by John Muncie
Charisse stopped flirting with Tug and turned her attentions to the son of a local gentleman farmer she’d met at Alyssa’s Fourth of July party. A week later she began to miss dinners at the lodge, and a week after that, nights in her room.
Don said he was writing a poetry cycle about painting and began spending evenings in the dairy barn studio of a New York artist, helping her mix colors. The bald tintypes photographer from Richmond and a calligrapher from Florida became inseparable. Abbi started calling William every night.
Cora, who’d been at Limespring for eight years, had never seen so many pairings, so many shadowy couples walking hand in hand on the night-lit gravel paths that connected the buildings. She even started to look at her husband with new eyes.
What was to blame? A tipsy Puck dripping his magic purple liqueur onto sleeping eyelids? Or was it a chain reaction from the fusion of Tug and Alyssa just up the road at Finally Farm? Maybe an unwitting breeze carried particles, charged by their passion, down Limespring Hollow Road and covered Limespring with a radioactive glow of desire.
If the Limeys had asked them, Tug and Alyssa would have denied that anything out of the ordinary was happening. Tug would have said the summer drawing project had rekindled his artistic drive. And why did Alyssa seem more vibrant than ever? Just the summer diet of tomatoes and olive oil, she would have said.
CHAPTER 41
“If you do to me what you did on poker night, I’ll tape your feet together.”
“You seemed to be enjoying it at the time.”
“That’s not the point. We’ve got to be discreet, remember?”
“So you didn’t like it?”
Alyssa bopped Tug with a bent plastic fairy wand, temporarily sprinkling his hair with a ragged spray of silver streamers. “I’ll turn you into a monkey if you don’t behave.”
They were rummaging for props and costumes at an estate auction in the hills just outside the tiny town of Orlean. The fairy wand had come from a box of old toys that contained board games, armless dolls, and a sad tiara, its once dazzling smile of baubles now a toothless grin of empty circles.
“Here, my queen,” Tug said, crowning her with the skeletal remains of the tiara. “Have mercy on your poor servant who can’t keep his hands or feet off you.”
To Alyssa’s embarrassment and delight, he knelt down and kissed the tip of her right foot. She was wearing sandals and could feel his lips brush against her toes.
“Get up, you idiot,” she said. When he ignored her and started kissing her left toes, she bopped him again with the silver streamers. “I dub thee Sir Foot-alot. Arise, sire, and be my champion.”
Two middle-aged women, who had been rummaging through a nearby box of kitchen things, witnessed this little performance and elbowed each other.
“Wish I were in love,” one of them said.
“The hell with love,” said the other, who was holding a set of chipped mixing bowls. “I wish I had someone who looked like that kissing my feet.”
They hung around for a second act, and Tug and Alyssa unwittingly obliged. He stood up and whispered something into her ear. She in turn whispered something back, and soon they were kissing.
“Let’s go before I’m tempted to put another ad in the personals,” the woman with the bowls said. The two women walked away laughing, but Tug and Alyssa didn’t notice.
This was their second Saturday together. Tug had told the Limespring crowd he was exploring the Shenandoahs that weekend. Alyssa had slipped out of bed at six, taken a shower, and brought him a cup of coffee in a travel mug.
“Come on, lazybones,” she said, pulling at his limp arm, “here’s your wake-up juice. Time to get up.”
Tug, whose pre-Limespring idea of crack of dawn was 11 A.M., moaned and pulled the sheet over his head with his free hand. “Go away, you wretched woman. You almost killed me last night. I can’t do any more.”
Alyssa pulled his arm harder. “I don’t need you for that. This is a field trip. If we don’t leave now, all the good stuff’ll be gone.”
As much as he asked, she refused to tell Tug where they were going. They drove for thirty-five minutes on narrow back roads, past country stores that marked the towns of Hume and Orlean, then onto an even smaller road that twisted up into the hills. Even if she’d wanted to go faster than twenty-five miles an hour, she couldn’t; a long line of cars snaked ahead of her.
“What’s with all the traffic?” Tug asked. “And where’d you say we were going, anyway?”
