by Al Riske
“I don’t really. It’s just that we’re here, you know?”
“I know. But it’s late and I’m really pooped—and I’ve got to get out of these shoes. Would you mind if we just went back to the motel?”
“Not at all.”
“I’m freezing,” she said. “Put your arm around me.”
ALONE IN THE room, getting warmer now with the heat cranked up, I didn’t know quite what to do with myself—as usual. I could hear running water and other noises from the bathroom, where Smiley was changing. I sat on the bed, took off my shoes and socks, then stood and unbuttoned my shirt, turned down the bed, paced.
Smiley came out in an oversized man’s shirt with tails that reached almost to her knees. Modest but sexy nonetheless.
“All yours,” she said.
It took me a second to realize she meant the bathroom.
When I came out, Smiley was in bed, looking the other way while she took off her wristwatch and placed it on the nightstand. (Was her timing premeditated?) Then she reached for the lamp, and waited.
“Are you getting in?” she asked.
“You can look,” I said. “I’m decent.”
She looked over her shoulder then. “Well, I didn’t know what you’d have to wear.”
I had on a pair of striped boxers that extended halfway to my knees. I bought them especially for the trip, in a three-pack from Hamilton’s, the local men’s store, but had not tried them on beforehand.
“Kind of sexy, huh?”
“Oh, yes, very.”
She smiled at me and—I still think this is remarkable—stifled a clear impulse to laugh. I got into bed and she turned out the light. The room went black.
“I had a good time,” she said.
“Me too.”
“Well, sweet dreams.”
I was lying on my back, looking at the ceiling and letting my eyes adjust to the dark. Smiley was on her side, facing away from me. We stayed that way for a long time. I was thinking about a lot of things—movies, magazines, a pink blanket moving up and down in the woods by the river on a summer afternoon when I was just old enough to know what it meant. My mind was a tangle of images, but the one thought I kept coming back to was this: Nothing is going to happen. I’m in bed with Smiley and nothing is going to happen.
Finally, I turned toward her, put my arm around her, and snuggled against her back. She didn’t say anything, and she didn’t move. I wondered if maybe she was already asleep, but I didn’t think so. Her body felt warm and soft—relaxed but not limp—and I loved the smell of her, which was not the smell of perfume anymore but her own subtle scent.
I wasn’t really sure what I was doing or what I might do next. I tried not to think at all.
The headlights of a car turning around in the parking lot swept across the room. Brushing Smiley’s hair up against the grain, I kissed her on the back of her neck. It was a soft, lingering kiss. She stretched and squeaked like a cat. I squeezed her and she turned in my arms and we were kissing. The kiss grew and multiplied until Smiley pulled back slowly, kindly, careful not to be abrupt.
“Dean?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure this is what you want?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything more,” I told her.
I kissed her again on the lips and the neck and began to slowly unbutton her nightshirt. The first two buttons went quite smoothly, but on the third there was a snag.
“Oh!”
“Sorry,” I said, looking around, patting the sheets. “It just sort of popped off.”
She put her hand on mine and said, “We’ll find it later.”
Stroking my head, she kissed me, and I kissed her, moving down to her neck and lower still.
When I had finished with the buttons, I pulled her shirt back behind her shoulders and looked at her in the dim light that came in through the curtains. My right knee was between her legs and I held myself up on my hands, arms extended so I could see better. Her hair, so short now and easily tousled, stood out in sharp contrast to the white pillowcase. Her eyes were closed but moving under the lids.
“God, you’re beautiful,” I said.
Opening her eyes, she smiled and ran one finger down my cheek and along my chin.
I kissed her again and she rolled me over on my side, throwing back the covers in the process. Her hand slid under my arm, down my back, and onto my shorts. Her head fit neatly under my chin, and she buried her lips in my neck. I felt warm and happy.
Then her fingers curled under the waistband of my boxers and she pulled them down until my butt was exposed. I could feel her smile against my shoulder. She tugged harder, but my shorts would go no farther, not even when she snaked her other hand down there and pulled from both sides.
My erection had poked through the fly and was holding things up. She looked down at it, then up at me. We both shook our heads and rolled our eyes.
I felt silly, but Smiley had such a friendly, easy manner that my embarrassment soon passed. She simply unhooked me and lowered my shorts as far as her arms would reach, then finished the job with her feet.
I was naked and it felt good. I kicked the covers off the end of the bed, and Smiley stroked me slowly, her head on my chest.
“That, uh, that’s good for now,” I said.
She sat up and I helped her out of her nightshirt, which was in a tangle around her elbows and behind her back.
There were four pillows on the bed, and by now they were scattered far and wide. Smiley grabbed the one closest to her and tossed it up against the headboard. I did the same with the two I could reach, then we scooted up and sank into the pile. Smiley put the fourth pillow between the headboard and the wall, I wasn’t sure why. When I looked at her, she just smiled and guided my head down to her breasts, one of which she cupped in her palm and fed into my mouth. Whenever she shifted positions, my lips would slip from her nipple and the result was some rather loud slurping noises. I felt self-conscious at first, but Smiley seemed to like it. I think she was amused, but not in a way that made me feel belittled in any way. Her amusement was mixed with understanding and pleasure, it seemed to me.
