He was cat-gentle, tiger-soft-he was a growing, growing boy. He found girls easy, older women easier.
His first love was fire-his second love was lust. His last love taught him a lesson: You can love too fast, too wildly and too long, but don't ever-
CHAPTER ONE
I WAS FOURTEEN and my cousin Nell was sixteen the summer I peeped through the crack and watched her take off her bathing suit.
I knew I had no business doing so. I worked up a sweat arguing with myself about whether I was going to look or not. The thing was-I was in love with Nell. Or thought I was. To put what I felt exactly, Nell was the greatest girl I knew. The way she was formed and the way she looked in a bathing suit, long, bare legs flashing, big, tight swelling boobs, healthy, clear tan-well, fourteen is not too soon for a guy to get hot and bothered.
The midsummer day was hot and bright. Sunlight glared on white dunes. A gull sailed over our beach cottage. The surf made a steady rumble down on the beach.
Nell and her boy friend, Paul Edwards, and my sister, Debbie, and the rest of the older kids had been swimming most of the afternoon. They were in the cottage, drying off and changing. I sat on the porch railing outside. All I had to do was slip down, go around to the back, press my face against the wall and look through the crack.
I was nervous and my ears felt hot. I had discovered the crack in the redwood wall several days ago. The beach cottage had been bait on pilings. The siding had been nailed on vertically, with battens covering the seams between the boards. If you hunted around you could find small cracks. The one I had my mind on gave someone on the porch a secret view of the bedroom.
I knew I had to have a dirty mind because the first thing that had popped into my thoughts when I had discovered this particular crack had been that now I could have a peep at Nell in less than a bathing suit.
Nell had red-gold hair that tumbled to her shoulders and sparkled like bright copper in the sunlight. Her eyes were blue-green, the color of big water.
I had first met Nell when my parents bought a vacation house on the beach and we came down from the north to spend the summer. Nell comes from a branch of our family we don't associate with much. Nell's father, my mother's brother, had run away from home as a kid to become a seaman. After knocking around the world on tramp steamers for a number of years he had settled here and gone into shrimping.
My father, who was a bluenose to the core, had written Uncle Enoch off as a drunkard and a bum long ago.
But we began spending summers on the coast after my father bought the house. Debbie and I got acquainted with Uncle Enoch and Aunt Bertha and their brood of kids who were our cousins, the oldest of whom was Nell. She and Debbie were about the same age and Nell brought her friends over from the shrimp town down the coast and they had a summer beach crowd going. Every day they were swimming or water skiing or going into town. They let me tag along sometimes, but only because I was Debbie's kid brother.
I had plenty of my own things to do. But the beach drew me like a magnet when Nell was there. I'd look at Nell in her skin-tight white bathing suit, watch her bare arms and legs flashing in the water and I'd get this hot, pounding feeling inside. And my thoughts would make my ears feel they might burn right off.
Here I was now, sitting on the railing, wrestling with the worst temptation I had known. I could almost see old Satan, pointed tail and all, beckoning me toward that crack in the bedroom wall as he grinned lasciviously.
I slid off the railing and went down the stairs. I stood below the cabin with my hands thrust in my blue-jean hip pockets. My bike was under the house, propped against one of the pilings. Not far away were the cardboard boxes I was filling with my shell collection.
None of those things interested me very much at the moment, with the other thing hammering at my brain.
Pete, my dog, came out of the dunes where he had been chasing a ground squirrel. He sniffed around my feet. I felt ashamed to have Pete around me when I was having sinful thoughts. Sometimes I toyed with the idea that maybe dogs were really people reincarnated and that they knew what you were thinking about.
Up in the house I could hear Debbie and the others talking. I heard Nell's musical laughter. She and Debbie must be in the bedroom now.
Man, oh, man, I thought, squeezing my perspiring fingers into fists. Well, it was going to be now or never.
Old Satan gave me an extra hard jab with his pitchfork and back up the steps I went. The cottage had a gallery that extended around all four sides of the square building. I walked to the back, the shady side, glanced around to be sure nobody saw me, and put my face up to the crack.
At first all I saw was a blur. Somebody was standing directly in front of the crack, obstructing my view. Debbie. I felt like yelling at her to get out of the way. Finally she did. Then I was looking at Nell. She had pulled off her swimming cap but she was still wearing the white suit. She picked up a comb and ran it absently through her hair as she talked to Debbie. They were both smoking cigarettes. Boy, Debbie would catch it from Mother for smoking-then I remembered that Mother had gone shopping this afternoon.
