by Nina Malkin
They want more, but we can’t oblige; even if we had an encore, Bruise Blue is spent, seriously. After a bunch more thanks and thanks again and really, thank you, we walk off.
My stride suddenly quickens; I need some space right now.
Kitten heels sink into the lush Leonard lawn as I beeline for the side of the house. Behind me, I can hear the start of the booming dance track the DJ had cued up, and something else. . . my name.
“Dice . . .”
With his tie loosened and his shades pocketed, Tosh reaches for my arm. I light his face with my smile, and notice an expression there I’d never seen before, an I can do anything look that’s more than cocky confidence. It’s exultant, it’s righteous, it’s knowing, and it gives my chin the most curious upward tilt.
I’d comment, but as I breathe—inhaling my own name as it issues again from Tosh’s mouth—he puts that mouth on mine.
XVII
A kiss. That’s all it takes. How simple! How stupid! If only I had known! True, it couldn’t have been just any kiss. Only a fully conscious, eyes-wide-open kiss. Not a lazy, blasé, why-not-kiss kiss—only a deliberate, purposeful, passionate kiss. In fact, it’s possible that only this kiss, Tosh’s kiss—his sweet, sure, triumphant kiss—could make what happens happen.
First, the earth moves. Not like an earthquake; it’s much more subtle—an undulation. When our kiss breaks and Tosh leans me back against the wall of the house, I see that he felt it too. He straddles his legs around mine and rests his forearms on either side of my shoulders, gaze unwavering, and we prepare for kiss, the sequel. Since after all, cliché or not, the earth moved. Naturally, in our conceit, we think it’s us.
Damn, are we dumb.
Then the sky moves. Forget cloudburst, forget hailstones, more like the stars elect to descend a little closer, give us a taste of their heat, their eighty-billion-degree fireball dominance, their ability to demolish on a whim, at will. But what whim?
Whose will? I’m beginning to wonder.
Finally, I move. Under my skirt, my thighs press together—the way thighs will when you kiss a boy for the first time, half daring him to part them, half hoping he won’t try—and the left one, bruised blue, starts to tremble. The right one picks up on this. Then all of me is trembling, and I mean all, inside and out, the eggs in my ovaries, the alveoli in my lungs, the squishy protective fluid my brain floats in, and, of course, the concentrated mass of membranes and sparks that amount to my brain itself. I clench my lids in an effort to still the trembling, yet even as I do, I accept it’s in vain.
“You’re shaking . . .”
Tosh is about to gather me in his arms again, I know it, and my eyes fly open as I realize that’s a very bad idea.
“Tosh, let me go.”
“I don’t understand . . .”
“I know, I know, but you really need to let me go.”
“But, Dice—why?”
My own reply is preempted.
“Because if you do not, you’ll leave me no recourse than to do you bodily harm.”
Out of the earth, out of the stars, and out of me. Him. Here.
Now. So close—an inch away, less, his back to the wall of the Leonard house. The smell of him: horses, dirt, iron, impudence.
His voice so calm; I know that calm. As Tosh shifts his gaze, I see his Adam’s apple spike. And I wonder how long we’ll stay like this, the three of us, within this strange, awful angle of intimacy—an endless moment? a brief eternity?
As I watch, reckoning takes Tosh’s face. Of course. In the escalating lunacy his life has been since deciding “Hey, that moon-tan chick with the indigo eyes and barn door butt, I kinda-sorta like her,” this is the obvious next step. Yeah. Right.
Sure. Uh-huh. Her boyfriend’s back. The dead guy.
Part II
The Gate
XVIII
To extricate himself with maximum dignity and minimal damage, Tosh pushes off with his arms, releasing me from their castle keep. One step away, he says, “I guess you two need to talk.”
Us two. Hmm. So far I have yet to make the smallest signal to acknowledge Sin, though I sense him modify from supine to sideways along the wall—the better to examine me.
One more step, and Tosh goes on: “I just want you to know, I’m not afraid of you.”
His breath on me, as always with its hint of apples, Sin addresses the boy he caught in so compromising a position.
“That would make you either very brave or very foolish. I care not which. But do leave us.”
