"Now I do."
She turned away and moved easily down the rock, agile as a cat.
She walked toward Steve and Kimberley. I watched her. There was a stupid grin on my face and very little immediate possibility of making it go away. I watched the easy grace of her. There was nothing to do but stand there until the muscles of my face worked again.
The others got out of their clothes.
Kimberley had larger breasts than I'd have expected. They were heavy-nippled, slung low and wide apart but very pretty, very lush.
She had a prominent mound of red-gold pubic hair. A little more in hip and thigh than I'd have asked for in the best of all possible worlds, but very much a green-eyed eyeful. Steven was hung like a ranch animal. And he wasn't shy at all.
I have cheap thoughts sometimes. They just come to me, unbidden. I had one now. I thought I was beginning to understand why Kim kept looking at him so fondly.
But I couldn't keep my eyes off Casey.
She waded into the sea and I watched the frigid water tighten her skin again. I thought I'd never seen anything so beautiful. She looked up at me, and I felt a clear silent summons. The grin was gone by then, so I climbed down off the rock. Compared to her I felt clumsy. A little muscle but no style.
"Come on in."
"You're kidding."
"Oh, come on. It's no big deal."
"Neither is pneumonia."
She swirled the water gently around her calves.
"Now look. Steven doesn't swim and Kim's a chicken. Are you going to make me do this all by myself?"
"I'll get my jeans wet."
"So take them off."
"My shirt, then."
"That too." She laughed.
What the hell, (thought. It was an easy way to get naked in front of them. I needed an excuse.
I let the clothes lie where I dropped them. I saw her watching me and felt two sets of eyes from behind. Hope it's up to snuff, I
thought. But I've never been much for display. So as soon as I moved out of my shorts I ran for the water. She dove in ahead of me. The last thing I saw was a slim pair of legs sliding in the water, toes pointed. A clean, perfect dive.
Mine was not so perfect. As soon as I hit the water I went rigid with the sheer numbing shock of it. It was like diving into a vat of scotch on the rocks. Colder.
I exploded to the surface with ash out Pure agony. Then immediately I felt her arm around my waist, so I shook the water out of my eyes and grabbed for her, laughed and heard her laughing and pulled her to me hard while she did the same to me. And suddenly there was body heat between us, enough to make the water seem fifteen degrees warmer.
I felt her hand slide over my buttocks and I pulled her closer still, and felt myself rising through the tiny space of freezing water so that just a moment later I was nestled between her legs. Her laugh was more private this time, just for the two of us. She scissored her legs together, trapping me in there, in a small hot nexus between them. I must have groaned.
"Not yet," she said softly. "Not yet but very soon."
And that was the first time I kissed her, there in the deathly freezing sea.
The taste of her was salty. Her mouth was rich and soft, all tongue and teeth and roaring heat.
When we came out of the water Kim was smiling at us. The classic cat-and-the-canary grin. Though it was caviar on her fingertips and not bird meat. She looked at us and spread her arms so that the breasts jiggled slightly and said, "Love!" Just that.
Steven pointed his finger at me.
"You having fun, buddy?"
"I am, yes."
We all laughed.
It wasn't love exactly. But it wasn't disinterest, either.
My phony aunt took a long time dying.
We went to the beach almost every day. It was always the same place.
We always stole our lunches. In one way or another, there was always the nude flirting.
Despite my resolve to be patient, my frustration level ran high. I began to wonder if Casey wasn't just another cold-assed tease. But there was something about her that was different from the others I'd met, a kind of questioning, a searching, a steady appraisal of me that seemed to carry a more serious intent than anything I was used to.
So I stuck around.
VI
On the way back home one day I took them down the coast road toward Lubec. You could see the old house way off to the left, slouched against the cliffs in the dim half-light of dusk. Casey was driving and Steven sat in the back with me.
"That's the house," I told him. "The one I talked about."
"The Crouch place?"
"Yeah."
He turned around to have a look. By then we'd almost passed it. I was watching Casey's hair tossing in the wind. There is something about a handsome woman in a sports car that is, one of the best things summer has to offer.
He turned back around and saw me watching her. I caught his expression: a slight frown. He'd been quiet with me lately. I knew there was jealousy there. But at the same time I felt a kind of tacit
acceptance of me that hadn't been present at first, a knowledge that I was there for the duration. He was verging on the genuine. The gaudy Hawaiian shirt seemed slightly out of place now.
"I thought you said nobody lived there."
"Nobody does."
He shrugged. "I saw a light."
