“Gauguin.”
“Yeah. Gauguin.”
“So how is everyone at Willowridge?”
“Well, the MHs are the same. There’s this new guy, Colin, from England, who’s into Gestalt and makes everyone play these games where you have to say stuff like: I am this Coke bottle and I feel empty. Everyone in our group is gone except for old Doug.”
“What’s up with him?”
“They want to discharge him, but he obviously can’t live with his mom, and his father won’t take him. And you know how he feels about halfway houses.”
“So what’s going to happen?”
“I have no idea. He’s going to have trouble finding a job, that’s for sure, with the way he looks now.”
“How about Rachel?”
“Her parents packed her off to some spa in Germany.”
“I can see it. She’ll probably meet a rich Italian count there and live happily ever after. What about Lillith? Has anyone heard from Lillith?”
“Didn’t you get the postcard?”
“What postcard?”
“She sent you a p.c. at Willowridge, I thought they’d forwarded it. She’s out, honey, back at that place she was living before.”
“That’s good, I suppose.”
“I thought about stopping by on my way down here, but I wanted to make good time. I guess I’ll go see how she’s doing when I get back.”
We parked in the lot across from the Don Ce Sar. I’d asked Aunty Mabel which beach we had gone to the time we came down to visit as kids, and she told me that it had been turned into a resort on Gulf Boulevard. Private, for guests only. A couple of days ago I’d cased it out for myself. The main building was huge, sprawling, and pink, in a kind of faux-mission style, like something out of Disneyland. I’d parked on the street and peeked into the glass doors of the lobby. It had seemed almost deserted.
“You better lose those earrings,” Mel said to me, so I took them off and put them in the glove compartment. I’d already changed into my Montgomery Ward bathing suit back at the house. When we strolled through the air-conditioned lobby in our ratty outfits, we got looks from the personnel, but I didn’t care because I was with Mel. Somehow he inspired me to bend the rules. Out back, we took off our shoes and strolled along the water, digging our toes into the talcum white sand I remembered. Seagulls, smaller and scruffier and darker than their northern counterparts, stalked along the waves as we passed.
I could have walked all afternoon, but Mel had the sailing bug. We found a concession stand with boats for hire. He bargained with the guy. A Sunfish was too small, but it was late in the day, how about a Hobie Cat for half price? We would stay in sight, the guy didn’t have to worry. The boat Mel picked was fancy with a striped sail—blue, red, yellow—and as we dragged it over the sand to the water he explained to me that what looked like skis on it were pontoons, for speed.
“How fast are we going to go, anyway?”
“Live a little, Sal. This isn’t the real ocean, anyway, no one’s going to be racing.”
We cast off on a little foamy wave, and there was so much to do, Mel yelling orders and me trying not to get creamed by the boom, that by the time I looked back to shore the red and white umbrellas in front of the resort were the size of mushrooms. I could barely make out the people sitting sipping their drinks. The sea sped by us on both sides with a rushing noise. Mel peeled off his T-shirt and tied it around his waist, and I did the same, since there was nowhere to put anything, no little hooks or holes. He was right, this was a boat built for speed and nothing else, like the greyhounds with their stylized proportions.
“Isn’t this fun?” Mel yelled.
“Are you going to be able to steer us back to shore?”
“What do you think this is?” He had his hand on the rudder. “C’mon, take the helm for a while.” He pointed out the telltale flag, showed me how to gauge wind direction. I steered watching the tip of the mainsail, and he said, “No, no, keep an eye on the coast. That’s the only way to really tell how you’re doing. Wanna see something cool?” He handed me his sunglasses and then clambered over to the prow. I watched him ease himself over the right pontoon and, leading with his chest, grip onto it with both arms and then both legs, making himself an extension of the boat. The catamaran listed violently and I instinctively leaned back hard, to correct it. The waves washed over Mel’s head, drenching his hair, and he blinked saltwater at me, grinning. The drops made his lashes starry. “Now you try it,” he called.
