Corliss paused at the directory. “I’ve seen this chain,” she said, pointing to a women’s clothing store called Ooh La La.
“I actually wanted to go into it once, but my stepmother wouldn’t lower herself to go there,” Mayfair said. “She said the styles were too offbeat for her taste and no recognizable designers. To me, that’s the stamp of approval. Let’s get to that ATM first.”
They started right. Their strut seemed to come naturally to them now. It was the way the three walked through the halls and rooms of Spindrift whenever they were together. Not only did they have perfect posture, but they also kept their focus on where they were going. They looked unstoppable and moved in a simultaneous rhythm that was both authoritative and sexy. It was truly as if they heard their own music and moved to their own rhythm.
Almost everyone who saw them paused to watch them go by. After Mayfair withdrew a thousand dollars from the ATM, they found Ooh La La, entered, and considered the clothing displayed.
“I like that blouse,” Corliss said immediately.
“That skirt with the frills,” Donna added, and nodded in another direction.
Corliss brightened and moved quickly to the blouse she admired.
“I’ll try on the skirt,” Donna said, excited.
They separated and began sorting through the merchandise, looking like any other group of teenage girls. Every once in a while, each paused to look at the others to see what was attracting them. How simple this was compared to almost everything else they did, this burst of shopping together. No one had to say it, but they all felt . . . human. They giggled at their appearance when they tried things on. They challenged one another to wear something more astonishing. The salespeople were amused by them and were encouraged to suggest other things. These three did behave as if they had just been released from solitary confinement.
Eventually, Corliss settled on a long-sleeved cable-knit white sweater with a crew neck and tunic length. Donna chose a casual knit turtleneck with classic long sleeves. Mayfair chose a semisheer blouse with a notched collar, long sleeves, and flared cuffs. She tried on a color-block cardigan with an open front, long sleeves, and oversize pockets and at once fell in love with the look, along with a very sexy pair of deliberately overdyed super-stretch pants. She stepped out of the dressing room with her new things on.
“You can’t be the same girl who blew away graduate-level exams when you were in seventh grade,” Corliss said.
“Don’t feel like her. Don’t even remember her.”
“What next?” Donna asked after everything was paid for and they stepped out of the store.
“Explore. Remember, this is a social experiment,” Corliss said.
They strutted through the mall, pausing to look in windows and occasionally at other girls their age. A microbrewery restaurant called Olaf’s was at the far end of the mall. They paused to look through the doorway at the crowd of young people drinking, eating at tall tables, and, whether they liked it or not, listening to the loud music.
“Have to be twenty-one,” Corliss said.
“Only to sit at the bar or order something alcoholic,” Mayfair said. “Let’s get a cup of coffee or a soft drink and observe the natives.”
“How late are we staying?” Donna asked.
“About a half hour more,” Corliss suggested. Fortunately for them, there were no room checks at Spindrift. Privacy was highly prized. After all, you could interrupt some genius on the verge of discovering the cure for cancer or something.
They entered Olaf’s and found a tall table with three chairs. A waitress in a short black skirt and a white top came over immediately.
“Coffee,” Mayfair said. “Please.”
“Do you have lemonade?” Donna asked.
“We do,” the waitress said. “Homemade, too.”
“Make it two,” Corliss said. “Please.”
“Want a side of twirls?” the waitress asked.
“What’s that?” Donna said.
“Fried onions.”
“Okay,” Mayfair said. “But change my coffee to lemonade.”
The waitress left, and they all sat silently, looking at the way girls just a few years older were dressed and how they behaved. There was a joie de vivre, a lightness, anyone could see they envied.
“Don’t you get the feeling sometimes that you’re in another country?” Corliss asked.
Donna and Mayfair nodded.
Mayfair turned slowly to her left. She could feel his eyes on her. A man who looked like a teenager but had to be twenty-one, evidenced by the glass of brew in his hand, was staring at her with a wry smile on his lips. His dark brown hair was swept back on the sides, but his bangs fell to the right on his forehead, reaching just above his eyebrow. He wore a navy-blue leather jacket, a black V-neck T-shirt, and a pair of black jeans that dropped halfway down what looked like grayish-black cowboy boots.
