over from me, and she was an ugly kid. We played together sometimes when we were small, but it was no great shakes. I don’t remember much about her from that time, except she had buckteeth that made her smile kind of funny—wide and toothy. She had bangs ever since she was born, and straight brown hair. There was really nothing great-looking about her.
And then her family moved out of the neighborhood to a ritzy private street and we didn’t see much of each other for a few years. And then she called me up one day last June and invited me to a splash party at her country club.
Well, I said sure, why not? A lot of my friends were going and it sounded like a pretty good time. I’d never been to a private country club. I thought it might be interesting to see how the other half lives. You know.
Alice and her father, Ward Pierce, picked me up in their Lincoln Continental. My mother says that Mr. Pierce made a lot of money in advertising and that’s why they had to move to a better neighborhood. Mr. Pierce didn’t seem all that comfortable being back in the old neighborhood. He was very quiet on the way to the club, except for a few questions he asked me about my future. I had to keep from laughing at the sight of him behind the wheel. He’s a very little guy, and he was sitting on one of those pillows for people who are too small to drive a car. And driving a Lincoln is like driving a house on wheels. His legs hardly reached the pedals.
He had this very proper voice, soft and thinned out. I could hardly hear him all the way in the back seat. It was a little like that scene in Citizen Kane when Kane and one of his wives have to shout to hear each other in their huge living room. I kept saying: “I’m sorry Mr. Pierce, what did you say?”, which was very annoying. Alice kept turning around in the front seat and smiling that wide smile at me. You’d have thought her parents would have spent some of their bucks fixing her smile. There was something cute about it though.
I think Mr. Pierce was beginning to lose some of his composure, because he raised his voice, and I could see him frowning at me in the rear-view mirror. I was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable about the whole ordeal at this point, being grilled about my future by this nerd in the lime-green cardigan.
“Well now, tell me young man, where do you plan to attend college?” I hadn’t really thought much about college, but I told him:
“Well, Mr. Pierce, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to Georgetown. I think that might be the school for me.”
Alice turned around when I said this, smiling of course. Maybe old man
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