We eat without speaking for the first few minutes until Gene looks concerned at our silence. “Something no good?” he asks.
Jesse shakes his head vehemently and swallows a huge mouthful. “No, man, no. Everything is incredible. Sorry, we’re all so focused on eating we got all quiet. But it’s amazing, really. Thank you!” We all nod and grunt our agreements.
“No need to thank me,” Gene says. “You guys help me out tonight. Without all of you, we’d be here late doing dishes.” He looks critically at G and Jesse, who have heaping piles of everything but the chicken on their plates. “You vegetarians?” he asks. “You should have said. My wife, she’s vegetarian. I make her a smoked tofu she can’t get enough of, man. You should have said.”
“It’s okay,” G says. “Rice and beans are my favorite.”
“Listen,” Gene says as we’re finishing up. “That guy who no-showed tonight? I fire him anyway. I like you guys. You come back tomorrow night, get me through until I can find someone else. I make you my famous smoked tofu, okay?” I’d agree to anything if it meant I got to eat like this again, and it seems like as good a plan as any we’ve got. Gene sends us out the door with bursting bellies, a bag full of corn bread for breakfast, and our promise to return the next night. My eyelids are fluttering as I stagger along behind Jesse and G, eager for even the hard van floor, as long as I get to lie down.
***
Emily is hanging out back in the van, but there’s no sign of Lyle. She eats a couple pieces of corn bread and then pulls me aside to tell me something. “Listen,” she says in a hushed tone. “I think I found a way into one of the bathhouses. You want to go for a swim?” Every ounce of my body wants to lie down in the van and shut my eyes. Well, almost every ounce. Over her shoulder I see G. She doesn’t look up or try and get my attention. Which I decide to accept as her unenthusiastic acceptance of my continued interest in Emily.
“All right,” I say. The smell of Emily—patchouli and cinnamon—when she’s whispering in my ear is invigorating enough.
“I knew you’d be up for it, Drew,” she says and squeezes my shoulder. She has no idea.
HOT WATER
The marble steps and columns in front of the Buckstaff Bathhouse make it look more like a courthouse or an art museum than a spa. Through the tall front windows I see elegantly dressed people mingling, drinks in their hands. “It’s some kind of private party,” Emily says. “But they’re only upstairs. The baths and locker rooms and everything are in the basement.” I follow her around back, where there’s a less formal entrance guarded by a tall, skinny guy in his early twenties wearing a baggy and unimpressive security uniform. In place of a gun he has a dinky-looking pair of plastic handcuffs and a wooden baton. He looks extremely excited to see Emily and significantly less so to see me.
“Hey, girl,” he says with a pronounced Southern drawl. “I thought I told you not to bring anyone with you.”
“I know,” Emily says in a cutesy voice I hardly recognize. “But he’s my younger brother, and he caught me sneaking out and threatened to tell our daddy if I didn’t bring him with me.” She throws her arm around my shoulders and I shake it off, acting the part to perfection. Younger brother? What the hell? My face is red with embarrassment as Emily walks over to Curtis—his name is stitched on the front of his starched, blue-collared shirt—and taps his chest with her forefinger. “You’re still going to let me go for a swim like you promised, right?”
Curtis hesitates, but even I can tell it’s for show. “All right, but don’t take too long. I could get in big trouble for this, you know?” Emily stands on her tiptoes and kisses him on the cheek.
“You’re the best!” she says and grabs my hand before I can act on my impulse to get the heck out of there. I can’t believe she just passed me off as her younger brother. It’s not so much that I care about Curtis. It’s just that what I’ve seen hits a little too close to home. Is this what I look like to G and Jesse and those guys? I pull my hand away from Emily as soon as we’re inside the bathhouse.
The bathhouse is a long room with a low ceiling covered in decorative tile. The baths are long, shallow swimming pools made of white stucco. The overhead lights are off, and the only light in the room comes from the glowing blue-green lights in the bathwater, which cast ripples of aquamarine light all over the walls and ceiling. I follow Emily wordlessly down the narrow passing space between the bath and the wall, trying to hold on to my resentment over the Curtis issue. There’s a red button in the wall that she presses, and immediately the rushing sounds of Jacuzzi jets fill the air and the enormous pools start frothing. “You’re coming in, right?” Emily asks. I give a little shrug. “Are you mad about something?” She cocks her head to the side.
