He started at the beginning, telling her how they’d met and how easy Diane was to talk to. Apparently he’d also said a quite a lot about the way she looked because when he finally ran down, Charlotte had said, “—and beyond appearance?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I just mean I’d like to know about her as a person. The kinds of things she’s interested in—likes—dislikes, the things you have in common, perhaps.”
So he’d mentioned that Diane played tennis and a little about her swimming and diving. He didn’t go into the hunting thing, knowing how Charlotte felt about the subject. Then he’d thought for a while and added, “And another thing we have in common is”—he paused and grinned to make clear that he wasn’t entirely serious—“Me!” Charlotte’s reaction made him feel that it wasn’t necessary to explain any further—to go into what a surprise it had been to find that someone like Diane was interested in him. He didn’t go into the chemistry thing either—about how he reacted physically to Diane and how she apparently reacted to him.
Shifting over onto his back, he put his arm behind his head and went on thinking about the things he and Diane had in common. After a while he decided it didn’t really matter, anyway. That is, it didn’t mean that they couldn’t have a significant and important relationship. Look at all the love affairs in literature where the lovers had very little in common. After some thought he came up with Phillip and Mildred in Of Human Bondage and David Copperfield and Dora, which might not have been what you’d call ideal matches, but certainly would have to be called significant. And besides, there was lots of time in which they might develop interests in common: Something might start developing at any time—a thought that led to the time at the moment—and the fact that he had an eleven o’clock date to meet Diane at the lake.
He reached the spot they agreed on, a stretch of lakeshore near the first boathouse, a little early and stretched out to work on his tan while he waited. The breeze was cool, but the clean, sharp warmth of the mountain sun tingled the skin of his back and legs. The air smelled damply of sand and lake, spiced now and then by breezes laden with the sun-warmed scent of pine and fir. All of it, the smells, the sensuous comfort of sun and sand, the anticipation of Diane’s arrival, blended into a strangely vivid feeling of timelessness, a sense that this moment was everlasting, would go on existing, returning again and again, like sunrise or the first day of spring. The shining moment dimmed and lengthened, drifted into semi-consciousness and then back into an awareness of a numb arm and a back that was a little too warm for comfort. He sat up and looked at his watch. It was almost twelve o’clock.
When he dialed the Jarrett’s number from the snack bar phone booth, Diane answered the phone. “Oh hi,” she said. “Wait a minute. I’m going to another phone.” There was a slight thump and then nothing except the distant sound of several people talking and laughing. Then someone shouted, No, Jacky. Don’t—” a click and the line was dead.
James stared into the earpiece. “I don’t believe it,” he said. Fishing in the pocket of his trunks, he discovered he was out of dimes. After Fiona had torn herself away from a conversation with a muscle-bound guy in green coveralls who was restocking the ice cream freezer, she finally changed his quarter and he got back to the phone booth. This time the phone rang quite a while before Diane answered it.
“Hi Jamesy,” she said. “I’m sorry. Jacky hung up on us.”
“So I gathered. I just called to ask if you were coming to the lake, like we planned.”
“The lake? Oh, did we say we’d meet there for sure? I thought you just said you’d call to see if I could come down.”
He decided against saying how sure he was they’d made it definite. “Well. I’m calling,” he said instead. “Are you coming down?”
There was a long pause. “I’m afraid I can’t right now. We have company. Friends of the family. My mother wouldn’t want me to leave right now.”
There was a silence while James tried to deal with his anger.
“I’m sorry, Jamesy,” Diane said. Her voice was soft, seductive, pleading. “Don’t be mad at me. Maybe we can go swimming tomorrow. Okay?”
He said he wasn’t mad at her. When the conversation was over, he went on sitting in the phone booth for several minutes, glumly considering the possibilities for the rest of the day. He would just as soon have gone on home, except that he had told Charlotte about his date to go swimming with Diane and he didn’t feel like going into explanations right at the moment. Finally he decided rather bitterly to go back to the beach and, in the interest of symmetry, sunburn his stomach to match his back. After ordering an egg sandwich at the sidewalk window, he trudged back across the sand.