They were holding hands and Alyssa squeezed his. “I didn’t. For the fifteenth time, stop asking. It’s a surprise. God, I bet you were the kind of kid who shook his Christmas presents to find out what was inside.”
Tug denied it vehemently, though he had in fact been a Christmas-present shaker and worse. Sometimes he’d steam the Scotch tape off the packages when his mother was out of the house.
Finally they pulled up to an old white clapboard house. A sea of people milled about in the front yard, and a field to one side was full of parked cars.
“Damn, I knew we should’ve left earlier,” Alyssa said as she saw the crowd. “Oh well, here we are. Rawley’s auction. Everything goes. The lady who lived here moved into a nursing home and the family’s getting rid of everything. I’ve been to tons of these auctions and they’re the best way to find props and costumes. Remember that big orange thing you wore on your head for the Follies? Estate sale. Come on, let’s get a number.”
The sale included everything from dining room furniture to beds to dishes to garden tools to an unopened but yellowing set of pillowcases embroidered “King” and “Queen.” Miscellaneous items like toys, books, and pairs of roller skates had been dumped indiscriminately into boxes. Interested buyers had to bid on a whole box, regardless of the mix of contents.
A couple of burly men with tattooed arms brought out the big items, like the furniture and appliances, to the front yard for bidding. The auctioneer, a white-haired man wearing jeans and a brown plaid shirt that strained at the buttons, stood on the porch and unleashed into the microphone an indecipherable torrent of words marked every so often by dollar amounts. Periodically someone in the crowd would hold up an index card with a black number on it, changing the dollar amount in the auctioneer’s rolling rap.
There was a whole houseful of furniture to sell, giving Tug and Alyssa plenty of time to prowl through the boxes. When Tug started to talk excitedly about having found a near-new set of wrenches buried underneath an old shower curtain, Alyssa shushed him quickly.
“Don’t say another word,” she said. “Someone’ll hear you and then we’ll pay three times as much for this box.”
The estate sale game was all about being nonchalant, Alyssa explained, not alerting anyone to the treasure you’ve found. If they were lucky, they’d walk away with that box of tools, a shower curtain, and an old eggbeater for $3.
“And by the way, keep an eye out for contraptions like that eggbeater.”
“You’re calling an eggbeater a contraption?”
“It is when I use it in a play. I just thought of it. I’m going to put it on Puck’s head—that’s how he takes off to fly.”
She reached down and, grabbing the eggbeater, held it against her hair and started cranking the handle.
“See, it’ll be perfect,” she said. “Now I need to find other gizmos for the rest of the characters.”
As they searched for other contraptions, Alyssa told Tug about Becky, her roommate in New York. They’d both been fledgling actors trying to make it on the stage. Not long after Alyssa left the City, Becky moved to Chicago and later founded an avant-garde theater troupe that incorporated puppets, masks, and Rube Goldberg-like devices into its productions of the classics.
“You’d love her. She’s your spiritual doppelganger,” Alyssa said. “She can’t walk down the street without bringing home something someone threw out. She’s finally put all that stuff to good use: the Red Moon Theater Company, ever hear of it?”
> Tug shook his head.
“They’re small, but critically acclaimed.” Alyssa then dropped her voice to sound official: “‘Verges on the near miraculous,’ according to the Chicago Sun-Times. But that reviewer got it wrong. They don’t verge on anything. Their production of The Seagull was out-and-out miraculous. Transformational. It made me laugh and cry and think. The props moved, they made weird noises and did all kinds of crazy things. All that wacky stuff made the satire more satiric and somehow made the tragedy even more tragic. I’m going to do that with Midsummer. Becky’s going to help me plan it when I see her later this summer.”
“This summer?” said Tug, who had picked up two ceramic bookends shaped liked elephants.
“I told you, remember? I’m flying to Chicago in August to see Roz. She wants to take me on site to see the project. I’m going to see Becky, too. She might even give me some of her old thingamajigs.”
“You’re leaving in August?” He slowly put down the elephants.
“Only for five or six days.”
“But I’ll miss you.”