“Are you crazy?”
“C’mon, darling.”
“No way.”
“I saw those biceps, honey. I know you’re strong enough. I dare you.”
He wriggled back onto the body of the boat and made his way back to the tiller. I gulped a deep breath and went forward and tried to do exactly as he had done. Once I got my arms in the water I was nearly swept away by the force of it, and then and only then did I realize how fast we were actually going. I kept on, sliding inch by inch over the slick surface. I could see the headline in the St. Pete Times: “Ex-Crazy-House Inmate Drowns in Freak Gulf Accident.” There was spray in my mouth, in my eyes. The muscles on the insides of my thighs, my forearms, had a life of their own, they were in a state of permanent contraction.
“You look like a figurehead.”
“I don’t give a shit what I look like.” My Derby Lane cap spun off my head and was lost forever, and then I could feel the knot of hair at my nape loosening. I was damned if I’d let go to do anything about it. “Can you slow this thing down so I can get off?”
I heard him laughing, as if that were the funniest thing I had said so far. “Okay, now one arm and one leg.”
“I’d like to live, if that’s okay with you.”
“Oh, Sal,” he said, still laughing. “Oh, honey.”
The boat guy reneged and charged us the price of a full afternoon.
“What the fuck?” Mel asked him.
“It’s the stannard rate,” the boat guy said, not looking at us. He was chewing gum, a kid, about the same height as Mel but thinner.
“We had an agreement,” Mel said reasonably, but with a trace of threat, a tone I’d noticed that men used often and women almost never.
“You took out a Hobie Cat. That’s thirty-five.”
“You said eighteen, you little prick.”
I was digging in the pocket of my shorts. “Just pay him,” I whispered. “He’s a jerk, but what can we do? We’re not even supposed to be on this beach anyway.” I passed him a ten and at first I thought he was going to bat it away but then, with an effort it seemed, he opened up his fist.
“Thanks, honey.”
The boat guy smirked. Mel threw the money at him.
“You’re still seven dollars short.”
“So sue me.”
As we walked away toward the Don Ce Sar I could hear the boat guy swearing at us and I had to exert pressure on Mel’s arm so he wouldn’t run back and pummel the punk’s head into the sand.
Before we hit the road we stopped at a Dairy Queen and bought synthetic-looking sundaes in plastic cups. I offered Mel a taste of mine, which was chocolate on chocolate. He took a bite from my spoon and winced. “Jesus, that’s sweet.”
“Something I think you might need,” I said. He was still mad at the boat guy.
“I hate that you had to pay.”
“You don’t have to be so macho. You paid for the ice cream.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, sounding crabby, but when I looked at him he was grinning.
It turned out he was staying at a friend of his mother’s, who was away visiting her family up north. Her place was more than an hour away—actually closer to Ft. Myers than to St. Pete. Mel kept punching the radio buttons impatiently. “Christ. What do people listen to here? Isn’t there a college station or something?” Finally we settled on classical: Aaron Copland, Appalachian Spring, which suited me fine. In fact, I was so warm and relaxed I slept most of the way.
; The friend lived in a development of condominiums with an old glassy lagoon out front where canoes and little power boats were moored. It seemed no one was around but us. It was stuffy inside the house, and Mel went around opening windows. “Sorry about the mess. I just dumped my stuff here and headed up to your relatives’. I didn’t even stop to take a shower.”
Sitting on the sofa, we drank the Cokes in glass bottles we’d bought for an unheard-of fifteen cents each from a rattling machine at the gas station down the road. The Cokes were so small that we’d gotten three apiece. Mel propped his bony shins up on the coffee table. His legs were impossibly lean, the mahogany color of sunburned skin beginning to tan, covered with dark hairs, darker than Carey’s. I couldn’t stop staring at them. He had his arm around me and I didn’t dare look at his face: the sharp angles, the narrow chin, the deep-set watchful eyes. A face that was hard to memorize, probably excruciating to draw, because it changed drastically with every passing mood. Of course I knew what was going to happen, had known the moment he got out of the car in my aunt’s driveway.
