The Silken Web

by Laura Jordan

  “And you found even more ugliness?”

  “No,” he said gently. “I found beauty.”

  She shook her head in bafflement. “I don’t—”

  “Let me explain. If I can. One day I was in a refugee camp. God, Kathleen, you can’t even imagine the deprivation, the misery. We have no concept of…” He made a helpless gesture with his hands. “There’s just no way to describe the devastation, the… the putrification.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes as if to wipe away the image.

  “Anyway, I was shooting tape, and in my eyepiece, I saw a young mother with her baby. Both of them were well past critical as far as starvation levels go, emaciated, really. But unaware of my seeing her, the woman squeezed the last drop of milk out of her breast and put her nipple in the baby’s mouth. She wept. The infant reached up and touched her cheek. It was as though he knew that was all she had to give and was grateful for it.”

  He became quiet, staring off into space. Even the sounds the campers were making seemed to be absorbed by his intensity.

  “Amid all that ugliness, I saw something beautiful. I don’t mean to get too preachy, but I think I realized that there could be something good found in everything if you look hard enough. The world just might be worth saving after all, if only for the sake of one child.”

  Kathleen was strangely moved by the story. “Your camera must find all sorts of nuances that the naked eye would miss. It doesn’t discriminate, does it? It isn’t closed by prejudgment.”

  “Come here,” he said suddenly, grabbing her hand and hauling her to her feet.

  “Where?” she asked. “The children—”

  “No, no. We’re just going over here. Very few people are allowed this privilege. I hope you appreciate it.”

  He steered her toward the boulder where his camera was. Hands on hips, he squinted his eyes at her appraisingly and then looked at the heavy camera. “Let’s see. How are you going to do this?” he muttered. “If I put that on your shoulder, you’ll sink into the ground.”

  “What—”

  “Here! I know.” He flipped several switches as she had seen him do last night, turning on the machine. “Okay, you move over here.” Placing a hand at her waist, he pulled her nearer until she was facing the rock and almost eye level with the camera.

  “Now, stand up on tiptoe until you can fit your right eye against the eyepiece. Can you see the monitor in there?”

  She did as she was told. It was hard to concentrate on anything after the contact his hand had made with her bare midriff. But her eyes found the tiny television monitor that was about an inch square.

  “Is that what it looks like? It looks just like a black and white television. I thought it would be like looking into the lens of an ordinary camera,” she exclaimed.

  “If you’re shooting film it is, but with videotape, you can see exactly how it’s going to look on a television screen, except for the color. That’s why you need a white balance.” He cleared his throat loudly and got an elbow in his ribs. “What do you see? Tell me which way to move it.”

  “Well,” she hesitated. All she could see was a blurry image of the tree a few feet in front of them. “It’s out of focus,” she admitted.

  “Say when,” he said close to her ear. “I’ll try to focus for you.”

  She watched as the trunk of the tree gradually became clearer, until she could see the patterned detail of the bark. “When!” she cried excitedly.

  “Now which way do you want to go? Left? Right? Up or down?”

  “Up a little, more into the branches.” He took a half-step closer to adjust the camera and she felt his warm, hard chest against her back. His arm rested on her shoulder as he reached in front of her to maneuver the dials around the lens. Her heartbeat quickened.

  “Now to the left,” she said breathlessly. “Keep going. Wait! Right there. There’s something… it’s a spider and… oh, the web is huge. It spreads from limb to limb. He’s so busy at work. Oh, Erik, can you move closer, I mean, make him bigger?”

  He chuckled and she felt his breath stirring the hair at the back of her neck. “Sure. But I’ll have to roll focus again. Can you see him better now?”

  “Yeees! There! Now focus again. Perfect. He’s perfect.”

  “Would you like to record an afternoon in the life of a spider?”

  “Aren’t we?”

  “No, I have to press the record button.”

  “Would you mind?”

  “Of course not.”

