent,” she said, pointing at a drink called the Volcano. “I’ll order it, and you can taste it. If you like it, I’ll order another. No problem, as long as we order something to eat, too.”
“Fine with me,” I said. Alcohol never bothered any of us, not that I was much of a drinker anyway. “I think I’m just going to have an appetizer. I’m not that hungry.”
“Really? They have great burgers and sweet potato fries. It comes with a small dinner salad.”
“I’ll get the shrimp cocktail.”
“Okay,” she said, and ordered for us.
I looked around. It was hard to tell who were couples and who were not. Everyone at the bar and mingling around it looked more like groups of friends. It occurred to me that maybe this was the sort of place where you would hope to meet someone and start a relationship, rather than a place that established couples might frequent. I wondered if that made any sense, but I was afraid to ask Julia, because she might realize just how inexperienced I was when it came to the dating scene.
“Are you very serious with your boyfriend?” I asked instead.