“Jesus, Squirt, be careful with that!”
“I took the magazine out,” she said, and held the weapon up to show him that she had. “I’ve never fired one of these.”
“It would knock you on your . . . keister.”
“Says the expert.”
“As a matter of fact, I fired expert with the Thompson.”
“Wow!” she said sarcastically.
Now is not the time to get into a scrap with her.
Never argue with a female holding a Tommy gun.
He struck a pose he thought was like that of a model.
“Well, what do you think?”
Marjorie put the magazine back in the Thompson and then put the weapon back where Clete kept it behind the clothes.
“You look,” she said, “like a high school sophomore wearing your big brother’s clothes about to go on a big date where you will try to seduce a cheerleader.”
“Thank you very much.”
“Worse, you’re still acting like a high school sophomore.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“I saw the way you looked at her, and I saw the way she looked at you. You better hope my mother didn’t.”
“Your mother didn’t what?”
“See the way you were looking at Frau von Wachtstein.”
“How was I looking at Frau von Wachtstein?”
“The way you looked at Miss Schenck.”
“At who?”
“Miss Schenck. The librarian. Don’t try to tell me you’ve forgotten her.”
“No, I haven’t forgotten her,” Jimmy admitted, as he remembered.
“The year you got yourself expelled from Saint Mark’s and came home to Midland . . .”
“I remember that, too.”
“. . . you followed that poor woman around like a suckling calf,” Marjorie, who was just warming up, went on.
“Poor woman? Where’d you get that?”
“She was just out of college. The first job she ever had was in the library. And there is this gawky fourteen-year-old with pimples hanging around the library after school every day—”
“I did not.”
“Yes, you did. You used to stand beside a bookcase and look at her through it.”