  Once they began recording, she expected him to return his left hand, but he didn’t. Instead, he laid it on the rock so that she was pressed between the hard, cool surface of the boulder and the warm vibrance of his body. It would be hard to discern which was the stronger and more impregnable.

  “How’s he doing?” he whispered in her ear. For a moment, she thought she felt the brush of his mustache against her lobe.

  “Fine. He’s beautiful.” She could feel his knees against the backs of her thighs and unconsciously adjusted her legs to those muscular columns.

  “Your hair smells like honeysuckle,” Erik murmured. This time, there was no mistaking that his lips were moving against her ear. His hips shifted and Kathleen realized that it was only the tight spandex of her bikini bottom and his cotton swim trunks that separated his virility from the soft curve of her buttocks.

  “Erik,” she said hoarsely.

  “Hm?” His nose was investigating the area behind her ear.

  “I think… I’ve… the spider… We’d better stop now.” She didn’t know for sure if she was talking about stopping the videotaping or the forced proximity of their bodies that was quickly becoming an embrace.

  He sighed. “Okay.” He clicked off the camera and the tiny monitor in the eyepiece turned gray again. He stepped away from her, and when she felt it was safe, she composed her features and faced him. Unable as yet to meet his eyes, she spoke to the ground. “Thank you. It was wonderful.”

  “Was it?” His voice was ragged but intuitive, demanding of her an honest answer. She lifted her eyes quickly, and was instantly impaled by the sharpness of his. Her green eyes were held mesmerized until his slid down her face and rested on her trembling lips. Then they moved up again to search the inner turbulence that shone from her eyes.

  “Kathy. Kathy.”

  The small, quiet voice finally penetrated the desire-clouded perimeter of her brain. She backed away from Erik and looked down distractedly at Jaimie.

  “Kathy?” he asked uncertainly. “My feet are getting pruney.”

  Kathleen clasped her hands to flaming cheeks and glanced hurriedly at her watch. “Oh, my God! It’s five-fifteen.”

  Erik started laughing at her, but she ignored him and ran to the riverbank, reached for her whistle, which had been shed along with her clothes, and blew it loudly.

  “Hurry, hurry, kids. We’re late. Get into your shoes and line up quickly.”

  She finally gave attention to the small hand tapping on her arm and looked down to see Jaimie again. His dark eyes were shining and bright. “It was neat having Erik here today, wasn’t it, Kathy?”

  Kathleen looked back toward the rock where Erik was hauling his camera onto his bare shoulder. “Yes,” she said shakily. “It was neat.”

  * * * * *

  Erik hurriedly ate his dinner and then began setting up the television monitor on which he could play back his videotapes. He had promised the campers they could see themselves on television and he was keeping the promise. Many of them skipped the meat and vegetables and went straight to the chocolate pudding, hoping to speed the meal along.

  When Erik saw what was happening, he announced loudly, “Nobody gets to watch until everyone’s plate is clean.”

  There was a congregational groan, but the food on each plate was then attacked with voracity. Within a half-hour, all two hundred children were fanned out in a semicircle before the dais.

  “Okay. Here are the ground rules. The first boy who stands up and
blocks someone’s view has to wrestle me. The first girl who does it has to kiss me.” The children shrieked with laughter as Erik scowled darkly. “I mean it. If all of you cooperate, everyone will get to see. Okay?”

  “Okay!” they chorused.

  He started the playback, and soon they were convulsed with laughter at their images on the screen.

  “Isn’t he marvelous with the children?” Edna said glowingly. She, Kathleen and the other counselors were still seated at their dinner table, relaxing over cups of coffee or glasses of iced tea.

  “He’s very competent,” Kathleen said.

  “Oh, I know he is. He wouldn’t work for the network and have been assigned so many impressive jobs if he weren’t. But he could have had an artistic temperament and been cranky with everyone. He manages the children beautifully.”

  Kathleen crossed her arms in a defensive gesture. She didn’t want Erik to be marvelous. She examined him for flaws. She wanted to see him make a mistake, commit a small transgression. His perfection disturbed her. His presence disturbed her. He disturbed her.