“I just don’t like the way you handled that guy out there,” I say without too much conviction.
Emily snorts and laughs. “Who? Curtis?” Then she looks at me again, this time with a little disbelief. “Drew, are you serious?” She takes a step closer and stares at me. I look over her head at the bubbling water, anywhere but at her gray eyes, her adorable upturned nose and her soft, pink lips. I shift awkwardly from one foot to the other. “Drew, are you jealous?” I roll my eyes, but I still can’t look at her. I want to retort that no, I’m not. But the words are stuck like chunky peanut butter in the back of my throat.
Because the truth is that yeah, I’m jealous, of Curtis and of Lyle and anybody else who gets her attention. It’s not like I want Emily all to myself. It’s that I want us to have something exclusive, something I don’t have to share with Lyle, or Curtis or G or anybody. The wanting is there, tugging at the bottom of my gut. I can’t remember ever wanting something so intense from another person. As if she’s reading my mind, Emily takes another step towards me. I take a tiny step backward against the cold, clammy wall. She puts her hand on my belt and hooks one finger over the waistband of my jeans. She tugs ever so slightly with that one finger, tugs me toward her. I still can’t look down at her face. I’m afraid she’ll start laughing and make this whole moment a joke. But then she reaches up and puts her other hand on the back of my neck and guides my face down towards her slightly parted lips.
Emily tastes like she smells, sweet and earthy. She teases my tongue with hers and tugs a little on my bottom lip before she lets go. I’m staring down at her, stunned, wondering if that just really happened and when exactly it’s going to happen again. I put my hands up to her face and kiss her again. This time a little more aggressively. I feel her lips turn up into a smile, and she laughs into my mouth. “Come on, Drew,” she says. “Let’s go for a swim.”
Emily pulls away, leaves her clothes in a heap on the floor, and slides over the stucco side into the nearest pool. I’m glad it’s pretty dark. I’m glad she can’t see my immediate and dramatic reaction to her kisses. I dunk my head into the warm water as soon as I can, trying to stay calm amid all the lustful thoughts from my overstimulated brain and body. When I come up for air she is lying on the far side of the pool, her head resting against the edge. The curves of her breasts are just at water level. I stay where I am. She sighs loudly, “This water feels incredible, doesn’t it?”
“Uh-huh”
“You know, they don’t use chlorine in here or anything. Just natural salts and minerals. It’s supposed to be incredible for your skin.”
“Oh yeah?” I swim over closer and find a dark spot near where she’s lying and let my head rest behind me. My body floats out in front of me and I close my eyes, still careful to keep my lower half below the surface of the water. Every so often I open my eyes and glance over, but Emily’s eyes are always closed. After about ten minutes of this I leave my eyes closed completely and don’t open them until I hear a splash next to me and Emily is gone. I see her swinging dreads retreating into the darkness. She comes back wrapped in a plush white towel and throws a second one at me. I grab it before it hits the water.
“We shouldn’t push our luck,” she says. “I don’t want Curtis to g
et in trouble.” I am totally capable of ignoring the reference to Curtis at this point. Curtis who? I’m the one who was naked in the pool with her. I’m the one she was kissing just minutes ago. I pull my clothes on and use the towel to dry off my head. Curtis must be making the rounds, because when we emerge from the bathhouse he’s gone. Emily scratches the word Thanks into the concrete with a piece of quartz from the landscaping around the bathhouse.
We’re walking back towards the van, and I’m not saying much because I’m trying to think of a way to kiss her again before we get back. Finally, when we’re almost a block away, I just grab her hand and pull her close to me. She kisses back, but this time there’s reluctance. She puts her hands up to my hands, which are on either side of her face, and pulls them down. “We can’t be like this in front of everyone,” she says.
“I know. Because of Lyle, right?”
“It’s not just Lyle, although yeah, I don’t want to hurt him. Being a couple or whatever doesn’t work in this kind of situation. Besides I don’t believe in that kind of commitment anyway. You know?”
