Femme Fatale and other stories

and the days were milder. There was another dance at school and Sofia was going this time. Things had changed. She had changed.
    “Why isn’t Joe picking you up?” her mother asked.
    “We’re meeting there,” Sofia said. “He’s not a
boyfriend
-boyfriend.”
    “I thought he was. You’ve been going to the movies together on weekends, almost every Saturday since St. Patrick’s Day.”
    “Just matinees. Things are different now. We’re just friends. This isn’t a date. But he’ll walk me home, so you don’t have to worry. Okay?”
    “What time does the dance end?”
    “Eleven.”
    “And you’ll come straight home.” A command, not a question.
    “Sure.”
    Sofia shouldn’t have agreed so readily; it made her mother suspicious. She studied her daughter’s face, trying to figure out the exact nature of the lie. Reluctantly, she let Sofia go, yanking her dress down in the back as if she could extend the cloth. Sofia had grown some since her birthday and the pink dress was a little short, but short was the fashion of the day, as were the platform shoes she clattered along in. She had practiced in them off and on for two weeks, and they still felt like those Dutch shoes, big as boats around her skinny ankles, Olive Oyl sandals. Thank God they had ankle straps or she would have fallen out of them in less than a block.
    Two blocks down, where she should have crossed the boulevard to go up to the school, she turned right instead, heading for the tavern. She didn’t go in, of course, but waited by the back door, which was just a back door on Saturday nights, nothing more. Within five minutes, a red Corvette pulled into the parking lot.
    “Hey,” said the man in the driver’s seat, a man she now knew as Brian. He wore his leather jacket with the collar turned up, although the night was a little warm for it.
    “Hey,” she said, getting into the car and pulling her dress so it didn’t bunch up around her.
    “Never seen you in a skirt before, Gino.” That was his joke, calling her “Gino” after Gino Marchetti.
    “And I’ve never seen you in anything but that leather jacket.”
    “Well, technically, this is our first date. There’s a lot we don’t know about each other, isn’t there?”
    Sofia smiled in what she hoped was a mysterious and alluring way.
    “Maybe we should get to know each other better. What do you think?”
    She nodded.
    “My place okay?”
    She nodded again. It had taken her three months to get to this point—three months of careful conversation in Gordon’s parking lot, which began when she threw the ball at the red Corvette, presumably in a fit of celebration upon scoring a touchdown. Brian, who had just pulled up, got out and started screaming, but he settled down fast when Sofia apologized, prettily and tearfully. Plus, she hadn’t damaged the car, not a bit. After that afternoon, he would stand in the lot for a few minutes, watching them play. Watching
her
play, she was sure of it. He brought sodas for everyone. He asked if they wanted to go for ice cream. He took them, one at a time, on rides around the block. Sofia always went last. The rides were short, no more than five minutes, but a lot can happen in five minutes. He told her that he managed a Merry-Go-Round clothing store, offered to get her a discount. She told him she was bored with school and thinking about dropping out. He said he had been married for a while, but he was single now. “I’m single, too,” Sofia said, and he laughed as if it were the funniest thing in the world.
    “Maybe we should go out sometimes, us both being single and all,” he said. That had been yesterday.
    The date made, it was understood that he would not come to her house, shake hands with her father, and make small talk with her mother while Sofia turned a round brush in her hair, trying to feather her bangs. Other things were understood, too. That it would not be a movie date or a restaurant date. Sofia knew what she was signing up for. Her only concern was that he might want to drive someplace, stay in the Corvette, when she wanted to see where he lived.
    So she said as much, when he asked what she wanted to do. “Why don’t we just go to your place?”
    His eyebrows shot up. “Why not?” He passed her a brown bag that he had held between his legs as he drove and she took a careful sip. It wasn’t her first drink, but she recognized that this was something sweet, liquor overlaid with a peppermint flavor, a girly drink