practice peeing without touching himself. By the time he was nine, he discovered the delirious thrill was a separable experience from urination. Thus began an odyssey of self-gratification that carried him through adolescence in seemingly infinite expressions of self-loathing ecstasy.
He shifted away from her and she immediately responded by swinging gently around to face him, raising her legs and pushing against him to wriggle and slide across the towel until she could lean with her back against the wall, which she did after placing his second towel between her flesh and the searing wood.
The light was muted red from a coloured bulb recessed in the ceiling and, while much of the illumination was absorbed in the rough-cut cedar surrounding them, a residue gleamed radiantly on their sweat-drenched skin.
Morgan was not normally shy — he was comfortable with his own body, but Shelagh Hubbard was a different experience. As he turned slightly toward her, he recognized the strange feeling within as a blend of sexual and intellectual excitement tinged with unmistakable fear. For the first time since entering the sauna he looked at her eyes. Her lids were draped down as if she were snoozing. He surveyed her body, touching her breasts with his gaze. They were large and voluptuous rather than pendulous, with high-set nipples. Her stomach was tight with a slight ridge of muscle. He looked up at her eyes again, still closed, then down between her legs, into the folds of glistening and textured shadow. Despite his experience with women, he was perusing unfamiliar terrain. He swallowed, aware of the moisture pooling inside his mouth, felt himself falling inside his own body, motionless but yearning immersion, the breath coming hard through his nostrils. He glanced up and saw that she was staring at him, her eyes wide open, watching his secrets revealed.
She smiled.
He looked down at himself. She lowered her gaze, continuing to smile. Yet, strangely, she seemed more amused than wary or beguiled. For an instant, he felt like the little boy, caught in his precocious act of pre-sexuality, uncertain what response was required.
“You have a tattoo, Morgan. I’m surprised.”
Her apparent intention was to deflect from the sexual, yet in acknowledging his body as an object of observation she heightened his awareness of their both being naked. She seemed absolutely relaxed in the red glow, sweat defining the shape and texture of her flesh, her legs casually apart, arms resting at her sides.
“I wouldn’t have thought you would. Anthropologically speaking, you don’t fit the profile.”
“That’s probably why I got it,” he said, for the briefest moment bemused by the reference to profiling. “It’s a Rapa Nui design.”
“Really? Let me see.” In a dark swooping motion she stood and settled close beside him. She clutched his shoulder and twisted him toward the light. Her breasts pressed against him as she drew him forward. He shuddered involuntarily. She seemed comfortable, resting against him so solidly they seemed in the heat to merge where they touched.
“It’s a bird-man,” she said.
“ Tangata manu,” he clarified. Then he added, “It’s not cultural appropriation, it’s a tribute.”
“To whom? Ah, Morgan, you’re such a sweet rebel.”
She leaned into him, letting her hand slide over his body and fall onto his lap. Her fingers curled around his penis, briefly holding it like a fallen bird cupped in her hand.
“The little fellow is confused,” she said, giving a gentle squeeze and pulling it longer, then tucking it back.
Then, as quickly as she had descended on him, she withdrew.
Standing up, she reached for the ladle in the bucket and poured another splash of water on the stove through the grate.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “I’m just running in for a pee. You don’t want to stay in too long. You might shrivel up and never recover.”
She was out the door with it shut tightly behind her before Morgan had recovered from their close encounter, which had left him short of breath and oddly deflated.
Had she bolted the door? he wondered, trying to summon the sounds of the heavy door closing. He did not move, transfixed by the possibility.
He listened, immobilized by his astonishment at the absurdity of his predicament. He could hear the crackle of the fire underneath the floor. He felt parched. His throat constricted and his eyes clouded painfully. If the door was locked, the process of his mummification had already begun.
Morgan realized he was light-headed — he had been in for too long. He rose to his feet but his balance was off and he lurched back onto the lower bench, feeling the wood sear against his buttocks. The second time, he stood up more slowly, wiping the sweat from his eyes, and reached for the wood handle of the door. He pulled on the handle but it resisted. He heard a gut-wrenching slash of sound as iron bars slid against iron.
Suddenly, the door came alive against his hand and for a moment there was a tug of opposing forces. Then it swung outwards into the summer kitchen and there stood Shelagh Hubbard, wrapped demurely in her towel, which was tucked neatly in a fold over her breasts.
“It’s about time you came out of there,” she said. “For a man with a medium-rare complexion, I’d say you look overly cooked.”
“Shall we roll in the snow?” The bravado in Morgan’s proposal betrayed his relief at evading death and, equally, avoiding making an utter fool of himself.
“There isn’t any,” she said. “Let’s run naked under the stars.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“You didn’t!” Miranda exclaimed. “I thought you could take care of yourself! What if… What would have happened to my car? Mired at the bottom of a pond beside Norman Bates’s motel. With your head in the boot. My God, Morgan, how could you?”
“We say ‘trunk’ in these parts — those of us who don’t own vintage Jaguars.”
“Trunk is what would be left of your body after your paramour finished with it. The defective detective. What were you thinking? It’s obvious what you were thinking with!”
He grinned across the table at her. They were meeting for a coffee and Danish at Starbucks expressly so Morgan could fill her in on what he’d discovered during his unorthodox investigation of their principal suspect. He felt sheepish about admitting he had momentarily panicked in the sauna, yet it was a necessary prelude to confessing his ultimate innocence. First, he would allow himself to appear compromised, then admit to having further avoided her charms.
“So, you’re trying to tell me you didn’t sleep with her. What do I care, Morgan? You probably missed a golden opportunity, if you were up for it.” He exuded a boyish good cheer that irritated her immensely. “If you did sleep with her, I would imagine the conquest was hers, and if you did not, that was probably her doing as well. So tell me, were you good together? Either way, who cares?”
The odd thing to Morgan was that it had never come up as an issue, whether or not he and Shelagh Hubbard would be lovers. After running around like adolescents on the soggy lawn, leaving dreadful footprints to be rolled out later in the season, they had briefly returned to the sauna to warm up, then separately showered in the bathroom off the kitchen where they returned to dry un-self-consciously and make hot drinks of cocoa that they sipped in front of the dying fire. She rose first, leaned down, kissed him on the forehead, and retired to her ground- floor bedroom. After a few minutes, lingering to watch the embers fade and fall, glowing gold and vermillion, he had gone upstairs and crawled under the duvet where he slept soundly and wakened in the early light, feeling completely relaxed. He had not bothered to lock the bedroom door.
Miranda didn’t know whether to believe him or not. “You’re a bit of a whore, you know. Was it worth the effort?”
“Is it ever, Miranda?”
“It all sounds quite adolescent,” she said, and could not stop from reinforcing her previous disclaimer, “I don’t care what you did.”
