Death at Charity's Point

by William G. Tapply

  I slipped off my shoes and tucked my socks into them and left them on the floor in the front of my car. Then I found my raggedy old Army blanket. I shoved it up under my arm. Rina grabbed my shirt sleeve. “Come on. This way.”

  We followed a well-trodden path up over the sand hill. Somewhere above the fog the moon shone full, casting the scene into blurry shadows and shapes. I could see the white strip of breaking surf ahead, but the ocean beyond it merged with the dark sky. It was a watercolor wash in shades of gray.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  “I think it’s spooky,” replied Rina. “A place for dead bodies to crawl up out of the sea.”

  We walked shoeless toward the surf. The sand warmed the bottoms of my feet with the heat it had stored up from the day’s sunshine. Then its texture changed, and it was like setting cement, wet, cool, firm. I imagined the girl who had found George Gresham’s body on this beach. In my mind I saw her jogging. The hard sand at the water’s edge squeaked rhythmically under her feet, her toes kicking back little divots with each stride. She stuck close to that line where the tide lapped, splashing sometimes in the shallow sheet of moving seawater, savoring the cool splashes on the front of her bare thighs.

  I pictured her, then, attracted to a formless mound on the beach where a flock of seagulls circled, croaking, angry at the disturbance. I saw her touch the dead man’s hand, then draw her fingers back instinctively at the cold, clammy feel of lifeless skin. Perhaps she gagged; perhaps she screamed into the vast ocean. George Gresham’s face was not pretty. I had seen the pictures.

  Rina groped for my hand. “Come on. Charity’s Point’s about a mile down the beach.”

  We walked in silence, our hands clasped, toward a louder, angrier roar of surf. I was very much aware of Rina beside me, our arms brushing as we walked, the faint, clean scent of soap mingling with the sharp, briny smell of the sea and the fog.

  “Make you think of George?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she dropped my hand and darted away, slipping ghostlike through the wall of fog. I stopped, momentarily disoriented, and felt a quick flash of panic.

  I swiveled my head around and squinted into the murk. Suddenly a wet, clammy weight slammed against the back of my neck. My first thought was that I had been attacked by a seagull. Then Rina was rubbing a handful of the seaweed into my face, holding me strongly around the waist with her other arm.

  “Hey!” I said. I reached for her, but she squirmed away and disappeared again.

  From the fog her voice came, distorted, hollow, almost unearthly. “When shall we two meet again, in thunder, lightning, or in fog?”

  “Come on, now,” I said, clutching at my dignity in what I saw was a losing battle.

  “When the hurly-burly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won,” she called, her voice a cackle.

  “Where the hell are you, pray?”

  “Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Hover through the fog and filthy air.”

  “I’m hovering, already. Help me down, will you?”

  Then she was at my side again, grasping my arm in both of hers, her head briefly pressed against my shoulder. “Scare you?” she said.

  “Hell, no,” I said. I could feel the roundness of her breast against my arm. “Where are we going, anyway?”

  “This way.” Her hand slid down my arm until she was holding mine. She swung it and began to skip, forcing me to increase my pace to keep up with her. After a moment I found it easier to skip, too.

  So we skipped down the beach, hand in hand, the forty-two-year-old attorney with his pants legs rolled up and the younger woman in her swirling, peasant skirt, cutting through the fog and splashing in the water at the edge of the ocean.

  Finally I stopped, holding her hand firmly so that she had to stop, too. When she did, she bounced against me.

  “What’s the matter, sire?”

  “Tuckers me out,” I panted. “Besides, I feel foolish.”

  “Nothing wrong with feeling foolish,” Rina said.

  “I’m not used to it.”

  “Well, we’re there, now, anyway. We have to climb.”

  She led me obliquely away from the water line. I could distinguish the dark shape of what appeared to be a small mountain looming through the gray fog. We slogged over the dunes at first. Sharp grass cut at my bare feet and ankles. Then there were rocks, and we had to climb. Rina went first, her hand still holding mine behind her. Sometimes she tugged gently at me when I had to pull myself over a boulder. Once I banged my knee, and when I growled “Bastard!” Rina laughed.

