“Okay,” he said, playing, “what was the last book you read?”
“The Devil’s Third Eye.” Complete with the smile again.
“Before that?”
“Phillip Aries’s Centuries of Childhood.”
“Well! That’s too fancy for me. Perhaps we don’t have anything on our shelves to interest you.”
“I was teasing,” she said, looking him in the eyes. She liked this game. He wondered if she were lying about this morning too—about her spontaneous orgasm or whatever it was—trying to get a rise out of him, to make him feel uncomfortable. “I did read it for a course I took last year. I hadn’t had time to read it during the semester.”
Jonathan heard shouting and turned away from her to look in the direction it seemed to come from. Two tall, flat-bodied boys wearing full-length black rubber surfing suits were rushing out into the waves, their long slender surfboards tilted in the sand on shore. Even from here, Jonathan knew them—the Halley boys, sons of the liquor store proprietor.
“Looks like we have company,” he said.
“Not much,” she replied, and turned onto her stomach after a cursory glance at them.
“The older one’s terrific-looking,” Jonathan said. Now he was gaming with her, trying to make her feel uncomfortable.
He expected her to turn over, inspect them, then comment. She didn’t. Instead she said, “He’s a cracker. They both are.”
“That’s what Dan calls them too. But for Dan that increases their attractiveness.”
“Not for me.”
“Doesn’t your boyfriend have that kind of body? Tall, wide-shouldered, small-hipped, flat-chested, all-American boy?”
“I suppose,” she said, not very enthusiastically.
“He’s on the shit list this week, huh?”
She laughed. “He sure is.” She rolled over on her side, facing him, slim, lithe, bikini-clad, and reached out as though stretching, with her hands and feet. She looked like a kitten on its back playing with a ball of yarn. “Bill and Lord and Lady Bracknell are all on the shit list.”
“How about Jerry?” Jonathan asked, hoping this would make up for his discretion last night, and so, eventually, satisfy Dan’s insatiable need for knowledge about past crushes.
Mock dismay from her. “Jerry’s a lost cause. Lobotomized.”
“Are you friends with him?”
“Not really. Not anymore. Do you have brothers and sisters?” she suddenly asked in a different voice, sitting up and serious again, quite studentlike. “I never even thought of that before. I wonder why not?” She pondered, then seemed to frown again. “Just goes to show you how you can’t escape parents even when they’re not around, doesn’t it? I think that all this while I assumed you and Dan only had each other, only could have each other. No brothers, sisters, family, apart from each other. Damn! How could I think otherwise, with all that brainwashing.”
Jonathan wanted to ask what kind of brainwashing. What had her parents said about him and Dan? He guessed he didn’t really want to know; didn’t care. But she was something else, more interesting by far than he had expected. Obviously she was at the point in her young life when she was questioning everything—all her assumptions, teachings, values. It was something Dan often did—maddeningly at times. But Stevie seemed quieter about it: deeper too. What a pleasure to be able to sense an active mind behind that very pretty face so young it seemed to be blank most of the time. If only her eyes didn’t have that glossy freshness of childhood too.
“And Jerry?” he asked.
‘‘He’s interning.’’
“That doesn’t sound too desperate.”
“For him it is.”
“You think he’ll make a bad doctor?”
“No. He’ll be fine. Capable. He’ll have an enormous, mostly female practice in a few years, and he’ll live very comfortably off mastectomy referrals and diet pill prescriptions, and afternoon office adulteries.”
“That doesn’t sound too terrible a life for a man,” he said.
“You’re all alike,” she said wearily.
“Not me! I don’t exploit any women. I even have a male cleaning woman.”
“Do you fuck around much when Dan’s away?” she asked.
Wow! That came out of left field.
“Do you?” he asked back.
“I’m not married,” she said, “and don’t say you’re not. It’s the same thing.”
“Did you know that Dan had the hots for your brother?”
“I know.”
“Really. How?”
