The final score was 42 to 9.
Jim had completed over three-quarters of his passes.
She met him outside Balton's showers long after the twenty minutes he had promised. She didn't mind. He was quick to apologize and looked so handsome with his wet hair and equipment bag thrown nonchalantly over his shoulder that she considered herself lucky. She had to remind herself that the purpose of their date – she had begun to call it that in her mind – was to discuss a tragic matter. Jim, though, elated by his team's victory, appeared to have thrown off the gloom of last week's incident.
“I think we scared them in the first few minutes,” he said as they walked towards the parking lot. The night was warm; maybe they'd have another one of those long summers. “They just rolled over and played dead.”
“It looked so easy I was afraid I'd get bored,” she said.
He paused and turned to her. “I hope I didn't bore you.”
She laughed quickly, embarrassed. “No, you were incredible. I don't see how you guys lost a single game last year with you at the helm.”
“I improved a lot since last year. We all did.” He added quietly, “I think playing this game for Todd and Kathy gave us an extra spark tonight.”
She nodded. “I'm sure they appreciate it, wherever they are.”
Jim raised his head to the stars. “Yeah,” he muttered. Then he shook himself. “Are you hungry?”
“I just ate two hot dogs.”
“But you haven't had dessert. Let's go somewhere to eat.”
“OK.” She gestured to the far end of the lot, where her car was parked. “I have my car. Would you like to meet somewhere?”
He grinned. “Afraid to come with me?”
She was glad it was dark and he couldn't see her blush. She poked him in the chest, feeling hard, smooth muscle. “You don't scare me, big boy.”
They did end up taking separate cars back to Point. They met at a local restaurant called Cider Cafe. The game had been relatively early, six thirty, and they were seated in the restaurant before ten o'clock. The place was upscale – there was nobody from school there. Angela remembered Jim's family, like Mary's, had money. Jim ordered a New York steak, shrimp, a baked potato, salad, vegetables and milk. He said he was always starving after a game. She asked for herb tea. The hot dogs had given her indigestion.
“Should we get the unpleasantries out of the way first?” Jim asked as they waited for their food.
“The shootings and Mary?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Jim folded his powerful hands and leaned across the table. His dark eyes, in the light from the candle, were anything but cold. They were warm and most enchanting and she had to consciously stop herself from staring too long into them. “I didn't tell you the whole story at the cemetery about Mary and me,” he said.
“What did you leave out?”
“I told you that I'd said I wanted to go out with other girls? And she freaked out?”
“Yes.”
Jim cleared his throat. “This is embarrassing. I realize now I shouldn't have been so tactless and told her who I wanted to date. At the time, though, I thought it was better to tell her than to have her find out on her own.”
Angela took a deep breath. “Yes?”
“I wanted to ask you out.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” he said.
“You told her that?”
“Yes.”
“You shouldn't have told her that.”
Jim sat back and sighed. “I know that now.”
“God,” Angela said. Then she blinked. Jim Kline wanted to leave Mary for her? Maybe there was something wrong with him. Her amazement forced the question out of her. “Why did you want to go out with me?” she asked.
He appeared to be stunned, then chuckled. “I like you.”
“Why? I mean, you hardly know me.”
“Haven't you ever liked someone you hardly knew?”
“Yes.” A perfect example was sitting right across from her. “But Mary's so incredible.” Angela shook her head. She was flattered and totally confused, “She must been shocked.”
Jim appeared to be disgusted. “Obviously.”
His remark sobered her quickly. “Do you hate her?”
“No. Yes. I can't hate her, but I want to. Todd was my friend.”
“How about Kathy?” She was already thinking about the competition.
“Kathy was a friend, too. We all used to go out together.”
“Mary told me.”
Jim's interest was piqued. “What did she tell you?”
Angela paused. Just being in a restaurant with Jim made her feel disloyal to Mary. There was no sense embarrassing Mary in front of Jim. “She said that you grew cold and uninterested,” Angela said carefully.
Jim was impatient. “That happens when people break up. I thought she would have been mature enough to accept what was happening and get on with her life. What else did she tell you?”
“Nothing.”
“Did you see her Saturday morning?” he asked.
“I told you I did. She refused to tell me why she did it. She didn't mention anything about you wanting to go out with me.”
“I didn't mean to lay such a heavy rap on your shoulders.”
“It's not your fault,” she said quickly, her heart pounding in her chest. She didn't want to say what she did next, but she owed it to Mary. “Mary's still my friend.”
Jim nodded. “I understand if you don't want to see me.”
“I didn't . . .”
“Angie?”
“What?”
“What were you going to say?” he asked.
“I don't know.”
“I guess this is all too quick for you,” Jim said sympathetically.
She stared at the candle on the table, then back into Jim's eyes. They had flecks of purple around the irises; she had never noticed that before. Such unusual eyes. She imagined she could see the flame of the candle burning behind them.
He's too hot for me.
“I like you,” she said softly.
Again he was interested. “What do you like about me?”
