Zan parted the curtains. She’d put on the dress from the pawnshop. It was a little too big for her, gauzy, the backlit red fabric so sheer that Earley could see the silhouette of her body right through it. “Jesus,” he said, staring. Zan smiled and held up a bottle of almond oil.
“Dress on or off?” she said.
“Either,” said Earley. “Both.” Zan set the oil down alongside the mattress, her eyes roaming hungrily over his body.
“Off,” she said. “Don’t want to rip it.” She knelt down beside him and turned her back, lifting her tangle of hair to one side.
Earley rolled up to a sitting position, sliding the long zipper down in a slow tease along her bare skin. He could see every knob of her spine in the candlelight, the oblong dark mole in the small of her back, the swell of her buttocks.
“Thanks,” said Zan, rising and turning to face him.
“Where’s Reed?” he asked, suddenly noting how quiet it was.
“He went out for a smoke,” said Zan. “Wouldn’t you?” She slid the red dress off her shoulders, then took a step forward and let it drop down to the floor. She was naked beneath it, as he knew she would be. She’s playing on me like a harp, Earley moaned to himself, and I don’t give a damn.
“Roll over,” said Zan, as she knelt down and squeezed a few drops of the almond oil into her palm. Earley did, turning his head to one side on the pillow. Zan moved onto the futon and straddled his back. Earley could hear her hands rubbing together, warming the oil. He held his breath, lying in wait for her touch.
Zan started out with the palms of both hands in the small of his back, moving upwards and outwards. Her oiled hands felt smooth and improbably warm as the candlelight flickered around him. The smell of almonds was heady. Earley sighed and gave in to her, closing his eyes as she worked away on his shoulders, kneading and releasing every sore muscle, caressing the wings of his shoulder blades, moving down the deep groove of his backbone.
How long had it been since anyone touched him with this kind of tenderness? Earley remembered his mom smearing Vap-O-Rub onto his chest when he’d had the croup, what would it be, twenty years ago? More. And a couple of girlfriends had given him backrubs, but nothing like this one. Zan’s fingers were practiced and sure. She’d done this for a living, no question about it. Earley thought about how many skins she had had to touch, older men, fat men, men who had scared her, might even have hurt her, and it made him angry. He wanted to punish them.
“Christ, Earley, you’re like a piece of sculpture.” Zan’s voice sounded husky. He could feel her warm breath as she bent over him, kneading the furrows and ridges along his spine.
“Whole lot of years cutting wood,” Earley murmured, cheek pressed to the sheet. He could feel Zan’s inner wetness on top of his buttocks; he loved how turned on he was making her, just lying still. “When do I get to turn over?”
“Now,” she said, arching up so that he could roll over beneath her legs. Her hands traveled over his pectorals, down to his belly, his groin. “And this is the part that my customers never got,” she whispered, sliding a warm, oily hand in between his legs. Earley’s breath caught as she stroked his cock, tracing it down to the root, and then bent down to take him inside her mouth. Her lips slid over his foreskin, her tongue thrusting, flickering, making him groan out loud.
Zan was insatiable. Earley lay back as she pleasured him, licking and sucking as if she could not get enough of him. She’s going to eat me alive, he thought, swallow me whole like a python. He could feel her tears damp on his thighs.
Without warning Zan shifted position and straddled him, angling the head of his penis against her own genitals. She circled above him and then slid down suddenly, bringing him so deep inside that he thought he’d explode. Her breasts bounced and swung as she churned up and down on him, clenching, releasing, making him hers. This is what it must be like for women, Earley thought, getting fucked. He liked the sensation, but not the idea; he wanted to be on top.
He arched his back and thrust upwards, asserting his own rhythm. Zan gasped and pushed back. Earley grabbed her hips, flipping her onto her back and plunging in, grinding his body against hers. Nobody’s going to outfuck me, he swore to himself, pumping harder and faster. Not you, and not Reed.
Reed, he thought suddenly. Where the hell is he? Has he been outside in the rain all this time? And as soon as the thought formed, Earley knew without looking that Reed would be standing just outside the curtains, watching and listening and beating off. Good, he thought feverishly. Maybe we’ll all come at once. Maybe Margie’s at home in her waterbed, working some battery vibrator, dreaming of me. I can fuck you all. Open the earth and I’ll fill it. I’ll be the Paul Bunyan of fucking. He gathered himself into one fluid essence and shot it out so hard that Zan screamed.