The egg salad sandwich turned out to be made of a little lettuce and a lot of goopy mayonnaise and a few small lumps that you could believe were hard-boiled egg, if you felt optimistic, but which in his present state of mind he was inclined to view with suspicion. Closing his eyes and making a determined effort to think positively, he finished the sandwich and collapsed in the sand. The air had lost its cool tingle, and the sand felt hot and itchy. Eyes closed tightly and teeth clenched, he had been determinedly tanning for about ten minutes when someone said, “Hello Prince.” Sitting up, he looked quickly around. There was no one on the beach except himself.
“Hello,” the voice said again, and following the sound, he looked up at the dock of the nearest boathouse. Griffin Donahue was leaning over the rail looking down at him. Her long braid of sunstreaked hair, dangling two feet below her face, looked almost as wide as her neck, and tight-fitting blue jeans accentuated the narrow length of her body. Seen from below, her wide long-eyed face looked vaguely oriental.
“Oh it’s you,” he said. “What are you doing up there?”
“Feeding things.”
“Yeah? What kind of things?” He grinned, raising his eyebrows in mock apprehension. “Or should I ask?”
She didn’t smile. “Do you want to see?” she asked.
“Sure. Why not?”
The dock was well posted with Keep Off and Private Property signs, and a padlocked chain blocked access by unauthorized vehicles. As he stepped over the chain, James noticed the wooden sign that hung from it. The name Westmoreland was carved into the wood in artistically rustic script, and the boathouse itself, one of the largest on the lake, followed The Camp’s architectural guidelines—a style that James had recently, in a letter to Max, dubbed “Ghost Town Lavish.” He followed Griffin past the crossbarred double doors of the main entrance and around to the side of the building. At a small side entrance she stopped and took a key from her pocket. Picking up a paper bag, which had been sitting near the door, she looked back at James and said, “Shh. Come in very quietly.”
The light was dim. Just below floor level a large cabin-type motor boat rocked gently, its polished chrome and shiny enamel reflecting the soft light. At dock level a narrow strip of walkway ran around three sides of the boathouse and a block and tackle arrangement dangled from the ceiling beams. Near the double doors a spiral wrought iron stairway led to an upper floor. Griffin closed the small door behind them very softly, and the light became even dimmer.
“Shh,” she said again. Motioning for James to follow her, she led the way to a coil of rope near the outer edge of the walkway. “Sit down,” she whispered. She waited until he was seated on the rope and then knelt and crawled to where a flight of steps led down to the deck of the boat. Leaning forward, she rapped sharply with her knuckles on the top stair.
James found himself staring with unblinking fascination, expecting—almost anything. His eyes still weren’t completely adjusted to the dim light, and now, as Griffin leaned into the flickering light reflecting up from the rippling water, the outlines of her bent back and reaching arms wavered and swam, transforming themselves into slender swaying patterns. He was still staring when a scrabbling noise caught his attention, and following the sound, he looked down in time to see a small black hand a
ppear on the edge of the second stair. He caught his breath in an involuntary gasp of astonishment. The hand disappeared.
Griffin looked back, frowning, and her lips noiselessly formed a “shh.” Then she rapped on the step again. The black hand reappeared, followed by a second one and then a long slender black nose. A small masked face twisted to look up at her, and then a raccoon crawled out onto the step from a narrow space between the dock and the boathouse floor. Whispering something under her breath, she pulled the paper bag slowly towards her and took out a handful of kibbled dog food. As she slowly extended her hand, the raccoon raised a handlike paw and took a few morsels from her palm. When it had eaten the first mouthful, Griffin moved back and he followed, climbing up onto the floor of the boathouse. A moment later a second raccoon appeared on the stair, and then a third.