“It’ll be at the end of August,” Alyssa said, pretending to examine the intricacies of a nutcracker. “You’ll be in New York by then.”
They fell silent, the auctioneer’s words hanging between them.
“Hey, look at those,” Alyssa finally said, pointing to a jumble of crates stacked up against the porch screen. “We’re bound to find contraptions here.”
Soon they were rummaging again, Alyssa shaking her head over the junk people save, Tug reminding her of what an estate sale at Finally Farm would uncover. If the two middle-aged women had hung around they would have seen Tug balance a sewing basket on his head and Alyssa hug Tug’s face with a blue teddy bear. They would have seen them bump up against each other far more often than accident or chance would expect. And they might have overheard this conversation:
Alyssa: “I’m serious about this canoe trip with the Limeys tomorrow. You can’t act like I’m anything special to you.”
Tug: “Who said you were?”
Alyssa: “Okay, smart-ass. Perhaps you’d like to start sleeping in your cabin again.”
Tug: “No. No. Not that lumpy bed. Please, I was just kidding. I’ll be good. Nobody will suspect that we’re anything but friends.”
Alyssa: “I’m sure they already suspect. But, please, please, we have to be careful tomorrow.”
Tug: “I promise. Besides, how could I do anything bad in a canoe in the middle of the Shenandoah River?”
Alyssa: “That’s what you said about poker night. And suddenly I felt your foot between my legs.”
Tug: “Nobody saw. And if you didn’t like it why did you press up against me?”
CHAPTER 42
The white van pulled onto Limespring Hollow Road at 7 A.M. the next morning with twelve Limeys and friends, all grumbling about the early wake-up. Tug, who was sitting in the last row next to Abbi and her boyfriend, William, was the most vociferous, saying a little too loudly and a little too often how he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been up before eight o’clock. Alyssa, next to Marius in the second row, faked a yawn and said, “Summer vacation was meant for sleeping in.”
In fact, Tug and Alyssa were used to getting up early. It was all part of their charade. Each morning at six, the alarm would ring, sending Tug home to Limespring, where he would slip into his cabin unseen and, around eight, appear in the lodge for breakfast. He was even starting to enjoy the world of dawn, with its birdsong and mists.
That morning, they’d greeted the sunrise with mugs of coffee on Alyssa’s front porch. Then, as usual, Tug jogged down Limespring Hollow Road unnoticed. Twenty minutes later he walked out of his cabin with a loud slam of the screen door. Meanwhile, Alyssa timed it to arrive at the van just a few minutes before the scheduled departure, so everyone could see that she’d walked to Limespring alone.
“Sorry,” she said to Jackie, who’d organized the Shenandoah canoe trip and had been checking her watch nervously, “I slept through the alarm. Didn’t even have time for coffee, so if I seem foggy, that’s why.”
Alyssa seemed suspiciously unfoggy. She was buoyant, smiling, and unnaturally alert for seven in the morning. Even her hair was bouncier than normal. Under other circumstances, Abbi might have asked if she’d won the lottery or something. But she was certain she knew what the “or something” was and she’d promised Tug she wouldn’t say a word.
Abbi wasn’t the only Limey who had noticed. Alyssa and Tug’s just-friends act was about as convincing as a politician’s promise. Tug didn’t have the acting chops to pull it off. He sounded like Dustin Hoffman around Mrs. Robinson.
“So, Alyssa,” he said woodenly as the van pulled out. “What do you think the next year’s Follies show will be?”
Alyssa, who did have the acting chops, artfully shifted the question to the rest of the group. “What do you guys think? Death of a Salesman? Streetcar Named Desire? Madame Butterfly?” She knew her crowd. For the rest of the ride, suggestions, from the outrageous to the practical, bounced around the van like errant tennis balls.
By the time they’d gotten to River Bend Outfitters, a few miles outside of Front Royal, the choices had narrowed to another version of Hamlet, this one redubbed Spamlet, that involved the indecisive son of a computer magnate, or Twelve Angry Men, where the case involved a parking ticket instead of murder.
