Dirty Dancing at Devil's Leap

by Julie Anne Long

  “I’m on board with that. Every little girl needs a merit badge for Revenge.”

  Eden laughed.

  And then everyone was gone.

  The quiet in the house was so complete. It was like she was a bug captured in a jar. Only the apocalypse would visit that kind of silence upon San Francisco.

  She knew if she remained still long enough, the country’s ambient sounds would reveal themselves to her. The house would creak and pop and settle with wind and temperature; outside she’d tune into the birds and squirrels, the rustles in the grass and trees.

  She opened the sash window in the living room and stood by, listened.

  She thought she heard the low hum of a riding lawnmower off in the distance. The bleating of goats.

  Her heart gave an involuntary little jolt.

  Like a bird pecking its way out of an egg.

  She drove downtown and stopped in at the hardware store to buy a slew of cleaning and scraping things, brooms and mops and buckets and sponges and the like, and took home about a ream of those paper paint samples. She stopped in at the grocery store to get some tea and food that could be noshed from a box or heated in the oven. By the time she got back Truck Donegal and Giorgio and her parents had arrived with the rec room couch, the squashy old bean bag chair, a short fridge, her twin bed, a card table, and a couple of chairs. She paid them in beer and pizza.

  When they were gone, Avalon threw her yoga pants and T-shirt in the washing machine and found an old T-shirt and leggings her mom had stuffed into her gym bag. She pored over paint samples as if they were the Rosetta stone that would crack the code on all of her life issues, sorting into stacks she considered “probablies,” “love but have no use for,” and “afternoon light.”

  By the time the very first star winked on in the purple sky, she was ready to crawl into the twin bed in her turret and sleep like the dead.

  The sheets her mom donated were regular old white spares Avalon recognized from the family linen closet, which meant her mom must have upgraded her condition from “suffering” to “doing okay and probably going to survive.” She was amused by that subtle vote of confidence.

  She slept fitfully, though. It was one thing to be under her parents’ roof with the two of them snoring away a few rooms over; here, she was profoundly conscious of being alone in the bed, almost as if she were perched on the end of the world and was in danger of tipping off because Corbin’s hot skinny body wasn’t next to her to stop her.

  She dreamed that it was her job to assign unique color names to everything in the world. Furniture and bathroom tile and clothes and hair dye and lipsticks and animal fur. Her deadline was tomorrow morning because all of her deadlines were always tomorrow, forever, and it was already midnight. Corbin was there, pacing manically to and fro, to and fro, nervously pulling his fingers up through the front of his hair in that way he had, over and over, that she’d once thought endearing and she now realized was why the sink in their bathroom was always clogged, and his fingernails were painted a sparkly orange. And Mac was there, too, in the background, shooting pool shirtless, because it was her dream after all. She’d never even seen him shoot pool, which was kind of odd. Boy, had her subconscious given him a fabulous set of abs. Her squirrel, Trixie, was sitting on his shoulder, and her heart nearly broke open with happiness when she saw the two of them together. But with every step she took toward them, the carpet spread wider and wider, like an oil stain, and they got farther and farther away. She stopped trying, remembering her deadline, and had just decided she’d call the sweater Corbin was wearing Bastard Orange when she woke up with a start, heart pounding.

  The sunlight squeezing in between the slats of the blinds (homely ones with chipped edges; she’d want to replace them) was benign and lemony.

  A split second later she remembered Mac Coltrane was nearby.

  And in that undefended moment just after waking, where her reason was too sleepy yet to corral her heart, it was like an entire sun rising in her chest.

  It was telling that Corbin was her third thought.

  Funny that her job was after that. Her entire life was enmeshed in something she’d created but patently wasn’t missing at the moment.

  Chapter 8

  If she’d had to guess, she’d say it was about eight in the morning, a little later than she normally slept in, on the days when she did indeed sleep in, which had been . . . four years ago, maybe? Life had been pretty much a solid wall of work.