They were aware of James. Their dainty black noses twitched in his direction and their eyes and ears scanned him anxiously from time to time; but then returning to Griffin, they seemed to dismiss him as something of hers; as something potentially dangerous but made safe and acceptable by her presence. Crouching on the coil of rope, James watched in almost breathless fascination as Griffin went on feeding and talking to the animals. He couldn’t hear what she was saying. In fact, at times it hardly seemed to be words at all; but her lips moved, and he could make out a soft stream of sound. The raccoons circled in front of her, small furry hunchbacked shapes, bobbing their heads and making soft growling noises. One at a time they came closer, squatted on their haunches, held out both hands, or reached out to touch her bent knees. As each one approached, she seemed to speak to it individually, and each of them responded, looking up at her face and making the soft, throaty noises. When she held out handfuls of kibble, they sat up and reached for it with both hands, scooping it up gently between their palms. When the food was gone, they went on weaving and bobbing around her, touching her feet and legs, exploring the empty bag, scurrying away when their explorations brought them too close to where James was sitting. After a long time she stood up, and as if at a signal, the raccoons filed down the stairs and disappeared beneath the flooring. Back in the bright sunlight on the dock, the spell faded slowly. Griffin seemed distant, almost distracted. Walking beside her, James watched her curiously.
After a while he asked, “How did you tame them?”
“Tame them?” Her eyebrows, oddly dark and heavy in contrast to her blue eyes and sun-streaked hair, drew together in a thoughtful frown. “I didn’t. Not really. I just saw one of them one day, and so I sat down and talked to him until he wasn’t afraid anymore. And then the others came. They just aren’t very afraid of me.”
“I know. It’s amazing.”
She shrugged. “Most animals are very intelligent. They know if you’re their friend.”
That was what reminded him of the deer and of his promise to take her to see him—a promise he regretted making and hoped she’d forgotten. But now, as if reading his mind, she said, “When are you going to take me to see…”
She paused, staring up at him, and almost as if there was something hypnotic about her high-intensity blue eyes, he found himself saying, “…to see the deer?“
She nodded. “The deer,” she said.
“Well, how about right now,” he said, to his own amazement. “I don’t seem to have much else to do this afternoon.” Even while he was saying it, he was telling himself he was crazy. To give away his most treasured secret, a secret he hadn’t shared with anyone, to a crazy little kid he really knew very little about. Perhaps she really did have some mysterious power of persuasion. Or, more likely, he just wanted some company, any company, to keep from brooding over the fact that Diane had stood him up. And on the positive side, there was no doubt that Griffin loved animals and would never intentionally do anything to endanger the deer.
They had already started up Anzio when he realized that Griffin’s feet, bare as usual, presented a problem. Her feet were probably pretty well toughened, but there were some stretches of very rough terrain on the way to the valley. When he mentioned the need for shoes, she didn’t argue.
“When we go past my house, I’ll run in and get some,” she said.
“All right. But that presents another problem. If Woody sees you, he’ll want to come along and I wouldn’t want to take a kid that young over the cliff trail. There are some places where it’s pretty dangerous.”
She shook her head. “Woody’s not at home. He’s gone to Belvedere with Wes.”
“Wes?”
“Yes. His father. They’re visiting Woody’s grandparents. The Westmoreland ones. And they’re going to a specialist to see why he gets tonsillitis so much. They’ll be back in a couple of days.”
“Did they leave you all alone?”
“Oh no. My mother is here and a whole lot of other people. It’s a kind of party.”
A few minutes later he saw what she meant. As the Westmoreland’s house came into view, he saw that several cars were parked along the road, and five or six more in the parking area beside the house. And if the cars were any indication, the guests weren’t little old ladies from Pasadena. Near the driveway James stopped to stare in appreciation at a fantastic Jaguar and a brand new Ferrari. Party noises, music, loud voices, laughter, drifted down to Anzio, and looking up, James saw a lot of people sitting around small tables on the lower deck.
