Meanwhile, back at Mashnee…we ran into a small problem.
Tommy’s girlfriend, Tina, was in town, and man was she gorgeous. Someone said she was Miss Teenage Massachusetts or something and I’d certainly believe it. Tall and blonde and curvy and perfect, she was the kind of girl most guys have trouble talking to, and that would most definitely include me, at least without a quart or two of liquid courage! She actually was that stunning, and she had a figure that was way ahead of her presumed years. On top of all that, she was super cool and smart too.
Anyhow, she had already visited Tommy a few times earlier that summer, so I kinda knew her. She seemed to really like me too. She was very outgoing and friendly, in spite of my obvious inability to properly construct a sentence in her presence.
Oh yeah, to make her just that much more exotic, she had a large and extremely colorful butterfly tattooed on her upper right thigh, just sitting there, daring to be stared at. Guilty as charged! She was everything cool with a capital ‘K.’
Of course Tommy didn’t have any trouble talking to her, (or to anyone else for that matter). Incredibly charismatic guy that he was, she was all over him. This relationship was definitely a case of a tough guy getting the girl. Everything about him was hard-edged and dangerous, and everything about her soft and delicious. As for little ole me? Well, I was just thrilled to be the sidekick, Gilligan, living vicariously through their magnetic energy and all-out pizzazz!
Anyway, that day, like so many others, I was just hanging out on the front steps bouncing a tennis ball off them and killing time when Tina came slinking by,
“Hey, Jimrocket,” she called with an energetic wave, her dreamy-blue eyes locking with mine, enough so to, well, move certain parts in a noticeable way. “Did I get it right this time?” she adorably giggled.
“Hi, Tina,” I managed to say without embarrassing myself. “Most people call me Jimmyrocket, but whatever you call me works just fine.” I replied smartly, going for subtle humor, despite my instantly flushed cheeks and tied-up tongue.
“Ok, got it, Jimmyrocket. I gotta run up and grab some smokes for Tommy—then you wanna take a ride with us? Tommy’s car is in the back lot; we’re gonna go visit our friends staying in Falmouth, for a couple of hours. They’re having a big barbeque and it’s gonna be party-your-ass-off central. Can you dig it? Sounds fun right? You wanna come?”
My response was simple and to the point: “I’m going wherever you’re going!”
“Pissah.” Then she floated past me and up the stairs.
So the day started out innocently enough. I even convinced Tommy to swing by Memorial Beach and pick up Christine and Sally on our way. Perfect plan, indeed. It was just gonna be two cool guys and three smokin’ chicks cruising along in a hot-rod, with the eight track blaring some of our favorite tunes, and maybe just maybe some grab-ass going on in the back. Good times, bad times, you know we’d had our share…
But like everything else that summer, good times were mixed with turmoil, and we never did make it to the barbeque. But we never made it to the girls, in fact, we never even made it out of Gray Gables…
Tommy was pissing along Presidents Road, banging gears and chirping tires at a good clip of speed, when in the midst of slapping-the-make on Tina, he ran the stop sign at Shore Road! Sounds bad but it was worse. He jacked on his brakes and immediately skidded sideways, tires smoking, and smacked hard into a merging Bourne police cruiser, knocking the cop car into a ditch! A cop car. The fuzz. Nobody was hurt, but it was a cop car!
Not good. Even for Tommy.
Blue lights. Sirens. Two cops yelling. Cussing. Lots and lots of cussing, actually. Until they saw Tina that is, then I remember, flirting, lots and lots of flirting. Which ultimately didn’t help Tommy, who was not only ticketed but handcuffed on the spot, and he had his license confiscated on the spot. But it seemed to go a long, long way toward keeping both her and me out of trouble.
With Tommy in cuffs, the cops got their car out of the gully and threw him in the back seat, Tommy, smirking all the while. Then they instructed, more like demanded, us to follow them in Tommy’s car over the bridge to the Bourne police station.
Couple of problems here…
First, neither Tina nor I had an actual license, or even a learner’s permit.
Second, although I had actually driven Tommy’s car once before, (when we were loading up the car with booze for our trading post escapade) it was obviously not my finest hour. I mean I drove it, and almost broke it. It was ugly.
On the other hand, leaving the car was not an option, Tommy implored them not to tow it, for fear of ruining the frame, so with the cops’ blessing and a few wind-blown kisses thrown their way by Tina, I jumped into the driver’s seat, looked over at her (melting, she winked at me!), attempted to square my (scrawny) shoulders, and proceeded to be, well, a tough guy!
Tommy yelling out his window, “Don’t fuck my car up or I’ll kill you, Jimmyrocketttt!”
No pressure.
The cop had instructed me to follow close behind.
It did not go well.
I would describe the drive as somewhere between jarring and spastic. Despite trying to properly engage the clutch while shifting, and Tina doing her best to give me some instructions, the car was bucking all over the damn road.
Then, as if to add insult to injury, as we were coming over the Bourne Bridge, things became even worse. I let the clutch out too fast, lunged forward, and (gently) bumped into the cop car’s rear bumper, causing sharp brake lights and even sharper stares.
One cop car. Two collisions. Oops!
We continued to the station, not smoothly but somehow making it without further calamity, Tina insisting how great I was doing, where more swearing took place. Much more.
Hey, I told you I couldn’t drive a stick yet.
My dad came and got me at the police station and posted Tommy’s bail. I think he knew what would’ve happened if Tommy’s old man would have been forced to come down there.
The cops impounded Tommy’s car to look for “illegal substances” of which there were none. We knew that. I later heard that the charges had been dropped based on legal technicalities, translation, somebody paid somebody.
Meanwhile, I had gotten to drive a pissah hot rod and sit next to a beautiful girl.
Not such a bad day. Well, at least for me!!
Chapter 46
Possible
Mashnee certainly had its fair share of unique people. To a large extent it was a melting pot of people from various towns, ethnicities, shapes, sizes, ages, educational backgrounds, political affiliations, and socio-economic statuses. A blended collection of fairly normal, regular ole “folks.”
But a few of the off-island workers and vendors were anything but normal. Or typical. There was a small collection in particular, so quirky, so unusual, so one-of-a-kind, so far-out and outta sight, they could best described as:
C-a-r-i-c-a-t-u-r-e-s.
And we were onto them! So we met at The Hut to make a list of the said, off-islanders who frequented Mashnee, who were now possible suspects.