I nod but then realize that I don’t know. “No, I don’t know. What do you mean?”
“I mean I don’t believe we’re really meant to be monogamous creatures. Humans, I mean. I don’t really think we’re cut out for monogamy. I don’t think it’s natural.”
“Oh,” I say. I must sound disappointed, because Emily stops walking, turns, and brushes my hair from my eyes. She looks at me critically, smiles, and then kisses me again. When she kisses me I don’t care about monogamy or Lyle, or Curtis, or any of it. I just don’t want her to stop.
“You’re good at that,” she says. “But can I tell you something?”
“Sure.”
“You shouldn’t put your hands on someone’s face when you’re kissing them. It’s a controlling gesture, like muzzling a dog. It’s very patriarchal.”
“Okay,” I say. “Duly noted.”
UP AND DOWN
In spite of what she says, I’m still a little disappointed when Emily curls up on the opposite side of the van from me. And the next morning, when she barely meets my gaze and then goes off with Tim to do some dumpster recon, I’m practically depressed. I don’t even realize it’s all over my face until G asks me if I’ve talked to my mom recently.
“No,” I say, sounding sour, I’m sure.
“Well you’re sure acting salty about something,” she says. “Something happen with you and Emily last night?” She actually doesn’t sound all that judgmental, and there’s part of me that would love to get her opinion on the whole thing. But I also already feel like I know what she’s going to say, and mostly it’s a big “I told you so.”
“No,” I lie. “I just kind of woke up thinking about my grandmother and how messed-up the whole thing is.” I feel bad lying about Mima. It’s not an outright lie, but it’s certainly not what’s on my mind this morning.
“Sorry,” G says. There’s not much else she can say. “There’s a free concert happening over in the park in about an hour. It’s a kickoff for the bluegrass festival. You want to check it out?”
“Sure,” I say.
We make our way over to the park without talking much. I’m thinking about Emily and how incredible it was to kiss her. But weirdly I don’t feel happy right now. I should be happier, right? But what I mostly feel is scared that it might never happen again.
I look at my watch. Right now I’d probably be changing for gym or staring out the window in Ms. Tuttle’s class while she begs and pleads with us to acknowledge Shakespeare’s greatness. I never really got why anyone would want to be a teacher. It’s like a half-step away from being a prison guard. But now I really don’t get it. School is the biggest scam ever and completely inapplicable to everything about real life that I’ve seen so far, except maybe for some stuff in books.
The park is already filling up with people when we arrive. Mothers with sticky little kids are spreading out blankets, and a lot of older people are showing up with lawn chairs. There’s a bandstand in the middle, and a trio of musicians is tuning up and tapping their microphones. There’s a man on guitar, another on banjo, and a woman with a big stand-up bass. G and I stake out a spot underneath a big spreading oak that’s just beginning to brown. After about twenty minutes the music starts. It’s not really anything I’d choose to listen to on my own, but it’s undeniably catchy, and pretty soon I’m tapping along and admiring the soulful voice of the female bass player. All the songs sound vaguely familiar. I’m sure they’re classics in this part of the country, because a lot of the audience members are singing or humming along. A few kids are dancing up front the way that little kids dance; just bending their knees a lot and running in circles.
After about half an hour they finish their set, and after a few announcements advertising their performances during the festival, they are replaced by a foursome of young guys in tall cowboy hats and jeans. These guys play a faster, more countrified version of the music we just heard, and it really gets the audience going. There’s a lot of hooting and calling out to the band for special requests. The music is so fast that the fingers of the banjo player and guitarist are a whirling blur and the lead singer’s lips seem to be moving a beat ahead of the sound that’s reaching my ears. I stare up into the trees and let the sound wash over me.
Suddenly everything goes dark as a pair of hands covers my eyes from behind. “Guess who?” Just the smell of her makes my heart move up toward my throat and my crotch twitch.
“Hillary Clinton,” I say. She snorts and giggles and shakes my head to indicate no.
“Lady Gaga,” I guess again, and again she shakes my head. I reach up and pull her hands away. My head is just underneath her chin. I expect her to pull away, but instead she scooches forward with one leg on either side of me, and I lean back so my head is resting against her chest. I can feel the movements of her chest with every breath, and the collar of her soft flannel shirt is tickling my cheek.
