Late in the Season

by Felice Picano

  The coffee turned out scrumptiously good when she tasted it. Perhaps there was something to taking this much trouble over it.

  She thought she heard mumbling, and looked down the hall toward his bedroom. Through the doorspace, she could see the sheets moving. He must finally be waking up.

  She poured a second cupful, found a sugar bowl and matching creamer, spoons, and a lovely brown lacquered tray to hold it all. Wouldn’t he be surprised? Carrying it to the bedroom, she felt like the butler to a great financier in his summer palazzo on Lake Locarno. She wished she had today’s newspaper to set on the tray.

  “Good morning, sir!” she greeted him, entering the room and looking around for a place to set down the tray near his bed. “And it is a beautiful day, too, after last night’s storm!” Her words trailed away.

  Jonathan was half sitting up in bed, against the pillows, the sheets down to his ankles. His skin was honey tan against the pale blue sheets, amazingly solid against their crinkled fine flatness. One of his arms was thrown up over his rumpled curly brown hair. His mouth was half open, his lower teeth and his tongue visible. His eyes were only half-opened too.

  Stevie stopped still, looking, or rather letting her eyes look, take photographs for her mind; otherwise she felt utterly blank, utterly filled up at the same time by what she was seeing, so that she couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but look. Look at how his dark fine body hair encircled each tiny cinnamon-colored nipple of his well-defined chest, then sloped in together to meet in a single line inches below on a little ridge of bone—his sternum—from there to slide and furrow and cascade over muscled ripples down to the flat plain of his paler lower groin, where the line of hair spread again, bushing thickly around his genitals—his half-erect penis, tilted up toward his navel—as the dark hair spread again, under his scrotum to softly cover the tops of his thighs, and to finally, eventually, disappear into his tanned calves.

  “Oh! Coffee,” she heard him say, and she looked back up his length from the tangled sheets to his face again. “You made coffee. How nice,” he said. He smiled sleepily at Stevie, and gestured toward her.

  She felt as though she were about to freeze to death. No, that wasn’t precisely right. Her arms and legs felt prickled, as though with a sudden rash, as though the nerve endings had all short-circuited at once, declaring a neural emergency. It was worse, different in her lower torso; her stomach seemed to be burning, yet at the same time to be involuntarily contracting and expanding so quickly, so forcefully she thought she was about to urinate.

  “You can put the tray down here,” he was saying, “on the bed.” He reached up for it, took the tray out of her hands, and set it down on the sheets.

  The freezing, burning, and other sensations in her body seemed to meet and flow together, gushing, and Stevie thought, Oh, my God, now I’ve done it.

  “Sit down,” he said. She went to a nearby armchair, and was about to sit, satisfied at least that her legs were working. But he motioned her over to the edge of the bed. “Isn’t this cup for you? Or do I get both?”

  She sat on the edge of the bed, facing away from him. That wouldn’t do. She looked down to check if her shorts were soaked—and was surprised that they weren’t. What could it have been? She still felt odd, still felt that prickling sensation in her lower torso, still felt blankness, even panic. It was something of a relief that she didn’t have to be embarrassed over incontinence too. She turned to face him.

  “I really need this,” he sighed. Then, after a few sips, “You sleep well?”

  She didn’t answer: she was too busy staring at him again, sweeping once more from his ankles to his face. He suddenly realized something was wrong.

  “Jesus! How stupid of me,” he said, and reached down to cover himself with the sheet. “Sorry. Guess I wasn’t thinking too clearly.”

  “That’s all right,” she managed to say in a small, deceptively calm voice. “You don’t have to,” she added, then lied, “I’m used to it.” She had to stop her hand from reaching up and uncovering his body. Looking at it had somehow set off all these reactions in herself, she knew, and while it was definitely strange and uncomfortable, she didn’t want it to end: not yet. “You don’t have to cover up in front of me.”

  “Well?” He hesitated. “If you say so.” Still, he didn’t uncover himself. He wasn’t really convinced. She felt she had to say something else, in defense.

  “I do have a boyfriend, you know,” she said, and was now amazed by how blasé she could be. “And this isn’t nineteen fifty-three, is it?”

  “I suppose not,” he said, but looked puzzled, and she wondered what in the world had prompted her to choose that year.

  “I’m never sure anymore what is allowed and what isn’t with younger people,” he replied.

  She turned away from him and stared into the depths of the coffee mug. No relief there: the coffee, with cream, was precisely the color of his abdomen. She sighed.

  “You didn’t have to go to all the bother of making coffee,” he said. “I do appreciate it, however.”

  “I got up early.”

  Her voice continued to lie blithely past her emotions, and little by little, she began to believe she could even make small talk with him, sitting here, on the edge of his bed, with him so close, his body so present, and she would get away with it—fool him and herself.