I turned around. The house was too far behind us now. All I saw was darkness.
"Where?"
"Upstairs. The second floor, I guess."
"That's impossible."
He shrugged again.
"I saw a light," he said.
I was drinking beers with Rafferty in the Caribou after work the following day. So I asked him. Rafferty collects a lot of scuttlebutt at the station.
"Is anybody in the Crouch place now?"
"You kidding?"
"No."
"Not that I heard of."
"That's what I thought."
"Why? You want to rent or something?"
His grin was slightly feral. Rafferty remembered the Crouch place as well as I did.
"We drove by last night. Steven said he thought he saw a light."
"Where?"
"In a second-floor window."
"He didn't see shit."
It came out pretty hostile. There was some resentment, I thought, of my relationship with these people. Maybe he was a little jealous. He'd seen Casey. And maybe he was already thinking what I was not-not yet-that they represented a way out of Dead River. They'd met Rafferty but had shown no interest. I hadn't pushed the matter. There was me and Casey and Steven and Kim. Two boys, two girls. Rafferty was not included.
"If anybody was out there, I'd know. They'd have to come by for gas now and then. Your friend was mistaken."
I knew that last bit was meant to soften it slightly.
"I guess he was, George."
We sipped our drinks. Rafferty stared straight ahead at the old Pabst clock over the bar. Then I saw a grin starting.
"Of course, I wouldn't know about kids playing out there."
I smiled back at him. "Now, what kid in his right mind would want to do that?"
"Wouldn't know."
It had been me and Rafferty once. We'd wanted to. And were much too spooked to try. We'd managed to get as far as the garbage cans and a peek through the cellar window before Jimmy Beard cried wolf on us and ran us off. Maybe kids were bolder now. The memory of it reunited us once again.
"You'd have to be completely crazy," he said.
"Completely."
He pulled on his beer, emptied it.
"God knows."
It had been a miserable day at work. Too much heat. It frayed the customers' nerves and it frayed mine. I kept thinking of the beach, of Casey's belly tanning in the sun. It made me restless but it got me by.
I went home and showered and shaved, drank a cup of coffee and wolfed down a hamburger to go from The Sugar Bowl, a local greasy
spoon. I dressed and went downstairs. The old black pickup, all body rust and squeaky hinges, stood waiting for me across the street. I drove to her place and parked it.
It was a very big house for three people to live in. I wondered if her mother had help with it. Help would be easy to find and cheap to hold in Dead River.
I climbed the steps to the freshly painted white front porch and rang the bell. There were lights on in the living room. I heard a deep sigh, then the sound of slow steps crossing the room.
Her father opened the door.
He was a big man, broad across the shoulders and still trim at somewhere around fifty, with thinning gray-brown hair, black-frame glasses and an inch or two of height on me-six-two or six-three. He looked tired. His color wasn't good. He blinked at me through the half-open door and I could see where Casey's eyes had come from, though his own were maybe one-quarter shade darker.
"Yes?"
I put out my hand.
"Clan Thomas, Mr. White. Casey's expecting me."
He looked sort of muddled and shook my hand distractedly. I wondered if the bad color came from drinking.
"Oh. Yes. Come in."
He moved aside and opened the door wider. I walked in. Inside the house was very handsome. A lot better than the usual summer rental.
Most of the furnishings were old, antiques, not exactly top quality but in good condition. The wood looked freshly polished. And there was an old rolltop desk off to one corner that was a beauty.
He called up the stairs to her. The answer sounded rushed and faraway.
"Coming!"
Neither of us sat. Nor were we able to think of much to say. I guessed he'd been reading the paper when I rang, because he was clutching it now, rolled up tight, in one big meaty fist. Sick or not, I wouldn't have wanted him mad at me.
Casey had said he was a banker, but it was hard to picture him hunched over a desk toting up a row of figures. Except for the sal low color you'd have pegged him for outdoor work. I wondered how he'd gotten those shoulders. Then I looked around the room a bit and saw the big framed photo on the wall over the desk, and that told me.
He saw me looking and smiled.
"Wrestling team. Yale, 1938. That's me, last one on the left. Had a pretty good record that year. Twelve wins, two losses."
"Not bad."
He sat down, sighing, in the big overstuffed chair beside the fireplace. There was no enthusiasm in his smooth baritone. It was flat, dead. Like the eyes were dead. They were Casey's eyes but there was nothing in them, no animation, not even the strange fathomless ness I found so attractive in hers. His eyes could have been colored glass.