  She stretched, flinging out all of her limbs like a starfish, and hesitated before reaching for her phone. She was loath to surrender that fresh, innocent, just-woke-up feeling to reality. And the possibility of a text from Corbin.

  She had a few texts; none from Corbin.

  Relief lifted her mood again.

  From Rachel:

  I’ll see you in a couple of hours today! I can’t wait to see the place!

  Hurrah! She’d be able to replenish her savings sooner rather than later, if her luck held. With credit cards and another scoop into her savings, she could drop about ten thousand on improvements.

  From Eden—a photo of that bottle of pink shampoo. Avalon laughed. From Annelise: a photo of her cat, Peace and Love, upside down in the sun. One from her mom: Let us know if you need anything!

  Both excellent ways to start her day.

  She texted all of them X’s and O’s and a quick pic of the view from her turret window.

  Then she went downstairs, made some tea, ate one of her store-bought muffins, curled up on the giant old sofa in the sunny room with her laptop, fielded a few GradYouAte emails (she’d sent the cheerleader avatar art back to the drawing board, with a sardonic, “Surely not all cheerleaders are blond?”) clicked “like” on a friend’s Facebook photo of her baby with cake smeared on its face, then got sucked into a YouTube video about pangolins. All the while she was aware of a very potent urge hovering on the periphery of her awareness like a teenager outside a 7-Eleven waiting to hit up a grownup to buy beer.

  She finally caved to it: she typed “Mac Coltrane” into the search window.

  As she’d done at least a half dozen or so times before in her life.

  And as with every time she’d done it, her heartbeat picked up speed.

  Nothing new was revealed. There was the Mack Coltrane in Nebraska, a smiling professor who was a Sylvia Plath expert. “Maximilian” also yielded exactly nothing beyond the odd mention in old articles about his dad. Lots of those.

  His life was pretty inscrutable.

  And then a lightbulb pinged on over her head, and she typed in Devil’s Leap, doing the deeper search she ought to have done the other night. She learned that the last known sale price of the parcel at Devil’s Leap was ninety-eight thousand dollars, sold to Graybill Sutherland LLC.

  Ah. Mac must have bought it through Graybill. Doubtless he’d had enough publicity to last anyone a lifetime.

  She turned toward the window she’d struggled earlier to open a few inches; through it came a grassy-scented breeze and the unmistakable sound of a mail truck trundling down the road. It was about eleven. She decided to go down to the mailbox to see if Enrique had overnighted her anything interesting.

  She could feel the house looming behind her as she followed the flagstones down the walk and across the lawn. Maybe not so much looming as . . . peering. In a companionable fashion. Like a loving partner trying to help with the crossword clues over her shoulder, not like some thug hovering behind her at the ATM trying to steal her password.

  She slowed her pace when she reached the gate that had clonked her head.

  Then stopped.

  A man was sauntering up the dirt road parallel to hers, toward Devil’s Leap swimming hole.

  Even from a distance she knew instantly it wasn’t Mac. One encounter with him yesterday had reminded her that his presence disturbed the air around her the way bubbles disturbed champagne.

  As he drew closer, she saw that this guy was wearing hiking boots with whi
te socks poking out of the tops and a blue baseball cap that said NPR.

  And nothing else.

  “Morning,” he said cheerily, and touched the brim of his cap. “Nice day for it, huh?”

  He sauntered on, whistling something that sounded like that song by The Baby Owls, the one about going around and around in the forest. There was a little spring in his step, a little white cooler in one hand, and a furled striped umbrella and what looked like a rolled towel tucked into his armpit.

  She rotated slowly, slowly, slowly, to watch him go.

  He had broad shoulders, a big, comfortable hairy stomach that provided a modest awning for his penis, which was nevertheless present and accounted for, unassuming, perfectly ordinary of size and proportion, and minding its own business.

  “Morning,” she parroted finally. Faintly.

  Though he was already making his jaunty way around the bend in the road and there was no way he could have heard her.