He lifted his glass of beer in a toast to her and sipped it, not moving from the wall against which he leaned. The lights from behind the bar cast a shadow over him, but she could see his softly carved jaw and firm, full lips. In this light, his eyes were dark orbs. He had a Roman nose. His smile tightened the corners of his mouth. Something about her and Donna and Corliss obviously amused him. When they were served their lemonade and fried onion rings, he laughed and then looked away as if his suspicions were correct. She felt as though he had dismissed them.
Slim but with firm shoulders, he looked at everyone else with what she thought was an arrogant disinterest. He shifted and turned, barely washing his gaze over her as he looked to his right. Why the mere sight of him and his obvious dismissal of everyone and everything around him annoyed her she couldn’t say. They just did.
But in a strange way, they also attracted her. She started to analyze why and stopped herself.
Brain, she thought, take a rest. You’ve got the night off.
Why did that feel even more dangerous than sneaking through the fence?
3
The waitress had brought them their drinks and fried onion rings, and for the moment, Corliss and Donna seemed engrossed with that, not seeming to notice the man Mayfair was becoming fixated on. Fried onions, any fast food, was a no-no at Spindrift. The logic was simply that if you could be brilliant about math and science, you certainly could be brilliant about what was healthy to eat and what was not. She wouldn’t be the first at Spindrift to think that sometimes it was a drag to be brilliant.
Mayfair turned back to look at the young man who had smiled and toasted her. He was looking at her again. Why not acknowledge him? She smiled and toasted him, now that she had something with which to toast. His smile brightened, and he literally put his right foot against the wall and kicked himself forward in her direction. Here’s hoping his first words don’t confirm he’s a dumb redneck, she thought. Corliss and Donna finally realized something was happening and looked up in his direction.
“Fish out of water?” he said, stepping close to their table.
“How can you tell?” Mayfair asked.
“I know my fish,” he said. He glanced at Corliss and Donna but focused his gaze firmly on Mayfair. “Why come to a brewpub and not order any brew, unless you’re not old enough to be served any?”
“Maybe we’re just planning our future,” Mayfair said.
He laughed, silently, tossing his head back just a little.
“Are you an undercover detective?” Donna asked him. “Making sure they don’t serve minors?”
He shook his head. “Just undercover. But I’ll take a wild stab at it and say you three are not from here.”
“Now, how can you tell that?” Corliss asked, as if what he’d said was an insult.
“Oh, it’s a lot of things that altogether boil down to my instincts. Let’s sum it up by saying you have a different . . .” He paused, debating the right word. Mayfair was impressed that such a choice was important to him. “Air about you. So? Am I right?”
“Everybody is from so
mewhere else,” Donna said. “Even you.”
“I didn’t say I was from here. Maybe I’m like you, a visitor observing the local yokels.”
Mayfair took a closer look at him. He had unique eyes, almost a gray-black, with eyelashes any girl would envy, a slight beard, trimmed, the hair somewhat lighter, more brown, and a strong, firm mouth that he curled up in the right corner after he spoke. She estimated him to be only an inch or so taller than she was, but his rock-solid look gave the impression he was taller. Although well put together, he radiated an indifference to his appearance. His boots were scuffed badly. Mayfair learned early in her life to look at a man’s shoes first. How well he kept them, how worn they were, and even their style told her things she more often than not confirmed about him later.
“Is there so much here to entice people to visit?” Donna asked. “We skipped the travel brochure.”
His eyes took on a sparkle as he realized the comments and answers from any of these three girls were equally sharp, yet his attention returned to Mayfair. She sensed it and, for the moment, welcomed it.
“It has its charm,” he said. “At least to me.”
“Maybe you’re too easily pleased,” Corliss said dryly.
