“Me too. I mean I was afraid you wouldn’t.”
“Mom and Pop thought I was crazy. I spent about an hour arguing with them. What’d your mother say?”
“Nothing. She thinks I’m walking alone with the wind in my hair, thinking poetic thoughts.”
“Huh? What for?”
Mary shrugs. “Mom’s like that. You’ll see. Come on, let’s go home and make cocoa or something to warm up, and then we’ll think up something to do. We can’t just stand here.”
She’s right about that, so I don’t argue. Her house is a few blocks away, a two-family type with a sloped driveway going down into a cellar garage. Neat. My pop is always going nuts hunting for a place to park.
Mary goes in and shouts, “Hi, Nina! I brought a friend home. We’re going to make some cocoa. We’re freezing.”
I wonder who Nina is. I don’t hear her mother come into the kitchen. Then I turn around and there she is. Holy crow! We got some pretty beat-looking types at school, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen a beatnik mother.
She’s got on a black T-shirt and blue jeans and old sneakers, and her hair is in a long braid, with uneven bangs in front.
Mary waves a saucepan vaguely at us both and says, “Nina—Davey—this is my mother.”