Marty sighed. He looked at his watch, saw that it was almost time to make his move.
Lorraine passed the bottle to him. He decided to take a swig to humor her.
As he was doing so, his mother pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. Marty gagged on the gin, he was so shocked.
“Jesus!” he cried, his voice sounding terribly strident. “You smoke, too?”
Lorraine looked at him and rolled her eyes to the top of her head.
“I’m serious,” he said. “You shouldn’t do it. Cigarette smoking is danger—”
“Come on,” she said. “I sort of understand that it’s not exactly ladylike to drink, but smoking is nice. There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“Are you kidding? Everything’s wrong with it.”
“Like what?” she countered.
“It’s unhealthy.”
“Then why do doctors advertise it on TV?”
“Because the cigarette lobby’s too powerful—”
“Oh, bull,” she replied. “Everybody knows smoking’s good for your circulation. It also calms your nerves and soothes the heart.”
“Soothes the heart! My God, it’ll give you all sorts of heart problems. And lung cancer. Look! It says right here on the pack—”
He took the cigarette pack from her and looked for the Surgeon General’s warning. It was not there. Instead, there was a line, obviously written by the cigarette manufacturer, which read: “This fine blend of Turkish and domestic tobaccos calms the nerves, improves the circulation, gives you a sense of well-being.”
“Good God!” Marty whistled.
He handed the pack back. Somehow he’d avoided smoking all his life and he wasn’t about to start now.
Lorraine regarded him with an irritated glare. “You know, you sound just like my mother,” she said. “It’s really stupid the way parents don’t understand their kids and try to run their lives for them. When I have kids, I’m gonna let them do anything they want. Anything. And I’m not gonna lecture them or say how it was different back in the good old days when I was young. No, sir, they’re not gonna get any of that crap from me.”
“I’d sure like to have that promise in writing,” Marty smiled.
The remark went over Lorraine’s head.
They sat silently for a few moments, Lorraine occasionally sucking on the gin bottle while Marty continued to look at his watch or out the rear-view mirror. It was already past the appointed time. Where the hell was George?
“Are you looking for somebody?” Lorraine asked.
“Uh…yeah. Strickland. Just wanted to make sure he’s not out on patrol.”
“He’s got enough to worry about inside,” Lorraine smiled. Putting the bottle back in her purse, she slid closer to him. “So tell me what your parents are like? Are they as square as mine?”
“Lately,” Marty said softly. “I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t know anything about them.”
“That’s a shame.”
George felt weak and cold and on the verge of fainting, like the time he’d stuck his finger in the gears of a portable cement mixer his father had rented and nearly severed the end of it. Fifteen minutes before the time he was due outside, his abdomen had been wracked with serious pain, causing him to rush to the men’s room twice. Now, as the hour of nine rapidly approached, he experienced a new wave of spasms too powerfully unrelenting to ignore. He knew it was a bad case of nerves, that his cowardly body and mind were collaborating to keep him inside, away from possible embarrassment or failure. Knowing this, however, did not lessen the pain. If anything, it intensified it. Bent nearly double, he stumbled toward the men’s room for the third time.
Inside, class prankster Mark Dixon and several other boys were sneaking a smoke and talking. Suddenly, the bathroom door slammed open so hard it seemed as if a raid were in progress.
“Jesus!” Dixon shouted, dropping his cigarette into the urinal.
Instead of Gerald Strickland, they saw only a white-faced George McFly. He grimaced at them and moved quickly to a stall.