  But could she ever reveal what she was really thinking to him? Or to anyone? How she’d seen Bill Tierney naked a dozen times, ditto her brother, and even a few other men; and although they were all certainly as attractive as any girl could desire, she’d never felt like this. Would Jonathan understand that? What was it, anyway, about him that had done it? Was it his position on the bed as she had come in the room, lying so thoughtlessly, so luxuriously among the tangle of sheets and the plump pillows? Was it the color of his skin—so honey brown—against the ice blue of the bedclothes? His sleepy vulnerability? Whatever it was, it had given her a brand-new experience, set off a chain reaction of little explosions that had culminated in her vagina—she had to admit it now—that no man or boy, even her crushes, even her rock star idols hadn’t come near before.

  Jonathan stretched again. This time she noticed that his underarm was amazingly vanilla-white against the darkness of the hair there, and the deep tan of his skin. She had to force herself to look away.

  “I think I’m finally beginning to come around,” he said.

  Why had she never noticed before what a handsome face he had? His eyes were large and brown and deep. His eyelashes were long, curled—an effect most women required mascara to achieve, but his were natural, uncosmetized. The black stubble in those areas of his bearded cheek and neck that he shaved was so regularly spaced as to seem deliberately placed. Even the gray hairs that stood out among the more frequent black of his mustache appeared to have been spliced in specifically for her admiration.

  “What’s on your agenda today?” he asked. “Going to try to work on that crisis of yours? Or just read and sun?”

  Now she remembered last night. And to think she had been fool enough then to have wanted to confide in him about Bill. That would have been the kiss of death. Thank God, she hadn’t. Or rather, thank God, he’d had the sense not to let her.

  “Probably tanning and reading. You?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll work a bit. Maybe take a swim.”

  Perhaps this was what people spoke of when they talked of love at first sight, Stevie thought. And yet, it wasn’t exactly first sight, was it? More as though her eyes had suddenly been opened: enlightenment. Hadn’t it been Saint Augustine who had written about that? And, she had to admit, it wasn’t really love either—although it could easily turn into that. It was lust, absolute, pure sexual desire that had swept her body and was plaguing her still, though diminishing somewhat. But it must have been something else too: some emotion; because while she wanted more than anything to stay here, next to him, with a good view of him, she a
lso knew that if she remained here another minute she’d do something awful, scream, break into tears, attack him.

  “Well,” she said, as calmly as before, “I guess I’ll be going then.” She stood up.

  “Leave the tray.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  He was so unconscious of her presence, they hardly were in the same room together. She picked up the tray, and he didn’t protest, but continued to sip his coffee and look up slightly questioningly at her. “What?” he finally asked.

  Now she was in a fix. She got control of her tongue after some time and said, “Thank you.”

  “For last night? Don’t be silly. I’m glad you felt enough trust to come over.’’

  “That’s not all,” she began, then stopped herself. She wanted to thank him for her new experience, her new knowledge of herself: to thank him for being tanned and manly and naked and almost but not quite erect, for being sleepy and for having such long eyelashes, and for merely being.

  Instead, she said good-bye and fled the house.

  She ran down to the surf, and still wearing her shorts and T-shirt, plunged into the tide.

  Chapter Seven

  “Mind if I sit down?” Jonathan asked. He looked down the length of the beach one way—empty—then the other way, also empty except for Mrs. Perle’s umbrella in the distance, the little soda-shop table and chairs set out as usual, with Giorgio and Ricotta, the old lady’s silent companions, propped up as though they’d had too much to drink.

  Stevie turned over and looked up at him. He wasn’t sure whether she was frowning or merely trying to see who he was in the glare of the sunlight. He hadn’t meant to startle her.

  “I promise I won’t interfere with your reading,” he offered.

  “It’s nothing great.” She’d been on her stomach. She turned around and sat up, making room for him on the large navy blue towel. “Just something I found in the house.” She gestured for him to sit. He did, cross-legged, and inspected the book’s broken-spined title.

  “The Devil’s Third Eye. Sounds scary.”

  “Not really.” She seemed so shy now, so reticent that Jonathan wondered again if his impulse to stop and sit here with her had been a mistake. He’d been drawn to her—here on the desolate stretch of rough sand the storm last night had furrowed and carved—by her presence, by the presence of some life on the otherwise dead beach.

  “Look,” he said, “if I’m disturbing you or anything…”

  “No.” A small smile from her. She’d already gotten good coloring in the few days she’d been here. Her smooth young face glowed with it.

  “You did say you had a lot of thinking to do.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For laying all that on you.”

  “But you didn’t. Here,” he said, “don’t frown. Thanks for the coffee this morning. I really needed it. Sorry I wasn’t better company for you. I’m not any good until at least an hour after I’ve awakened.”

  She looked even more distressed at this remark. Had she really been upset by his nakedness? Why had he stupidly thought she was Dan this morning? Lady Bracknell would have had a fit if she’d been there.

  “I’ll keep quiet,” he said. “Go on reading.” He handed her the book.

  She took it, and he stretched out on his back, his hands beneath his head as a pillow.

  Another splendid sunny day. After that insane storm. What did these sudden changes of weather portend, anyway? Change of the seasons, naturally. Spring coming with rain. Autumn too. “Rowdy weather,” Dan called it. He hated it.

