C.B. Forrest young and everything was so simple. The days of drive-in movies and spin-thebottle in somebody‟s wood-panelled basement. It took her back, perhaps, to those early summer evenings when we sat on the bleachers at the ball diamond and got butterflies in our stomachs just from holding hands. “Jerry,” she said softly. And here I closed my eyes in anticipation of the well-earned admonishment to come. But she said only, “I hope you get some help.” She went to hang up the receiver. I saw the door closing on my last chance to make things right with this girl, indeed this woman I so deeply loved. I motioned for her to bring the receiver once again to her ear, pleading with my eyes, and she did so with reluctance. “Yes Jerry?” she said. I cleared my throat. I looked to my right to a slab-sized biker making obscene gestures to his lover through the screen. And then I looked into her clear green eyes, orbs of pure goodness which had haunted me all those sleepless nights between the ball diamond and the soup station at the River View Holiday Inn. “You‟re married now,” I said. “I‟ll never bother you again.” And it was true. I had gone as far for love as I was willing to go. “Pinky promise,” I said, like we used to, and I moved the little finger of my right hand to the Plexiglass. There was a long moment there where I could see her thinking about it. The pad of my little finger remained pressed to the screen like a pink buttock squashed against a school bus window. Finally I saw the release in her eyes, surrender to the harmlessness of those lost days. She moved her hand slowly towards the glass, and without looking at me she pressed her pinky to mine. “Pinky promise,” she whispered. I returned to my cell and stretched out on the lower bunk, hands behind my head. I closed my eyes until the only sound was the rush of blood in my ears, a lingering scent of watermelon lip gloss in the air. And for me that is where it always begins.
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