“What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, I guess,” he said, shrugging.
Mayfair looked at Corliss and then at Donna to see how they were reacting to his responses. She saw they wore identical looks of distrust and wondered just how much of a mirror image of herself they presented. Each had been wounded deeply enough by romantic relationships, especially her, to lean heavily toward the cynical. It almost didn’t matter who had approached their table to talk to one of them. The bridge across the moat wasn’t readily lifted, and there were alligators waiting in the water, jaws open. Who wouldn’t be driven away?
But he just smiled, pulled out the fourth chair, and turned it around so he could sit on it with the back of it between him and them like some shield.
“So, you don’t strike me as high school girls. There’s a community college nearby, but most of the girls there are not twenty-one and don’t come here.”
He leaned in to speak in a voice just above a whisper.
“There are places they can go where they’ll be served, but not here. No, most of the women you see at the bar are either married to someone, going with someone, or working women. I don’t mean ‘working women’ like it might sound.”
“And how might it sound?” Donna asked.
He looked toward the bar. “Call girls, prostitutes. These girls are secretaries, salespeople, some working in this mall. There’s even a nurse or two.”
He sipped his beer. Corliss and Donna looked at Mayfair, obviously to see if she or they should continue talking with him.
“For a visitor, you sure know a lot about the locals,” Donna said.
“I’m a quick study.”
“So we admit we don’t come from here and we’re not in high school,” Mayfair said. “You’ve obviously been around here long enough to reach some conclusions about us. What are you willing to reveal about yourself, or are you the mysterious stranger?”
“Me? I’m an open book. I’m at the end of a journey. This might be as far as I go before I turn back. That’s why I’ve lingered a bit.”
“So what are you, a writer looking for a story?”
“You don’t have to be a writer to look for a story,” he said. He finished his beer and twirled the glass in his hand.
“Then you’re trying to find yourself,” Donna said in the tone of someone who had heard this explanation many times.
“Aren’t you?” he countered. “You have that deer-in-the-headlights look.”
“I beg your pardon. I’m not confused or surprised about anything I see here. If we are trying to find ourselves, I don’t expect we’ll find ourselves here,” Donna said. She looked at Corliss, who closed and opened her eyes in approval, and then she looked at Mayfair. She looked thoughtful, as if searching for ways to be more clever.
“Which doesn’t preclude the possibility that we are looking for ourselves,” Mayfair said.
“Preclude? I knew I should have carried my thesaurus tonight.” He smiled. “College girls, then?”
“Which reminds me,” Donna said. “Curfew?”
“Yes, time to say good-bye,” Corliss said. She signaled the waitress.
“Not just good night? Good-bye sounds so permanent.”
“Probably is,” Donna said.
“Sensitive types,” he said to Mayfair.
She smiled. “I wish we were.”
“Under a curfew?” He looked at his watch. “It isn’t that late.”
The waitress arrived. Mayfair handed her a twenty, and she took it and their bill back to the bar.
He looked at them more suspiciously, perhaps because she hadn’t answered.
“You don’t seem like you’re under twenty-one. What am I missing here?”
“A purpose,” Donna quipped.
Corliss laughed.
He looked like he was between laughing and getting angry. He turned to Mayfair. “Just in case we meet again, my name’s Leo, short for Leonardo.”
“Where are you staying?” Mayfair asked him.
“A motel about four miles toward Palm Springs.”
“Just in case. My name is Mayfair, short for Mayfair,” she said.
He laughed and stood when the waitress returned with her change. She put a tip on the table.
“How long are you staying?” she asked him.
“I have no pending appointments, so it depends on you,” he replied.
Mayfair looked at the other two and laughed. “Then it’s a mystery, I suppose,” she said. “Girls?”
“Why is it I feel like I was just in a game of tennis?” he asked. He was smiling, but he looked a little stunned.
“It’s more fun, don’t you think?” Mayfair replied. “More of a challenge for you. Later you’ll thank us.”