“Jerry told me. He said he would probably have done it with Dan too, but he never had the time. He thought Dan was sweet.”
“Wait till I tell Dan. He’ll reserve a seat on the next plane back.”
“Jerry told me that Dan was much nicer to him than most of the women out here, and that’s why he would sleep with him. To show how grateful he was. He said that Dan had no expectations either. I guess that’s what it all comes down to, doesn’t it?”
“Lack of expectations?” he asked. He’d lost her.
“That too,” she said. “No, being…being human.”
He had the urge to touch her, and did, on her hot, smooth shoulder. “You shouldn’t worry too much. You seem to have it all in place.”
She looked at him with a question, but didn’t ask it.
He took his hand off her, and she intercepted it and held it next to her own, then turned it over, palm up.
“Look at all the lines on my hand, compared to yours,” he said.
They compared palms silently, his square with large tufts of flesh, the long, straight fingers, slightly knobby at the joints; hers finer, oval-shaped, flat, with slender tapering fingers. She had a tiny scar between the two middle fingers.
She touched his gold ring. “Did Dan give you this?”
“Stevie,” he suddenly said, surprising himself, but feeling incredibly sympathetic with her plight. “I’m on your side.”
“Thanks. I know that. You and Rose are. I don’t know if that’s enough.”
“If you’re on your side too that’s all you need,” he said.
“I wish Lord Bracknell thought that,” she said sadly.
“Fuck Lord Bracknell.”
A surprised look from her, then a mischievous smile. “Would you?”
He had to think. He tried to picture Vernon Locke, tried to remember him objectively. He was older, of course: out of shape. But not bad.
“Would you?” he asked.
She squeezed his hand between hers. “I asked first.”
He pretended to ponder. He liked having her hold his hand and look at him, liked this little game with her. “In a pinch,” he finally said. “And you?”
“In a pinch,” she agreed, then let go of his hand and began to laugh so hard she fell backward on the beach blanket. When she could speak clearly again, she said, “Lord Bracknell is right! You are corrupting me. Thank God! I was so bored!”
She looked up at him, comfortable on the blanket. He was reminded of years ago, when he was in high school, when he and a girl friend, Francine, had gone to the beach, on picnics and rides. They’d never done more than kissed and necked a little at a school dance; but they’d always amused each other, tested each other, kept each other sharp, satisfied each other’s need for companionship. He wondered where Francine was now, and if she were happy.
Suddenly he felt as though something were expected of him: the way she was staring at him, appraising him almost. He stood up, shaking off the sand that had stuck to his legs.
“You want to come look at those books?” he offered.
“Another time,” she said.
“Whenever.”
“Wait!” She sat up. “I have an idea. Why don’t you come to my place for dinner tonight?”
It was so spontaneously said, he answered, “Fine.” Then, “Can you cook?”
“I’m a brilliant—although somewhat limited—cook.”
�
��Limited how?”
“You’ll see,” she said. The smile again. “What time?”
“Eight? Nine?”
They agreed on nine.
“Should I bring anything? Wine? Bunches of dried leaves for your table setting?”
“Both,” she said, jumping to her feet. He was glad he’d accepted her offer. She was already in the mood to do something about it. It would be fun for her. “I have to go shopping for food,” she said, remembering something. “’Bye!” and she started off.
“Hey!” he called.
“What?” Turning back.
“Is this formal?” he asked.
“Don’t come naked,” she said, then turned again and ran up toward her house.
He watched her for a while until she had reached the oceanside deck, washed off her feet with a hose, then went in.
Jonathan sat back down on the beach towel and looked at the boys bathing in the surf. They had probably decided against surfing today; both had taken off their rubber suits and were diving and swimming, much closer now than before, brought down this end by the strong tide.
They were extraordinary, he thought. Awfully blond. What did teenaged girls know of male beauty? He couldn’t get enough of them.