I wondered if he was sick, or even dying.
There was the inevitable small talk. What do you do for a living?
"I sell lumber."
He nodded meaninglessly. There was silence. He was staring at something in front of him. I tried to follow his gaze, but his question called me back.
"Can you make a living at that?"
"Barely. But there aren't too many options here. Boats make me seasick."
"Me too." He laughed. He wasn't amused, though. The laugh was meaningless too.
"Nice place you've got here."
I told you I was fabulous at conversation.
More nodding.
I was making all the impact of a spot on the rug. Luckily he didn't seem to care. I had the feeling that as far as he was concerned, I
We heard footsteps on the stairs. He glanced up at me sharply and for once his eyes seemed to focus. Ah, a human being standing there.
"Take care of my daughter, Mr. Thomas." "Yes, sir."
The footsteps descended. I saw him staring away from me again, and this time I followed the sight lines across the room to a small table cluttered with vase, flowers, ashtray, and a pair of gilt-frame photographs. One was a few-years-old photo of Casey. A high school graduation photo, probably. The other was a studio portrait of a young brown-eyed boy, maybe six or seven years old, smiling in that shy funny way kids have of smiling without showing you their teeth.
Casey had never mentioned a brother.
I looked at Mr. White. He was staring intently at the photographs.
The high, pale forehead was studded with creases. The flesh gleamed.
I wondered if it was Casey he was staring at or the boy.
"Ready?"
She swung down the stairs and the T-shirt looked painted on. By a very steady hand. She stood there slightly out of breath, smiling, smelling very clean and freshly showered.
She moved to her father and pecked him on the cheek. "Bye, Daddy."
He managed to raise a weak smile. I could not see much in the way of affection between them. "You'll be late?"
"Don't know. Maybe. Say goodnight to mother for me."
"Yes."
He stood up absentmindedly but with some effort. It was learned behavior but its hold on him was stronger than the discomfort it caused him. Or that's how it looked to me. When a lady leaves the room, you stand. Even if it's your daughter. It was years of habit talking. But it wasn't making life any easier for him.
Like everything else I'd seen him do, its net effect was zero. Except to make you wonder where all that lethargy came from. Here was a man, I thought, inhabiting a great big void.
"Good night... young man," he said.
He'd forgotten my name.
"Good night, sir."
We walked outside into the warm summer night. I was glad to be out of there.
She looked at the pickup across the street.
"You really want to take that thing?"
"I don't care."
"Let's take the Chevy, then. Kim and Steve would never forgive me."
She turned and headed for the driveway. I grabbed her arm.
"Suppose we make a deal?"
"What's that?"
"We take the Chevy. But tonight we skip Kim and Steve."
She laughed. "They're expecting us."
"Call in sick. Say you've got your period."
"I can't do that." Sure you can.
"Suppose they see us driving around town or something?"
I shrugged. "You got better again."
We climbed into the car. I watched her mull it over for a minute. She was smiling and I had the feeling I was winning this one. She started up the car. I leaned over and took her chin in my hand, turned her toward me and kissed her. At first I kissed smiling lips and teeth.
Then there was heat and a brittle hunger.
HShe pulled away.
"You convinced me."
We drove to the phone booth in front of Harmon's. She got out, and I watched her under neon light. Dialing the number, talking. I guess she got a little argument. Then she turned toward me and made a circle with her thumb and forefinger. A moment later she smiled and hung up.
She climbed back into the car and slammed the door.
"I have my period. Kim will tell Steven. He's not going to like it much. But."
"But."
I kissed her.
"What is it with Steven, anyway?"
"You mean with Steven and me."
I nodded. She laughed at me.
"We were kids together. Next-door neighbors. When we were real little, we even talked about getting married some day. You know how kids do. Then we grew up. At least some of us did."
"He's going to Harvard."
"There are plenty of kids at Harvard, dear."
"So where does Kim come into it?"
"Oh, some seven or eight years later. I met her in junior high. I introduced them. His parents and mine and Kim's all became friends eventually anyway, so they'd have met sooner or later. All the same, I take complete credit for putting that together. And I'll tell you, back in high school it was a very heavy thing. They were both sort of... precocious, I guess you'd say. Kim developed quite a reputation.
Deservedly, of course."
"And they've been together all this time?"
"We have. We've s
tayed together. Sometimes I feel like we're linked at the hip, the three of us. We've had some rough spots, but they pass. If you want me, you take Kim. And if you want Kim, you take me.