The body you are wearing under those clothes.
“Your piercing intellect and subtle wit,” she said.
He smiled. “You're making fun of me.”
She shrugged. “I just like you. You’re cute.”
He reached over and took her hands in his. “You’re cute.”
He could see the blood in her cheeks now. “Next to Mary I look like old wallpaper.”
“Mary's in jail. Mary's going to stay in jail. Let's not talk about her anymore.” He raised a finger as she started to protest. His tone had gone hard all of a sudden. “At least not tonight. All right? Let's have fun.”
She lowered her head, feeling like Judas. “All right.”
Jim's food came, and he ate. Boy, did he eat. She sipped her tea and restrained herself from lecturing him on the virtues of chewing. When he had cleared his plate he ordered dessert – cheesecake – and insisted she have a bite. He liked it so much he had a double helping, although she thought it dry.
But she liked watching him eat. Just watching him.
He paid for the meal with his father's credit card.
“What do you want to do now?” he asked as they stepped outside into the night air. The warmth of the day continued to linger, although it was getting close to midnight.
“Go to bed,” she said.
He laughed and clapped her on the back. “You Chicago girls get right down to business, don't you?”
“I meant sleep.” He had hit her a bit harder than she would have preferred. But he was so darling that it was OK.
He continued to chuckle. “I know what you meant. I didn't mean to embarrass you.”
“We Chicago girls don't get embarrassed that easily.”
“Wow. What’s that mean?”
She giggled. “I'm not that tired. Follow me back to my house in your car. We can go
for a walk.”
“Along the lake?” he asked.
“Wherever you'd like, Jim.”
Jim almost killed them both when he arrived at her house. He tried pulling in beside her in the driveway, but there wasn't room. He ended up banging her grandfather’s propane tank with the front bumper on his four-wheel drive. He leapt out of the vehicle when he saw what he'd done.
“Did I break the seal on it?” he asked. Reaching inside his truck, he eased the vehicle back slightly.
Angela dashed over to the tank. Being from a city, she wasn’t experienced with propane. She studied the tank in his headlights. He had definitely dented the metal, and it worried her. He joined her a moment later, touching the twisted white curve with his big hand.
“I think it's OK,” he said.
“Are you sure? Should I wake my grandfather?”
“It’s fine for now. If it was leaking, we'd know it. But it should be checked in the morning. If it needs to be repaired, I'll pay for it.”
“It won't explode?” When she had originally moved into the house she had felt as if she were sleeping next to an atomic bomb.
“It’d take a full collision to get a tank like this to explode.” Jim paused to study the length of the forty-foot prone cylinder. “But I'm surprised your grandfather has such a big tank. You usually find ones this size on a farm, where a huge barn has to be heated.”
“My grandfather explained to me that until ten years ago there used to be five houses around here. They all used the same tank.”
“What happened to them?”
“I think they burned down,” Angela said. “You would have been eight then. Do you remember anything like that?”
“Vaguely.”
“You have lived in Point all your life, haven't you?”
“Yeah.” He nodded to the tank. “A big fire could have set this sucker off.”
“What would such an explosion do?” she asked.
“If the tank had just been filled, it would blow away the house.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”
“I think my grandfather just had it filled.”
He laughed. “Then I’II try not to run into it again.”
Angela had visions of huge explosions in her head. For no reason they excited her. “If it blew, would it make a crater in the ground?”
“What?”
“You know, like a small meteor had hit here?”
“I don't think it would do that. Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering,” she said.
Angela ran inside to use the bathroom before they went for their walk. Jim followed her in. Plastic was asleep on the living-room sofa. The dog didn't even stir. Naturally, her grandfather wasn't home. Jim made a joke about him and said he had quite a reputation around town. He almost sounded envious.
A few minutes later they were walking hand in hand along the shore of the lake. Angela didn't know who had reached for whom, but together felt right. Her guilt about Mary stayed with her, but she tucked it aside. She could worry about it later. Her fingers almost disappeared inside Jim's. They walked without saying much, and that was nice. A half moon hung low in the west, the silver rays glittering on the water, on the bare skin of their arms. The sound was the rhythmic swish of oil wells high up on the hills that overlooked the lake. Although partly hidden by trees, Angela felt the wells were an unnecessary blight on the local beauty. She said as much to Jim.
“Those wells make a fortune,” he said. “They've pumped better than a thousand barrels a day for the past five years. And they don't make much noise. You can only hear them now because it's late and everything's quiet. They're modern wells and work on air pressure rather than gasoline motors.”
“You sound like you like them.”
He grinned. “My dad owns a twenty per cent interest in all twelve of them. That car I drive came from money from those wells.”
She let go of his hand and shoved him playfully in the side. “Here you're not even out of high school, and you've sold out to the money-hungry destroyers of our environment.”
He grabbed her and pulled her close. “Who cares about this world? It's only here for our pleasure.”
“What about our children? And our children's children?”
“I can't worry about them.”
