If Jack's in Love by Stephen Wetta Page B

threatened to turn it into a constitutional issue, they decided not to press the matter. It was dawning on people that the war against long hair was over. Soon they would give up on rock and roll and drugs. After that it would be Vietnam, civil rights, homosexuals, pornography. The news kept arriving through our television screens. The world was happening out there, if not in El Dorado Hills: drugs like the planet had never seen, orgiastic music, interracial shenanigans, crazy long-haired gatherings—flowers and dancing and girls blowing bubbles!
    Not so long ago, maybe eight or nine months back, my brother had been bawling his eyes out over Courtney Blankenship. That mad affair had lasted one brief season, long enough to scandalize the neighborhood and cause Mr. Blankenship (he of Ahoy, Mateys ) to seek professional counseling for his daughter. For three breathtaking months the romance between Stan and Courtney was the talk of El Dorado Hills. Courtney lost many of her best friends, and didn’t seem to care. What in the world was she thinking? Perhaps El Dorado Hills had been too negligent of my brother’s sinewy physicality and Jim Morrison curls. Maybe. But after I saw him bawling over a girl he didn’t seem so tough. Actually, it gave me a little heart, seeing my brother vulnerable and crying. But that period passed, and now he scorned Courtney Blankenship for being plastic, square and uptight. Derisively he sneered when he heard her name. He called her “Suzy Creamcheese”—a cocktease, a whore, “the slut goddess of El Dorado Hills.” When he learned Gaylord Joyner had already broken up with her he laughed out loud. Not that it softened him towards Gaylord. On the contrary. It was as though Gaylord’s sole purpose in pursuing Courtney had been to break his heart, and that was a crime he would never forget.
    What this meant was, I couldn’t talk to my brother about Myra. Joyners were Joyners, and he hated them all. Besides, he’d grown too cavalier about love to sympathize with romantic feelings. “Let me tell you about chicks, they want it as much as guys but they can’t admit it. When they find out they like it, it freaks ’em out, see? Especially when they like getting it from a hippie dog like me. Chicks around here can’t deal with their instincts. That’s why I dig Anya, she knows exactly where it’s at.”
    Profane talk like that made me hesitate to utter Myra’s name in his presence. When had he become a hippie dog, anyway?
    There didn’t seem to be a soul I could confide to. Mom had been burned too many times to think any good would come of love. Her hope was that I’d find some nice ugly girl, after I turned thirty. As for my going with Myra, that would be reaching for the stars, and she’d never encourage such overweening vanity. Which left two potential confidants: my only friend, Dickie Pudding, and Pop. Dickie Pudding was out, because it would be all over town faster than a telegram if I breathed a single word to him about Myra Joyner. And Pop was too manly to have much regard for feelings. So I locked up my dreams and walked alone.
    One afternoon I strolled to the Ben Franklin to see if Mom would loan me a dollar (she wouldn’t). As I was leaving the store I decided, on impulse, to visit Gladstein.
    Gladstein was the only person who knew about Myra and me—Gladstein, of all people. How had it come about? And yet I was still a little timid around him.
    I stopped before his shop window, pretending to browse his display. When I casually raised my eyes, I saw him behind the counter, grinning like a demon and waving me in.
    The prissy bell above his door tinkled when I opened it.
    â€œHow’s it going, little Witcher?”
    It was humid and tomblike in the shop, and it smelled subtly of linked meat.
    â€œDid you give her the ring?” He waited happily, his grin parting the bristles of his