Nell put down the comb. She puffed on her cigarette a couple of times, then placed it carefully into a tray. She reached behind her back and opened her zipper. Then she peeled the wet bathing suit down over her hips.
My heart was banging. I thought it would jump out of my throat. It was the first time in my life I had seen a girl all naked. Sure, Debbie was always running around the house in her underwear but she was my sister. Anyway, she was so skinny and flat-chested she didn't have much more than I did.
But Nell looked like one of those models in the girlie magazines. She had big breasts that sagged a bit, wide hips and long, beautiful legs. When she kicked the wet bathing suit from her ankles and straightened, tan and white and naked, I could see everything, even the dark triangle below her soft belly. I thought my heart was going to smash my ribs.
I knew she was engaged to a big guy, Paul Edwards, who hung around a lot. She wore his school ring on a gold chain around her neck. It gleamed and swung like a pendulum between her breasts, bouncing against them.
She dried herself, bending over as she rubbed her legs with a towel. She put her cigarette between her lips again and strolled across the room, talking around the cigarette like a sexy girl in a TV murder play.
She was out of range of my peephole for an instant. She was dressed in her shirt and slacks and had a ribbon around her hair when I caught my next glimpse of her.
I left the porch and sat on the bottom steps. My whole body was sticky with perspiration.
Man-oh-man-oh-man-oh-man-oh-man....
Old Satan was cackling triumphantly in my ears. I was sure to go to hell for what I was thinking. I felt a cramping pain in my abdomen and for the next hour I limped around behind the sand dunes in agony. I figured it was my punishment.
CHAPTER TWO
A COUPLE OF DAYS later I was sitting under the cottage sorting out my shell collection when Nell came pedaling up the beach on her bike. She wore a pair of faded blue jeans and a boy's shirt with the tail tied in a knot under her breastbone. Her midriff was bare. Her hair bounced in a ponytail.
She hopped oft the bike and pushed it up through the loose sand to the house. "Hi, Mark," she said. "Hi," I mumbled. I was ashamed to look at her. "What are you doing?"
"Just fooling around with my shells." Nell propped her bike against one of the pilings and walked over for a closer look.
"You sure have a bunch of them." Nell had always been nice and friendly to me, more than the others in the older crowd. The thought made me feel even more guilty about spying on her.
"What are you going to do with them?" . "Oh, I don't know. Glue them on cards, I guess. I'd like to take them home with me to show them in the science class in school."
She picked up a purple bonnet and turned it over in her fingers.
"Do you know the names of all of them?"
"I have a book that tells what most of them are."
Nell was standing close to me. She smelled good, soaped and healthy. Debbie doused herself in expensive French perfume.
Nell put down the shell and dusted the sand from her fingers.
"Is Debbie home?"
"She and Mom went shopping."
Nell looked disappointed.
"Pop came in with a big shrimp catch, the best he's had this year. They're unloading his boat down at the dock now. I thought maybe Debbie would like to watch."
I lost interest in my shells.
"I'd sure like to watch."
Nell smiled.
"Okay, Mark. You can be my date this morning."
I flushed. I suddenly felt grown up. Nell's gaze met my eyes steadily. A funny expression came into her eyes and a tiny shiver ran through her body. She flushed, laughed nervously, went to pick up her bike.
I pushed my bike out between the pilings and we pedaled down the beach with Pete trotting behind us, his tongue lolling out Nell and I chattered as we rode. She had a soft, drawling way of speaking-her voice got inside you like a caress. She was really a swell girl and she could be a lot of fun when she was away from that older bunch of stuck-up phonies, especially Paul Edwards. Why the heck she wanted to be engaged to a dope like him was more than I could understand. He was last year's football hero around these parts and I guess girls went for things like that.
The morning was beautiful. The sun glistened on gentle waves out as far as the eye carried. Pete ran ahead of us, barking at a flock of sanderlings that were racing along the edge of the surf on spindly legs.
Before we came to the harbor we had to get off our bikes and push them up over a high levee thrown up to keep out the sea when hurricanes struck.
A railroad track ran along the top of the earthworks. We stood on the steel and looked down at the harbor. I always got a charge out of seeing it. My home was inland and everything about waterfront life fascinated me. I could understand my Uncle Enoch's love of the sea. Our ancestry may have included a strain of seafaring men.