“You should,” she said, feeling his warm breath on her face.
“Why? They might never be born.”
He kissed her. He kissed the way he ate, and that wasn't bad. Deep and hard, but still with enjoyment. She felt herself sink into him; he pulled her tight against his body. He was like a redwood, strong and firm. His arms went round her, and his hands went down her back and over her butt. He was aggressive – Mary had told her. But she wasn't Mary, although last summer she wished many times she had been. She wasn't an expert in the art of making love. She had never even had a guy touch her below the waist. Jim moved his right hand to the front of her blouse and started to slip it down. God, it felt good, just his fingers getting close. But she pulled back.
“Don't I get a chance to come up for air?” she asked, trying to joke.
He reached for her. “I'll give you my air.”
She held up her hand. “Hold on a sec. This is a little fast for me.”
He smiled. He dropped his hands to his side and stared out at the water. “Do you want to go for a swim?” he asked.
“The water's too cold.”
He started removing his shirt. “Hah! We're both hot. Besides, the night's warm. Come on.”
“I don't have a bathing suit.”
He pulled his shirt over his head, laughing. “That's the best part.”
Angela felt dismayed. This was their first date, after all. Nothing like this had ever happened to her in Chicago. Jim unzipped his trousers and began to pull them off. It didn’t look as if he was wearing underwear.
“Wait,” she said.
“What?”
“I can't swim,” she lied.
“We don t have to go out deep.”
“I have a cold.”
“Angie.”
“I'm just getting over one, really. I shouldn't go in the water.”
He threw back his head and laughed at the moon. “I’m going swimming. You can join me if you want, or you can watch. But you'd better be careful if you watch, because I might suddenly jump out and pull you in. I've done it before, you know.”
She giggled nervously. “I didn't know that.”
Angela tried not to look while he pulled off his trousers, but she ended up getting an eyeful. He had a nice – well, he was a nice boy, in all respects. Great buns.
Except he was kind of pushy, a side of him she had never seen before. It was funny how you really didn’t know someone till you got intimate with them.
This is not intimacy. This is sexual insanity.
Jim ran naked into the water, splashing like a kid. At waist level he dived under, and she counted more heartbeats than she wanted before he reappeared, at least fifty yards further out. He was a powerful swimmer. The light of the moon swam around him, and the ripples he sent out were like miniature silver waves.
“Come on!” he called.
“Next time!” she called back.
He swam to the centre of the lake, a quarter of a mile out, and had her worried that he'd cramp up and drown. But then he rolled on to his back and leisurely began to paddle back in. She took off a shoe and touched the water with her foot. She shook her head. It must be fed with underground streams, she thought. The daytime temperature had averaged over eighty degrees for the last few months, and the water couldn't have been more than sixty degrees.
Jim must have a hardy constitution.
She saw an example of that hardy constitution a few minutes later when he reached the shore and came running out of the water towards her. She couldn't believe it. Until a few days ago her life was dull, and now she had a hunk, naked no less, chasing her in the middle of the night. She took one look at him and realized he had eve
ry intention of dragging her into the water, clothes and all. She ran off the grassy shore, across View Street, and into trees. She'd be damned if Jim wasn't still hot on her tail.
“I have a cold!” she shouted back to him.
“I don't believe you!” he answered.
Angela darted behind a clump of bushes, hoping to lose him, and bent down low to hide. She figured he'd be able to spot her in a second and had resigned herself to a drenching when she suddenly heard him cry out in pain. She stood up tentatively, figuring it might be a ruse. But she spotted him only fifty feet away kneeling beside a tree, holding his right arm. It looked as if he'd tripped and cut himself. Surprisingly, he had his trousers on again.
He gets dressed and undressed faster than anybody I’ve ever seen.
She hurried to his side and helped him up.
“I guess I was in too much of a hurry to catch you,” he said rather sheepishly.
“God,” she whispered. His right arm was covered with blood. She couldn't even see where the cut was. “What happened?”
“I ran into a tree.” He touched the tree they were standing beside. “This one.”
“Does it hurt?”
“The tree? It did when it came running at me.”
She giggled. “Silly. That's what you get for trying to drench me. Come on, let's go back to my place. I can dress it for you.”
He was agreeable to the idea at first. But when they got to where he had deposited his shirt he wanted to wash the cut in the lake and bandage it with his shirt – tear it into strips, in other words. The wound was still bleeding, but Angela thought that was a bit extreme.
“Why don't you just put pressure on it?” she suggested. “That will stop the bleeding.”
“Because it hurts. I don't want to touch it.”
She nodded to the lake. “Is this water clean enough?”
“We drink it every day at school.”
“So I've heard.”
“What have you heard?” he asked.
“Never mind. OK, let's wash it.” She reached down and picked up his shirt. “At least we'll be able to see how bad it is.”
“I’m surprised how much it stings,” Jim said. She suspected it was a nasty cut indeed. He hesitated before dipping it in the water. She knelt beside him and got her trousers wet, too.