New Year's Eve

THE whole thing began when I walked into the kitchen and asked my mother if Tina — this girl who had been going around with us for a couple days—could have supper with us and spend the night.

Mom looked at me, kind of shook. Dad, mixing their drinks over by the sink, looked at me too, and I could tell he was mad. But he usually is, unless he’s about half gassed.

“I don’t know,” said Mom. “I don’t think we’ve got enough. Well, maybe —”

“She’s right out in the living room, Mom.” I had to say this because Mom was talking pretty loud and excited and I knew Tina could hear.

My father came over to talk to me, low.

“What the hell’s the idea, Steve? Why don’t you let us know ahead about these things? We’ve just arranged to farm out Janie for the night, and your mother and I were going to La Rancherita to eat and down to have some drinks with the Robertses later.”

Now, Janie is my kid sister. Three and a half years younger than me. I was born before Dad went overseas, and Janie after he got back and he and Mom got relocated. Their sending Janie to spend the night with a friend meant they wouldn’t be home until late, if at all. The Robertses were their latest drinking buddies. They’d had a dandy at our place the other night, while I was up in L.A. Janie told me all about it when I got back, and what she didn’t tell me, they did. Everybody had got loaded.

“For Christ’s sake, Steve, how can that girl stay here when Janie’s spending the night out and we’re not going to be here?” My father asked the question, but I spoke to my mother.

“She hasn’t got anyplace else to stay, Mom.”

“What’s the matter with where she’s been staying?” my father asked.

“They threw her out. Her girl friend’s mother got mad and told her to get out.”

“They threw her out! And you expect us to take her in here? Why did they throw her out?”

“I don’t know. Her girl friend’s mother is real mean. Tina said something, and she got mad and told her to get out.”

“Well, why doesn’t she go home then?”

“Dad, she lives in Palm Springs. She was over here visiting this girl friend for the holidays, and her plane reservation to go back isn’t until tomorrow afternoon.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Steve.” My father didn’t sound or look sorry at all. “She can’t stay here. It’s out of the question. We’re not running a home for wayward waifs. If Janie was going to be here, it might be different. Even then, if those other people threw this girl out, they must have had pretty good reason. Doesn’t she have any other friends, girl friends in town she can stay with?”

His voice wasn’t low anymore, and so that Tina wouldn’t hear any more of this I went into the living room and told her to wait for me out front in the car.

Mom and my father brought their drinks into the living room and sat on the sofa. My father had made himself a martini, which is usually a bad sign. Janie had been upstairs getting ready to go out; now she came down.

“Janie, you know this girl, isn’t there anybody else she can stay with?” Dad asked.

“Maybe Suzy Blake.”

“There. Steve, why don’t you call Suzy Blake and see if this girl can stay there tonight? That’d be a lot better than having her here with just you and Joe in the house.”

Joe was the cousin of Eddie and Freddy Martin. He had been using the spare bed in my room since we came down from L.A., because he didn’t like Eddie and Freddy’s mother, and I think, too, he was interested in Janie. Janie isn’t as bad as she used to be, now that she’s fourteen and in the ninth grade.

Janie and I went upstairs to call Suzy Blake, but they had houseguests and there wasn’t any room for Tina.

My mother came upstairs, and I asked her for money to get something to eat at the drive-in, and she gave me three dollars. In the living room my father was sitting drinking his martini. He didn’t pay any attention when I went out the front door.

I drove to the drive-in and we ate. We took our time and then drove around for a while, not going anyplace, just moving. Finally we went to the Martins’, and Mrs. Martin said my mother had called and said it would be all right for Tina to spend the night at our place.

I learned from Janie the next day how after I left the house Mom and my father talked about it for a long time. My mother was worried, me having gone off that way with Tina. My father started out saying the girl was a no-good tramp, the way she’d been bumming around with me and Eddie and Freddy the past couple of days. No wonder those people threw her out, he said.

He was mad, too, about her age. What was I doing running around with a girl so much younger than me? Somewhere he’d got the idea Tina is Janie’s age. She isn’t, she’s two years older.

But like my father does lots of times, especially when he’s drinking — maybe always when he’s drinking — after he got through running Tina down he said, “Oh, hell, I suppose it’s better for her to be here, even alone with Steve and Joe. What the hell, we’ve turned this place into a boardinghouse already this vacation. One more won’t hurt, even if it is a little tramp.” And he said he supposed I had sense enough not to get in real trouble with the girl.

So Mom called the Martins and left word that it was all right for the girl to stay at our house that night.