This was a shrimping harbor. At least thirty saucy, graceful shrimp trawlers were tied up at the docks, either unloading shrimp or taking on fresh supplies of fuel and ice before heading out again.
A rickety dock ran around the perimeter of the harbor. Tin sheds lines the shore. Most were packing sheds but some sold ice to the shrimpers or were repair shops. Scattered liberally among the other places of business were beer lounges. A lot of the shrimpers lived in the waterfront beer joints when they were "on the beach," which meant not working.
One of the shrimp boats started down the channel while we watched. There was a wonderful look about that boat. Its high prow cut the water with irreverent insolence. A flock of seagulls were dipping and squawking over the big net that hung over the deck.
Something tightened inside my chest. I wished I were on that boat and heading for adventure.
"Come on, Mark," Nell said.
She climbed on her bike and coasted down the incline.
From here we could roll all the way to the docks. We parked our bikes against a tin shed and walked around to the pier where the Sally Ann, my Uncle Enoch's shrimp trawler, was tied up. Actually the Sally Ann was a company boat, part of a fleet, and not Uncle Enoch's. The owners got a share of his catch as rental. Nell had explained to me how the system worked.
Right now a conveyor belt was transferring the shrimp from the trawler's hold into a packing shed. Shrimp spoil easily and the action in the shed was fast. Uncle Enoch was leaning against the pilot house, watching the operation.
Nell and I jumped from the dock to the boat.
"Hi, kids." Uncle Enoch grinned. He put his arm around Nell and winked at me. "How's it going, mate?"
He always called me mate. I think he did so partly because he had a hard time remembering my name. I liked him, even if my father did think he was a bum and a sinner. It seemed to me he led a pretty adventurous and happy life. He was anything but stern and preoccupied with business all the time, as my dad was. He laughed a lot and always had time to talk to us kids when his boat was in.
"Did you catch a lot of shrimp this time, Uncle Enoch?" I asked.
"You bet your boots, mate. We've got us a sixty-box haul, if I'm any judge."
His face was flushed and his voice was thick. I figured he had already been down to the nearest beer joint to celebrate. He gave Nell a squeeze.
"We can buy you that new dress you been wanting, honey."
Nell's eyes lit up. I guess a new dress was something special to her. Dresses were nothing to Debbie and my mother, who had their closets stuffed with them. I had hardly ever seen Nell in anything but a bathing suit or blue jeans. She had a whole swarm of little brothers and sisters. I guess, with a family like that, Uncle Enoch could afford few luxuries. Shrimping is an unpredictable business.
I moseyed around the boat, poking into the engine room and the cabin. The cabin was neat and compact. It held four bunks, a butane stove and an ice box. It opened into a tight little compartment where you steered the boat. I put my hands on the wheel and pretended I was out in open water.
Uncle Enoch came into the cabin after some papers.
"Gee, I wish I could go out on a trip with you," I said.
He laughed and rumpled my hair. "I'll sign you on, mate. You can work as a header. That's how a shrimper gets started. I'll pay you regular header's wages-three cents a pound of the catch."
"Honest?"
"Sure. If it's okay with your folks."
He found the papers he was looking for and left the cabin. I was too excited to stand still. He had seemed pretty full of beer. Would he still want to take me on a trip when he sobered up?
Later, when Nell and I were riding back up the beach, I asked her if she thought her father really would take me out on a trip with him.
She nodded. "I guess so, Mark. But I don't think your folks would let you go-do you?"
"Gee, I don't know."
Some of the excitement faded inside me. My father probably wouldn't let me go. He had no use for Uncle Enoch.
Nell and I pedaled along the beach with no particular destination in mind. We talked about our families. Nell got me to tell her about my home in the city and our ranch westward.
Her eyes had a far-away, wistful expression.
"Gee, it must be wonderful to be rich."
"I don't know what's so wonderful about it," I muttered.
I could see no point in our money if it kept me from going on a shrimping trip with Uncle Enoch.
"I guess your father must have about a million dollars, Mark."
"I don't know," I said. "He never said whether he has a million dollars or not. The only time he talks about money is when he's griping about how much the government is taking away from him."
"Well, he must have an awful lot of money. All those oil wells and those chemical plants."
"He doesn't own the chemical plants. They belong to a corporation. He's just the head of the corporation."