Reed was inside the bedroom so quickly that Earley knew he’d been right. “Are you all right?”
Zan nodded, gasping, her cheeks soaked with brine and her skin drenched in sweat. She couldn’t speak. Neither could Earley.
Reed stared at their soaked, heaving bodies, their intertwined limbs. Then he dropped to his knees and curled onto the futon beside them.
“Don’t leave me,” he whispered.
NINETEEN
Earley slept fitfully, skimming in and out of dreams about ferryboats, knives and Vick’s Vap-O-Rub. The sensation of warm hands caressing his chest was so real that it pulled him up out of a deep, swirling sleep, like a trout that’s been hooked. The predawn light was muted and granular, still too dim to see anything clearly. An owl hooted low in the distance.
Earley shut his eyes, hoping to drift back into the warmth of that dream. In that borderless zone between waking and sleep, it took him awhile to realize there was a hand sliding, light as a whisper, over his thigh towards his hipbone. At first he thought he was still dreaming, but no, there it was, like a secret, a promise, a feathery touch that glided so lightly the hairs on his thigh prickled softly.
Earley’s breath caught. He kept his eyes closed, reluctant to break the spell by admitting that he was aware of it. He could sense Zan’s face, inches away from his own. Her breathing was even and steady. Was she caressing him in her sleep? A deep, private shudder ran through his whole being; he felt himself falling insanely in love. He had to look at her, he had to know.
Barely breathing, he turned his head, opened his eyelids a sliver and peered at Zan. She was sleeping, all right. Her dark eyelashes feathered her cheek, which was propped, Earley noticed, on both of her folded hands.
He must have tensed involuntarily; Reed’s hand stopped moving at once. So he wasn’t asleep, Earley realized. Holy shit.
Earley froze. He could feel his own heartbeat echoing inside his ears. What the hell should he do? If he moved or spoke, or did anything that made it obvious he was awake, he’d have to confront Reed. And what would he say? Why the fuck was your hand on my leg? Reed would deny it, or pretend he thought Earley was Zan in the dark. Maybe Reed was asleep, Earley tried telling himself, but it was no use. He knew full well that Reed wasn’t sleeping; knew, too, that Reed realized that he had woken up Earley and was lying a few feet away from him, tense as a guy-wire, wondering how Earley was going to respond.
I can’t deal with this, Earley thought. Not at five in the morning, with Zan fast asleep in between us. He was dying to get off the futon and out of the bus. But if he stood up now, he knew he’d be making a statement. I know what you’re up to, you bastard; I’m not going to play.
Well, why shouldn’t he make a damn statement? Reed was the one who had crossed a line; why did Earley feel guilty? His heart was still racing. If he stayed where he was, they could both still pretend he’d slept through the whole thing. Anything else would be tipping his hand.
Earley lay there in stunned indecision, hyperaware of Reed’s every breath. The longer he waited, the harder it felt to speak up. By the time the wood pewees and warblers had started their dawn song, Earley had all but convinced himself there was no
need to, that Reed hadn’t actually touched him at all.
Zan made them both breakfast. She had no feel for the woodstove: the bacon was dry as old bark and the scrambled eggs tasted like cotton. Even the coffee was awful. “Do they let you camp-tend?” asked Reed.
“They did once,” said Zan, helping herself to more blackened hash browns. She didn’t seem fazed in the least by the way the food tasted. Earley loved her for being so matter-of-fact. He ate seconds of everything. Reed picked at his plate, though whether it was because the food was so lousy or he was still feeling self-conscious was anyone’s guess. He still hadn’t met Earley’s eye.
“I’m going to go take a shower,” he said, scraping his plate into the compost can.
Zan’s eyebrows went up. “Where?”
“There’s a waterfall down in the gorge,” Earley told her. They’d started to use it the week before, though the water was still cold enough to raise goosebumps.
“Isn’t it freezing?”
“Yeah,” said Reed, grinning, “it’s great.”