  She’d lived in San Francisco a good decade or so, and during that time there wasn’t much she hadn’t seen there. And though it was hardly an everyday occurrence, she was no stranger to naked people cropping up where you didn’t expect to find them. It didn’t really make it any less startling. I mean, you always knew the jack-in-the-box clown was going to eventually pop out of the box when you spun the crank, but didn’t everyone still jump a little each time it did? But no one blinked at anything crazy in San Francisco. And you did get a sense for when something had veered outside the usual tolerable weirdness into the realm of threatening.

  This guy hadn’t felt the least threatening.

  Frowning thoughtfully, she pivoted back to the mailbox.

  And froze.

  Two more naked-save-for-hats—his the baseball variety, hers a vast, navy straw-and-polka-dot confection she could have worn to the Kentucky Derby—people were advancing up the road, each carrying a beach tote and a cooler and a rolled-up towel. The woman was wearing those expensive, highly engineered–looking sandals favored by women who had said “up yours!” to the tyranny of fashion in favor of comfort, which made Avalon decide they were about her parents’ age.

  “Morning,” they sang out happily.

  “Hi!” The effort to sound nonchalant sent Avalon’s voice out about three octaves higher. “Where are you off to on this beautiful day?”

  She should have anticipated they would stop.

  Dear God, where did she park her eyes? On their eyes.

  On their naked, naked eyes.

  “Devil’s Leap, dear.” The woman gestured. “That’s where the party is today.”

  “Party?”

  Behind them, a half dozen or so more naked people had appeared, smiling, chattering, and wearing sensible shoes, sun protection for their heads, and nada in the middle. A quick glance told her that no one had subjected their body hair to the kind of rigorous shaping Casey at the Truth and Beauty, for instance, would have applied. No triangles or hearts or landing strips. It was a free-for-all. The same applied to the bodies.

  “But . . . isn’t Devil’s Leap Mac Coltrane’s property?”

  “Oh, Mac called me yesterday and said we could hold our clothing-optional weekend at the Devil’s Leap swimming hole. Morty’s been asking him for ages,” the woman in the navy hat told her.

  Suddenly it aaalllll made sense.

  And like a wishbone she was yanked between feeling incensed and thinking it was the funniest, most original damn thing.

  Sauntering in the middle of the nude people was a clothed guy who, by virtue of the glorious way the olive-green long-sleeved T-shirt stretched across his chest and the way a pair of soft, old jeans hugged his hips, seemed more naked than all of them.

  “Good morning, new neighbor,” Mac said to Avalon. “I see you’ve met Morton and Helen Horton.”

  “Not formally.” It felt odd to use the word formal when nearly everyone in this conversation was naked. “Wait . . . your name is Morton Horton?” She swiveled her head toward him.

  “It’s a great name, isn’t it?” he said happily.

  “It really is.” There was no denying that, at least.

  “Mac here is an old national guard buddy.” Morty jabbed a thumb in Mac’s direction.

  Avalon pivoted. “You were in the national guard?”

  Mac briefly looked cornered.

  Morty answered for him. “Heck yeah. Mac was an engineer. You name it, he can build it, fix it, plan it, finesse it, coax it.”

  “I can’t build an imaginary school for grownups to play in on their phones or anything,” Mac said modestly. “Just bridges, engines, buildings . . . things like that.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. Unsurprising, perhaps, to know that Mac had spent a little time on Google and was probably up to speed on Avalon and GradYouAte.

  “What happened, Mac? Did you lose a bet? Get drunk and enlist? Flee a paternity claim?”

  “Is all of the above an option?” he suggested.

  She didn’t answer that, because more naked people were filing down the road.

  Avalon cleared her throat. “Okay, now, while I’m not remotely a prude . . .” she began brightly.

  Morty’s and Helen’s smiles evolved into something indulgent and sympathetic, a touch cynical. Which was when Avalon realized nothing made a person sound more like a prude than saying “I’m not a prude.”

  “Pretty uninhibited, are you?” Mac said idly, flipping through his mail as though he was looking for something in particular.

  They all waited politely and with apparent benign interest for her answer.

