PART TWO: THE LEAGUE OF VIRGINS

The girls went down to the water twice. The first time was the day after the rainstorm that had broken over Ventura County, shedding more water on the small town of Palomo Grove in a single night than its inhabitants might have reasonably expected in a year. The downpour, however monsoonal, had not mellowed the heat. With what Me wind there was coming off the desert, the town baked in the high nineties. Children who'd exhausted themselves playing in the heat through the morning wailed away the afternoon indoors. Dogs cursed their coats; birds declined to make music. Old folks took to their beds. Adulterers did the same, dressed in sweat. Those unfortunates with tasks to per-form that couldn't be delayed until evening, when (God wiling) the temperature dropped, went about their labors with their eyes to the shimmering sidewalks, every step a trial, every breath sticky in their lungs.

But the four girls were used to heat; it was at their age the condition of the blood. Between them, they had seventy years' life on the planet, though when Arleen turned nineteen the following Tuesday, it would be seventy-one. Today she felt her age; that vital few months that separated her from her closest friend, Joyce, and even further from Carolyn and Trudi, whose mere seventeen was an age away for a mature woman like herself. She had much to tell on the subject of experience that day, as they sauntered through the empty streets of Palomo Grove. It was good to be out on a day like this, without being ogled by the men in the town—they knew them all by name—whose wives had taken to sleeping in the spare room; or their sexual banter being overheard by one of their mothers' friends. They wandered, like Amazons in shorts, through a town taken by some invisible fire which blistered the air and turned brick into mirage but did not kill. It merely laid the inhabitants stricken beside their open fridges.

"Is it love?" Joyce asked Arleen.

The older girl had a swift answer.

"Hell no," she said. "You are so dumb sometimes."

"I just thought...with you talking about him that way."

"What do you mean: that way?"

"Talking about his eyes and stuff."

"Randy's got nice eyes," Arleen conceded. "But so's Marty, and Jim, and Adam—"

"Oh stop," said Trudi, with more than a trace of irritation. "You're such a slut."

"I am not."

"So stop it with the names. We all know that boys like you. And we all know why."

Arleen threw her a look which went unread given that all but Carolyn were wearing sunglasses. They walked on a few yards in silence.

"Anyone want a Coke?" Carolyn said. "Or ice cream?" They'd come to the bottom of the hill. The Mall was ahead, its air-conditioned stores tempting.

"Sure," said Trudi, "I'll come with you." She turned to Arleen. "You want something?"

"Nope."

"Are you sulking?"

"Nope."

"Good," said Trudi. " 'Cause it's too hot to argue." The two girls headed into Marvin's Food and Drug, leaving Arleen and Joyce on the street corner.

"I'm sorry..." Joyce said.

"What about?"

"Asking you about Randy. I thought maybe you...you know...maybe it was serious."

"There's no one in the Grove that's worth two cents," Arleen murmured. "I can't wait to get out."

"Where will you go? Los Angeles?"

Arleen pulled her sunglasses down her nose and peered at Joyce.

"Why would I want to do that?" she said. "I've got more sense than to join the line there. No. I'm going to New York. It's better to study there. Then work on Broadway. If they want me they can come and get me."

"Who can?"

"Joyce, " Arleen said, mock-exasperated. "Hollywood."

"Oh. Yeah. Hollywood."

She nodded appreciatively at the completedness of Ar-leen's plan. She had nothing in her own head anywhere near so coherent. But it was easy for Arleen. She was California Beautiful, blonde, blue-eyed and the envied possessor of a smile that brought the opposite sex to their knees. If that weren't advantage enough she had a mother who'd been an actress, and already treated her daughter like a Star.

Joyce had no such blessings. No mother to pave the way, no glamour to get her through the bad times. She couldn't even drink a Coke without getting acne. Sensitive skin, Doctor Briskman kept saying, you'll grow out of it. But the promised transformation was like the end of the world that the Reverend talked about on a Sunday; delayed and delayed.

With my luck, Joyce thought, the day I lose my zits and get my tits is the day the Reverend's right. I'll wake up perfect, open the curtains, and the Grove will be gone. I'll never get to kiss Randy Krentzman.

There, of course, lay the real reason behind her close questioning of Arleen. Randy was in Joyce's every thought, or every other, though she'd only met him three times and spoken to him twice. She'd been with Arleen during the first encounter, and Randy had scarcely looked her way when she was introduced, so she'd said nothing. The second occasion she'd not had any competition, but her friendly hello had been greeted with an off-hand: "Who are you?" She'd persisted; reminded him; even told him where she lived. On the third meeting ("Hello again," she'd said. "Do I know you?" he'd replied), she'd recited all her personal details shamelessly; even asked him, in a sudden rush of optimism, if he was a Mormon. That, she'd later decided, had been a tactical error. Next time she'd use Arleen's approach, and treat the boy as though his presence was barely endurable; never look at him; only smile if it was absolutely necessary. Then, when you were about to saunter away look straight into his eyes, and purr something vaguely dirty. The law of mixed messages. It worked for Arleen, why not for her? And now that the great beauty had publicly announced her indifference to Joyce's idol she had some sliver of hope. If Arleen had been seriously interested in Randy's affections then Joyce might have gone right around to the Reverend Meuse and asked him if he could hurry the Apocalypse up a little.

She took off her glasses and squinted up at the white hot sky, vaguely wondering if it was already on its way. The day was strange.

"Shouldn't do that," Carolyn said, emerging from Mar-vin's Food and Drug with Trudi following, "the sun'll burn out your eyes."

"It will not."

"It will so," Carolyn, ever the source of unwanted information, replied, "your retina's a lens. Like in a camera. It focuses—"

"All right," Joyce said, returning her gaze to solid ground. "I believe you." Colors cavorted behind her eyes for a few moments, disorienting her.

"Where now?" said Trudi.

"I'm going back home," Arleen said. "I'm tired."

"I'm not," Trudi said brightly. "I'm not going home, either. It's boring."

"Well it's no use standing in the middle of the Mall," Carolyn said. "That's as boring as being at home. And we'll cook in the sun."

She looked roasted already. The heaviest of the four by twenty pounds or more, and a redhead, the combination of her weight, and skin that never tanned, should have driven her indoors. But she seemed indifferent to the discomfort, as she was to every other physical stimulus but that of taste. The previous November the entire Hotchkiss family had been involved in a freeway pile-up. Carolyn had crawled free of the wreckage, slightly concussed, and had subsequently been found by the police some way down the freeway, with half-chewed Hershey bars in both hands. There was more chocolate on her face than blood, and she'd screamed blue murder—or so rumor went—when one of the cops attempted to dissuade her from her snack. Only later was it discovered that she'd sustained half a dozen cracked ribs.