Shadowland

he do that?'

    'He just can. One summer he made Del think that six or seven weeks went by in a day. It was the time Del broke his leg.'

    'And Bud Copeland came.'

    Her eyebrows lifted. 'You know about that? Oh . . . Del told you. Yes, that summer. He didn't want Del to . . . I can't say.'

    'What happened?'

    'The iron staircase. It broke away from the cliff.'

    'What can't you say?'

    Now the smile was firmer. 'Ask Del. Maybe he'll be able to remember by now. I can't, Tom.'

    She walked a little way up the beach and turned to him . again. He saw that it was impossible: this was a secret that she would not give up. 'I can't stay much longer, Tom,' she said softly.

    'I want to kiss you,' he said. That she would keep her secret had made her even more desirable. 'I want to hold you.'

    'I told you. It's wrong now. I have something to tell you and I don't want to get all confused, and I don't have much time. He'll want to see me again.'

    'Tonight?' He walked toward her over the gray sand.

    She nodded. At least she did hot walk away.

    'What for?'

    'To talk. He likes to talk to me. He says I help him think out loud.'

    'But that's great. Then you can tell me and Del . . . '

    'Right. That's why I gave you that note. I found out something. But now, after tonight, you probably know it anyhow.'

    'I don't know anything,' Tom complained. And she reached out and took his hand.

    'He wants to give his farewell performance over again. With you and Del in it. If we're going to get out, I think it has to be right before, when all they'll be thinking about is what they have to do.'

    Pleasurable impulses and sensations had been going all the way up his arm, and now she gripped him harder. 'The important thing is that he's planning something big for this performance. Something dangerous. He said you'd have to choose between your wings and your song. Do you know what that means?'

    Tom shook his head. 'He said it to me once before. I don't know what it means.'

    'He said Speckle John chose his song, and he took his song away from him. So he didn't have anything left. I think we have to make sure we're out of here before . . . '

    'Before I find out what it means,' Tom said a little fearfully.

    'That's what I think.' Rose dropped his hand. Tom leaned forward and took hers and raised it to his mouth. He was trembling. He saw a girl in a red cloak carrying a wicker basket up a wooded path.

    Rose said, 'Tom, I feel so terrible-like I'm drawing you in deeper. But I have to do what he says, or he'll know something's wrong. Just trust me.'

    'God, I don't just trust you,' Tom said. 'I — '

    Rose was suddenly upon him. Her face came down over his, blotting out the sky and the brilliant stars. Her mouth swam over his, and her teeth took his lips. Rose's legs nestled his, her breasts plumped against his chest. Tom put his hand in her hair and gave himself over to the kiss. His surprised erection grew straight into the softness of her belly; he groaned into her mouth, smelling a faint perfume and the fragrance of clean hair, tasting what she was. She was the girl in the window: it was knowledge he had not permitted himself before, but now he held two Rose Armstrongs, the girl in the green dress and the unattainable staggering girl who had raised her arms and shown herself to a frightened boy freezing in a wintry sleigh.

    'You're going to break my back,' Rose said into his mouth.

    He put his hands again in her hair.

    'We can't.'

    'We can't what?' Tom mumbled.

    'We can't make love. Not here.'

    That nearly made him explode. Not here! He groaned again, jerked in an instant from a world in which he had feared he might be frightening or disgusting her with the evidence of his desire into one in which she could casually allude to its fulfillment. 'Where?' he said, his voice out of control.

    'Don't growl, I'm just barely . . . If you knew . . . '

    'Oh, Jesus, I know,' he said, and found her mouth again.

    'It's not fair, is it?' She pulled her face away from his: in compensation, her hips tipped toward him. 'Oh, you're so beautiful.'

    'Where?' he repeated.

    'Nowhere. Not now. I have to go back and see him, Tom. And besides, I . . . '

    She was a virgin. 'I am too,' he said. 'Oh, my God.' He pulled her tighter into him. 'I want you so much.'

    'Pretty Tom.' She'grazed over his cheek, but she already felt distant. So much had happened to Tom, so many milestones had gone by in a blur, that he had no idea of what to do next. Despite what he had hinted to Del, Jenny Oliver and Diane Darling had stopped short even of French kissing. Rose's belly was somehow mirac­ulously accommodating and accepting his erection.

    'Pretty Tom,' she repeated. 'I don't want to be unfair to you. I want you, too.' Her arms went around his neck, and he thought heaven had opened and taken him in. 'I'm just afraid . . . '

    'It's okay,' Tom said. 'Oh, Rose.'

    'The shadow of the boathouse,' Rose said, and pushed him back with her body. They stumbled awkwardly back a few steps.

    'There aren't any shadows, it's night,' Tom said, and it seemed so funny to him that he laughed out loud.

    'Dummy.' She pinned him against the coarse wood and opened him up with her mouth again. She muttered, 'Too bad I didn't drop you in the water, then you'd have to take off your clothes.'

    She was a cloud blessedly made of flesh, softly pillowing every part of him. Sexual urgency blasted him.

    'It's okay, Tom,' she whispered right against his ear. 'I know. It's okav. Go on.'

    One of her hands left his head and lighted on his trousers. 'Oh, no,' he said. And she slipped her hand a layer closer to him. His whole body shook. Rose's fingers twined in, cupped and held — he felt a yard long. She said, 'Oh, Tom,' and he hugged her as close as he could and felt everything in him jump, an explosion seeming to happen in his spine and his head as well as where Rose was, and she pulled, and he thought he was turning inside-out. 'Dear Tom,' she said, and nuzzled his cheek, and he turned inside-out again. 'We really shouldn't have done this,' she said into his cheek, and he laughed until her hand left him. 'Now you're a real mess.'

    'Thank God.'

    'You must think I'm terrible. I just could feel you . . . and you were moaning like that . . . I don't want you to think I'm . . . '

    'I think you're amazing. Beautiful. Astonishing. In­credible. Fantastic.' His heart was still thrumming. 'You're even generous. I hardly know what happened to me.'

    'Well,' she said, and her expression made him laugh again.

    'How are you?'

    'Fine. I don't know. Fine.'

    'Sometime . . . '

    'Sometime. Yes. But don't start again.' She stepped back on the sand.

    'I love you,' he said. 'I'm just absolutely in love with you.'

    'Beautiful Tom.'

    'Not grumpy Tom.'