“Macho man,” Zan smirked.
Reed twisted his T-shirt, threw back his head and brayed, “STELLLLLA!” like Brando. Then he scooped up his towel and soap and headed off into the woods. Earley watched out the window as Reed slouched past the chopping block, stomping along in his unlaced caulks. He had to be normal. Didn’t he?
Zan came up behind Earley, holding the coffeepot. “Heat that up for you?” she said like a waitress. He turned around, glad to be rid of his thoughts about Reed.
“Hey, we’ve got the place to ourselves for once. What do you say?” Zan was wearing one of Earley’s wool shirts as a bathrobe. He slid his hands up her bare legs and over her buttocks, pulling her closer. She still smelled like almonds.
“Is that all you ever think about?”
“No,” Earley said. “But it’s high on my list.”
Zan looked at him. “What do you dream about, Earley?”
You, he thought. And Vick’s Vap-O-Rub. Neither of those seemed to be the right answer. “I’ll show you,” he said and led her outside.
They set off down the path, sidestepping a widowmaker. Earley reminded himself he should come back and buck it up for firewood sometime. There was a sweet springy scent in the air that he couldn’t quite place, some berry flower or Nootka rose that had opened out in the new sunlight. The woods seemed so lush these days, everything hurtling from bud into ripeness, plants growing so fast you could practically see them expanding, like stop-motion footage. The whole world was green.
They were walking in single file. Zan, who had never been back here before, led the way, with Earley, as usual, dogging her footsteps. They passed the steep cliff edge where he and Reed had thrown the charred mattress after the fire. Earley paused to look down at it, lying below among boulders and yellow-green skunk cabbage. It was soaked through with rain, the striped fabric already fading from white to damp gray. A short way beyond it, the path twisted off to the right, tracing a zigzagging switchback down the dry gorge to the creek beyond. Zan started to follow it down.
“No, this way,” said Earley, guiding her onto a less-worn path that led off to the left, through a thicket of devil’s club. He stamped down the thick, thorny canes with his boot soles, leading Zan deeper into the trees. He had to stoop frequently, holding back branches to keep them from lashing back at her.
“This is one hell of a back road,” said Zan. “Where are you taking me?”
“Almost there.” Earley stepped over the trough of a nurse log. He knew every step of this route, but he’d never brought anyone with him before. He led Zan through a cluster of red osier dogwoods and into a small, heart-shaped clearing. The sunlight streamed down, cathedraling through the tall fir trees. The air was so moist he could see dust motes swirling within every ray.
Zan stood next to him. “What am I looking at?”
“The cabin I’m going to build. Here’s the front door.” Earley stepped over a root and turned back to take Zan by the hand, ushering her after him. “Living room. The woodstove goes right where that rock is. Windows here, here, and a big one right here, facing the sunrise.” He drew a big rectangle in the air, framing the peak of Olympus. “Sixteen-foot ceiling.”
Zan’s mouth crinkled into a smile. “Sixteen?”
“There’s a loft bed up there, looking out at the mountain. And under the loft”—Earley paused for dramatic effect—“is the bathroom. Flush toilet, a deep sink with hot and cold running, and here, with a view of the waterfall after I thin out those hemlocks, the world’s hottest, steamiest shower.”
“Waterfall?” Zan said. “Is that what I’m hearing?” She stepped forward and stood on a flat shelf of rock, looking down. Earley followed her gaze. The green bowl of moss-covered rock was bisected by a white veil of spray that fell over the cliff and into the creek shallows. Reed stood in front of it, taking his clothes off.
Zan watched him bend to step out of his jeans. “Want to go down and join him?”
“No. I don’t.” Earley sounded a bit too emphatic, even to his own ears. “Can’t we just be alone with each other? I’m sick of Reed.”
Zan looked at him, nodding, her eyes impenetrable. “But I’m not.”
