When she was done clipping her pubes and shaving her legs, she evaluated herself carefully; there was no stray hair anywhere. Except for her arms. Should I shave these? She wondered. I have never shaved them before, but I’ve never noticed until now that they are a bit hairy. No time to deliberate, she reminded herself. She soaped up her arm and dragged the razor across, once, twice. In only a moment her forearm was shorn and smooth, so she turned to the other one and did it, too. A glance at the clock told her she was running low on time; she pulled the plug in the bathtub and stood up to shower, soaking her hair and shampooing her long brown curls.
And at six o’clock she paced in the hallway just out of sight of the front windows of the living room. Somehow she knew he’d arrive on time. He wouldn’t stand her up or be more than a few moments late. And she was terrified and titillated all at once. Again she peered into the hallway mirror to check her makeup and hair. Everything was as close to perfect as she could get it to be.
“You look great, you really do,” Karla said soothingly, as her reflection appeared in the mirror beside Maddie’s. “You look so thin, and your back looks awesome and it’s just all so perfect.” She draped her arm around Maddie’s shoulders and sighed dreamily. “God, I wish this was a movie, so we could watch it together tonight when you get home.”
“If I get home,” Maddie said after a brief pause, as sassily as she could. “I hope I don’t see you until breakfast.” A huge smile split her face and her cheeks turned red. She could feel the blood rushing to them, and she could see them changing color in the mirror.
“Alright baby, you get you some!” Karla crowed, as she let go of Maddie and began to boogie around in the hallway. Maddie slapped her hands over her mouth and guffawed at her friend before joining the dance. In the middle of a couple of hip thrusts and uninhibited disco singing, they heard the knock on the door. Both fell silent. “It’s him!” Karla exclaimed, her eyes getting big. The two of them bounced up and down together for a moment, then Karla gave Maddie a hug and said, “Have fun!”
Maddie nodded her head vigorously and attempted to pull herself together. She crossed the living room and took a deep breath before she put her hand on the doorknob. She stole a glance over her shoulder to make sure Karla wasn’t peeking and was surprised to find her standing only a foot or two behind.
“Get lost, leech!” she hissed playfully and Karla skittered back around the corner, but Maddie was sure she crouched there, listening.
She swung open the door and there was Raffie, with the sun’s rays shooting through the trees behind him.
“Hey,” said Maddie. “You ready?”
“Yes. Take my hand and I’ll escort you around the block to Dimestore Cinemas, if you please,” he said, smiling, bowing, and making an exaggerated show of taking her hand. She curtseyed, and they were on their way.
Chapter 6
After the movie, the two of them made their way back down the sidewalked street toward Maddie’s duplex. Raffie, she had discovered, loved horsing around. He was into pinches and hair tugs, and other little-boyish types of flirting. It was completely adorable. So when she stopped to read a menu in a window—and he ran his finger down her spine, exposed by her kerchief shirt—she was shocked at how electrifying it felt; apparently he could do cutesy little-boy moves and sexy big-boy moves equally well. And the whole thing really made her so glad she’d chosen that particular kerchief shirt. It had been the perfect shirt after all, apparently, aside from the fact that she didn’t enjoy the movie one bit because of it. She was cold the whole time they were in the theater, and the scratchy fuzz of the cinema seat had irritated the sensitive skin of her lower back for the entire 90 minutes. But the feeling of Raffie’s finger slipping along her backbone made it all worth it.
“Do you want to know something funny, Maddie?” he asked as they turned away from the restaurant window.
“Of course, Raff. I always want to know everything funny,” she answered back, tilting her head to look up at him. The sun had set, but there was still a glow in the air, the long summer day taking its time to fade away.
“Did you ever notice the vegetable garden a hundred yards or so from your building, across the common yard?” he asked. She crunched her face in an expression of confusion. Sure, she’d noticed it, but never really observed it closely. It was very near her building, and there was an old broken-down fence that prevented access to the untamed-looking garden.
“What’s funny about a vegetable garden?” she asked.
“Not ha-ha funny. Fascinating funny,” Raffie clarified. “So you’ve noticed it?”
She thought again of the vegetable garden again. It was on the other side of the old fence, along with four old-timey little houses in a circle, left over from the 1920s or so probably, and they were accessible from a different street. Presumably the garden belonged to one of these ancient little houses.
“I guess,” she answered. “Yes, I can picture the garden in my head, but I’ve never really inspected it.” She shrugged a bit and fought a creeping sense of aggravation. How had things gone from a sexy finger down the back to cucumbers and carrots?
“There’s a hole in the fence near the garden,” Raffie said, turning and looking at her with excited expectation.
Maddie kept walking along, quietly, wondering what he would say next, and wondering why any of this was important and how any of this was funny—ha-ha or otherwise.
“If you climb through the hole in the fence,” Raffie said, “and you go through the garden, and you find a little white house with a blue door,” he said, stopping mid-sentence.
Maddie waited and grew a little irritated. She didn’t like it when people made incomplete utterances and then paused for dramatic effect. If this was a pattern of his, it might eventually become a blemish on his record. He continued speaking after a moment.