  She seemed to move effortlessly up the incline, slithering over and around the rocks, tall, slim, and lithe as a panther, and I became aware of the curves of her body—the breadth of her back contrasted with her tiny waist, her hips slim and angular, and the suggestion of her rump taut under her skirt as she stretched and pulled at me. I felt awkward in comparison to her. I had to cling to her hand for support. The folded Army blanket was still crammed under my arm. I thought of George Gresham climbing here alone not too many nights earlier, a man in a suit and necktie with a desperate purpose. I glanced ahead to check our progress. The fog, I noticed, was thinning, so that I could see our destination more clearly. The crashing of the surf came more sharply to my ears, each breaker a separate and distinct explosion of tons of water smashing against the hard planes of boulders.

  Then Rina stopped. “We’re here.”

  I looked out over the ocean. We seemed to be standing above the fog, which lay in a cottony blanket on the beach off to our left whence we had come. Before us stretched the Atlantic, shimmering with gathered points of light. I walked to the edge of the mammoth boulder and peered down.

  “Jesus!” I whispered. The face of the cliff seemed to angle back under me, as if I were perched on a ledge, so that I could only see the thrashing of the confluence of current and tide far below me. Each crashing wave sent a sheet of white spray thirty feet into the air. A place for shipwrecks, I thought. A good place for suicide.

  Rina was sitting, well back from the edge, arms clasped around her legs, head tilted so that her cheek rested on her knees. I went back and sat heavily beside her. I lit a cigarette. We sat without touching or speaking. I felt overwhelmed by the enormity of the place—the height, the awesome power of the ocean, the thunderous booming of the waves, the vastness of the sky. Rina beside me seemed small, vulnerable. I suppressed the urge to put my arm protectively around her shoulders.

  “What’re you really after?” she asked after a while. “What’s in all this for you?”

  “What? You mean the Gresham thing? Nothing for me. Not really. It’s my job, that’s all.”

  “You’re a lawyer. I don’t get it.”

  I flicked my cigarette away. “My client hired me. For advice. Legal advice. That’s it.”

  “Umm.”

  “You don’t approve.”

  I could feel her shoulders lift and fall beside me. “Not a matter of approval, my lord. I’m beyond judging. Way, way beyond that. Glass domiciles, you know. Just seems like a funny sort of thing for an attorney to do, messing around in the life of a dead man.”

  She leaned against me lightly. I glanced down and saw her face uplifted to mine. I did put my arm around her shoulders, then. She leaned her cheek against my shoulder and wiggled her body against mine. I rubbed my chin in her hair. Her face turned, and her mouth was a sweet fruit under mine, soft, promising, and languid. Abruptly, she turned away. I felt her shiver, and with my hand I urged her closer to me. Instead, she stood and walked slowly to the edge of the precipice. I felt a momentary panic. I thought, crazily, that she was going to jump. I stood and moved quickly to stand beside her.

  “Sorry about that,” I said.

  “Sorry?” Her laugh was short, cynical.

  “You know…”

  “Want to kiss me again, good my liege?”

  “Sure,” I said. I did. The salt spray drifted up to us from the chaos far below. Her
hair was damp to the touch of my face. I couldn’t tell if the salty taste on my tongue was from the mist rising from below, or if Rina was crying.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said, twisting away from me.

  The descent from Charity’s Point was easier. Rina didn’t hold my hand on the way down. Instead, she bounced ahead of me, sure-footed and spirited as a young mountain goat. I hung back from her, glad for the space between us. Too much wine, I thought. That’s all. A couple of nice, competent kisses, a very romantic spot for kissing, nice-looking woman, maudlin thoughts of death. Logical.

  The tide was rising as we strolled back up the beach toward the parking lot. We didn’t touch. I shifted the blanket to my other armpit. Waves broke out to our right, and the frigid, spring seawater hissed over the wet sand toward us, a shock to our feet, and then we felt the sucking erosion as it slid back to sea. We walked slowly, in no hurry. The fog was lifting from the beach, and the sky over our heads was a great bowl of stars. The moonbeams cut through the puffy little wisps of dissipating fog.

