At last they escaped and he got them a couple of fried hot dogs and a Dixie cup filled with greasy french fries that tasted the way french fries hardly ever do once you've gotten past your fifteenth year.

They passed a kooch joint. Three girls stood out front in sequined skirts and bras. They were shimmying to an old Jerry Lee Lewis tune while the barker hawked them through a microphone. “Come on over baby,” Jerry Lee blared, his piano boogying frankly across the sawdust-sprinkled arcades. “Come on over baby, baby got the bull by the horns… we ain't fakin… whole lotta shakin goin on…

“Club Playboy,” Johnny marveled, and laughed. “There used to he a place like this down at Harrison Beach. The barker used to swear the girls could take the glasses right off your nose with their hands tied behind their backs.”

“It sounds like an interesting way to get a social disease,” Sarah said, and Johnny roared with laughter.

Behind them the barker's amplified voice grew hollow with distance, counterpointed by Jerry Lee's pumping piano, music like some mad, dented hot rod that was too tough to die, rumbling out of the dead and silent fifties like an omen. “Come in, men, come on over, don't be shy because these girls sure aren't, not in the least little bit! It's all on the inside… your education isn't complete until you've seen the Club Playboy show…

“Don't you want to go on back and finish your education?” she asked.

He smiled. “I finshed my basic course work on that subject some time ago. I guess I can wait a while to get my Ph. D.”

She glanced at her watch. “Hey, it's getting late, Johnny. And tomorrow's a school day.”