“You’ll find something incredible,” he finally concluded, with a reverent hush to his voice.
“What will I find?” asked Maddie, her curiosity now piqued in spite of herself. She liked the idea of snooping around at the old worn houses, and it seemed that Raffie was inviting her to go on a spy mission to creep around in them.
“Do you want to know what incredible thing you’ll find?” he asked, stopping and turning to face her full on.
“Of course,” she answered, the irritation that was just beginning to ebb surging back in a gushing flow. “Of course I want to know what’s incredible over there. What kind of goofy question is that? Just tell me what’s over there.”
“I won’t tell you,” he said, as they rounded the corner to her duplex and walked along the gravel drive that connected the eight duplex houses. “But in one hour, I’ll show you.” He glanced at his watch. “At ten o’clock, I want you to climb through the hole in the fence, go through the garden, and meet me at the little white house with the blue door.”
She turned and looked at him in the fading light of the day. They had arrived at her place and she leaned back against her front door without opening it. This man was a roller coaster. He’d brought her from childish flirting to sexy advances to choking irritation to breathtaking adventure all in one walk home.
“If I ask you again what this was all about, you still won’t tell me, will you?” she questioned a little bit teasingly, and, she hoped, a little bit seductively.
He leaned over close, and rested his forehead against hers. She felt the air puffing from his nostrils across the arc of her upper lip.
“No. It’s a secret and telling will break the magic. But promise you’ll meet me there,” he said, and she felt the faintest tendrils of the magic to which he was referring. She felt it in her stomach and in her thumping heartbeat.
Maddie writhed a little below him, wishing he’d drop his face and kiss her. He didn’t.
“Ten o’clock?” she whispered.
He tilted his face so that the tip of his nose brushed hers. “Yes.”
“Okay.”
He disappeared d
own the driveway as Maddie watched. A little voice in the back of her mind wondered where he’d parked his car. Not in her duplex’s driveway, apparently.
When he’d vanished around the corner, she pulled out her keys and let herself through the front door. “Karla?” she yelled out, and at the same time that she realized Karla’s car wasn’t outside. She’d left all the lights on, as usual, to deter burglars, but she herself wasn’t there.
“Dammit,” hissed Maddie as she raced to the bathroom to have a look at herself. She was in a frenzy about the impending snooping, and the heavy breathing, and the finger down her spine, so she was relieved to see that her eye makeup hadn’t smudged and her clever little messy ponytail had stayed in place. She lifted her arms and sniffed; everything was still okay on that front.
After getting Karla’s voicemail, Maddie realized she’d be on her own in determining what to do at ten o’clock. She’d go through the fence, surely, wouldn’t she? That’s what Raffie had asked her to do. But she didn’t like the idea of creeping through that vegetable garden, fearing some Mr. McGregor would appear and spray her with shotgun pellets.
“Oh, that’s silly,” she said to herself as she rooted around in the kitchen for a flashlight. “If someone in one of those little houses had a shotgun, surely I’d have heard them shooting something by now.” There was no flashlight.
She considered getting in her car and driving over to the little white house with the blue door, instead of crawling through the garden. She’d have to drive around the block, making a total of four right turns, and then she’d find the entrance to the gravel path that led to the houses.
But if she drove up in a car, any residents of the little houses would notice her arrival, and that wouldn’t make for good snooping. She presumed that the little white house with the blue door must be uninhabited, and that Raffie must know of something really cool in there that you had to sneak in to get a look at. Maybe the walls were covered with art, maybe there was a crying Madonna in there, maybe it was a bobcat with a nest of kittens, who knew. But Maddie wanted to find out, and she realized that even if she shut off her headlights, the rumble and presence of her car might ruin whatever it was Raffie wanted her to see.
She’d have to creep through the garden.
Having failed in finding a flashlight, Maddie decided she’d just traverse the wilds of the garden by the light of the moon, which, she discovered as she went outside at 9:55, wasn’t out yet. She crossed the gravel parking lot by the light of the security lamps and found the hole in the fence with only a little squinting and a few pats of her hand. It wasn’t a break in the fence, as she’d imagined it would be; no, it was really a true hole, so she had to squat and climb through like she was a giant dog through a doggie door.
There wasn’t any room on the other side to collect herself either, as she tumbled and sat flat on her butt in the soft earth. With a little curse, she pulled her zippo lighter out of her jeans pocket and flicked it open. The garden seemed to be thriving, but it also seemed to be haphazard; there were no clear aisles to walk down. Maddie got to her feet and brushed the dirt off of her tush, but she was suddenly seized with fear; she squatted again, her mind flooded with images of Peter Rabbit’s lost shoe and shovels swinging hard toward the earth. She duck-walked through the garden, her fabulous cowboy boots tangling in a blackberry vine and her palms coming into contact with the soft bristly undersides of squash leaves at every turn.
When she reached the front of the garden, she hesitated. She parted two tomato plants and peered out into the little gravel courtyard that the four tiny homes encircled. She didn’t know what she’d see, but she anticipated seeing perhaps a car or two, and lights on in one or more of the little homes. She didn’t think all four were abandoned; rather, she figured ancient people or college kids probably lived in at least two of the little places. Otherwise, wouldn’t the city have condemned the whole spot?