I caressed her thighs and the curve of her hip, the rough lace and smooth satin of her panties. My thumb found its way under the narrow band—little more than a ribbon—that stretched across her side. All I had to do was inch her undies down over her hips, slide them down her legs …
My hands were rough, the calluses thick at the base of my fingers and around the joints where the skin had been pinched and worn while gripping the oars of a racing shell day after day with Curt. I grew hesitant and finally motionless.
“What is it, Dean?”
“I’m not as sure as I thought I was.”
CURT CALLED ME when he got back into town.
“You remember Bob Pritchard, don’t you?” he said.
Bob worked for Curt’s dad. He was a big guy, very athletic in a loping sort of way. One summer, years earlier, he had been our camp counselor. (For some reason I remember him being fond of the word “prowess.”) He gave us advice about dating, and one of his rules was that a goodnight kiss should last no more than fifteen seconds. When somebody balked, he asked all of us in the cabin to be silent. He looked at his watch, at us, and at his watch again. It did seem like a long time then.
“Who could forget?” I said.
“He tried to warn me about you and Smiley.”
“He what?”
“He said you guys were getting awfully—oh, what was the word he used? Chummy.”
Chummy was another of his favorite words.
I said, “He called you in Bridgeport?”
“He had to talk to my dad about something, but then he asked for me. I thought it was really strange. I told him I asked you to keep Smiley company, and he said, ‘I think he’s doing more than keeping her company.’”
“Unbelievable.”
Curt just wanted to be sure I was home, he said. His dad was going to drop
him by to pick up the Mustang.
“DEAN, I WAS just telling Smiley what Bob Pritchard said.”
The dust was still settling from Mr. Hutton’s departure in his rusted old pickup.
“Can you imagine,” Smiley said, “if he’d known about the trip to San Francisco?”
“The what?”
“Uh-oh … Dean? You didn’t tell him?”
“I was just about to.”
Curt raised his eyebrows and folded his arms.
“You know, the Mustang gets pretty good mileage on the highway,” I said, handing him the keys.
“And you took my car. Great. What else did you do?”
“Nothing,” Smiley said.
I said nothing, too, but not out loud.
“Where did you stay—a hotel?”
“Of course we—”
Curt turned to me.
“You screwed her, didn’t you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Oh, I see, so she screwed you.”
“Curt—”
With his back to me, he muttered something to Smiley and she slapped his face. He spit on the ground by her feet. I grabbed his shoulder.
“Always jumping to her defense, aren’t you? Well, come on then.”
He motioned me to take a swing. I stood still.
“Go ahead,” he said. “I know you want to.”
He looked down at my hands and I realized they were fists.
Smiley walked away.
Then so did we.
THE SUN WOKE me in the morning. I was lying on my back, and the insides of my eyelids were so red I had to squint. Then I came awake with a start, threw back the sheets, and sat up. I looked at my clock—the alarm had not gone off. With good reason. I had not set it.
I had been dreaming of the river, but I didn’t really know if I was supposed to be there now. My guess was that Curt would not be. I went back to sleep.
I QUIT MY job at the restaurant and spent the next few days avoiding people.
I wanted to deposit my paycheck, but I figured I’d get Smiley as a teller and I wouldn’t know how to act. I spent hours on the beach sitting in a little fort some kids had made of driftwood. I had a dozen conversations going on in my head and not one of them was coming out well.
On the second day I returned to the fort, but I wasn’t there long before I knocked down the walls, ramming them with one shoulder, then the other. After that I walked along the coast until I no longer recognized my surroundings. Stretching out in the tall sea grass, I fell asleep. When I awoke, the tide was in and the sky was dark.
I WAS COMING up the hill after a long solitary run the next morning when I spotted Curt sitting cross-legged on the grass in front of the Imperial Arms. He was right on the edge where the lawn is still flat, then slopes steeply down. He waved and I walked over to him slowly. My legs were heavy, but even though I’d been running for over an hour, I wasn’t winded.
“How far’d you go?” he asked.
“No idea. Can’t even say where all I’ve been.”
I sat down and was surprised by just how good it felt to be off my feet. I knew I should do some stretching, but I just couldn’t bring myself to move.
“I gather you quit the restaurant,” he said. “How come?”
I shrugged. We were both facing downhill now and said nothing. I pulled off my shoes and felt cool air through my damp socks.
Finally I said, “Listen, Curt, about that trip—”
“I know.”
“What do you mean, ‘I know’?”
“I know. Nothing happened.”
“Is that so?”
“Oh, God, don’t get all insulted.”
“Sounds to me like you thought it over and decided—”
“To believe you?”
I said nothing.
Curt said, “Sorry I flew off the handle yesterday.”
I pulled up some grass and scattered the blades to the wind.
“You should have fucked her brains out,” he said.
“Now you tell me.”
We laughed and then he said, “I’m glad you didn’t.”
I nodded.
