Test Pattern Read Free Page B

part of the war effort, don’t let anybody tell you different.”
    “That’s right,” she says. “I bought war bonds.”
    “I’m getting discharged this week,” he tells her around the Lucky between his lips. He takes a long drag, pulls it out, crushes it beneath his army boot. “Don’t know what I’ll be doing then. Maybe work for my dad at the auto-parts store although it’s been oh, ‘bout ten years since I worked a regular job, not service-connected, you know.”
    Lorena nods, shifts the grocery bag to the other hip, combs her bangs to the side with two fingers of her free hand. As he speaks she watches his lips move beneath his carefully trimmed mustache, neat and thin, an Errol Flynn mustache that shelters smooth pink lips marred only by a fleck of tobacco stuck to the bottom one. Automatic as the miniature crane that grabs a toy in a carnival prize machine, her hand rises, plucks the tobacco from his lip, then lingers on its silken surface.
    “Hey,” he says. “Hey, Lorena.” He grabs her hand and keeps it on his lips.
    She is leaning against her car, one arm around the grocery bag, the other raised to Binky’s mouth. She can feel his teeth hard behind the soft lips, feels her own lips part and her tongue circle them lightly. What is she doing? She snaps her hand away, shakes it as if something clung to it, something more than just tobacco, more than the softness of pink.
    “I’ve gotta go,” she says.
    “Where?”
    “I’ve gotta get gas,” she says, ignoring his laugh. She flings the car door open, throws the groceries inside. “Gotta run.” She starts the car, grinds the gears as she backs out of the space. She doesn’t want to look at him.
    “Hey, Lorena.” Binky follows her, bending his head to talk to her through the window. “Can I see you again?”
    She shakes her head no. “I’m married,” she says, and shifts forward into first. The car shrieks, shudders, stops dead.
    “Married?”
    She nods.
    “Who’d ya marry?”
    “Pete. Pete Palmer.” She starts the car up again and yells over its sputter, “You don’t know him. He graduated a couple of years before us.”
    She can see him in her rearview mirror as she pulls away. He stands at ease, in his uniform. When she gets home, she remembers she forgot to get gas.

3
CASSIE
    I WATCH THE test pattern while Mom’s in the kitchen, keep the sound low so she can’t hear the hum. The test pattern has changed. Slithery shapes slide in and out of the spokes, sometimes even in color. If I lean real close and listen well, I think I hear music and voices.
    Today it’s different. Something else is happening. The test pattern spins, fades to a blur, then runs together like watercolors. All of a sudden there’s this pretty lady with yellow hair who’s wearing a two-piece bathing suit that’s way too small for her. She’s got flowers and butterflies and words that don’t make sense like “groovy” and “kinky” painted all over her skin. And she’s dancing.
    I turn up the sound. She’s dancing to music I’ve never heard before, snappy and bouncy. She doesn’t dance regular, just wiggles her arms and butt and giggles a lot. The best part is, it’s in
color.
I didn’t know they did shows in color.
    “Mom!” I yell. “Come look at this.”
    “Look at what?” she calls from the kitchen.
    “It’s a new show, and it’s in color, like the movies.”
    She hurries into the living room, gives the TV and me a funny look that makes her eyebrows almost collide. “What are you talking about?”
    “Look! Isn’t that a neat dance?” I get up and copy the giggly girl with the teeny bathing suit and the painted stomach, wiggle my butt, wave my arms. “Sock it to me!” I say.
    Mom just stares. “Where did you get that from?”
    “From the dancer with the dark hair, the one they’re splashing with a bucket of water. She keeps saying ‘Sock it to me.’”
    Mom gives me one of her looks. “You telling me you see something