"Well, isn't that the same?"
"I don't know," I admitted.
Nell looked dreamy.
"I'm going to be rich some day. I'm going to drive a big Cadillac and own a lot of nice clothes and a summer house and have a cabin cruiser, too."
"How're you going to get all that?"
"I don't know. Marry money, I guess. That's the only way a girl can do it."
"But you're engaged to Paul," I pointed out, "and he hasn't got any money. His daddy is a shrimper like yours."
"I know," she murmured, knitting her brow.
I felt my spirits rise. Nell wasn't completely sold on Paul. I didn't like him.
We rode along in silence for a while. At last Nell glanced at me with a warm smile.
"You sure are a nice boy, Mark. I like you a lot."
"Thanks," I said gruffly. My ears got hot. "I like you, too."
She looked at me steadily for a few seconds. Then she said, "I'm going to show you something I've never shown anybody else in my whole life."
"Yeah? What."
"Never mind. You'll see." Her air of mystery got me interested. "What is it, Nell? Come on, tell me." She laughed.
"I'll race you."
She stood up on the pedals and started pumping. I had to go with all my might to keep up with her. We flew down the beach. Pete raced beside us, yapping at the wheels.
I never saw a girl who could race a bike like Nell. She sure was a keen girl.
The race ended a mile down the beach. We parked our bikes against a driftwood log and collapsed on the sand, winded.
Nell finally stood up and looked around to be sure no one was in sight. The beach was deserted. I saw just us and the sea gulls.
She led the way into the dunes. Sea oats waved in the breeze. Scattered among the dunes were driftwood logs and bits and pieces of wrecked ships. An old hatch cover stuck up through the sand. Beyond it lay the rotting prow of a boat.
We came to a flat plain where cattle grazed on the short grass. Pete had been running ahead of us, sniffing at everything. Now he went tearing off after a rabbit.
About a hundred yards from the dunes was a windmill and tumble-down shack. It had probably been built there by ranchers a long time ago and abandoned. The shack was Nell's destination. She walked around to the side and dug in the earth under a rotting step.
She dragged a wooden box from the hole. It was a little larger than a shoebox. Nell sat on the steps and patted the spot beside her, indicating where I was to sit.
"This is my treasure chest," she said in a low voice, gazing down at the box intently. "No one else in the whole world knows about it. Don't you ever tell a soul. Promise?"
"I promise," I said.
She brushed the sand off the box. The lid was tied down with rope. She picked the knots loose. The box swung open. One by one she removed her treasures and spread them at her feet.
"These are all things I've been finding on the island since I was a child." She showed me a handful of ancient Spanish coins, encrusted with age. "Doubloons. Maybe they're part of a pirate treasure. They're all I ever found, though."
I touched them with awe.
She took out a fruit jar filled with Indian arrowheads.
"Carancahua Indians," she said. "They once lived on the island. They were cannibals." She lifted a human skull from the chest. "They had a burial ground near here."
The skull had been polished to the texture of ivory by wind-blown sand.
"It glows on a moonlit night," Nell said.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled.
She put down the skull and removed other items from the chest, an old whiskey bottle turned purple by the sun's ultra-violet rays, a round glass fishing float half filled with water and no way of explaining how the liquid got inside, oddly shaped fragments of driftwood, a bottle with a note in it that was illegible.
I lost all track of time and place. This was the most exciting thing that had happened to me all summer, next to Uncle Enoch's offering me a job on his shrimp boat.
Nell showed me everything in the box and then astounded me by saying I could have all of it. I thought she must have lost her mind.
"You can't give this away," I exclaimed, my voice sliding up an octave, the way it had been doing lately.
She shrugged.
"I'm getting too old for stuff like this. It's okay when you're a tomboy. But I'm a grown woman now. I'm engaged. I've been waiting to give it to somebody. You're a nice boy, Mark, and I like you. I want you to have it"
I stammered out my thanks but words seemed totally inadequate.
Nell smiled at me. "You're a good-looking boy, Mark. You're going to be very handsome when you grow up. It's your dark eyes, I think-and those beautiful long lashes. You're going to break a girl's heart one day."
I flushed and kicked at the sand.
I felt her gazing at me in a kind of amused way.
"Have you ever kissed a girl, Mark?" she asked.
I didn't know if she was teasing or what.
