sí!” Jacobo whispered, and Arnold clamped his knees together.
He didn’t know anyone named Billie Jo, but then he didn’t know many girls at all—at least not by name. Girls didn’t play chess, mostly, and girls didn’t play football, and the girls in his classes didn’t say much. They were too worried about appearing smart. But from mid-November on, he found a daily message in his locker, usually an interesting quotation with a personal note in that lovely hand. It was nice, being watched—but also creepy.
On Christmas Day, his sixteenth birthday, an ice-cream cake was delivered to the Hitler door: a frozen, regulation-size, edible football inscribed “DON’T PASS ON THIS ONE, Birthday love from your secret admirer.” Arnold pled ignorance as George and Anna shared a knowing laugh.
On Monday, January 2nd, 1967, she revealed herself to him. A somewhat plain, dark-haired young woman with granny glasses, short skirt, and black tights sat down next to him in the cafeteria and said, simply, “Happy New Year, Arnold. I’m your mysterious love.” He had seen her before, he thought, without noticing, one of the neutral mass of bodies and faces passing in halls and seated in assemblies.
“Are you Billie Jo?”
“Billie Jo Hoffmann, at your service.” She doffed an imaginary cap. She did have lovely, brown hair.
“At your service? What does that mean?”
“You’re the semiologist, so you tell me.”
A promising beginning.
Arnold was intrigued by her audacity. He was not sexually attracted, but all the “sexually attractive” girls were so conscious of their gifted status, so manipulative around it, so made-up and cheap, with their permed hair and push-up bras, that he had always been turned off by the very beauties who were supposed to turn him on. Billie Jo was not unattractive. In fact, over the next days, her natural simplicity of appearance and style began to please him more and more.
She was a senior. At Mansfield High, it was unheard of for a senior girl to be interested in a junior boy. Given the relative maturity of the boys and the girls, it would surely have been robbing the cradle, well and justly tabooed. But Arnold was different. And Billie Jo was different enough to understand that, and to dare to reach out to him, perhaps her only soulmate among the student body.
She and her twelve-year-old brother, Chris, had moved to Mansfield only that year, from Dallas. Her mother, Francine, had just separated from her dad and had moved the twenty miles south to be out of his sphere, yet still close enough to share child responsibilities and to not lose touch with old friends and activities. She still worked three nights a week at a group home in the city. Billie Jo, too, still had ties to Dallas—several girlfriends, an ex-boyfriend, now “just a friend,” her piano teacher, with whom she studied on Saturdays, and a library card using her dad’s address. She did the commute in her own ’65 Oldsmobile, a sweet-sixteen gift from her dad. Arnold had never known anyone with money. Or had a peer with a car.
By Friday of the first week, she had taken him home to show him off. He immediately made two other conquests: Francine, who, if she were only twenty years younger . . ., and Chris, who, if he were only four years older. . . . After some initial heart palpitations, both of them settled into their roles as adoring potential in-law and aspiring little brother. For all three Hoffmanns, Arnold Hitler was certainly “a catch.”
It was the first free Friday night, since the football and holiday seasons had ended and the crush of spring-term assignments had yet to begin. So he stayed late. Chris retired at 10:30; Mom went to her room shortly thereafter (with a wink of her eye and intrigue in her heart), leaving Juliet alone on the couch with her Romeo. After enough time to ensure the finality of all exits, what did they do? They talked. Quietly. They talked about the season, about his occasional appearances in games, his passing record, what it all might mean for his role next year as a senior. They talked about The Last Word and its impact on the school. She traced out her attraction to him, her hesitancy and fear of rejection, her decision to woo Mr. Words via words alone, her researches to discover quotations that might interest him, her New Year’s resolution to materialize, come what may. He said he was happy she had. And with that, she took his head in her hands.
“Close your eyes,” she said.
“Why?”
“Just close them.”
So he did.
She placed her open lips over his left eye and blew ever so gently, rhythmically bathing his lid in warm, moist air, largo sensuoso. He liked it, and smiled. Then, on to the right eye.
“What are you doing?” he murmured.
“Shhhh,” she answered.
Back to the left. She breathed on his lid three times, then began to stroke it methodically with her tongue, tracing the contours of the globe underneath, probing the undersurface of the orbit, caressing the space between eye and nose. His lachrymal duct wept with tickle and joy. He breathed quickly, somewhat from thrill but also to keep himself from laughing. She finished the left eye, then finished the right. “There,” she said.
“Let me do it to you,” he offered.
“Nope. You’re the guest.”
He just sat there. Now what?
“OK. Time for you to go. I have to get up early for my piano lesson.”
“You play the piano?”
“Since I was eight.”
“You must be good.”
“I’ll play for you. But not now. It’s too late. Next time.”
“So there’ll be a next time?”
“You think I lick everybody’s eyes?”
“No, but . . .”
“Listen, buddy, you’re taken. Hear me?”
“I . . . well . . . yes.”
He stood up and headed obediently to the door.
“Bye,” he offered. “Have a good lesson. Um . . . may I kiss you good-night?”
“No. I’m saving myself for my husband.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I mean, I hope you don’t think . . .”
“You dope,” she laughed, and flung her arms around his neck in her own efficient version of a tackle. It was a good kiss. His first except for Mom.
“Close the door,” she chided. “You’re letting in the cold.”
Billie Jo Hoffmann was an offer he couldn’t refuse. Arnold pedaled home through the Texas night. For all his vocabulary, the only words on the tape-loop of his consciousness were “Wow!” and “Wow!”
Billie Jo lay in bed, also reckoning where things had gotten to. Her presleep assessment was “first base plus.” Her sweetie’s game of football did not lend itself to sexual metaphors. Even the cheerleading Rebelettes, Billie Jo’s scorned and hated rivals, charted their progress to heaven (or hell) in baseball language. “Getting to first” meant kissing. The “plus” in Billie Jo’s assessment applied to kissing eyelids, a technique her Dallas ex had taught her that didn’t figure in the usual calculation. It was the first time she, herself, had been the kisser. “Getting to second”—that would surely come—involved a hand, Arnold’s hand—once burned, a hand feeling, touching, being allowed in under her clothing, but not below the belt. “Third base”? Well, that actually included private parts, his blind, and likely awkward, exploration of hers, perhaps, who knows, even hers of his. Third base with a long and daring lead toward the plate occurred out of clothing, or somewhat out of clothing, and brought in mouths, mouths and tongues on private parts. This might or might not happen.
Their relationship was not by any means just about sex. It was a lot about sex, but not entirely. One night (after getting to third base plus), she lay with her head in his lap.