sweat when Vanessa whispered in his ear.
“Uh, I’m invited to spend the night. Is that okay?”
After a little discussion over curfews and deadlines for returning home, Carl hung up.
“You’ll stay?”
“Mom’s thrilled that I finally made a friend at St. Martin’s.”
“I wish my father gave a shit about the people I hang out with.”
Carl looked around the entry hall. It was paved with reddish-yellow tiles, and the main attractions were an immense crystal chandelier and a curving marble staircase.
“It’s early for dinner,” Vanessa said. “Want to go for a swim?”
“I don’t have a suit.”
Vanessa eyed him wickedly. “Don’t worry about that.”
Carl blushed and Vanessa laughed. “We keep a selection of swimsuits in the pool house. Leave your school stuff in the entryway and come on.”
Vanessa led the way through a large living room lit by sunlight that streamed through high French doors. She pushed open one set, and Carl found himself on a wide tiled patio bordered by a manicured lawn that separated it from a twenty-five-meter pool. There were two dressing rooms on the far side of the pool. Vanessa pointed out the men’s changing room and went into the women’s. Ten minutes later, Carl came out clad in a black boxer-length swimming suit. Vanessa was stretched out on a lounge in a tiny yellow string bikini. Her lean, tanned body took his breath away. Vanessa’s stomach was flat with a hint of muscle, and her legs were long and smooth. He felt himself growing hard and fought with all his might to contain himself. Vanessa gave no sign that she’d noticed his discomfort. Instead, she rose from the chair holding a T-shirt, a sweatshirt for Carl, two big terry-cloth towels and a large beach towel.
“Let’s get wet,” she said leading him toward the far end of the lawn, where a set of weathered wooden stairs took them down the face of a rugged cliff to a narrow beach three hundred feet below. The tide was coming in and large waves crashed on the shore. Vanessa spread the beach towel on the sand, dropped everything she was holding on top of it, and ran into the water before flattening out and swimming into the surf with a practiced crawl. Carl dove into a wave, then swam hard to warm up. Vanessa was nowhere in sight when he came out of the other side of the wave. He treaded water and turned in place, looking for her, momentarily panicked. Then Vanessa rose from the sea with the grace of a dolphin, put her arms around his neck, and pulled him to her. Her kiss startled Carl, but he overcame his shock when she kissed him again.
Carl had wanted Vanessa from the first moment he saw her. It was too much to believe that she wanted him, too, but how else to explain Vanessa clinging to his body, wrapping her long legs around his waist and pressing her beautiful breasts against his chest?
Vanessa broke the kiss and dove under the waves, leaving Carl dizzy with desire. When she surfaced, she was almost onshore. Carl swam after her. When he struggled out of the surf, she was wearing her T-shirt.
“I’m freezing,” she said, tossing him a towel and the sweatshirt. “Let’s go in.”
Carl followed, afraid to speak, overwhelmed by desire at the sight of Vanessa’s buttocks moving rhythmically up the stairs. His erection made it difficult to think. He tore his eyes away, afraid that he would fall if he did not concentrate on climbing the narrow steps.
When they entered the house, Vanessa led Carl up the winding staircase to the second floor.
“You’re here,” she said, opening the door to a guest room. Carl walked in and Vanessa followed him. The room was furnished with a chest of drawers, two end tables, a floor lamp, and a queen-size bed.
“Dinner won’t be for an hour.” Vanessa shut the door and stripped off her T-shirt. “What should we do until then?”
Carl woke up before dawn. It took him a moment to remember where he was and another moment to assure himself that yesterday was not a dream. The proof was lying beside him, naked, hair tousled, and achingly beautiful. Carl crept out of bed and slipped on the swimsuit and the sweatshirt Vanessa had lent him. While Vanessa slept in the guest room bed, Carl followed the steps down the side of the sheer cliff to the beach. He needed time to sort out what had happened between him and Vanessa, and to do that he had to clear his head.
In a few hours, the Southern California sun would bake the beach, but at this hour the sun was just rising in the east and the cliff cast a cooling shadow across the sand. Carl stretched for twenty minutes before practicing kata, the dancelike formal exercises of karate. Each kata was a ritual battle fought against imaginary opponents. The moves of the kata had to be performed in a specific order. Carl liked practicing katas more than he liked fighting. For Carl, kata was more than exercise. It was a ritual that imposed a framework of certainty on a life riddled from birth with uncertainty.
Carl glided across the sand just out of reach of the incoming waves. Each kata was more complex than the one that preceded it, and he performed them three times at increasing rates of speed. The kata performed in slow motion and at half speed flowed softly, one movement drifting into the next. Carl was a blur at full speed, but he saw each strike, kick, and block clearly in his mind. As he exercised, the sea, beach, and newborn sun faded away until there was only the blow that he was delivering.
Carl was sweating freely by the time he finished his last kata and started to cool down. He was almost done stretching when he saw a figure descending the stairs to the beach. The sun had risen above the rim of the cliff. Carl raised his arm to shield his eyes from the glare and made out a ruggedly handsome, solidly built man in a T- shirt and shorts. His black hair was sprinkled with silver and worn in a military cut.
“I’ve been watching for the last twenty minutes,” the man said. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“I didn’t know you were there,” Carl answered truthfully. The katas had absorbed all his attention.
“You’re very good,” the man said. “How long have you been studying?”
“I started when I was eight.”
“You must be a black belt by now.”
Carl nodded, embarrassed. “The belts don’t mean much,” he said, so that the man wouldn’t think he was bragging. “Anyone can earn a black belt by practicing hard enough.”
“I’m Morris Wingate, Vanessa’s father,” the General said, extending his hand.
Carl forced himself to shake it. The peace achieved by his workout was instantly replaced by shame, because he had just had sex with Wingate’s daughter in Wingate’s house-and fear, because Vanessa had told him that her father was a cold-blooded murderer.
“And you are?” the General asked.
Carl managed to keep his voice steady when he told Wingate his name.
“I assume you’re a friend of Vanessa.”
“We’re classmates. I…I’ve been helping her with calculus.”
“Really? An academic and a dedicated student of karate-not my daughter’s usual type. I assume you stayed over, last night. After the tutoring session.”
“Yes, sir. It was late,” Carl answered lamely as his gut churned. He wondered if Wingate had looked in the guest room and seen his naked daughter and Carl’s clothes.
“I got in very late myself, around two this morning. I find that exercise wakes me up better than a cup of coffee. Care to join me for a run?”
Carl couldn’t think of any way to refuse, so he fell in beside the General. The older man set a steady pace that Carl had no trouble keeping. The beach seemed to stretch forever, and Carl wondered how far Wingate would go. He decided that it didn’t matter. In the distance, high up, a solitary tree with a thick, gnarled trunk had dug its roots into the side of the cliff. It tilted precariously toward the sea, but Carl got the feeling that it had been getting the best of gravity for a very long time. He set his sights on the tree and glided along.
Carl and Wingate ran in silence for a while, then Wingate asked, “How is Vanessa’s calculus?”
Carl wasn’t sure if Wingate was being sarcastic, so he decided to give him a straight answer.
“She picked up on what I was saying pretty fast.”
“Vanessa is smart, but she doesn’t give school her full attention. I wish her grades reflected her IQ.”
The General’s confidences made Carl uncomfortable. He wouldn’t want his mother discussing his shortcomings with his friends.