Chapter Eight
Everything was ready but the fish. That was slowly baking in the oven, according to her mother’s recipe. Just before serving it, Stevie would cover it with a sauce and slip it under the broiler for a fast browning. Otherwise, everything was fine. The salad looked fresh and colorful in its transparent bowl; the cold asparagus were laid out accompanied by two little dishes of fresh mayonnaise; even the rice and pea mixture would be served cold. The table was placed by the windows onto the ocean deck, set for two, with the pale blue china her mother never used because it was too good for summer dining; the practical flatware shined to a glitter; two ceramic candlesticks found hidden in a closet. She hoped he wouldn’t bring the dead leaves, as he had teased he would. She’d collected some late-blooming irises and long-stemmed willows from the garden of the Winstons’ house, closed weeks ago.
She should have told him which wine he was to bring. The house looked fine, finally. She’d spent all afternoon on it, hiding the awful throw pillows, taking down the paintings on the walls, those awful “textured” seascapes her father had bought years ago in the city, because he thought they were appropriately marine. Lord Bracknell. That fitted him. Neither a monster nor a myth; wasn’t that how Wilde characterized his character? That was Dad, all right.
Really, if Mother were here, she would see right off how much better the place looked with all that extra furniture stashed away in the shed under the house, the walls bare; the knickknacks packed away; those awful curtains down; the windows exposed. Maybe Stevie ought to go into decorating. No, too many fags.
She blushed then, looking in the mirror, applying her eyeshadow. Then she said out loud, “Idiot! What do you think Jonathan is?” and continued making up.
Of course she was out of her mind inviting him here for dinner. But then, what harm was there in it? She was merely being neighborly. Friendly. Repaying her social obligation to him. Even Lady Bracknell would have to agree with that.
“Inspection time!” she said, aloud.
Not bad. She’d gotten excellent color on the beach. What a beautiful day it had been, what a gorgeous sunset too! The very one she’d thought about on her arrival here in Sea Mist. The sun had become a huge, deep-red disk, flat on either tip, and had slowly sunk through layers of colored sky, each pastel more delicious and impossible than the next: fluffy magentas giving way to marbled pinks, in turn making way for sherbet oranges, followed by salmon mousses. Amid all these cool-hot colors had been one thin cloud—cirrus, she recalled, was its name—that had been an electric yellow. It had forked at one point to enclose an area of the sky untouched by the prevailing red spectrum—a satiny neon blue, like her brother Jerry’s basketball shorts. Every second the colors shaded and transformed themselves into subtle new shifts of tint, layer by layer. Then she became aware of the sudden silence around her: the lack of wind, the sudden cessation of birdsong. It was as though the entire day suddenly sighed for a minute. Then, from behind her, she barely made out an approaching sound—the muffled, distant flapping of many large wings. In an instant they arrived—brownish gray, flying low over the housetops and pine trees, coordinated, in a loose V-shape—the geese!
That had been exquisite. The second exquisite moment of the day—a day not yet ended.
The first, of course, had been her discovery of Jonathan this morning. She’d felt that primarily as lust, but after she’d dashed into the ocean, she’d come back to the house and analyzed the surge into several layers of meaning. Uppermost was the new fact of her intense desire for a man—that man, where he was, as he was at that moment. That had never happened to her before, and it had overwhelmed her. She’d wanted to possess him: to caress him like a mother, and at the same time to cover his body with passionate bites and kisses, like a courtesan. Bill Tierney would never believe it was possible, even if she were stupid enough to ever tell him. He called Stevie the Ice Princess; and it wasn’t always said jokingly. Not that she was frigid or anything awful like that. She simply had never felt that connected to physicality before. She had never really understood why it was that men and boys found her far more attractive than she ever found them, why they felt drawn to her when she could take them or leave them. Sometimes she thought it was a pose on their part, an affectation, or even worse, a merely mechanical working out of what they thought they ought to be doing and feeling around a halfway good-looking female: something men pretended without ever really feeling. She recalled how queasy she’d gotten one afternoon, on the sailboat with Bill out on the Long Island Sound, when she’d caught him looking at her with that stricken, fascinated, wounded look. It had given her the creeps. She’d certainly never expected to be on the other end of that bizarre an emotion.
