'My shirt, then.'
'That too.' She laughed.
What the hell, (thought. It was an easy way to get naked in front of
them. I needed an excuse.
I let the clothes lie where I dropped them. I saw her watching me and
felt two sets of eyes from behind. Hope it's up to snuff, I
thought. But I've never been much for display. So as soon as I moved
out of my shorts I ran for the water. She dove in ahead of me. The
last thing I saw was a slim pair of legs sliding in the water, toes
pointed. A clean, perfect dive.
Mine was not so perfect. As soon as I hit the water I went rigid with
the sheer numbing shock of it. It was like diving into a vat of scotch
on the rocks. Colder.
I exploded to the surface with ash out Pure agony. Then immediately I
felt her arm around my waist, so I shook the water out of my eyes and
grabbed for her, laughed and heard her laughing and pulled her to me
hard while she did the same to me. And suddenly there was body heat
between us, enough to make the water seem fifteen degrees warmer.
I felt her hand slide over my buttocks and I pulled her closer still,
and felt myself rising through the tiny space of freezing water so that
just a moment later I was nestled between her legs. Her laugh was more
private this time, just for the two of us. She scissored her legs
together, trapping me in there, in a small hot nexus between them. I
must have groaned.
'Not yet,' she said softly. 'Not yet but very soon.'
And that was the first time I kissed her, there in the deathly freezing
sea.
The taste of her was salty. Her mouth was rich and soft, all tongue
and teeth and roaring heat.
When we came out of the water Kim was smiling at us. The classic
cat-and-the-canary grin. Though it was caviar on her fingertips and
not bird meat. She looked at us and spread her arms so that the
breasts jiggled slightly and said, 'Love!' Just that.
Steven pointed his finger at me.
'You having fun, buddy?'
'I am, yes.'
We all laughed.
It wasn't love exactly. But it wasn't disinterest, either.
My phony aunt took a long time dying.
We went to the beach almost every day. It was always the same place.
We always stole our lunches. In one way or another, there was always
the nude flirting.
Despite my resolve to be patient, my frustration level ran high. I
began to wonder if Casey wasn't just another cold-assed tease. But
there was something about her that was different from the others I'd
met, a kind of questioning, a searching, a steady appraisal of me that
seemed to carry a more serious intent than anything I was used to.
So I stuck around.
VI
On the way back home one day I took them down the coast road toward
Lubec. You could see the old house way off to the left, slouched
against the cliffs in the dim half-light of dusk. Casey was driving
and Steven sat in the back with me.
'That's the house,' I told him. 'The one I talked about.'
'The Crouch place?'
'Yeah.'
He turned around to have a look. By then we'd almost passed it. I was
watching Casey's hair tossing in the wind. There is something about a
handsome woman in a sports car that is, one of the best things summer
has to offer.
He turned back around and saw me watching her. I caught his
expression: a slight frown. He'd been quiet with me lately. I knew
there was jealousy there. But at the same time I felt a kind of
tacit
acceptance of me that hadn't been present at first, a knowledge that I
was there for the duration. He was verging on the genuine. The gaudy
Hawaiian shirt seemed slightly out of place now.
'I thought you said nobody lived there.'
'Nobody does.'
He shrugged. 'I saw a light.'
I turned around. The house was too far behind us now. All I saw was
darkness.
'Where?'
'Upstairs. The second floor, I guess.'
'That's impossible.'
He shrugged again.
'I saw a light,' he said.
I was drinking beers with Rafferty in the Caribou after work the
following day. So I asked him. Rafferty collects a lot of scuttlebutt
at the station.
'Is anybody in the Crouch place now?'
'You kidding?'
'No.'
'Not that I heard of.'
'That's what I thought.'
'Why? You want to rent or something?'
His grin was slightly feral. Rafferty remembered the Crouch place as
well as I did.
'We drove by last night. Steven said he thought he saw a light.'
'Where?'
'In a second-floor window.'
'He didn't see shit.'
It came out pretty hostile. There was some resentment, I thought, of
