wishbook

From under the living room sofa I pulled out the Wishbook catalog and took it out to the porch swing with my root beer float. For Christmas that year, Billie complained that there hadn’t been enough presents under the tree and so Dad promised us that he would turn our basement into a game room. He had described a room to us where we’d soon be shooting pool in, playing a quarter-free pinball machine, drinking soda and eating chips from a wet bar. “We’ll move the stereo down there, too,” he had said, “So you kids can have some parties . . .” But all he had done for the game room was coat the cinder-block walls with sheets of plywood and tacked up some posters of Lamborgini, Ferrari, Porsche – that sort of thing. This is how I got into the routine of the Wishbook catalog. I had every corner of what of my dream game room should consist of circled with a red pen: air hockey, Atari, bubble gum machine, beanbag chairs, etc. Plus there was one girl I really liked in the lingerie section. She had a round shell of black hair and was dressed in pair of white panties with a large baby-blue robe pouring over her shoulders. Not that I thought she belonged in our game room. I didn’t know where she belonged.