CURT HAD TO leave—he was late for work—but we agreed to meet down by the river the next morning. We had left one thing unresolved, and, with time running short, we both knew the river would make the subject, if not easier to broach, impossible not to.
As we carried the shell out of the boathouse, Curt said, very mat-ter-of-factly, “What would you think about going to Regis?”
I said, “They offered you a free ride, didn’t they?”
“That’s not the point. It’s a—”
“But they did.”
“Well, yeah. But it’s a great school, Dean. You’d really like it.”
We hoisted the shell over our heads and started walking down to the river, Curt in front with his back to me.
“I’ll stick with Orland,” I said.
“I knew you’d say that. What about us sticking together, going to the same school. That was the plan.”
“I’ve done nothing to change that.”
“Me either! We still can.”
He looked over his shoulder at me, but I said nothing. We just kept walking until we got to the dock and set the shell in the water. Aside from a few ripples along the banks, the river was calm, and for a moment we just stood there looking at it.
“You just want to go to Orland because they have a good design program,” Curt said. “What reason do I have to go there?”
“None. Take the scholarship, Curt. I would.”
“But you could get one, too. Maybe not the first year, but Mr. Hill said if you make the team—”
“I don’t think so.”
“No, you could. I know you could.”
“No, I mean … no.”
A soft breeze came up, and I watched as it brushed across the surface of the water. It made me feel calm.
“I tried, man, but they have a limited number of scholarships to pass around, and—”
“It’s okay. Really.”
“It’s not okay.”
“It can’t be helped,” I said.
“It could if you weren’t such a stubborn S.O.B.”
With a straight face, I said, “You know, if you were any kind of a friend at all, you’d turn down that scholarship.”
“So I can pay top dollar to go to the school you want to go to?”
I couldn’t hold back my smile any longer.
“My point exactly,” I said.
Curt nodded and smiled slowly.
As we went through our normal warm-up routine, Curt setting the pace as always, I felt a growing impatience, but soon we were rowing in earnest. I wanted to make that boat move—make it glide—and get that feeling of being in synch once more. But we just couldn’t make it happen.
I STILL HAVE the button from Smiley’s nightshirt. I found it the morning after, far from the bed, and put it in my pocket without saying a word to Smiley. As I look at it now, I wonder why I’ve kept it.
She told me she was glad I stopped when I did.
“Not glad at the time, maybe, but—”
“Me, too,” I said.
That was a lie, of course.
I know I did the right thing that summer, but sometimes you can do the right thing and still regret it.
Hold On
THE DESERT IS full of things you can’t hold on to—light and heat and sand that slips through your fingers like friendships you once had. But if you’re looking for a sense of permanence, the desert is the place to go. I guess that’s why I’m here.
My troubles started when I lost my job. I was advertising director for a ski magazine based in Mountain View, California, which sounds like an ideal location until you find out that the nearest ski slope is four hours away. Not that I minded. I was never much of a skier. They only hired me because I bore some slight resemblance to Franz Klammer or Jean-Claude Killy or somebody like that. Anyway, the founder and publisher wa
s going through a nasty divorce and sold the magazine to an outfit on the East Coast. I didn’t want to relocate, and they never asked me to. With the severance pay they gave me, I figured I had no worries, but the money ran out before I could find another job, and my wife wasn’t holding up too well under the burden of supporting us both.
THE MESSAGE ON the answering machine has not changed.
“Hello, this is Jim’s voice. He can’t come to the phone right now, but you can leave a message for him, or Kate, at the beep.”
The voice is mine, coming back to me across the length of California. I want to leave a message for Kate, but I can’t think what to say.
I’M WRITING THIS in the desert east of Los Angeles. I’m shaded now by a cluster of fan palms at the bottom of a deep ravine, and as I reach for my canteen I feel a soreness in my legs and lower back. To get here I’ve had to walk four miles through the dry desert heat, and although my knapsack is light, the two canteens I carry are not. It’s a relief to put it all down and sit here in the sand.
“Here” is a place called Lost Palms Oasis. The palms mean there’s water here somewhere, but it’s all below the surface.
I THINK KATE suspected for a long time, but maybe not. You see, even though Maura lived in the same two-story, sixties-era apartments we did, she worked nights. Kate never saw her.
Once it started, it was difficult to stop. Sometimes I’d think, “Look at yourself. Sneaking around like this. This is not you.” The trouble was, Maura knew exactly when Kate left the apartment, and she would often let herself in. It got so the dog would hardly even look up when she appeared. I would protest a little at first, but she knew what I liked.
THE IMMOVABLE BOULDERS and massive rock formations jutting up from the desert floor make you feel as if nothing ever changes here. It’s not true, of course. On some of the rocks you can see petroglyphs left by an ancient Indian civilization we know little about—experts aren’t even sure if the etchings were a form of writing or just drawings.
So what? I’m here now and I don’t know what anything is supposed to mean anymore—what I’m supposed to do and whether anything I’ve ever done has value. I can’t seem to hold a single thought in my mind long enough to decide whether it’s right or wrong.