  Sometimes as we walked our hips bumped. Once Rina grabbed my arm in both her hands as a wave crashed close to us. She dug her face into the front of my shirt to wipe off the water.

  “Let’s stop,” she said suddenly. “Let’s sit for a minute. Here, give me an end of the blanket.”

  I flapped out the blanket, and Rina grabbed the other end to spread it on the powdery sand. I lit another Winston. We sat in silence and stared at the moon. Then Rina stood up. Wordlessly, she stepped out of her skirt. I watched as she worked at the buttons down the front of her blouse. The moon’s pale glow caught the white strips of nylon at her crotch and across her chest. She reached up behind her and shrugged her shoulders, catching the bra in her hand and dropping it to the blanket beside me. Then she hooked both thumbs into the band of her panties and drew them down her legs. She stood before me, legs apart, feet planted solidly in the sand. The moon’s reflected rays played in her dark hair.

  “Coming?”

  I undressed awkwardly while Rina waited. Then she took my hand and we ran into the water. The shocking coldness of it stopped me, but Rina continued, high-stepping over the little breakers, and then, with a twinkling flash of her pale rump, she cut the water with a dive. She stayed under for a long time, and when her head popped out, silhouetted on the surface of the water, she was much farther from me than I had expected.

  I followed her in my plodding crawl, too much arm and shoulder and too little kick. When I reached her, I was breathing heavily. She was treading water effortlessly, bobbing with the gentle swell of the ocean. I floated on my back, trying to restore my breathing to normal.

  “You can swim like crazy,” I puffed.

  “Nearly made the Olympics.”

  “What happened?”

  “Couldn’t make up my mind. Loved the distances, but wanted to dive, too. Platform. Coach said if I’d specialize, you know, concentrate on one thing or the other, I’d be a cinch. But I wanted it all.”

  “So you didn’t make it.”

  “Yeah. I should have. Really. I was good enough. But the judges, they knew what I was trying to do. They couldn’t tolerate anyone being good enough that they could make it swimming and diving.”

  “But you were good enough.”

  “Yes. I was good enough.”

  “When was that?”

  “I was fourteen. Eighth grader.”

  “Jesus!”

  “And I haven’t competed since.”

  She came into my arms, her naked body hard and cold against mine, her feet pedaling slowly. I tried to kiss her, and she bobbed away.

  “Come on,” she said. “Race you.”

  Her arms flashed, her kick thrusting her powerfully. I was no match for her, and when I finally staggered to the blanket Rina was sitting there hugging her knees and shivering.

  I flopped down beside her. “I’m cold,” she said, rolling toward me. I moved onto my side and hugged her. My hand played on her back, tracing the planes and curves of muscle and the ridges and bumps of bone from her neck to the hollow places behind her knees. Her skin was taut and cold to my touch. Her hips began to move, tentatively at first, and then with a rhythm I recognized. She lifted her face to be kissed, then pushed me gently onto my back.

  She slid over me, her breasts flattened against my chest, her mouth on my throat. Her legs straddled mine.

  “Hey!” she said as I entered her. She lifted her face to smile at me. Then her mouth came down on mine, and then moved away. Her arms were tight around my neck. I held on, and moved with her.

  I felt the muscles in her thighs spasm and her buttocks tense. “Oh, sire!” she whispered into the side of my throat, and then her whole body shuddered.

  We lay that way long after it was over. She gave my chest little kisses, and I strummed my fingertips softly on her ribs as I watched the clouds drift past the moon.

  “Look…”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Just let’s not…”

  “Sure. The wine and all.”

  “Right. I mean, we’re both…”

  “Adults. Yes.”

  She rolled off me and propped herself up on an elbow so she could look down at me. The sudden rush of cold air where her body had been covering me made me shiver. I sat up beside her.

  “Well,” said Rina. “That was fun.”

  “Uh-huh,” I agreed. “Jesus. It’s cold,” I said. “We should get dressed, don’t you think?”

  “Well, yes. Sure.”

  I found my clothes where I had dropped them beside the blanket, and hastily put them back on. I didn’t look at Rina.

  We each took two corners of the blanket, shook it out, and folded it, bringing our hands together carefully, trying not to touch.

