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It's Like This, Cat (Version 2)

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<h1>8</h1> <div class="tei-figure"><ANTIMG src="images/image08.png" width-obs="524" height-obs="450" alt="Illustration: Dave and Mary buying tickets to West Side Story." /></div> The regular park man got sunstroke or something, so I earned fourteen dollars raking and mowing in Gramercy Park in the middle of August. Gramercy Park is a private park. You have to own a key to get in, so the city doesn’t take care of it. Real paper money, at this time of year especially, is very cheering. I head up to Sam Goody’s to see what records he’s got on sale and what characters are buying them. Maybe I’ll buy something, maybe not, but as long as I’ve got money in my pocket, I don’t feel like the guy is glaring at me for taking up floor space. Along the way I walk through the library, the big one at Forty-second Street. You go in by the lions on Fifth Avenue, and there’s all kinds of pictures and books on exhibit in the halls, and you walk through to the back, where you can take out books. It’s nice and cool, and nobody glares at you unless you either make a lot of noise or go to sleep. I can take books out of here and return them at the Twenty-third Street branch, which is handy. Sam Goody’s is air-conditioned, so it’s cool too. There are always several things playing on different machines you can listen to. Almost the most fun is watching the people: little, fat, bald guys buying long-haired classical music, and thin, shaggy beatniks listening to the jazz. I go to check if there are any bargains in the Kingston or Belafonte division. There’s a girl standing there reading the backs of records, but I don’t really catch a look at more than her shoes—little red flats they are. After a bit she reaches for a record over my head and says, “Excuse me.” “Sure.” Then we catch each other’s eye and both say, “Oh. Gee, hello.” Well, we’re both pretty surprised, because this is the girl I met out at Coney Island that day with Nick when I had Cat with me, and now we’re both a long way from Coney Island. This girl isn’t one of the two giggly ones. It’s the third, the one that liked Cat. We’ve both forgotten each other’s names, so we begin over with that. I ask her what she’s been doing, and she’s been at Girl Scout camp a few weeks, and then she earned some money baby-sitting. So she came to think about records, like me. I tell her I’ve been at Coney once this summer, and I looked around for her, which is true, because I did. “It’s a big place,” she says, smiling. “Say, you live out there, don’t you? How come you get all the way in here by yourself? Doesn’t your mom get in a flap? Mine would, if she knew I was going to Coney alone.” Mary says, “I came in with Mom. Some friend of hers has a small art exhibition opening. She said I could go home alone. After all, she knows I’m not going to get lost.” I say, “Gee, it’d be great to have a mother that didn’t worry about you all the time.” “Oh, Mom worries.” Mary giggles. “You should have heard her when I said I liked Gone With the Wind and I didn’t like Anna Karenina. I pretty nearly got disowned.” “What does she think about science fiction?” I ask, and Mary makes a face, and we both laugh. I go on. “Well, my mom doesn’t care what I read. She worries about what I eat and whether my feet are wet, and she always seems to think I’m about to kill myself. It’s a nuisance, really.” Mary looks solemn all of a sudden. She says slowly, “I think maybe it’d be nice. I mean to have someone worrying about whether you’re comfortable and all. Instead of just picking your brains all the time.” This seems to exhaust the subject of our respective mothers, and Mary picks up the record of West Side Story and says, “Gee, I’d like to see that. Did you?” I say No, and to tell the truth I hadn’t hardly heard of it. “I read a book about him. It was wonderful,” she says. “Who?” “Bernstein. The man who wrote it.” “What’s West Side Story about, him?” I ask cautiously. “No, no—he wrote the music. It’s about some kids in two gangs, and there’s a lot of dancing, and then there’s a fight and this kid gets—well, it isn’t a thing you can tell the story of very well. You have to see it.” This gives me a very simple idea. “Why don’t we?” I say. “Huh?” “Go see it. Why not? We got money.” “So we do,” she says slowly. “You think they’ll let us in, I mean being under sixteen?” You know, this is the first girl I really ever talked to that talks like a person, not trying to be cute or something. We walk around to the theater, and being it’s Wednesday, there’s a matinee about to start. The man doesn’t seem to be one bit worried about taking our money. No wonder. It’s two dollars and ninety cents each. So we’re inside with our tickets before we’ve hardly stopped to think. Suddenly Mary says, “Oops! I better call Mom! Let’s find out what time the show is over.” We do, and Mary phones. She says to me, “I just told her I was walking past West Side Story and found I could get a ticket. I didn’t say anything about you.” “Why, would she mind?” Mary squints and looks puzzled. “I don’t know. I just really don’t know. It never happened before.” We go in to the show, and she is right, it’s terrific. I hardly ever went to a live show before, except a couple of children’s things and something by Shakespeare Pop took me to that was very confusing. But this West Side Story is clear as a bell. We have an orangeade during intermission, and I make the big gesture and pay for both of them. Mary says, “Isn’t it wonderful! I just happened to meet you at the beach, and then I meet you at Goody’s, and we get to see this show that I’ve wanted to go to for ages. None of my friends at school want to spend this much money on a show.” “It’s wonderful,” I say. “After it’s over, I’m going back to buy the record.” So after the show we buy it, and then we walk along together to the subway. I’ll have to get off at the first stop, Fourteenth Street, and she’ll go on to Coney, the end of the line. It’s hard to talk on the subway. There’s so much noise you have to shout, which is hard if you don’t know what to say. Anyway, you can’t ask a girl for her phone number shouting on the subway. At least I can’t. I’m not so sure about the phone-number business either. I sort of can’t imagine calling up and saying, “Oh, uh, Mary, this is Dave. You want to go to a movie or something, huh?” It sounds stupid, and I’d be embarrassed. What she said, it’s true—it’s sort of wonderful the way we just ran into each other twice and had so much fun. So I’m wondering how I can happen to run into her again. Maybe the beach, in the fall. Let’s see, a school holiday—Columbus Day. The train is pulling into Fourteenth Street. I shout, “Hey, how about we go to the beach again this fall? Maybe Columbus Day?” “O.K.!” she shouts. “Columbus Day in the morning.” “Columbus Day in the morning” sounds loud and clear because by then the subway has stopped. People snicker, and Mary blushes. “So long,” I say, and we both wave, and the train goes. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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