  He’d seemed distant on the telephone this morning. Distant and quite excited too. The flat in Chelsea had central heating and a shower, Dan reported. Very American, Dan said, already using a British accent. He would be impossibly, archly British for months after he returned. Dan was always affected by accents and speech patterns, when he traveled. After the Los Angeles trip, he’d bought roller skates because he’d loved skating along the boardwalks in Venice. Even though Jonathan and all the rest of their friends had laughed at him and none had joined him, Dan had gone out on the streets with the damn things, grocery shopping, tooling along the bike paths in Central Park. He’d even spoken like an Angeleno. His ex-wife, Janet, had counted eight uses of the word “karma” in one evening’s conversation with Dan. And what had Jonathan done with his beautiful self last night? Dan asked, always on the alert for infidelity, although he was the one who encouraged it, used it as a justification for his own philandering, calling it part of their open relationship.

  Nothing, Jonathan told him: it had rained like the end of the world in a Japanese horror movie. Of course Dan was hardly interested. He sailed into a paean on British boys. Not even there one night—and already. How gorgeous they really were, Jonathan, at least at the age of twenty or so. They began falling apart by twenty-five, got pasty-faced and fat, or lean and bony. Dan would have some British boys to report on soon; perhaps he’d even have a little affair there. Unlikely, too much work to do. Daniel…

  “What?” he said, aloud, only just aware that she’d said something to him.

  “You can take off your shorts, if you want,” she said. “You know, to get evenly tanned. I don’t mind.”

  What? he thought. What? “No. That’s all right. Besides, I’m not evenly tanned.”

  “I know.” She’d put down the book and was leaning on one elbow. “Go on, don’t mind me.”

  She was flirting, wasn’t she? Or was she mocking him? He couldn’t be certain which. Her eyes didn’t give her away: they were steady and gray—a little darker in this strong sunlight—almost blue.

  “I only do that in the privacy of my bedroom,” he said, “with unmarried young ladies present.”

  She smiled and turned away, putting her head down. “Besides! What would Lady Bracknell say, if she knew I was corrupting her teenaged daughter?”

  “Lady Bracknell?” Her head jerked up.

  “That’s what Dan calls your mother. You know, after the Oscar Wilde character.”

  He had no idea how she would react. He wasn’t prepared for what she did, however. Putting one slender finger up to her lips, she seemed to think rather seriously, then said, “It’s Lord Bracknell. My dad. My mom’s all right. He’s the one!”

  Then she began to giggle.

  “She would have gone into contortions, though,” Stevie said, not hiding her amusement, “if she’d seen us. Especially if she knew…”

  She stopped herself, then said in a conspiratorial voice, “Especially if she knew what happened to me this morning.”

  “What did happen to you?”

  “I had a hot flash.”

  “A what?”

  “A hot flash. You know, something sexual.” Now she was a little girl, maybe eleven or twelve, giggling and refusing to explain.

  “A hot flash,” she said again, more calmly. “At least I think that’s what women call it.”

  She was flirting with him. He decided to defuse it.

  “Is that anything like a fat attack? You know, when you absolutely have to eat a pint of chocolate ice cream?”

  “Close,” she said. “No. Not close at all.” And now she was twenty-eight or so, Nurse Locke, analytical and calm. “It’s a physiological thing. They only call it a hot flash in trashy magazines. I suppose it’s something like when a man has a spontaneous emission. You know, without him even being aware he’s aroused.”

  Jonathan didn’t know whether it was her calmness or what her words meant, but he was feeling uncomfortable. What was it with these kids anyway that allowed them to talk so openly about these matters? Thinking fast, he asked: “Who’s Rose?”

  “Rose Heywood?” she asked.

  “I guess.”

  “She teaches history of ideas courses at school. She’s a friend of mine. Why?”

  “Nothing. You mentioned her last night.”

  Her face closed up again; so he decided to keep on the attack
. “Look, I’m sorry about being so indifferent to your need to confide in someone last night. It was very rude of me. If there’s anything you feel you need to discuss…”

  “No.” The smile again—deceptive little smile, what did it signify? “No. It’s okay.” She felt the need to explain. “To me that would be a worse breach of taste than serving you coffee in bed unexpectedly this morn-ing.”

  “I appreciated that.”

  “I should have known better than to intrude.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “You thought I was someone else.”

  “I was half asleep.”

  “I know. All tangled in the sheets.”

  “Cotton-mouthed and foul-tempered,” he put in.

  “Rumpled and funny-looking,” she said. She looked down at the paperback. “This book is terrible.”

  “We’ve got shelvesful,” he said. “Why not come some-time and browse? Dan reads like an addict, and I do some too.” Then he had a thought: What did she read, anyway? What did eighteen-year-old girls read nowadays? Madame Bovary? Virginia Woolf? Gothic novels? “What kind of books do you read?”

  “All kinds.”

  She was playing with him again. Reveal and hide. Speak out, then be secretive. She was flirting. She was evidently pleased about this morning—not upset as he had thought at first. Somehow it gave her an imagined power over him—equalized them in some way in her mind. Whatever else Stevie Locke might be, she wasn’t a fool, that was certain. Perhaps a little too smart. No wonder she was having an identity crisis. Didn’t she know—hadn’t she learned by now—that intelligence was as much a wound as an aid in life?