  Ever since they had returned the children to the compound and gone to their separate cabins, her mind had been in a whirlwind. Much to her chagrin, she caught herself remembering how it felt to be close to him, something he had said into her ear, his warm, fragrant breath and how it caressed her cheek and the back of her neck.

  Then, impatiently, she berated herself for acting like a fool. She was a mature woman, too old to be behaving this way. Too old to have that shortness of breath and fluttery heartbeat each time she reflected on the image of him as he had walked toward the river, his body naked except for the swath of cloth around his loins that enhanced rather than hindered his sexuality. Never had she given so much thought to the male anatomy.

  She had resisted the temptation to wear something to dinner besides her navy shorts and white knit T-shirt. But she did succumb to the urge to dab Mitsouko onto the pulse points of her body. Not because of him, she had averred even as she leaned down to stroke some on the backsides of her knees.

  Now, Edna’s enthusiasm for Erik only made her more determined not to become too attracted to him. He was a world-traveler. He was several years older than she. How old? Thirty? Thirty-five? Chronological age didn’t matter. Even if he were younger than she, he would still be years older in experience.

  Surely he had known women in every part of the world. A man who looked like Erik would not stay celibate for long. His virility radiated from him like an aura of light that touched everyone, especially women. The only persuasion he would ever have to use would be to get women out of his bed once he was finished with them. To get them into it would be no problem.

  Disobediently, her mind conjured up a picture of Erik lying on a wide bed. Someone was with him. It was she. She was helpless beneath him. He was nuzzling her neck with his mouth. His mustache—

  What was she doing? Kathleen shook her head. Glancing around furtively, she noted that neither the Harrisons nor anyone else had been watching her strange behavior. They were all engrossed in the unedited tape that was being played through the monitor a second time at the request of the viewers.

  No one noticed when Kathleen stood up and left the mess hall, shutting the screen door quietly behind her.

  No one but Erik.

  He watched Kathleen as she strolled to the edge of the deep porch and sat down on the top step, tilting her head back to gaze at the sky. He saw how the tendrils that had escaped the knot of hair secured to the top of her head lay like strands of silk against the stark whiteness of her shirt.

  Closing his eyes briefly, he could almost smell the honeysuckle essence of her hair that had filled his head and made him drunk this afternoon.

  It was hard to tear his eyes away from the poignant picture she made sitting out there in the shadows. For the sake of his captive audience, he returned his gaze to the tape. But not his mind. It was still on the girl on the porch.

  Girl? Woman? That was the hell of it. For some reason, none of the labels he usually attached to women fit Kathleen Haley. She had elements of every other woman, yet she was none of them. She had a classiness, an indefinable distinction, that made her different and impossible to categorize.

  But she was woman. God! She was woman. Every time he saw her, his body threatened to make it embarrassingly evident how much of a woman he thought her to be.

  That was another thing that didn’t fit into the scheme of things. She wasn’t his type. The Harrisons had told him she worked in the fashion industry. He should have guessed that right away. Who else could make a simple pair of shorts and a T-shirt look haute couture? It had never mattered a tinker’s dam to him what a woman wore. He preferred them without anything on. And then, he liked lush bodies, round hips, big breasts.

  She was almost boyishly slender, but that tight little fanny nearly drove him crazy. He wanted to cup his hands over it, just to see if it was as firm and taut as it looked. Those long, slender legs didn’t try to be provocative, but he had caught himself watching the play of muscles as she walked ahead of him on the mountain trail earlier in the day. Her breasts were small, but full and beautifully shaped. When she had come out of the cold, rushing river, her nipples had stood out invitingly, eager and pert.

  Dammit! He was fantasizing about a woman barely mature enough to be deemed such. He liked women, but he liked them naked, silent and in bed. He never thought of them as people with careers. Never did he seek one out for the sake of an enlightening conversation. Yet today he had shared with Kathleen thoughts that he hadn’t even catalogued in his own mind. It was her rapt, intense listening that had opened up his own brain, making him see things clearly that had been nebulous before.