At the outfitters, which was just a plywood shack next to a huge rack of canoes, Alyssa and Tug avoided each other like sixth-graders with a secret crush. They stood on opposite sides as the group listened to the safety talk, was urged to wear sunblock, and was fitted for life vests.
“Just grab a paddle from that bin over there,” said the canoe guy, a thin, ropy blond with a diamond stud in his top left eyetooth, “and choose your canoe mates.”
That was easy. Limespring couples fever was running high. Jackie had brought her new beau; so had Charisse; Nattie and Rudy were glued together; and Abbi had William, who’d come down to Virginia for the weekend. That left only Tug, Alyssa, Marius, and Don, whose New York artist friend had refused to come because she was afraid of water snakes and leeches, even though Jackie assured her she’d never seen a water snake on the Shenandoah River and was certain no leeches lived in Virginia.
Alyssa quickly turned to Marius and said, “Bow or stern?”
“I like it when women are in charge, especially beautiful ones,” he said. “I’ll take the bow.”
That left Tug and Don, who rock-paper-scissored for the stern. Tug won.
With water bottles, sunscreen, sack lunches, and vests in hand, the Limespring group climbed into the shuttle for the twelve-mile ride upriver to the put-in spot.
Runoff from the heavy spring rains had kept the Shenandoah deep, giving the amateur canoeists long stretches of calm water. At first they practiced the strokes the outfitters had taught them, but after a while the hot sun, the slow current, and the love plague began to take their toll. A languid ease settled over most of the canoeists, who stowed their paddles and drifted lazily down the river. The little flotilla looked like an Impressionist painting come to life.
Alyssa and Marius, bored with the sedate scene, snuck up on Charisse and Alex, a tall forty-year-old man with a soul patch. While they were busy murmuring to each other, Marius angled his paddle in the water for maximum splash. “Attack!” he screamed, letting loose a spray of water. Alyssa joined in and they drenched the lovebirds.
Shaking off their stupor, Abbi and William rushed to Charisse’s rescue, splashing Alyssa and Marius. Attracted by the mayhem, Nattie and Rudy joined in. Nattie, who was a strong swimmer, dove over the side and attacked from the water.
“They’re boarding us, Captain!” Marius yelled to Alyssa as he tried to push Nattie under. But it was like throwing Brer Rabbit into the briar patch; Nattie just swam to the other side.
Marius, who handled a paddle like a three-year-old learning to use a fork, tried to move the canoe away. “Full
throttle ahead!” he shouted to Alyssa. But it was too late. Nattie shimmied up the side and pushed down hard. The canoe spit Marius and Alyssa into the water.
In less than two minutes, the entire contingent was splashing and screaming and dunking each other in the Shenandoah. Alliances formed and disbanded in rapid succession. Marius and Alyssa versus Nattie and Rudy morphed into Alyssa and Nattie versus Marius and Rudy, which quickly shifted to boys against girls, then artists against writers, then Klingons against the Enterprise.
Somewhere in the watery melee, Alyssa hurled herself against Tug. “Take that, pointy ears,” she said.
Tug caught her in his arms, and for a moment they forgot themselves. If it hadn’t have been for a sneak attack by Nattie—or Captain Kirk, as she insisted she be called— he might have kissed her.
“Mr. Spock,” Nattie shouted to Tug, “take the Klingon to the brig.”
“That is illogical, sir,” Tug said. “But I will comply.”
He threw an arm over Alyssa’s chest and swam her to shore. The others followed, bringing their canoes with them. Soon all were on the grassy bank, drying in the hot sun and eating soggy sandwiches.
CHAPTER 43
Five hours later, the Limespring fellows and friends sat down to a second meal together, this time at El Camino Real, a popular restaurant on the outskirts of Front Royal.
They’d arrived a little after six and were ushered to a long table on the outdoor patio. The seats quickly filled up, and, after spending the day trying to keep apart, Alyssa and Tug found themselves, like partners in a game of musical chairs, standing by the only two spaces left.
For the rest of the evening, while the other couples kissed occasionally and let their fingers entwine, Tug and Alyssa kept their secret below the table, rubbing their legs and touching toes.