They all rose and started out. He didn’t follow them. He returned to the bar. Mayfair looked back at him, but he didn’t turn their way. Was he feeling blown off? She felt an unexpected dread sink to the base of her stomach. Corliss and Donna looked at her and walked faster.
“You guys are acting quite frightened. Should I? What am I missing?”
Corliss stopped. “I just thought we wouldn’t want him to follow us.”
Mayfair looked back. “I doubt he will.”
“He liked you,” Donna said. “He spoke to us, but it was as if we weren’t there.”
They all walked slower toward the exit.
“He was interesting,” Mayfair admitted.
“Maybe a little too interesting?” Corliss posed.
“If someone drifting through his life is interesting,” Donna said, “then he’s interesting.”
“Isn’t that us?” Mayfair countered.
No one spoke again until they were around the mall and heading for the path back up the hill.
Corliss paused and looked back. Then both Mayfair and Donna did.
“Maybe our smart-ass answers blew him off,” Mayfair said. “It was three against one.”
“Regrets?”
They started up the hill.
“Let’s just say I want to come back down. It didn’t feel meaningless.”
Corliss paused. “Serendipity?”
“Maybe,” Mayfair said. “Or maybe I’m just desperate to get out of myself, and he looked like another way under the fence.”
Neither Corliss nor Donna replied. They walked to the fence in silence.
As they made their way through the woods and the rear entrance of Spindrift, Corliss paused again. “I never thought of it that way, exactly. Like you, I didn’t have a joyful youth and actually had anxiety every morning on my way to school. I suppose I’ve been looking for a hole in the fence for a long time.”
“Isn’t that a bit over the top?” Donna asked. “A bit too dramatic?”
“Is it?” She loo
ked at Mayfair.
“Not for me. You know what I fear the most right now?” Mayfair asked them.
Donna shook her head. “There’s a list from here to the Atlantic, I suppose,” she said.
“No, for me only one thing tonight.”
“Which is what?” Corliss asked.
“That I’ll go back under the fence and down the hill tomorrow night, and he won’t be there,” she said. “It’s not a feeling I’ve had about anyone lately.”
“The hungriest eat poison the fastest,” Donna said.
“We’re all so full of wisdom,” Mayfair muttered. “We’ll have to rewrite Alexander Pope’s warning that a little learning is a dangerous thing. In our case, it’s a lot of learning that’s dangerous.”
Corliss nodded. “Don’t let Dr. Marlowe hear you say that. She’ll have a nervous breakdown.”
Laughter was a welcome relief, but after that, they walked in silence again until they were inside the building.
“Let’s not get caught coming out of here together,” Corliss said. “Don’t go right to your room, either. Make it seem like you’re coming from somewhere else or had another purpose.”
“Pity we’re not really evil,” Donna said. “We could give law enforcement quite a challenge.”
“We’d give everyone that,” Mayfair said, “not just law enforcement.”
They timed their exits. Donna went to the library, Corliss to the science lab, and Mayfair to the lounge area. After an appropriate delay, each made her way to her room. Mayfair, who got into a conversation with Kelly Boson about the moral implications of DNA implants in in vitro fertilization, was the last to reach her room. Neither Kelly nor anyone else who saw Mayfair, for that matter, had made a comment about her new clothes. She didn’t want their opinions to matter, but suddenly their indifference mattered.
When she got into bed, she lay there staring into the darkness. After Alan Taylor had let her down and made her ashamed of her own feelings, she thought it would be impossible to feel any interest in or excitement about another man. She had analyzed herself until she was tired of looking at her own image in a mirror. In her heart of hearts, she had no real expectations for this little escapade with Corliss and Donna. There was some new delight in breaking a cardinal rule at Spindrift, but nothing more to anticipate. Except for what she had done with her stepsister’s teacher, she had never violated a commandment, whether at school or at home. It offered her no self-satisfaction, and most of the time, if there was some regulation against something she wanted to do, she found a legal way around it. There was always something she was able to think of, some weakness in the armor.