Next, naturally, was the sensation—intuitive, yet no less strong for that—that she would do something, possibly a great deal, probably anything to sleep with Jonathan Lash. Despite the fact that he had a lover, was gay, was twice her age, and wasn’t obviously interested in her. All those negatives made it more of an adventure. She desperately needed adventure. That was why she’d come out here alone, to test herself against the unknown—whatever that might be—if only to prove to herself she was still alive, still unlobotomized. Which scientific writer had she skimmed last term who’d written that the only certain proof that an organism was truly alive was its struggle to change the life and environment around it? She couldn’t recall, but she certainly agreed.
Her face was done, her hair in two long barrettes, swept up behind her ears and down. The blouse and slacks she’d bought this afternoon at the harborside boutique looked really good. That had been a stroke of luck; she’d almost run past in her hurry to get dinner shopping done. Thank God, she could never bypass a sign that read, “Season Closing—Fifty Percent Off!” She had few enough clothes out here to begin with: nothing but denims and work shirts. But, then, who’d considered when she’d packed her bag that morning that she’d be doing this—having dinner with a man she wanted. It seemed that everything was conspiring to help her.
“Wicked woman,” she said to her reflection. “Whore of Babylon.” She pursed her lips. “I wish,” she responded tartly.
It was nine o’clock. Where was he? Outside on the ocean deck it was dark, clear, starry, quite warm. She could see the lights from his house. What was he doing now, this minute? Getting dressed? Standing in that big bathroom, a towel wrapped around his hips, shaving, around his beard, trimming it, inspecting his face for tiny nicks? She hated not being there.
Faint steps on the boardwalk. He was coming.
The footsteps approached, and went past the entry to her family’s house: someone walking to the beach.
It made no sense to just wait out here, agonizing. She ought to do something, check the fish, mix
them drinks. What if he wanted a drink? Had they left any liquor in the house?
In the kitchen, she found a bottle of cooking sherry and a small flask of brandy—not a great brand either: for cooking too, she supposed.
“Hi! Anyone home?”
Calm yourself, Stevie. He’s here.
She felt like a parody of her mother, sweeping graciously out of the kitchen to greet her guest.
He’d dressed as though for a garden party: beige open-necked shirt of some silky material, pale blue jacket, white pants pleated at the waist, cinctured with a thin beige belt, and white shoes. Tan, dark-haired and bearded, he looked smashing—like an oil sheikh’s playboy son on the Riviera.
“I’m not too early, am I?”
“No, fine. Come in.”
He held a bottle of white wine in one hand. Naturally. He would never—even unconsciously—do the wrong thing; she’d already expected that. He offered the bottle to her, label up.
“You didn’t say white or red,” he apologized.
“This looks exactly right,” she said. He was still waiting in the doorway. “Please come in.”
He did and she felt more comfortable.
“I just discovered we have almost nothing in the way of liquor,” she said, hoping it was spontaneous. “So I can’t offer you a drink. Should I chill this?”
“Serve cool,” he said, looking around the living room.
She couldn’t recall if he’d ever been inside the house before. His scrutiny made her edgy: as though he were evaluating her through the house. She hoped not.
“It looks different,” he said. “Nice.”
“Not like your place,” she said, but felt relieved. It was the simplicity and rich texturing of the lovers’ house that had inspired her own patchwork redecoration. “Correction on the drinks. We have sherry and a little brandy.”
“Soda? Tonic? Lemon?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Good. I’ll throw together a brandy cocktail I know how to make. Everyone eventually ends up drinking the cooking sherry, you know.”
Late in the Season Page 6