WE KILLED some time at the Martins’ while Eddie and Freddy got dressed up in coats and ties. Tina and I sat on the couch in the family room and watched TV. Mrs. Martin came in the room a couple of times and just looked at us sitting there and then walked out. I don’t think she liked it much, but she didn’t say anything. Mrs. Martin worries a lot about Eddie and Freddy. She’s always been OK with me, but I could see she didn’t much like me having Tina along.

When Eddie and Freddy were dressed we all watched TV until the program ended and then left in my car. Eddie didn’t want to drive his new car, a ‘58 Ford wagon, on New Year’s Eve because there would be a lot of cops out and he’d already had too many tickets.

On the way to my house we parked around the corner from the liquor store where Eddie can pass for twenty-one. He’s a little goofy-looking, with big ears, a thin face, and a long nose, and unless he’s smiling he looks a lot older than eighteen. He doesn’t smile much. There are some places I can get by, especially beer joints around Oakland, because I’m so tall, almost six-four, and I look old enough with my long hair whenever I don’t wear my glasses. It seems every time someone asks for my ID it’s when I’m wearing the glasses. Or my complexion is broken out.

Eddie came back with a couple of large Cokes, a six-pack of beer for Freddy, and a half pint of vodka. Eddie’s mother had given him ten dollars for him and Freddy before we left their house, and I had five bucks besides the change from the three dollars Mom had given me for supper at the drive-in.

When we got to the house Mom’s car, the white Bonneville wagon, was gone from in front, so we just carried the booze in with us.

We went in the kitchen and opened both Cokes and poured some into a glass for Tina, who doesn’t drink much. Eddie and I filled the Coke bottles with vodka. We put our thumbs over the tops and turned them upside down to let the vodka mix. Freddy opened a can of beer and put the rest in the refrigerator.

We went in my room, and everybody sat on the twin beds except Eddie, who sat in the rattan basket chair that tips you off on the floor if you sit too far forward. We drank and talked for a while, and then I shaved and changed, taking my pants and white shirt with me into the bathroom.

I was tying my tie for the third time, trying to get the ends even, when I heard footsteps through the living room. I got to the bedroom door in time to keep my father, walking through the dining room to the kitchen, from seeing Tina sitting there on the bed. Tina had ducked into the bathroom when he came back.

“You got the word,” Dad said. “About it being all right for the girl to stay, I mean.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

I got an idea from his eyes that the booze was getting to him. His breath stank of garlic from the Mexican food and of beer.

“What’s going on?”

He looked around at Eddie and Freddy, at the Cokes sitting on the TV. Freddy had stashed his beer someplace. For some reason this made me think of the rest of the six-pack. I couldn’t remember whether we had put it in the refrigerator or left it on the kitchen sink.

“The beer is Eddie’s,” I said.

“Huh? What beer?”

So it was in the refrigerator, and he hadn’t seen it.

“In the kitchen. It’s Eddie’s.”

This was real stupid. He knows I drink beer sometimes. But not very often around home. He and Mom keep saying they don’t mind if I drink around home, just don’t drink much when I go out. But for some reason I always do it the other way around. I just can’t feel comfortable drinking around them, especially Mom. I don’t know why I wanted to make a point that the beer wasn’t mine. But I guess it didn’t matter. He just looked at me kind of puzzled; what I’d said about the beer didn’t seem to register.

“Well, your mother and I are going down to the Robertses’. I don’t know when we’ll be back. Probably not very late, though.”

He always says they won’t be late, but they usually are. But once in a while they do get back early, so I’ve never wanted to plan anything around the house when they’re out.

He left. A few minutes later, after Eddie and I had finished our vodka and Coke, we all left too. We took the six-pack and what was left of the half pint with us.

We drove around a while. We went to Paul’s house. His folks had some people in, just a small party. Paul said he was staying home. He’d just got back from Mexico the day before. He goes there every vacation with one of the teachers from high school; they mess around the archaeological sites. We said hello to his folks and went into Paul’s room. He brought us some beer from the kitchen, and we drank it and then left.

We went over to Dave’s. He was all dressed up and just about to leave for a party at some girl’s house. Half a year at college has changed Dave a lot. He used to be a real nice big hulking slob, a good tackle and a bashful kid. But he’s lost some of the weight now and actually looked almost smooth, dressed up like he was.

Dave’s folks were out, so he got us a beer too, and we sat in the living room and drank it and talked until he said he had to go.

“Why don’t you come on up to the party?” he said. “I don’t think they’d mind. You all know Louella, anyway.”

We said maybe we would. But Tina said she couldn’t go to a party like she was. She had on a skirt and blouse but low-heel shoes. So we went back by the house, and I got her Janie’s black high-heel shoes, and they fit.

