pubic hair. Mostly it told you she was strong.
She walked right past me.
I kept watching. I saw her eyes flicker and move, and then she was
gone up the beach to her friends. I thought she'd noticed me. And
then I thought that that was wishful thinking.
I knew it wasn't Rafferty. Girls don't notice Rafferty. At twenty his
face was still ravaged by pimples. His hands were stained with axle
grease. His face was red with whiskey. It's not that I'm any great
beauty, but my eyes are clear. I'm in pretty good shape to this day,
and whatever small problem I'd had with zits, I'd lost two years
before, at eighteen. So maybe it was me.
I thought it was me.
And thinking that made something glad and constricting happen
inmythroat. A happy snake coiled there. I drank a beer, and it didn't
go away.
But it was rough just sitting there after that. I wanted to walk up
the beach and talk to her in the worst way. But I was never any good
at approaches.
Besides, I was way outclassed and I knew it.
I worked in a lumberyard.
I sold quarter-inch plywood and pine and two-by-twos to contractors and
do-it-yourselfers.
College was on the back burner for a while and for all I cared it could
fry there. Oh, I'd read a lot and my grades were okay, but I'd had it
with school even worse than I'd had it with DeadRiver. Eventually
that would change. But at the time I was content with three-fifty an
hour and a little barmaid I knew called Lyssa Jean. Nice girl.
After that day on the beach, I never saw her again. Not once. Sorry,
Lyssa Jean.
Anyhow, it was not much fun sitting there after that, but I stuck it
out for another hour or so, hoping she'd get up for another swim. She
didn't. In the meantime Rafferty had struck up a conversation with
Lydia Davis.
Now that the tourists were in town Lydia was a lot more generally
available. Off-season she was just about the prettiest thing we had in
DeadRiver and you could buy her drinks all night long at the Caribou
and hardly get a smile or word out of her. She got nicer with
competition around.
So I couldn't get Rafferty to leave. The dog in the honey pot He kept
baring his crooked teeth at her.
I quit trying.
We had Rafferty's car that day but I figured I could probably hitch a
ride along the coast road. I packed my gear, slipped on my jeans,
shirt and sneakers and headed up the beach to the goat trail.
On the way I passed them. A tall, slim guy with dark skin and dark
hair and as harp straight nose. And a pretty green-eyed blond, a
little on the heavy side for my tastes but still very tasty, looking a
couple years younger than the guy- sort of barely ripe- in her tiny
yellow two-piece.
The other girl's towel was empty.
Climbing the goat trail I did a quick scan of the beach. I couldn't
find her anywhere. About ten feet from the top I turned and looked
again. Nothing.
'I'm up here,' she said.
I almost fell right off the trail. It would have been a bad fall.
It was very matter-of-fact, though, the way she said it. As though it
were obvious I'd be looking for her. As though she simply knew. I
turned and saw her standing there above me, and I think I must have
flushed a little, because she smiled.
I climbed the trail to the top. I watched my footing, not because I
really needed to, but because, as I say, it's my habit, and because it
was sort of hard to look at her directly. Bathing suit or no, I don't
think I'd ever seen anybody look so naked before.
Maybe it was the fact that she seemed so comfortable in her own skin,
like a kid who doesn't know about clothes much.
But there was something consciously erotic about her too and a long
haul from innocence. Just in the way she stood there, flicking a
green-and-white bath towel at the hawk seed hipshot.
The breeze had died down long ago.
The sun put red and brown into the still dark hair.
I have seen the Caribbean since then. Toward the end of the day the
sea sparkles with light as the sun goes down, and the color is that
high transparent blue that will turn gray and then finally black by
nightfall. Her eyes were like that, the color of last light.
They took me in all at once, gobbled me up.
I wondered how old she was.
I think I mumbled hi.
'It was me, wasn't it?' I listened for hints of mockery in her voice.
There weren't any.
'It was you. How'd you know?'
She smiled and the lips remained full even then. She didn't answer,
though.
She looked at me for a moment and I looked back and there was that
nakedness again, that easy nudity. She flicked the towel. The head of
a daisy shot off into the dust. She turned and walked a few steps back
to a dark green Mercedes parked between Rafferty's old Dodge and a
white Corvair.
'Drive me home?'
'Sure.'
She climbed in the passenger side. I walked around and got behind the
wheel. The keys were in the ignition. I started it up.
'Where to?'
'Seven Willoughby. You know where it is?'