To Tosh, I nod accordance. No—I don’t nod; I bobble, I’m a bobblehead, a bobblehead with a big, ridiculous beehive.
“All right.” Eyes so gray, tone so grave, the boy who just kissed me tells me, “I’ll see you.”
And as Tosh turns to walk away, a proprietary knuckle sweeps a tendril off my cheek and behind my ear. “You’ve done something to your hair.”
Oh, please—is that how it’s going to be? Casual commentary, sparkling repartee. It’s a game I’m good at, but right now I don’t have the wherewithal to engage. In fact, it seems that I can’t move.
“I cannot say I find it becoming.”
My head is a grenade, and Sin plumbs for a pin, finds one, pulls it out. No explosion.
“It does display your neck and shoulders nicely.” He mines another, and another; a hank of hair falls free, and still I stare straight ahead.
“But it’s all about artifice; in fact, reeks of it—” He inhales the polymers and solvents of Aqua Net.
“Whatever upholds this construction, it’s not you, Dice.” One more pin, and with a silent crash, bang, boom, the whole mess dishevels around me. At which point Sin heaves off the wall to take the stance Tosh relinquished, his long legs astride, his arms bracketing.
“Now, this . . . ,” he says. “This is you.” Seeing him cures my paralysis. I blink for clarity and drink him in. High bones, thick brows, and heavy lids, the muscled mouth full on the bottom and sculpted on top. Finally I plunge into those bottomless black eyes. I say his name, bracing for the crush of his full weight against me. Except it doesn’t come.
Instead, he searches me, as though for something he’d left when we were last together, truly together, as opposed to in a dream that’s not a dream. His stare marauds, tearing at the fibers of my soul with far less delicacy than he undid my hairdo, and it hurts.
So I tell him, “Stop.”
“Stop? Stop what? I’m just . . . looking . . .” He defies me. “Or is this a preemptive stop? Do you think me about to ravage you?
Kiss you black and blue and deaf and blind?” His eyes gleam, ice on coal. “No, Dice. Not to fear.” For a flash one corner of his mouth ascends in the uneven smirk that’s the essence of his mien, and then reclaims sobriety. “I will not. I cannot.” With that he leans flat to the wall again. I cast my gaze skyward, then it’s my turn to roll onto my side and study him.
Dark blue jeans, plain white tee—his basic gear, although last I saw him he was all dressed up in his birthday suit. My hand on his jaw, I guide his face to mine. I read his pain like print.
“What’s going on, Sin?”
“Your betrayal,” he says. “That’s what’s going on.” Stern and deliberate, he removes my hand. “How long did I spend in limbo, this trap of not-quite-oblivion, only to return and find you in the arms of another?”
I want to tell him he’s being unfair, but if roles were reversed, can I honestly say my reaction wouldn’t be the same? True, I forgave him many offenses—including deflowering my cousin.
But I hadn’t witnessed them in flagrante delicto, plus she was merely a means to an end, and he was a different person then . . . if “person” isn’t exactly the right word.
“Wait, hey, whoa.” My voice is soft, but I do object. Maybe I’ve got some ’splaining to do, but he’s up first. As in, where he’s been these last six, seven months? We fell asleep together in a tangle of limbs and sighs in front of the fire and I woke up alone.
<
br /> “Sin, come on. You abandon me without a—”
“Abandon? You think—” He shakes his head, consults the stars. “That’s not what happened. I simply . . . it was . . .something. I don’t know.”
Well, that’s illuminating. Yet in a way, good to hear. I never wanted to believe he’d meant to leave me.
“But how I suffered—”
Now I’m starting to get mad. “You suffered . . .”
“Unable to be with you, unable to let you go.” He does seem distraught. “I . . . I’m sorry, Sin. But it was the same for me.”
“It was not the same,” he insists. “You had your life, your friends. The pleasure of your senses—all six of them. Your appetites. Books, music, food, drink. You had day, you had night.”
All of it meaningless without him. “Don’t you know I would have gone with you, anywhere?”
He’s not listening. He’s off the wall now, literally, three paces this way, three paces that. “I had nothing,” he fumes.
