A Map of Tulsa Read Online Free PDF Page B

stopped at a QuikTrip, to use the bathroom. It was over-air-conditioned and smelled like tile cleaner. Wherever I had left the bear mask, I mused, I did not know—I thought of that house I had been in as an intricate novel, one I had read too fast but could unwind, later, and rethink, in my notebooks. I dried my hands and rushed out into the main part of the convenience store, and fixed myself an amaretto cappuccino, and with the clerk I counted out my bills audibly, like my father sometimes did.

3
    I did not assume it was a repeatable experience. Running through the backyards, pretending I was high—bounding after her like I did—maybe I was high. I was grateful that it had finally happened to me—a sense of moment that bore me in my car like a heavy, Wagnerian music. Full of foreboding of course. When my parents got home from church my mom wouldn’t look me in the eye. She put down her purse. With no prologue she told me that “you have to be safe”—and that was going to be all. But stupidly, stupidly, I brought up Chase’s address. Mom might think I had been rolling insensate on the floor of the Cain’s Ballroom. But Maple Ridge, I told her. I thought the intimation of wealth might be explanatory—rich people’s parties are different, they go on longer—they’re unashamed of themselves—
    “You don’t know those people, Jim.”
    She almost never snapped at me like that. I slept through the afternoon, grinding my teeth, and got out of dinner by going off to the movies. At the concession I justpurchased a Coke and a piece of pizza in a triangular box and sat through the movie tripping out on my own headache. It was dark when I walked back out into the sticky parking lot. I spent the night sitting up Indian-style in my bed, with my window cracked against the air-conditioning, reading. I filled up a small notepad with notes.
    I went to the downtown library the next day—ever since I got home from school I had been making almost daily trips to the library, to try to follow the reading course I had set for myself. It was wholesome. My particular books smelled good. Classics that had been reprinted, they had tight, bright pages, and didn’t seem to have been consulted much. For probably two hours that afternoon I took the most meticulous notes—but then got the idea to call Edith. I could simply ask for Adrienne’s phone number. Why not? I went down to the circulation desk, where they had a pay phone.
    Edith was cautious.
    “You guys had a good time on Saturday?”
    “Well, yeah.”
    “Just don’t be surprised if she doesn’t call you back.”
    “Why—did she say something?”
    “No. But Adrienne’s hard.” I heard diplomacy in Edith’s voice. “I hope I didn’t give you the wrong idea, Jim. Adrienne doesn’t really date people, you know.”
    What Edith maybe didn’t understand was the intuitive validity of my interest: that simply I ought to get what I want. Wanting was a form of virtue, especially when you wanted challenging things. That’s how myworld worked. It was how I had gotten into college. What more comprehensive validation was there of a teenager’s intuitive sense of his future than the positive return he gets on a list of his accomplishments mailed off to authorities on the East Coast? I said to Edith, “I think you are meant to give me her number.”
    Edith gave it. But she spent the rest of the conversation trying to get me to go to Retro Night on Wednesday. “Last week you had a blast.”
    I called Adrienne from the same pay phone. My voice mail went like this: “Hey Adrienne, this is Jim. I don’t think I ever said happy birthday to you, so I wanted to say that. I forgot to get your number but Edith gave it to me. Let’s hang out sometime.”
    The next morning, at home, I tried again. I did my second voice mail in a different voice. To prepare I sat still for ten or fifteen minutes until finally I took the cordless like a chalice to my lips, dialed with my thumbs, and