  Mac finally looked up, raising his eyebrows coaxingly. His face was solemn but his eyes were full of wicked, insufferable glints.

  She cleared her throat. “I think I’m pretty open-minded and accepting. I mean, I went to the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco and I saw a guy leading around another guy who was wearing a leather harness, like a pony. No biggie.”

  Now they were all studying her a little skeptically, as if Avalon might be an actual perv. Skeptically, and a little pityingly.

  “Oh, honey,” Helen said warmly, “that sort of thing is a little outside of our experience. We just take our clothes off. It’s not much more complicated than that. We don’t put on leather harnesses or anything that might go up our heinies or in our mouths and the like. I imagine they would chafe quite a bit.” Helen rotated her shoulder, apparently imagining it. “We’re not crazy about chafing, as you can imagine, which is one of the points of going clothing optional. But to each his own,” she added magnanimously, laying a gently placating hand briefly on Avalon’s shoulder.

  Avalon wasn’t crazy about chafing, either. And her nerves were chafing big-time right now. These naked people were very nice. Even though their presence could spell disaster for her plans to sell the house to Rachel.

  “Once the renovations on the house are completed, corporate retreats will be held here, and visiting executives may find nude strollers and swimmers a little startling. Perhaps a bit counter to the image they’d like to be cultivating,” she explained, with as much diplomacy as she could manage.

  “I imagine you’ll work something out with Mac about that sort of thing. You seem like a bright, competent young woman.”

  Helen was probably a retired schoolteacher. She clearly had an “accentuate the positive” approach to life.

  “That’s kind of you to say,” was all Avalon could manage for now. She studiously did not meet Mac’s eyes. She didn’t need to. She could practically feel the rays of his wickedly amused triumph from where she stood.

  “I wish Mac would join us. He’s always good for a laugh,” Morty volunteered.

  “Me, I’m a little shy,” Mac said. “I’m not uninhibited like Avalon here.”

  Avalon shot him a look that by rights ought to have singed his hair.

  He gazed back at her with limpid hazel eyes.

  Morty gave Mac a little back thump. “Someday you’ll be my age and you won’t give a crap about
what anyone thinks you look like. And that, my dear boy, is called being comfortable in your own skin. Maybe it’s why our skin gets looser as we age. It’s metaphorical. It gets roomier outside because we all feel roomier inside.”

  And with that philosophical gem he winked at Avalon and gave Mac another chummy back thump and trundled unconcernedly on down the path, Helen alongside him. She called, “Lovely to meet you, Avalon,” over her shoulder, and Avalon was pretty sure she meant it.

  “See you at the meeting, Mac!” Morty called.

  What meeting? Smartasses Anonymous?

  Avalon watched them until they disappeared around the bend in the road that led to the rock.

  Morty’s butt was broad and perfectly square, like the cushions on her parents’ living room sofa, and traced by curly hair all around, like Christmas tinsel around a window. It was a sort of Almond Sunrise. Or Winter Blossom. Helen’s butt was reminiscent of a pair of empty, medium-sized handbags hung side-by-side. Morning Latte, she’d call the color. Or maybe Misty Mocha.

  They looped their arms around each other and Helen tipped her head against his shoulder and she laughed at something Morty murmured.

  Dozens of conflicting emotions assailed Avalon then. Oddly, the most piercing was envy. And if envy was a stab, then yearning was a pull. She knew she was witnessing happiness and comfort and abiding love and two people clearly meant for each other.

  And as she watched them stroll off, she was 100 percent certain she’d never known that kind of love as an adult.

  She drew in a breath and tore her eyes away from them.

  Right up into Mac’s hazel gaze.

  She’d startled him in the midst of some fascinating indecipherable expression.

  He hadn’t been watching Morty and Helen.

  He’d been watching her.

  “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to,” she said, finally, conversationally. The nonchalance she delivered that with was a supreme effort.

  He tipped his head quizzically. “Up to?”

  “I mean, I’ve seen naked people before.”