“Just this narcotic haze, this druggy Dammerschlaf, and the maddening omnipresent awareness of you.” Could that be true? Then what of his visits? “But, Sin, you would come to me—”
“When you called, yes, I—”
What is he saying? “No! You would just . . . be there. I couldn’t—”
“As usual, Dice, you underestimate your power.” He stops, smacking fist to palm in frustration, then flings a finger. “It was you who brought me to your bed, and then, to torment me, to throw it in my face when you dallied with that—” He’s so wrong. “That’s not . . . I didn’t—I wouldn’t.” My hands flounder, sightless birds trying to find purchase on windblown branches. “Sin, please—I love you.” With the speed of flame, he snatches me by the shoulders—the brunt makes me gasp—and looks at me, in me, that searching, questing, stare. “Love.” The word dissolves on his tongue. “If it’s me you love, what were you doing with him?” I start to speak, as if I have an answer—but I realize I have none.
“I saw you, Dice,” he goes on, the skin-sheathed steel of his grip tightening. “Saw you with your throat arched and your eyes slit and your lips parted.”
Yeah . . . that would be me.
“And do not tell me it was pure desire, just lust, because you, dear lady, don’t operate that way.” He’s maneuvered me against the wall again, as if he might nail me there. “I know about you . . . and I know about love.” He lets go, as if his truths burned his hands.
And then I hear “Shut up, Marsh, Dice is fine—she’s Dice!” Pen, it’s Pen I hear. “I invited you to smoke—not to whine.” It takes a beat, but the pun penetrates Kurt Libo’s skull.
“Huh-huh,” he chuckles. “Yeah, beer’s all right—but no whine. We don’t want any whine.”
“Just spark it up, Kurt, okay.”
He does, and it’s a mighty spliff—I can see it in the flare of his Zippo. What’s more, they can see us.
Pen’s chin threatens to violate her cleavage. Marsh clutches her arm. The two of them freeze on the spot. But Kurt lunges forward, bellowing, “Holy crap! Screw me hard and smack me stupid! Sin!”
Who banishes all emotion from his eyes. “Kurt, you devil!” But it’s me he shows his smile, savage thing that it is. Then he slings an arm around his old cohort’s shoulder. “Tell me what kind of trouble you’ve been getting up to—and let’s see if I can’t dig you deeper.”
XIX
“Your hair is wrecked.” Pen’s not being mean, just stating fact.
“Marsh, give her your ponytail thing.”
Having flanked and funneled me into the house, my girls now take stock of my state in the downstairs powder room off the Leonard kitchen. The great thing is, they ask no questions.
They witnessed Sin with their own eyes—the how and why details are irrelevant. All that matters, as they can plainly see, is I’m not happy. So they proceed with damage control.
Marsh whips off her elastic and I take it, but conferring with the mirror I don’t know where to start. Masses of sticky curl obtrude from the circumference of my head. I look hilarious. I feel hysterical. The combination makes me giggle.
“Here, let me.” Pen tackles the top, making the sides spring out like Bozo. She grapples with the nape and the crown poufs up, a huge geyser of hair. “No use.”
“You’re screwed till you can wash it,” Marsh says.
Pen agrees. “Sneak upstairs if you want, use the shampoo and stuff in my shower.”
Not a bad idea. But I get a better one. “Or I could just jump in the pool.”
Pen’s grin is instantaneous. “You could,” she says. “We all could.”
“You mean . . .” Marsh is not so sure about this.
“Let me grab towels!” Pen zips into the nearby laundry alcove.
I kick off my heels. Peel off my tank top. Giggle some more.
Back in a flash, Pen throws a heap on the sink, and in one fluid motion yanks her dress over her head. I haven’t seen her Rubenesque proportions in the buff before, and I decide that she’s beautiful, still beautiful, still Pen.
“Damn,” she says, hoisting a leg onto the toilet to unlace her clodhoppers. “Tight in here with the three of us.” Marsh lingers by the door, hands clasped, considering.
Then she recognizes that it all makes perfect sense: Sinclair Youngblood Powers is back in town. Time to get naked! Off comes her nice new outfit.
We wrap ourselves in Egyptian-cotton terry.
“Ready?” I query.
“Set,” Marsh accedes.