They were gone a long time. Earley boiled water and washed Reed’s thrift-store dishes, hating his guts. Maybe he ought to just fire the bastard; it wasn’t as if he even needed a splitter at this point. Especially not one who groped him in bed. He willed himself not to revisit the scene from this morning, which hovered behind every thought, unignorable. But when he pushed that away, he was left with the sting of Zan turning her back on his cabin—his cabin!—to go off with Reed. What cabin? he thought as he hurled the gray dishwater onto the ground; it’s nothing but thin air. I don’t even own the damn land. Wanting something, even wanting it so much that the desire for it felt like a part of your body, as real as a leg or an arm, didn’t mean you’d ever get it. Look how much he wanted Zan.
Maybe I’ll go and stand under that waterfall too, he thought angrily. Show those fuckers who’s boss on this hill. He set off down the trail, noting the bright yellow flash of a warbler winging from tree to tree, some trilliums starting to bloom underfoot. Could it really be only a week since they’d carried Reed’s mattress along this same path? So much had changed, and was still changing, minute by minute. Earley took a deep breath. He could hear the rush of cascading water as he stepped to the rim of the gorge and looked down.
Zan and Reed lay in the mossy glade next to the creek, their bodies pale against all that lush green. They were turned towards each other like bookends, their faces just inches apart. They seemed to be talking about something that made them both happy. Reed’s hand traced the curve of Zan’s hip, moving up from her thigh towards her hipbone. So it was her that he’d reached for this morning. What a relief, Earley told himself, but there was a hollowness inside his chest as he watched them together.
The splash of the waterfall buried their voices, but Earley could see Zan was laughing at something that Reed had just said. He wondered if they had already made love, or if this was still foreplay. And then it occurred to him: maybe they weren’t having sex at all. Maybe they were just talking, enjoying each other. Maybe Reed shared a kinship with Zan that Earley would never have; maybe they were, in fact, soul mates.
So what did that make him? What he’d been so many times to so many women, he figured: a muscular body to play with, a big dumb fuck.
Zan reached for Reed’s hand, kissing his fingertips one at a time. Earley felt as if his heart would burst. There was something so tender in that simple gesture. I’ll never have that kind of closeness, he thought. Not with Zan, not with anyone. Sex took you only so far. There were intimacies that went so much deeper, connections that made people realize they weren’t alone in this world.
Earley blinked several times. Something seemed to have gotten in one of his eyes; it was watering freely. He felt like a creep standing up there and spying on Zan and Reed
. I should go down and join them, he thought, or else take off and give them some privacy, but somehow his feet wouldn’t move. Make me part of you, he thought to himself as he watched them together. Sweet Lord, let me in.
Zan took off for the planters’ camp right after dinner, some kind of weird quiche made of tofu and kale. Earley was still hungry, so he boiled up a couple of hot dogs and washed them down with a cold Oly while Reed took out the compost.
“Want to play Go?” Reed asked when he got back, kicking off his boots.
“No,” said Earley. Reed nodded as if he’d expected that answer. They went through their bedtime routine in charged silence, avoiding all physical contact, like prizefighters circling each other before they start sparring. The bus’s cramped spaces seemed tighter than ever, and they both made a point of drawing the curtains shut tightly around their beds.
Earley lay still on his futon, remembering the whispery touch of Reed’s hand sliding over his thigh. He moved his own hand to the same place and noted the texture of sinew and hair, the hardened scar tissue where he’d been cut by his chainsaw. Reed had to have known whose leg he was touching. Why else was he acting so dodgy?
If he really grilled himself, Earley had to admit it had crossed his mind that Reed was a little too fond of him, not just eager to learn Earley’s skills as a woodsman, but doting on his every word. But he’d set those suspicions aside when he saw the way Reed looked at Zan, heard him talking for hours about how obsessed he was with her. Earley had watched Reed have sex with a woman; he couldn’t be gay. The fact that he had watched made Earley uncomfortable. He remembered the first night they’d met, that damn shower, the way he had noticed the size of Reed’s penis. What did that make him? Had something been off all this time and he just hadn’t noticed? Or had he played into it somehow or other?
It pissed him off, having to ask all these questions. His friendship with Reed had been effortless. They simply fit with each other, they’d gotten along since the moment they’d met, and now Earley found himself wondering why. The blueness of Reed’s eyes annoyed him; his long ponytail made him look like a girl. Three-dollar bill, he thought. How did I miss it? And what am I going to do with him now?
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