Joe was at the house, and I asked him if he wanted to come along with us. But he said he was going out with a guy he knew from surfing, to the show and then to the guy’s house to play pool on a half-size table his kid brother had got for Christmas.

He left, and we drove up and parked down the street from where the party was. After a while Dave came out with Louella and stood by the car. Dave and Eddie and I finished off the vodka, and Freddy opened two beers. He drank one himself, and Tina and Louella shared the other.

Louella said it would be all right if we came to the party, but the way she said it we knew she was afraid it would make trouble with her folks. So we said thanks anyway, but we had to go someplace else.

We drove around La Jolla a little, but it was pretty dull. So we went down through P. B. and Mission Beach and turned left at the Amusement Center, past the Bahia Motel and across the Ventura Bridge, not going anyplace in particular.

The big new hotel just past the bridge, the Islandia, was all lit up. I guess it’s the newest and fanciest place in San Diego.

Without any particular reason, I turned off the highway into the parking lot. “Let’s see what’s going on,”I said, kidding.

“Sure, why not?” said Eddie.

WE PARKED the Opel in the parking lot, walked around for a while, and finally went into the main dining room, which was all fixed up for the New Year’s Eve party. It must have been about ten thirty by that time, and there were a lot of people there, most of them pretty drunk. Nobody paid any attention to us when we walked through the door, but after we’d been inside a little while some woman came up and handed us funny hats and paper leis and noiseinakers.

“Now, have a good time,” she said.

So we watched for a while, and it was pretty good. We were especially stoked at just walking in like that, because I took a menu from one of the tables and it said the price for dinner and a bottle of champagne was twenty-five bucks a person.

After a while Tina and Freddy wandered off someplace and Eddie and I worked our way toward the bar. We thought about trying to buy a drink, but then decided it wasn’t worth maybe getting turned down because the drinks at a place like this would cost too much anyway. So we just stood around a little way from the bar and watched the people.

We noticed a couple of older women at the bar that seemed to be alone. They must have been at least thirty, maybe thirty-five, but they weren’t too bad-looking. One of them smiled at Eddie. He said hello, and she said, “Well, hello there.” The other one smiled at me and said hello and I said hello back. We got talking to them, and pretty soon we asked them if they’d like to dance, and they said, “Why not?”, both smiling real big at us, getting their kicks over dancing with a couple of kids like us but not laughing about it, just feeling good.

So we danced with them. Mine asked me what I did, and I told her I was a junior at Berkeley and she seemed impressed. I asked what she did, and she said she was a private secretary to some big executive at Convair and so was her friend and they lived together in an apartment on the beach.

When the music stopped we took the women back to the bar and said thanks for the dance. They invited us to have a drink with them but we said no, we had to find some friends who had come with us.

We found Freddy and Tina near the entrance and went out to the car and opened a couple of beers. We talked for a while about getting in the place like that and all the people drinking and Eddie and I dancing with the two women. We shared the beers, and when they were finished Eddie said, “Let’s go try the Bahia.”

So we drove over there, and it was the same thing. We just walked into the main dining room and nobody said anything.

We sat at a table that people seemed to have left. A waitress came up, and we ordered Cokes for Tina and Freddy and drinks for Eddie and myself. She didn’t say anything about our IDs, just brought the drinks. We paid for them.

Then it was midnight and some man in a tuxedo gave a countdown at the mike and the band played “Auld Lang Syne” and everybody kissed everybody and we all kissed Tina. Everybody made noise with whistles, and the waitress came with a tray and gave us four glasses of champagne.

We drank the champagne and then got up and wandered around the place some more. Maybe half an hour later we missed Eddie and looked all over before we found him.

Now, the people that own the Bahia own another big motel, the Catamaran, which is also on Mission Bay, about two miles north. They have a scaled-down version of a Mississippi riverboat that runs back and forth between the two places on weekends and holidays, with a bar and a five-piece Dixieland band.

The boat was loading at the Bahia docks. Standing on one side of the short gangplank, taking money from the people as they got on, was a man in a yachting cap. Across the gangplank from him stood Eddie, deadpan serious, also taking money from the people going on the boat. He was so businesslike standing there, taking the money, saying something to the people as they started up the gangplank, it broke all three of us up. When I stopped laughing I walked over nearby to hear what he was saying.

“Thank you, sir,” he said when a man handed him a couple of bucks and started to steer the woman with him up the gangplank.

“Happy New Year from the Bahia,” Eddie said. “Bon voyage, yo’ all.”