***
The Freegans perform their show that afternoon, and afterwards we all show up at Gene’s to wash dishes and get fed. The smoked tofu is pretty good, but I still prefer chicken. There’s something about the way tofu is always pretending to be some other food—that and the texture gets to me. But Emily loves it; she sits next to me at dinner and is practically bouncing out her seat with joy. She begs Gene to give her the recipe, and he tells her she can help him make it the following night.
As we walk back to the van, Lyle, who’s been pretty quiet all day, coughs a little before speaking. “I just wanted to say, I’m sorry for lying to you guys about my family. It was a dumb thing to do, and I’m sorry.”
I really want to dislike Lyle. He’s been pretty cold and snobby towards me from the start, but even I can’t ignore the humble and heartfelt nature of this apology. “Don’t worry about it, man,” Jesse says.
“Water under the bridge,” Tim adds poetically.
“It’s not important to me,” G says. I don’t say anything. I never asked Lyle about his family, and he never offered any information. Emily is also quiet, though her expression is sort of sad and pensive. Selfishly, I hope she doesn’t forgive him.
The next day, when we’re setting up for the show, Lyle approaches me with fifty feet of nylon rope coiled around his shoulders. “It seems like you’re going to be with us for a while,” he says.
“Yeah?” I say, thinking he’s about to be confrontational.
“Well, I just thought you might like to learn the knots we use to hang this stuff. You know, in case you wanted to help out ever.” He seems flustered, and I can tell it’s not exactly how he meant it to come out. “I mean, you asked me once if you could help out, and I didn’t really have time to show you then, but if you wanted to learn now. I mean, I could show you now if you want.”
“Sure,” I say and follow him over to the light post where he and G have been hanging their trapeze. He shows me how they use a smaller rope with a rock tied around one
end to bring the rest of the rope up over the streetlight, or tree branch, or whatever they’re hanging from. He shows me how to join the smaller rope to the thicker piece using a sheet bend and how to tie the whole thing off using a clove hitch followed by a series of half hitches. I’m a good pupil, following directions diligently and waiting until he’s done talking to ask questions. It helps that learning how to tie a knot seems infinitely more useful than learning to structure a five-paragraph essay. As if to reward me for my attention, he shows me a few more knots: a bowline and a monkey’s fist, which makes this little ball of rope.
“It’s not that useful,” Lyle says. “But it looks cool. And if you didn’t have a rock, you could use it to weight the end of your rope.”
The monkey’s fist is cool, and I sit down with a piece of rope to practice. I’m trying to ignore the part of me that’s thinking about how that was a pretty decent interaction with Lyle, and maybe he’s not so bad when he’s not feeling threatened. Even harder to ignore is the voice that’s saying maybe I should forget about Emily for a while if it’s going to cause all this drama among the Freegans. Even though it’s been a few days since that night at the Hot Springs, if I think about it I can still conjure up the softness of Emily’s mouth. That’s all it really takes to get me to forget about Lyle and his feelings.
Ignoring other people’s feelings seems to come pretty easily to me, though it’s not a trait I like to admit to. I was eleven or twelve the first and only time I saw my dad cry. It was one of my weekend visits in the city. I could never sleep that well in Dad’s apartment. I guess some people find the city noises to be soothing, but the orange streetlight glow and rumbling of car engines that pervaded the apartment made me feel like I was sleeping in the middle of the day. I slept lightly, waking again and again throughout the night. It was during one of those nighttime wakings that I found my father sitting at his kitchen table, his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking. At first I thought he was laughing. In my day/night confusion I remember thinking he had beat me to the Sunday comics—being annoyed because it was the only part of the paper I really liked. When I realized what I was witnessing I stepped back and stood in the doorway, just watching. Instead of trying to comfort him or even asking him what was wrong, I found myself thinking about the book I had just read about a kid with cancer. I was really impressed with all the stuff his parents did to try and make his life better. I wondered how my parents would act if I had cancer, and I stood there in the threshold, half-pretending that Dad had just gotten some terrible news about my condition. I went back to bed before he could see me watching him.
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