  We started back for the car. “God, it must be late,” said Rina. “I’ve got classes in the morning.”

  “Umm,” I agreed. “I’ve got work, too.”

  In the car Rina fiddled with the radio. There’s not much there on Sunday nights. She finally settled for a fuzzy Country and Western program, its signal so distant that it kept fading and returning. She tried to sing along, but she didn’t know the lyrics. She was able to join the refrain of one ditty, in which the words “love” and “you” figured prominently. She pronounced them “lerve” and “yew,” mocking the hillbillies on the radio.

  Her Pinto was the only car in Gert’s parking lot. I pulled up beside it. Rina opened the door and slid out of my car, then bent down to look in at me.

  “Well, thanks a lot for the evening. Great food, and everything. I really needed to get away.”

  “My pleasure,” I said. We exchanged smiles.

  “Guess I better get going, then,” she said.

  “Can you make it okay?”

  She snorted. “Hey, I’m liberated, remember? No, I’m fine. Thank you.”

  “Well, then…”

  “Yes. See you. Good night.”

  “Night.”

  She slammed the door to my car. I waited for her to climb into her Pinto. When I heard her engine start up and saw her headlights flash on, I started back to Boston.

  At one o’clock on a Monday morning the highways seem like scenes from nuclear holocaust films. They’re brightly lit and otherwise empty of human life. A few trucks passed by, northbound in the other lanes. I imagined them moving of their own volition, without men steering them. I drove in silence. Rina’s hillbilly station had faded completely away. I listened to the static for a while, then snapped off the radio. It seemed as if Rina had faded away, too.

  I parked in the garage under my apartment building and rode up the elevator to the sixth floor. Piped-in Muzak still filled the casket on cables. When the little bell dinged and the elevator eased to its cushioned stop, I twitched. I had actually dozed during the vertical trip.

  I lurched down the corridor, unlocked my door, and flipped the light switch. My apartment looked as if it had been burglarized. It took me a moment
to remember that it always looked that way. It was supposed to look that way. I still was surprised occasionally not to find Gloria’s orderly influence on the place where I lived, where everything had its assigned place and God help the husband or son who put it in backwards, or upside down, or, most venal sin, neglected to put it back at all.

  I loved the comfort of mess, disorder, untidiness, disarray. It helped define my place, identify it as Mine. Nothing had a special spot in my home, now. I gave everything the run of the house. If my books liked it under the kitchen table, I believed they had a right to rest there for a while. If spoons found their way onto the top of the television, and if shoes liked it in the bathroom, maybe just to get away from their mates for a while, it was all right with me.

  Charlie had dropped by my place once to pick me up for a golf date. He had expressed envy at the mess I had achieved in my apartment. I told him that I hadn’t been like that when I’d lived in my parents’ house or when I had lived with Gloria. Charlie looked around, poking at a balled-up sweatshirt on the kitchen table, and said, “This is how you give the finger to Gloria.”

  So when I walked into my apartment in the early morning hours after my evening with Rina Prescott, I said, “Hello, Coyne’s Place. This is why you’ll never marry again.”

  I kicked my shoes toward the bedroom, let my jacket slide onto the sofa, found a can of Rolling Rock behind an almost-empty jar of pickled hot peppers, and made for my little balcony. One beer before bed.

  I fumbled with the lock on the sliding glass doors that opened onto the balcony. I had taken my seat and lifted my legs tiredly up onto the railing before it hit me: The sliders had been locked! The sliding glass doors should have been unlocked. I never locked them. It was another way I had of flipping my middle digit at my ex-helpmeet, whose compulsion for security rivaled the one she had for tidiness. Gloria required me to tour the house every evening before I was allowed to retire. The cars had to be safely garaged and locked. I had to check each window and door. Bolts had to be thrown, chains secured, keys turned. She always said, “You can’t expect me to make love to you unless I feel safe and secure. I just couldn’t relax.” There were moments toward the end of our marriage when I was tempted to unlock everything on one of my nightly rounds, go upstairs and screw her until she yelled “Uncle!” and then gleefully tell her the house was wide open.