  The kiss last night hadn’t been spontaneous. He had planned it right down to the last detail. He had wanted to match his mouth to hers. But rather than satisfying him, he now craved more than one kiss. He had to see if she tasted as good as that one brief appetizer had indicated she did.

  The tape running through the machine clicked off, and Erik was thrust out of his pleasant surmises by the enthusiastic applause of the children.

  “Again, again,” they chanted.

  Erik laughed. “I don’t think so.”

  “Children,” B.J. called over the roar, and clapped his hands. “Children, the night bell is about to ring, so let’s all start toward our cabins, please. Counselors, round up your groups. We’ve had a real treat tonight. Let’s all give Mr. Gudjonsen a big thank you.”

  The words were screamed at him, the campers taking full advantage of being as loud as they wanted to be.

  Kathleen had reentered the room when all the commotion started. Erik managed to wade through the throng toward her. “I’d like to show you the tapes I shot today. They’re not edited, but I thought you might like to see what I’ve got so far.”

  “Well, I…” She hesitated. She didn’t know whether she wanted to be alone with him or not.

  “Come on,” he urged. “Look at it as a free movie.” He cuffed her on the shoulder with a gentle fist.

  She laughed. “All right.”

  They said their goodnights to the other counselors and to the Harrisons, who hurried out of the building, declining Erik’s offer for them to stay, so B.J. could get back to their cabin before the ten o’clock news came on. The ladies who managed the kitchen had been cleaning up the dinner dishes while the tape was playing, so the building was now deserted.

  “Let me load this first tape,” Erik said. “Why don’t you catch the lights? We can see it better.”

  Kathleen moved to the large panel and flipped off the switches. Only the diffuse light from one small bulb in the kitchen illumined the room as she made her way back to the benches.

  “Ready?” Erik asked over his shoulder, and smiled.

  “Ready.”

  He started the tape and Kathleen took a seat at one of the long dining tables. Erik sat down beside her, propping his elbows on the table behind him and stretchi
ng his long legs out in front of him. Kathleen looked down at her own bare leg, a scarce few inches from his thigh. She didn’t move farther away.

  They watched the raw footage that he had shot and were soon chatting amiably about the moods he had captured. Kathleen couldn’t help but laugh when the camera rolled in on Gracie’s splotched, tear-streaked face. She had fallen down and scraped her knee on the morning hike, and had wailed disproportionately to the injury.

  “Oh, Erik, how cruel,” Kathleen admonished, even though she was laughing.

  He chuckled. “Maybe so. But I couldn’t resist. You know, one day, when she’s older, the braces come off and she can wear contact lenses, I’ll bet Gracie will put the rest of them in the shade.” His hand found its way to Kathleen’s shoulder.

  “I hope so. She deserves some happiness. Her parents and little brother died in a car crash. She was hospitalized for months with injuries. She was eight at the time, and as sad as it is, that’s often considered too old for adoption. She’ll probably live at an orphanage until she’s eighteen when, hopefully, she can go to college.”

  “God, what a bummer.”

  Kathleen sighed. “Yes. Most of the children here were orphaned under similar circumstances. Some of them have one parent, usually a father who isn’t able to keep them with him. Very few were born in a home for unwed mothers or lost their parents in infancy. Most infants are easily adopted.” Just then, a close-up of Jaimie filled the small screen.

  “Jaimie is the exception to that rule. His father never married his mother. She gave him up for adoption at birth. He was never placed because he’s biracial.”

  Erik's hand moved from her shoulder to her neck in a comforting gesture that changed into a caress. “He’s rather special to you, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. I try not to let it show, but he is.” She was glad Erik had to take his hand away when he got up to change tapes. She was finding it hard not to lean against him.

  He had shot four twenty-minute tapes, and each time he got up to rewind the one just played and exchange it with another, he returned to his seat and replaced his hand on her neck or back or shoulder. In some way, at all times, he was touching her.