"Oh, sure," I lied. "Lots of times."
"Show me how good you are at it."
I swallowed. My mouth was suddenly full of cotton.
"Gee, I don't know. Somebody would see us."
Nell laughed. "There's nobody around for miles, Mark."
She placed her palms against my face, turning it toward hers. Her eyes looked straight into mine, getting a bit crossed at such close proximity.
She bent and placed a kiss on my lips. Blood rushed to my head. I felt embarrassed.
She laughed again, a low, teasing kind of laugh.
"You've got a lot to learn about kissing, Mark. You'll be dating girls soon and a boy has to know how to kiss right or girls won't want to go with him. Here, let me show you."
Her head bent over mine again. This time her lips clung to mine and lingered. Her fingers slid to the back of my neck. Her mouth grew warm against mine. My head was spinning. A fist seemed to be squeezing off my breath. A sweet, forbidden longing churned through me.
Nell slowly moved her head from side to side and her mouth worked against mine.
I thought something inside me was going to explode. I never knew kissing a girl was like this. Everything about Nell not only smelled but tasted good.
I guess Nell was having fun kissing me, too. We kept it up for a long time. We stopped to catch our breaths, then kissed some more. We were completely alone, sitting on the shady side of the old shack.
Finally we started fooling around with each other. Nell was flushed and silent. I fumbled at her shirt with a blind, instinctive wanting. Her fingers moved up to the buttons. She opened them slowly and let me see the soft pink and white swells of her bosom, which was straining against a white cotton bra that seemed entirely too tight.
I thought I was going to smother with the wild feelings pouring through me. Nell said nothing. The air was quiet out here in the middle of the island. Even the surf was too far to be heard. The only sound was a soft twang now and then from an old galvanized windmill as it turned fitfully in a breeze I could not feel.
My fingers touched the beautiful swells of Nell's breasts, half-hidden by the cotton bra.
She was gazing at me steadily. Her eyes had taken on a strange kind of intensity. They seemed to have turned to the dark green of deep water. She was breathing hard. So was I. I could see a pulse beating real fast in Nell's throat.
Nell reached up slowly and her fingertips touched the white cotton bra.
She asked in a husky whisper, "Do you want me to take it off for you, Mark?"
I gulped. The blood was surging through my temples. I nodded.
She was flushed. Her intense eyes give mine a long look. "Don't you dare tell anybody."
"I won't."
"You promise, Mark?"
"Sure-I promise."
"Cross your heart and hope to die?" I traced an invisible X on my chest and spat over my left elbow.
She hesitated a moment longer.
"Sometimes a girl would-would like to do some things-but she can't with any of the boys her age be-caused they'd go around and blab to all the other boys and everybody would know about it. You wouldn't go blabbing to Debbie or anybody else, would you, Mark?"
I shook my head vigorously.
"Well-"
She chewed her lower Up. Then she got a reckless look in her eyes and suddenly untied the knot in her shirttail. She pulled off the shirt and laid it on the steps. Then she unhooked the bra, pulled down the straps. She let the bra slip down her arms and tossed it over near the shirt. She drew a deep breath and leaned back against the steps on her elbows, showing her naked breasts to me.
"See, Mark?" she murmured.
My eyes were straining. I made some kind of choking sound. Her breasts gleamed like white marble in the bright light, except for the rounded, pink tips. The nipples had puckered and stood out sharply.
"Do I look pretty, Mark?"
"Gee, I'll say," I blurted out.
"You want to feel them, Mark?" She took my right hand and pressed it against the velvet flesh. "Go ahead, I like you to. It feels good."
I squeezed the delicate flesh and caressed the pale globes. Nell fell silent, breathing hard through slightly parted lips, gazing at me steadily.
Her eyes trailed down and then away from me, and she shivered.
"Mark, you're a naughty boy." She laughed unsteadily. "You've gone and gotten me all excited."
I felt like a dumb kid. I wished to hell I was less dumb. I mean, I knew all about it. I'd known since I was twelve years old when a kid next door, back home, had told me all about it and showed me some dirty pictures he'd swiped from his big brother.
But talking about it with guys and thinking about it in bed at night and looking at girlie pictures was a lot different from really doing something with a girl when you never had done anything like it before.
But Nell was laughing at me in a fond, teasing, big-sister kind of way. Of course, the laughter held that note of excitement.
"You'd better let me help you. Let me see what you have in the way of muscles."