But when she peered from the tomato plants, she did indeed see something incredible, just as Raffie had promised: she saw that one of the little white houses, the one with the blue door, had a dozen candles scattered across its worn front steps, and a dozen more candles arranged across its little porch. She smelled incense and saw a hammock and heard the quiet tinkling of wind chimes. Maddie crawled from between the plants and stood up, dusting her knees and hands but unwilling to move her eyes from the sight of the little magical house.
After a moment, she finally turned her eyes away and looked this way and that for Raffie. He wasn’t there.
Or was he? A sudden rush of exhilaration washed over her. This was a good game he’d set up. She was completely confused, in a wonderful way.
She walked across the gravel cul-de-sac toward the house, her boots grinding into the small gray stones, and paused a moment at the base of the stairs. She looked down at the candles, some freestanding, some on little dishes, some screwed into empty bottles. Across one side of the porch hung the hammock, and from the rafters above it several dreamy scarves stirred in the wind. Closer to the house, as she was now, she could hear not only the occasional tinkle of the wind chimes but the low cheerful sound of music playing inside.
This is the first time I can remember, she smiled to herself, that I’ve really enjoyed sound of The Grateful Dead wafting across the breeze.
She walked up the warped wooden steps, and approached the old worn door. She reached out her knuckles and rapped on its peeling blue paint. Raffie opened the door and said, “You’re here,” with a smile that made something in Maddie’s stomach buzz and flip. “Welcome to my home.”
“Your home?” said Maddie. “I didn’t know you lived here. What are the odds that you’d live so close to me?” She laughed and experienced a sudden recognition of the bizarre serendipity of it all.
“I know,” said Raffie. “It’s fate. Come in,” he said, letting the door swing free behind him as he turned and opened his arms in a way that ushered Maddie into his tiny house.
Sheets printed with sunbursts and tie-dyes were pinned to the walls to camouflage the aged paint. Directly across from Maddie was a beaded curtain hung in a little open doorway. There was a squat sofa all covered with blankets and pillowcases, and there were some short cinder-block and plank bookshelves with pretty little things littered amongst the books. A dozen more candles were lit all throughout the room, and the whole place was adorned with gauzy scarves and strings of flower petals and plants in pots, and the effect was so overwhelming that Maddie turned away, back to Raffie, back toward the exit.
He caught her up in his arms and before she knew a thing his mouth was on hers and they kissed.
“Do you want to know something?” he breathed down onto her mouth after he had released it. She bobbed her head weakly up and down. The scents in this house—the patchouli, the incense—combined with the scent of his skin had her intoxicated. “We were supposed to find each other, here, in the wilds of summer. We were supposed to bind together.” He slipped his palm slowly up her back—left exposed by the kerchief shirt—up to the back of her neck. He tangled his fingers through her hair and tugged the ponytail tie loose, letting her curls fall through his hands, as he sunk his lips to hers for another kiss. Maddie’s face felt hot and it was as if the rest of her body had vanished, and there was nothing to her aside from the few areas that Raffie was touching: she was all mouth, hair, and lower back, and nothing more.
After a few moments of kissing Maddie began to come back to herself and panic a little. She was no virgin, but she’d rarely slept with the same guy more than once or twice. She knew she wasn’t good in bed. She just simply hadn’t had the practice. The first time or two with someone was awkward, and if one never got past the first time or two one never learned how to be good at sex—or at least, that’s what she told herself. Right now, at this moment, the anxiety about her poor performance surged. This is it, her mind blathered, this is the climax of the summer of love experience. You’re going to ruin it somehow, now, at the last minute.
That’s it, she resolved. The boots have to come off first.
They kissed for a few more moments, but Maddie’s panic prevented her from enjoying it. She finally gathered the courage to say, “Hold on.” Raffie pulled away from her, a questioning look on his face.
“Uh, it’s silly, but I’m really, really thirsty,” she said. She felt like an idiot, but she needed to get rid of him so she could take her boots off. She was positive that she’d look like a big stupid kid, yanking on her cowboy boots. She didn’t want him to see her that way. He’d figure out what an inexperienced kid she was soon enough without seeing that.
“Okay,” he said, with no hint of judgment in his voice. “Would you like water, or a beer?”
“A beer,” she stammered, not sure if she had just taken the night in the wrong direction by choosing the alcohol. She’d only been trying to buy a few moments of time to get her boots off. When he left the room she scurried to the sofa, sat down, and pulled hard. She set the two tall brown shoes to the side of the sofa and quickly yanked a foot up to her nose, smelling the white sock to make sure her feet weren’t rank. It didn’t smell, and she dropped her feet to the floor.
As Raffie returned from the kitchen, she was suddenly struck by how adolescent her white socks looked sticking out from the bottom of her jeans, and she tugged a foot back into her lap, removing the sock and sticking it deep in its corresponding boot. She surreptitiously slipped off the other sock as he sat down next to her and handed her a smooth brown bottle. Maybe he hadn’t really seen the socks.
Peace of Her Heart Page 5