(no)

Tune enough to think of that later, maybe, when it would do something for her besides cause useless arousal. She swung her own legs over the edge of the bed and slid into gossamer panties.

'Maybe it's a bad idea,' she said, not sure if she was testing him or herself. 'Maybe we ought to just get back into bed and-'

'It's a good idea,' he said, and a shadow of humour crossed his face. 'Pig blood for a pig.'

'What?'

'Nothing. Come on. Get dressed.'

She did, and when they left by the back stairs she could feel a large excitement blooming, like a rapacious and night-flowering vine, in her belly.

Tommy pulled into the parking lot beside the high school's new wing, let the motor idle for just a second, and then switched it of. Carrie sat on her side of the seat, holding her wrap around her bare shoulders. It suddenly seemed to her that she was living in a dream of hidden intentions and had just become aware of the fact. What could she be doing? She had left Momma alone.

'Nervous?' He asked, and she jumped.

'Yes.'

He laughed and got out. She was about to open the door when he opened it for her. 'Don't be nervous,' he mid. 'You're like Galatea.'

'Who?'

'Galatea. We read about her in Mr Evers' class. She turned from a drudge into a beautiful woman and nobody even knew her.'

She considered it. 'I want them to know me,' she said finally.

'I don't blame you. Come on.'

George Dawson and Frieda Jason were standing by the Coke machine. Frieda was in an orange tulle concoction, and looked a little like a tuba. Donna Thibodeau was taking tickets at the door along with David Bracken. They were both National Honour Society members, part of Miss personal Gestapo, and they wore white slacks and red blazers – the school colours. Tina Blake and Norma Watson were handing out programmes and seating people inside according to their chart. Both of them were dressed in black, and Carrie supposed they thought they were very chic, but to her they looked like cigarette girls in an old gangster movie.

All of them turned to look at Tommy and Carrie when they came in, and for a moment there was a stiff, awkward silence. Carrie felt a strong urge to wet her lips and controlled it. Then George Dawson said:

'Gawd, you look queer, Ross.'

Tommy smiled. 'When did you come out of the treetops, Bomba?'

Dawson lurched forward with his fists up, and for a moment Carrie felt stark terror. In her keyed-up state, she came within an ace of picking George up and throwing him across the lobby. Then she realized it was an old game, often played, well-loved.

The two of them sparred in a growing circle. Then George, who had been tagged twice in the ribs, began to gobble and yell:– 'Kill them Congs! Get them Gooks! Pongee sticks! Tiger cages!' and Tommy collapsed his guard, laughing.

'Don't let it bother you,' Frieda said, tilting her letteropener nose and strolling over. 'If they kill each other, I'll dance with you.'

'They look too stupid to kill,' Carrie ventured. 'Like dinosaurs.' And when Frieda grinned, she felt something very old and rusty loosen inside her. A warmth came with At. Relief. Ease.

'Where'd you buy your dress?' Frieda asked. 'I love it.'

'I made it.'

'Made it?' Frieda's eyes opened in unaffected surprise. 'No shit!'

Carrie felt herself blushing furiously. 'Yes I did. I … I like to sew. I got the material at John's in Andover. The pattern is really quite easy.'

'Come on,' George said to all of them in general. 'Band's gonna start.' He rolled his eyes and went through a limber, satiric buck-and-wing. 'Vibes, vibes, vibes. Us Gooks love them big Fender viyyybrations.'

When they went in, George was doing impressions of Flash Bobby Pickett and mugging. Carrie was telling Freida about her dress, and Tommy was grinning, hands stuffed in his pockets. Spoiled the lines of his dinner jacket Sue would be telling him, but fuck it, it seems to be working. So far it was working fine.

He and George and Frieda had less than two hours to live.

He didn't talk when he drove; he liked to drive. The operation gave him a feeling of power that nothing could rival, not even fucking.

The road unrolled before them in photographic blacks and whites, and the speedometer trembled just past seventy. He came from what the social workers called a broken home; his father had taken off after the failure of a badly managed gas-station venture when Billy was twelve, and his mother had four boyfriends at last count. Brucie was in greatest favour right now. He was a Seagram's 7 man. She was turning into one ugly bag, too.

But the car: the car fed him power and glory from its own mystic lines of force. It made him someone to be reckoned with, someone with mana. It was not by accident that he had done most of his balling in the back seat. The car was his slave and his god. It gave, and it could take away. Billy had used it to take away many times. On long, sleepless nights when his mother and Brucie were fighting, Billy made popcorn and went out cruising for stray dogs. Some mornings he let the car roll, engine dead, into the garage he had constructed behind the house with its front bumper dripping.

She knew his habits well enough by now and did not bother making conversation that would simply be ignored anyway. She sat beside him with one leg curled under her, gnawing a knuckle. The fights of the cars streaking past them on 302 gleamed softly in her hair, streaking it silver.