“Go!” Pen shrieks.
It is on, a whooping and hollering circuitous route to the pool that cleaves a path through the guests. I catch sight of my parents, whose faces register a bemused respect. Oh, there’s Wick and her flabbergasted gaggle. And Duck. And Tosh. All in a blur. We reach the edge, lose our vestige of modesty, leap high, hug knees to boobs, and hit the surface in a three-part cannonball salute. Water ballet it is not. But, Houston, we have splashdown.
Oooh, ahhh, how I need this! This cold, this wet, this hard slap on the ass, this total submission to submersion. Instantly it brings my fever down, the sting of chlorine even having an astringent effect on my mental facilities. True, the delirious dip is only making my hair situation worse, but that’s okay—a bottle of conditioner, a wide-tooth comb, I’ll deal with it later.
Once I hit bottom, I further recall that swimming is so not my forte. Panic ought to set in any second, so I tune my internal GPS for shallower environs and begin to dog-paddle.
Soon as I get footing, I’m laughing. It seems we set off a chain reaction. All around, by the glow of tiki torches and in-ground lights, Swonowa seniors are losing their minds and their party clothes, going native and jumping in. With a few clean strokes, Marsh is at my side, and then Pen. High fives all around as we congratulate each other on a job well done.
Duck may have been the first to launch. Looking more walrus than Winnie the Pooh, he swings our way. “You girls are brilliant!” he lauds. “Brava!”
“Check out my mother,” Pen says with a chuck of her chin.
Mincing poolside, Lainie attempts to instill order, but that’s so not going to happen.
“Yeah, well, I just hope no adults consent to join the fun,” I say. “The sight of my parents in the buff would require therapy they can ill afford.”
Pen scrambles onto Duck’s slick shoulders, challenging,
“Chicken fight! Who wants to chicken fight?” Marsh gives an “Eek” of surprise as a boy from our Spanish class swims between her legs and lifts her up, but I guess she figures when in Rome . . . since she kicks her vehicle (whose name is Dennis Purvis; of course, we call him Purv) and with a yowl goes for Pen with ferocious glee.
I move toward the edge, wrap my arms around the ledge, and kick in front of me as I watch the match. That’s where I am when Tosh finds me.
“You got next?” he asks.
“Oh. Hey. No,” I say. “Not much of a swimmer. More of a not-drowner.”
“Really? Me, man, summer in New York, I was all about Coney, Riis Park, Jones Beach—you couldn’t keep me out of the water, and talk about reckless, none of that ‘wait half an hour after eating’ either.”
Tosh is so cute. I smile at him. Here we are, naked, me and the boy whose mouth recently seized mine, surrounded by all these other naked people, and it should be weird, very weird, yet it’s only mildly weird. Which is weird. Then I see Tosh is not entirely naked. Around his neck, a silver chain with a small circular pendant, a medal of some kind. I never noticed it before, and I wonder if he always wears it, tucked under his T-shirt.
“So . . . how are you otherwise?”
I’m honest with him. I tell him, “I don’t know.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I hear that. But I can still call you, right? I mean, I’ll call you. About practice and stuff. After graduation.
Hey, by the way, congratulations and all that.” See what I mean? Just mildly weird. “Thanks.”
“I’m going to get in line for the diving board.” I tell him okay and see you, and I watch him lumber off in that clumsy way you have when you walk in the water. As he lifts onto the ladder, I dunk myself—I just can’t look.
XX
“Candice Reagan Moskow . . .”
I’m out of my seat, down the aisle, up the stairs of the proscenium to accept my diploma. Moving the tassel from right to left, I walk off, down, back, done. It’s cool, but in the aftermath of solstice night, graduation is anticlimactic.
Tonight, tomorrow, are other parties, a few that I was invited to prior to fronting both Bruise Blue’s debut and the skinny-dipping bacchanal, several I’m “reminded” about (those invites apparently lost in cyberspace). But I think not. Too much on my mind.
“Are you sure you won’t come?” Marsh isn’t doing the party circuit either; she switched shifts with another custard slinger to get time off to spend with her fam. New Pop has a time-share in Newport, and I’m welcome to join them for seafood and sailing.