Hearing this broke me up again, and I had to get away fast. I went back and told Freddy and Tina, and they broke up too.

When people stopped coming they cast off the ropes and the boat pulled away from the dock. Eddie waved at the man in the yachting cap and walked up the path to the motel. He went past without looking at us, but a couple of minutes later he walked up behind us.

“How much did you get?” I asked.

“Fifteen or twenty bucks, I guess.”

“How come the man there let you get away with it?”

“I just walked up and told him they sent me down to help him.”

We walked around the docks, looking at all the power cruisers tied up there. When the boat came back Eddie went to stand by the gangplank again and collected more money. We watched from a little way away. After a while the man in the yachting cap waved at Eddie. “You finish up,” he said. “I’m going to get a drink.”

So Eddie stood there taking the money until no one else came. Then, when they were getting ready to cast off the ropes, all four of us went on the boat. The Dixieland band was completely gassed and sounded like a high school pep band. Most of the people on the boat were gassed. But we got a charge out of watching them try to dance to the band and out of seeing the lights all around the bay reflected on the water.

At the Catamaran things were real slow. It didn’t look as though they’d had as good a party as the Bahia anyway, and it was getting pretty late. We waited until the boat headed back. There was no one taking tickets at this end. On the boat, Eddie went and talked to one of the crew. He came back shaking his head.

“That guy at the Bahia was a phony,” he said. “They don’t charge people to ride on this thing. Can you imagine anybody doing a thing like that?”

Things had slowed down at the Bahia, too. We got in the car, shared the last can of beer, and drove toward home, throwing out the empty beer cans and the vodka bottle.

All the way along La Jolla Boulevard a car gave me trouble, coming up close behind, swingingout to pull alongside, then dropping back again. I turned off into a side street, and the car followed. I turned left onto the street behind the Town House Hotel, and the car followed, then pulled alongside. It got in front and moved in. I hit the brakes and pulled up at the curb.

Eddie and Freddy and I got out. Tina stayed in the car. Six guys got out of the other car. The guy in front was taller than me and a real thick; he must have weighed two-thirty.

“Happy New Year,” the thick said.

“Happy New Year,” I said back.

We kidded back and forth a little while, everybody milling around. The big guy tried to kick me between the legs. I saw it coming and kind of moved back, so he didn’t get me real good, but it hurt enough anyway.

He grabbed Eddie and Freddy, one hand behind the neck of each, and banged their heads together. Then he kicked Freddy between the legs real good and Freddy went down. We all started to yell, and I could hear Tina screaming from the car.

A bunch of rent-a-cops ran over from the hotel and grabbed everybody, breaking up the fight before it really got going. The manager of the hotel came over. We told them what had happened. A couple of the rent-a-cops said yes, they saw it all, that’s the way it was. After a lot of talk they let us go. We got Freddy in the car and drove away. The rent-a-cops made the other guys let us get a start.

I drove home and let Tina off. The front door was unlocked, so I told her to go up to Janie’s room and go to bed. I didn’t know if the folks were home yet or not. Then I started to drive Eddie and Freddy home. Freddy was hurting bad, but he’s a real tough kid and didn’t say much except how he’d like to get the guy that kicked him.

Driving up Pearl, right by the Cleancraft laundry, we spotted the car that had forced us over. I turned onto a side road and went half a block, then parked in front of a building under construction. We got out and hunted around until we found some good big two-by-fours.

The car was still parked there on Pearl by the laundry and across from a liquor store that was still open. The guys saw the three of us coming with the two-by-fours, Freddy walking kind of doubled over; and they rolled up the windows and locked the doors of their car.

Eddie swung his two-by-four and broke in the windshield. Freddy rammed the end of his twoby-four through a wind-wing.

They came swarming out of the car. We backed away a little, standing together, holding our twoby-fours. The big thick looked goofy. His eyes were funny and his mouth crazy, and he was talking in a high voice and not making any sense.

I rammed the end of my two-by-four against his chest, and he staggered back. A little guy made a rush at Freddy, and Freddy hit him in the face. The little guy stood still, blood coming all over his face. He looked like he was hurt bad.

The cops came, three cars of them. When we saw them coming, Freddy dropped his two-byfour and faded away, going into the shadows over by the liquor store.

Everybody was talking at once, mainly me and the big thick, and the cops couldn’t make much sense out of what was going on. So they took me and made me sit in the back of one car and took the big thick and put him in another.

For a while it looked as though we were in real trouble, but we told the cops how the other guys had run us off the road down by the Town House and come after us. The cops called the Town House and the manager said yes, his rent-a-cops had seen the whole thing.

