Evenings Cat and I play records, or we go to see Aunt Kate and drink iced tea. One weekend my real aunt comes to visit and sleeps in my room, so I go to stay with Aunt Kate, and I pretty near turn into cottage cheese.
I’ve about settled into this dull routine when Mom surprises me by handing me a postcard one morning. It’s from Tom: “Day off next Tuesday. If you feel like it, meet me near the aquarium at Coney Island about nine in the morning, before it’s crowded.”
So that week drags by till Tuesday, and there I am at Coney Island bright and early. Tom is easy enough to find, pacing up and down the boardwalk like a tiger. We say “Hi” and so forth, and I’m all ready to take a run for the water, but he keeps snapping his fingers and looking up and down the boardwalk.
Finally he says, “There’s a girl I used to know pretty well. I didn’t see her for a while till last week, and we got in an argument, and I guess she’s mad. I wrote and asked her to come swimming today, but maybe she’s not coming.”
I figure it out that I’m there as insurance against the girl not showing up, but I don’t mind. Anyhow, she does show up. It can’t have been too much of an argument they had, because she acts pretty friendly.
Tom introduces us. Her name is Hilda and a last name that’d be hard to spell—Swedish maybe—and she’s got a wide, laughing kind of mouth and a big coil of yellow hair in a bun on top of her head, and a mighty good figure. She asks me where I ran into Tom, and we tell her all about Cat and the cellar at Number Forty-six, and I tell them both about my Ivy-League haircut, which I had never explained to anyone before. They get a laugh out of that, and then she asks him about the filling-station job, and he says it stinks.
I figure they could get along without me for a while, so I go for a swim and wander down the beach a ways and eat a hot dog and swim some more. When I come back, I see Tom and Hilda just coming out of the water, so I join them. Hilda says, “Come have a coke. Tom says he’s got to try swimming to France just once more.”
I don’t know just what she means, but we go get cokes and come back and stretch out in the sun. She asks me do I want a smoke, and I say No. It’s nice to be asked, though. We watch Tom, who is swimming out past all the other people. I wish I’d gone with him. I say, “Lifeguard’s going to whistle him in pretty soon. He’s out past all the others.”