squeamishly. I saw what she was looking at. His left arm was out at a
right angle from us, the wrist just sort of dangling. The ball of the
thumb was cut pretty badly. There was a steady flow of blood rolling
down off his wrist and a flap of skin maybe two inches long pulled back
toward the palm of his hand.
'Get me something. Something to press over it and stop the bleeding.
Hurry up.'
His eyes looked better now, even though the color was still gone from
his face. I was pretty sure he'd be all right. He tried to talk to
me. The look on his face was one of pure amazement.
'She... she pushed me ...'
I glared up at her. She hadn't moved. The bright sunlight always made
her eyes go oddly transparent. Now it was like staring into two bright
cubes of ice.
'You want to tell me about it?'
'No.'
'What the fuck is this about, Casey?'
Kim came running back with my T-shirt. I helped her wrap it around his
hand and showed her how to press it down.
'Hard,' I told her. Then I looked back at Casey.
'I asked you something.'
I saw her shoulder relax slightly. Her voice was low, contemptuous.
Scary.
'You can go to hell.'
She stepped back away from us.
'You both can.'
I watched her disappear down the far face of the rock. I covered Kim's
hand and helped her press down on Steven's wound. I glanced at Kim.
She was totally concentrated on him.
It was only then that I realized I was shaking.
I never did find out what caused it, though I was pretty sure he'd made
some moves on her. His mood was just silly enough for him to try.
Nobody talked about it.
We drove home with the girls in the backseat wrapped in towels and the
two of us in front. Same as before. Only this time I was driving and
Steve was clutching his hand, squeezing my bloody T-shirt to a wound
that would take seven stitches once we got back to town.
All the way home nobody said a word. The freeze between Casey and Kim
was a palpable thing. You could hardly blame Kim. I was damned mad at
her myself. No matter what had gone on up there, it was clear she'd
overreacted, to say the very least. And then I kept seeing that cold
unconcern on her face while she stared at us. It could have been a
concussion. Yet all we got was anger.
You had to wonder. How well did I even know her?
And despite our weekend together, that kept coming up again. I kept
wondering how many more surprises there would be like the one today,
and whether I really wanted to be around to see them.
I dropped the women off at their respective houses. Then I got a spare
pair of pants from my apartment, helped him on with them and took him
to Doc Richardson over on Cedar Street. I stood there watching through
the injection, the bandaging, the stitching, the swabbing and patching
of the head wound while the Doc complained good-naturedly that the
times had not been good since Hoover.
By the time we drove back through town Steve was feeling better. I
dropped him at his parents' summer house and watched him move slowly up
the field stone walk, through the white colonial doors.
I didn't see him again for nearly a week.
The next I saw of Kim she was still angry. But you could tell that the
bitterness was wearing off some, eroded by understanding. We
sat in a booth at Harmon's together drinking Cokes. She, too,
suspected Steve had made a move on Casey.
She thought he had reasons, though.
'We're alike, Casey and I. The both of us wear a kind of sign, like one
of those sandwich boards. The sign says Sex. Now, I don't figure
that's so bad. A lot of women wear it. And plenty of us aren't after
anything particular except some fun, some pleasure, a little
give-and-take. I figure that all things being equal, we're just about
the best kind of woman there is. A whole lot better than some dried-up
and sad-assed type like Steve's sister. Because we can switch it over
to love at the drop of a hat.
'But sometimes I think that Casey uses it, you know? Like it's some
kind of dynamite she has so she can blow loose whatever she wants out
of life. And I think that's not so good. Dangerous, even. I know
that Steve's wanted her since they were kids, even though he wants me
too. But I think I'm good for him, basically. And she isn't.
'Maybe she's good for you I don't know about that. But not Steve. Not
ever. Though every now and then, he keeps trying.
'And I can't help but thinking that it's not good for her, either, to
be that way. What's it for, anyway? Pleasure. Pleasure and
affection. But for Casey I think it's something else, something it
shouldn't be. Like conquest.
'Or hunger.'
EMT
'What do you want, Case?'
We were lying in bed at my apartment.
'What's worth having?'
Her face was only inches from mine. Her eyes let me down into the
depths of her. I slid there gratefully.
'Pleasure.
'Knowledge. Security. I want to own good things, I guess. Success,
eventually. And something astonishing, something that surprises me. Or
me, surprising myself.'