She reached over and fumbled at my shirt.
I was surprised. I also felt embarrassed and excited, like I wanted her to see me the way I was. I helped her to open my shirt.
She stared at me hard.
"Gee, you're a real big boy for your age."
She raised her eyes to mine again, a flush on her face.
"You want to see all of me, Mark?"
I nodded. Nell's trembling fingers opened a button and zipper on the side of her blue jeans. She stripped them from her long legs and pulled off her panties. Then she lay back, altogether naked, her legs parted, and let me look at her all I wanted.
Neither one of us said anything. My body was pounding so with excitement I thought it was going to fly apart. I stripped off all my clothes, too. I wanted to be closer to her. I guess she wanted me near, too. She got me to he down on the ground beside her. The silken feel of her flesh against mine was unbearably sweet. We were both breathing hard and perspiring.
Nell whispered in a strained voice, "Mark, have you ever done it with a girl-you know?"
I was scared. I shook my head.
"You want to do it with me?" she whispered.
I made a strangled sound and nodded.
"Paul's after me all the time to do it with him," she murmured, "but I can't. Not that I don't want to. He gets me in the mood something dreadful sometimes-but I know if I go all the way with him he'll spread it all over town. Next he'll drop me and then all the men on the waterfront will be after me because word will spread around that I'm easy. A girl can get a reputation like that in a hurry in a small shrimping village like this, and then she might as well move away. No man's going to bother marrying what he can get for free." She looked at me. "You understand?"
"I guess so," I replied, although I did not exactly.
"It would be all right with you, though, Mark-I think," she said breathily. "You're my cousin and you wouldn't tell anybody. We'd just have a little fun is all."
We were silent for some moments. She pulled me closer, her body straining against mine. "You know what to do?" she whispered. "Sure," I said.
But I just lay there helplessly, feeling inept and childish.
She wriggled around and under me, her hips working. Nell was an earthy girl. She did whatever she did in a natural and uninhibited way, without a lot of guilt feelings. Once she had made up her mind about what we were going to do, she went right ahead.
A whole new sensation spread through my body. Nell made a gasping sound. Her limbs clamped about me. She no longer had to tell me what to do. Our bodies were performing a wild sex dance.
Nell panted in my ear. The sky and earth spun around me and everything became blurred. Nell became my whole universe. We were a part of each other and somehow I knew that I was going to look back to this moment as a changing point in my whole life.
The excitement was over. We dressed. Nell seemed undisturbed and not at all self-conscious about what we had done. She was laughing and talking.
But I could neither look at her nor say much. I felt stunned. I expected a thunderbolt to strike us dead at any minute-or the earth to open up and swallow us both.
We buried the box under the steps again. I whistled Pete back. We walked to where we had left our bikes.
We rode slowly along the beach toward town. Neither of us had the energy to race. We rode into the main part of the village. I bought us a couple of milk shakes at the drug store. I had recovered from my first wave of shock but I was still self-conscious and found it difficult to look at Nell.
We finished the shakes and went outside. A black Cadillac was parking at the curb. Nell paused and looked at it intently. A man stepped out and came around to the sidewalk. I recognized Fred Turner, the big shot who owned the shrimp fleet Uncle Enoch worked for. Mr. Turner was bald and red-faced but the weight he carried looked solid.
He stopped and looked at Nell, at all of her, not just her face.
"Hello, Nell."
It seemed to me Nell should get sore about a guy's eyes eating her up the way Mr. Turner's did. But she just took a deep breath-which gave Turner even more to look at-and smiled sweetly.
"Good morning, Mr. Turner."
He came over to where we stood. He walked like a big cat. He took out a white handkerchief and patted his damp forehead.
"Sure is a hot one, ain't it?"
"Yes it is," Nell murmured, slanting her eyes at him. "Your daddy's boat come in?"
"Yes. He had a real big catch."
Fred Turner finally took his eyes off Nell long enough to notice me.
"This is my little cousin, Mark Harris," Nell said. "Hi, fellah," Mr. Turner said absently. "Hi," I muttered.
Nell was burning me up. She was acting like she did around her older crowd, when she was trying to impress the boys. She was all phony and putting on and not at all keen like she was when we were alone together.
She went on talking with Turner. I might as well have not been there.
Finally Turner said, "I have to drive to the city to sign some papers. I'm just going to make a quick round trip. Like to come along for the ride, Nell?"