“I’ll just go up and get my shoes,” Griffin said. “Do you want to wait here?”
It was obvious that that was what she wanted him to do. “I might as well,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to intrude at lunchtime.”
She shook her head. “Breakfast,” she said. “I’ll just be a minute.” She had started up the slope when a man and a woman came out into the parking area, followed by what looked, from a distance, to be a pack of long-legged rats. A moment later a flashy looking silver-brown sports car roared into life, shot backwards, and then swooped down the drive. Beside Griffin it slid to a stop, and the window on the passenger side opened.
Sun on the windshield made it hard for James to see the woman clearly, but it was obvious that the conversation was, at least in part, about him. Several times Griffin gestured in his direction. The woman was probably her mother, and under the circumstances, it seemed diplomatic to go up and be introduced. If Mrs. Westmoreland was objecting to her thirteen-year-old daughter going off on a hike with an older guy, and it seemed quite likely that she was, he felt fairly certain he could set her mind at ease. And he might as well do it. Being the type who wouldn’t ever be mistaken for Mack the Knife wasn’t always an asset; so when it was, it might as well be taken advantage of. He strode resolutely up the drive, smiling his most forthright and reliable smile.
On closer inspection, the car was a Maserati, and the woman in the passenger seat was the most incredible-looking person he’d ever seen. A general description might include such things as shadowy blue eyes, lots of tawny hair, deeply tanned skin, a silky white jumpsuit with a belt of golden chains and the body to go with it. In spite of her coloring, she gave an impression of darkness—a subtle brooding darkness, exotic and foreign. But no listing of details would explain the overall effect that was a kind of dazzle, like fireworks in a black sky. Whoever she was—film star, international beauty, sex goddess—she obviously wasn’t Griffin’s mother.
“This is my mother,” Griffin was saying.
He swallowed twice before he managed to get started explaining the little educational nature hike he and Griffin were planning. He got in most of the information he wanted to cover, but the delivery was lousy, accompanied by a lot of blinking and stammering. As he blundered along, Mrs. Westmoreland watched him with a disconcerting lack of concern. His explanation seemed to be working—if not in quite the way he’d intended. He would have preferred to have given the impression of being reassuringly responsible, rather than harmlessly imbecilic. As he babbled, the woman’s eyes drifted dreamily from his face down to her lap, where three skinny little dogs whimpered and shivered.
After a while he began to get the feeling that she wasn’t listening to him. Before he was quite through, she sighed, smiled sleepily and reached out to touch Griffin’s cheek with the backs of her fingers.
“That’s nice, darlings,” she said. “Don’t get lost.” The man at the wheel, whom James had forgotten to even notice, shot the car into gear, and it roared down the drive.
“Wow,” James said. “That’s really your mother?” But Griffin was already running at top speed toward the house.
CHAPTER 9
GRIFFIN’S EYES WERE firmly fixed on her feet—now encased in scruffy tennis shoes—and her responses to all of James’ conversational efforts were as brief as possible. When he asked if the party was to celebrate anything in particular, and who the man in the car with her mother was, she simply shrugged and said she didn’t know. And when he said her mother was fantastically good-looking, her answer was even briefer. “I know,” she said in a flat voice. He was beginning to wonder if he’d doomed himself to a hike that would turn out to be not only ill-advised but also embarrassingly silent. But just before they reached the west gate he hit on a subject that produced better results. When he asked about the dogs, she said they were whippets; and although she was still looking at her feet, her voice definitely had more life in it. He decided to try a variation on the same theme.
“Was something wrong with them? They seemed to be shivering?”
“No. Nothing’s wrong with them. They’re just very nervous. And they don’t like strangers. They’re very sensitive.”
“They’re bred for racing aren’t they? Does your mother race them?”
“No. Wes has some that he races, but they live at the trainer’s. My mother just has hers for pets. She takes them with her everywhere.”
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