I felt his fingers tickling the back of my neck, undoing the few bobby pins that were left. My hair fell down in a damp salt-smelling mass, and he pushed it back over my shoulders and away from my face. Then he slipped off my earrings one at a time and studied them cupped in his palm. They were my favorite, silver dangling fans from Carey, each pleat carved with a character in Persian. “Beautiful,” he whispered, and laid them carefully on the coffee table, where they made a sweet little clack.
When he started to kiss me I thought: this is what’s responsible for the propagation of the species, there’s no way in hell of resisting this. He felt for my tongue with his, but slowly, without urgency. Then he stopped, pulled back, looked in my eyes.
“You like that, honey?”
“What do you think?”
“I like to hear it.”
He slid his hand up my T-shirt and encountered my bathing suit, but that didn’t faze him, he didn’t rush, just stroked my nipples through the damp fabric. I shivered, although it was about 110 degrees in there. It had been way too long and I was feeling clumsy, like I might make a mistake, but we proceeded so slowly this was not a possibility. Every time he did anything new he’d ask, “Is this okay?” “Does this feel good, Sally?” It wasn’t only the way his breath smelled, it was his skin, pungent and sweet, still adolescent.
When I reached down to touch him he trapped my wrist against his thigh, the most erotic gesture of the afternoon so far. “No. Not this time.”
I was naked before he was. “You’re lovely,” he said. What did that mean? Was it part of his routine, what he said to all his girls the first time?
His fingertips brushed up on the inside of my thigh and then he slid himself down. I’d heard that there were some men who preferred this beyond all other acts of the flesh, and I was sure Mel was one of them, the way he slipped his hands under my ass and pressed his lips, his tongue to my other mouth with such expertise but also with an unexpected gentleness, almost a politeness. Getting to know you. Carey had done this rarely, and I didn’t know enough to ask.
So much pleasure, like so much pain, is hard to bear. My mind did a little hop-skip, like someone was changing the reels, and I began noticing outside things, like how the couch smelled of decrepit dog, the dust motes swirling like atoms in the tunnel of late-afternoon sun coming in through a small window at the end of the room.
“Sally, are you still with me? Say something.”
“Mmmhmm.”
“Come on.”
“I can’t talk.”
“I want you to talk. Tell me what you’re feeling. At least if you like what I’m doing.”
“You know I like it.”
“Yeah”—working me harder with his tongue—“but I want to hear it. Say it, Sally. Do you like this?”
“Yes.”
This is what I was thinking: never in a million years would I have believed him capable of such patience, restless old Mel, pacing the dayroom, jumping up and down on the sidelines in rec therapy when the therapist wouldn’t let him play because he showed off.
“Okay,” he said. “Now what do you want?”
“You know.”
“Say it.”
“I can’t.”
He pressed into me, so I could feel everything.
I was swimming with the seals, I was a seal, no one could see me.
“I want you inside,” I said.
Still on top of me, he struggled out of his trunks, shimmied them down, kicked them off. And then there I was, lying back on the scratchy cushions, the insides of my thighs already aching from clutching the pontoon and now from holding him. I was making noise, I couldn’t remember ever having made noise before. He was opening me up, more and more.
“What are you thinking of, honey?”
“You,” I said.
“If you knew how much I wanted—” he said. “How I waited—” He pushed all those tangled strands of seaweedy hair back from my forehead.
I was gagging, trying not to.
“What’s the matter?”
I couldn’t answer.
“You’re scaring me,” he said. “Don’t—” And then he began to come.
I am swimming with the seals, I thought, and just let it happen.
21
And after. The room was still, golden, each object stood out with great clarity. The late-afternoon sun through the blinds striping the green and brown rag rug, a purple and white yarn god’s eye on the wall, framed photographs of babies and children propped in the bookcases. Mel beside me, eyes closed. His head was turned so that the sapphire caught a gleam. I could barely see his chest move.