The cop that talked to me was the first good cop I ever saw. “All right now,” he said. “Tell me you haven’t been drinking so I can laugh.”

“I haven’t been drinking,” I said.

He laughed.

The cops went through the other car and found all kinds of evidence of alcohol. They went through my car and didn’t find anything.

Then it turned out the other guys were all from East San Diego.

“All right,” the cop finally told me. “It looks like La Jolla won one for a change. You can go, but don’t let me see you around town again tonight.” He hadn’t even taken our names.

When we went back to our car we found Freddy waiting in the shadows of the building under construction. “You guys go ahead,” he said. “I called home from the liquor store, and they’re coming down to get me.”

We drove home, and I told Eddie he could sleep in the sleeping bag on the floor in my room. Joe was asleep in the spare bed. He woke up, and we told him what had happened.

I went upstairs and looked in my parents’ room. They were in bed. There was a champagne bottle on the floor beside the bed.

When I got back downstairs Eddie said he wanted to go home. I told him I couldn’t drive him because that cop might get me.

Eddie said he’d hitchhike. What if that gang was still hanging around town? I asked him. But he still wanted to leave. So I went in the kitchen and gave him a steak knife in case he ran into those guys or some queer picked him up.

He told me the next day that’s what happened. A guy alone in a car picked him up on the boulevard. Eddie said he had to get home, told him where he lived. The queer tried to talk Eddie into going to his apartment. Eddie said no, he had to go home.

“Oh, can’t you spare fifteen minutes?” the queer said. Eddie said no and showed him the knife. The queer took him home.

THE next morning I got up early. Dad was up early too; he was going to watch the bowl games. I saw him pour a slug of vodka in his orange juice. Then he made himself an Alexander, using Mexican brandy and Kahlua.

“Have fun last night?” I asked him.

“Peaceful,” he said.

Mr. Roberts had the flu, so they just had one drink with his wife, watched TV a while, and then left. On the way home they picked up the bottle of champagne at the liquor store. He and Mom drank half of it sitting in front of the fire in the living room and the other half up on the balcony in front of the upstairs bedrooms, watching the surf in the dark. Then they went to bed.

I had a bowl of cereal while Dad was fixing himself huevos rancheros, fried eggs on a tortilla covered with hot sauce they’d brought home from La Rancherita.

I went out front and stood on the sundeck over the garage, watching the ocean. It was a bright, cool morning. The winter surf isn’t much good in front of our house, and when it does get big it’s radical and comes from the north. The south swell in the summer is real good, though.

Dad came out to stand beside me. I told him about the night before. Just the bare details. Going to the Islandia and the Bahia. And getting forced over, and kicked, and Freddy getting kicked, then finding the guys again and going at them with the two-by-fours. And the cops letting us go without even taking our names.

He said something about its seeming the younger generation was taking over New Year’s Eve. He looked at me kind of funny. “Seems like you were pretty lucky, you know. With the cops, I mean. They could have hauled you in.”

I nodded, and he went back in the house. A little while later he had the TV moved into the dining room and was watching the Orange Bowl and drinking a beer from the can.

Mom came down, and I told her about the night before, too, all that I had told Dad and also about Eddie and I dancing with the women. She looked queer when I said they were old women, and she said, “How old?”, and I said thirty or thirty-five.

Tina came down, and we went out in the car and wandered around town all day, seeing people and telling everyone about the fight the night before. Finally Eddie and Freddy and I took her to the airport.

When I got home for supper there was trouble. Mrs. Martin had been on the phone talking to Mom, and everybody was mad at me. Freddy had had to twist things a little to keep his folks from giving him a bad time, and it made it look as though I was to blame for the fight. He hadn’t explained how the other car forced us over.

Then there was the knife, which I hadn’t told Mom or my father about, and they were real mad about that.

So my father called Janie and me into the living room, and with Mom sitting there he lectured us. It got real bad. He’d been watching the bowl games all day and drinking beer, and I guess all the teams he wanted to win got beat. He was drinking bourbon and water now.

Finally he went too far, and I told him so, and Mom started to cry. After a little of this I left.

I drove around a while, up to the Martins’, and talked to Eddie and Freddy, and they said if I wanted I could have my father call them and they’d back me up.

When I got home things had quieted down some. Janie said Mom had told my father he’d gone too far. After a little more talk we let it go.

I was still mad, and so was my father, and Mom was crying a little, but we let it go.

Later, in the kitchen, Mom started asking me about Tina. She always wants to know everything about any girl she sees me with, even only once.

When she asked me if I was going to write Tina in Palm Springs I told her no, I couldn’t, because I didn’t know her last name.