The Ice Age Read Free

looked slightly older than me, just enough to be interesting. I said ‘hey’ back. We talked a little and before I knew it, we were around the corner kissing. I hadn’t done much kissing. I’d spent all my previous kisses wondering what the heck those guys thought they were doing, and whether or not I liked it.
    I liked this kissing. And the touching. He was holding me tighter and tighter, and he was warm. His shirt was scratchy, and I don’t usually know what texture people’s clothes are. All the closeness was kind of nice. I was liking the kissing more and more as it went on. Then we stopped for kind of a breather. We just chatted. Small talk and stuff. He asked where I was from. I said back East. I found his presence kind of exciting, but his talking was boring me. Gunther hates small talk. ‘Abhors’ it. Says it’s a needless strain on the vocal cords. He usually gets by with a polite grunt, and I think I agree with him, that’s usually ‘sufficient’. People aren’t really interested in you anyway. I hoped this boy would get back to the kissing. I’ve got Gunther to talk to if talking’s what I want.
    I guess I was boring him, too, because he got back to the kissing, and pretty quickly too. I don’t know how long we kept at it. He had started to touch other parts of me. At first I was uncomfortable with some of it, like when he swept his big old countryboy paw across my breasts. But then I started to get kind of tingly. And then Gunther shouted, ‘What the HELL do you think you’re doing?!’ It was clear he’d been back to the room, because he’d taken his jacket off. I wondered how long he’d been looking for me. I had no idea how long I’d been out there. Long enough to get pretty tingly. It was all kind of a blur from there. Gunther marched me straight back to the room, barely glanced at the boy, who muttered, ‘Jeez, your dad is pretty uptight.’
    Once back in the room we didn’t really say much. Gunther rolled an assembly line of joints with a series of jerky movements that had none of his usual joint-rolling grace or finesse. He was glaring at his hands, glaring at everything they touched. I mumbled ‘sorry’, and he snorted. I didn’t think I’d done anything hugely wrong, but it was late, I guess. He must have been looking for me for a while. But as far as I knew we were both entertaining ourselves. That was his idea. I thought he was having a night on the town. Or on the roadhouse, as it were. And me…well, as Glorie announced huskily when I stood staring at her traveling portrait, you’re only young once.
    He seemed back to normal by the next morning, when he was doing all his morning things. By the time we got into the car he was a lot sunnier, for him. He seemed to have seen something funny in it. He smiled; not his usual beaming, but he glanced a weakish grin my direction. ‘So our little girl is growing up,’ he said. ‘I think you can do better than Random Farm Boy.’ We drove a ways further, past another doughnut sign, with faded, chipping paint. ‘Perhaps, a little more discerning.’

    We didn’t deviate from routine for a couple of weeks at least, after that incident. We each seemed to be making a concerted effort to keep things as regular as possible. We didn’t even make fun of people, or towns, or signs. We didn’t complain about the boringness of anything. We preserved it. We damn near cultivated it.
    I just wanted to crawl back into that bubble of safeness, that cocoon of hugging walls, smoke, and gazing at Gunther; basking in his benevolence, and dreaming of the promise of ultimate freedom he might deliver. For his part, I think he was trying to regain his composure, his suave air. I think he was largely succeeding.
    We were on sort of an artificial roll. I say ‘artificial’ because we weren’t quite ourselves. We were both