“You asleep?”
“Nah,” he whispered. He opened his eyes and pulled me to him. “You’re a wild one. My wild wild baby.”
“We sure made a mess of this sofa. I hope your mother’s friend doesn’t have a cow.”
“She’s an old hippie, it’s cool. Say, honey, are you okay? What was that, anyway, at the end?”
“I don’t know. It’s never happened before. I guess I’m retarded, or something.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re not retarded.” Then, more gently, “Did you come?”
“Yes.”
The hair under his arms was sparse and ginger colored and I touched there, lightly, to see if he was ticklish. He wasn’t. In response, he picked up my left arm and slowly licked every single stripe, one by one. “Connect-the-dots,” he said. “I shouldn’t encourage you, but I’ve always found these awfully sexy.”
“You wanted me at Willowridge?” I asked.
“Are you kidding?”
“Where could we have done it?”
“In the upstairs bathroom, you know, the one with the rug.”
“Mmmhmm. Where else?”
“By the lake.”
“I like by the lake.”
“I knew you’d have beautiful skin.”
“Why didn’t you do anything?” I asked him. “Say anything?”
“I thought maybe you had a thing with Lillith. I wasn’t sure.”
“I wasn’t sure either.” Then I asked, “Am I your first Asian woman?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
“You’ve just had white?”
“There was a black girl for a while, before Bethie.”
“I always had white guys.” Like two counted as always. Plus Daddy, but did he count? I didn’t know.
When Mel dropped me off a little before midnight my aunt was waiting up. She said Uncle Richard had had chest pains all evening and the doctor had told him to take it very easy.
For the next four days, this was the routine: mornings, I kept my uncle company. We played gin rummy, watched TV, or I just sat in the rocking chair and read while he nodded off on the couch. Sometimes, asleep, he’d cry out, single syllables in Cantonese, startling me. “What were you dreaming?” I asked him later, and he shook his head. “Who knows? You remember your d
reams, Niece?”
At lunchtime my aunt would take over. I’d pack a beach bag and go sit on the front curb to wait for Mel. The second time we’d snuck into the Don Ce Sar they’d really given us the hairy eyeball, so we’d started going to the public beach farther down the coast. We’d sun for an hour or two and then hightail it to the condo, grabbing a bite on the way—Denny’s, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, it didn’t matter to us—and spend the afternoon in bed. Each time I came it was like a little of Monkey King was blotted away. Something that had never happened with Carey. “What was it like with your husband?” Mel asked me, and I had to answer: “He was rough.”
“No wonder,” Mel said.
“I wasn’t really there,” I said.
Mel was very good at me, but I did my own studying. The first time I made him come in my mouth his fingernails on my wrist drew blood. The feeling of power this gave me was unexpected, and I was careful with it, as I would have been with any new responsibility.
At dusk we’d get up to take the friend’s canoe out on the lagoon. There were alligator warnings posted, and though it seemed to me that they must be more day creatures than night, I avoided trailing my fingers in the still water. Worse than possible alligators was the real presence of gnats and mosquitoes, which had mutated to monster proportions in this climate, as well as those strange squishy bugs I’d noticed when I was mowing the lawn. At the Cumberland Farms next to the gas station we purchased Deep Woods Off! and rubbed it all over each other’s exposed parts.
Mel and I took turns steering. It was easy to catch a paddle in the murky weeds, or run aground in unexpected shallows, especially when dark had fallen completely and we were traveling only by starlight and moonlight, but we weren’t headed anywhere in particular, and since there was no current, there was no danger. Mostly we just drifted, drinking the bottled Cokes we’d gotten addicted to—I could swear Coke was sweeter in the South—and talk and smoke. Sometimes we’d mix rum in with the Coke.
“You have the sexiest fingers,” Mel said once, when we were passing the bottle.
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