I thought she looked a little scared and uncertain. Her eyes cut toward the expensive, air-conditioned Cadillac. She ran her tongue over her lips and nodded.
"I'd enjoy a ride in that, Mr. Turner."
They went off together, ignoring me. I got on my bike and rode down to the beach, feeling abandoned.
Nell sure made me mad sometimes.
CHAPTER THREE
MY FATHER is an unpredictable man. I finally worked up the nerve to ask him about going out on a trip on Uncle Enoch's boat and maybe getting a summer job. He surprised me by saying I could go. He told me it was time I got off my duff and learned what it was like to earn a dollar with my own sweat.
One morning after sunup I went aboard the Sally Ann. I was in blue jeans, sport shirt and tennis shoes and carried a sea bag over my shoulder. I felt like a sailor boarding a schooner bound for the Spanish Main.
Uncle Enoch was in the galley having a cup of coffee fortified with a slug of whiskey.
"Matey," he greeted me in a cheerful voice.
"Hi, Uncle Enoch. I'm here."
"Fine. Stow your gear in one of the bunks."
I did so and joined him at the table. He shoved a skillet heaped with fried potatoes and sausage across the table at me.
"Have some breakfast."
"Gee, I'm not hungry."
"Eat. You got a hard day's work ahead."
Uncle Enoch was a terrible cook. The potatoes and sausage hit my stomach like lead sinkers.
We left the harbor in a couple of hours. The hold was packed with more than four thousand pounds of ice. The fuel tanks were loaded. I could feel the throb of the big diesel through the deck.
Uncle Enoch was in the wheel house. His cap was shoved to the back of his head. His white hair made a bushy halo. He was singing at the top of his voice and he looked pie-eyed to me. I wondered if he could get through the ship channel without running us aground.
The rig man on board the Sally Ann was named Cootie. He had fierce, red-rimmed eyes. A jagged scar ran through the blue-black stubble on his chin. Most of the words in his vocabulary would make a nice old lady faint.
At first he hated having a green kid underfoot-but before the trip was over we became pretty good friends.
I ran all over the boat when we left the harbor. The blue sky was dotted with puff-ball white clouds. Sea gulls swarmed above our mast.
I felt great until we were out of sight of land and the boat began to ride long swells. Suddenly my breakfast turned into a greasy lump in my stomach.
Cootie looked at me and said, "You little fart, you're turning green."
"I feel kinda funny," I admitted weakly.
"You're gettin' seasick, y' little bastid. Go ask your uncle for some of them pills he keeps-"
The rest of his advice was lost on me as I made a dash for the rail. I had to endure the ignominy of spending most of my first day at sea in my bunk, more dead than alive. Uncle Enoch poked pills into me at intervals. I was able to totter out on deck by late that afternoon.
My education started.
You trawl for white shrimp in shallow water during the day. At night you go out to depths beyond twelve fathoms and trawl for large brown shrimp.
The huge net comes surging up out of the black water, bulging with a wriggling, squirming mass of sea life and dripping sea weeds. The doors that have been holding the net open down below clap together with a loud bang. The boom swings the net over the boat and dumps all the junk in it across the deck. The floodlight atop the cabin plays over a rainbow of bright colors. Next you wade knee deep in bright-colored parrot fish, angel fish with lacy wings, pink and white crabs, striped sergeant majors, sea horses. And the stink gets right into you.
The catch is sorted. Shrimp are put into baskets. The rest of the mess is dumped overboard. The shrimp are headed and packed in ice. The deck is hosed down and the operation starts all over again.
If knocking the heads off shrimp sounds like easy work, try sitting on the deck of a rolling shrimp boat and decapitating a few thousand pounds. The heading knife looks like a weapon designed by Jack the Ripper. After you get good with it you can remove the heads of two or three shrimp at a time. And after you've been doing it for a few hours your back and shoulders turn into one big ache.
But the worst part is that the hand that grabs the shrimp becomes sore. Pretty soon the whole inner circle of your thumb and forefinger is raw. The salt water works into it. Your hand swells up until it looks gangrenous.
"I wish I'd brought gloves," I moaned to Cootie.
He snorted at my misery. "Gloves ain't no good, y' little jerk. You don't see no real header using gloves. They just get in the way. You got to keep at it until your hand gets tough. That's how you can spot a header. They got a big callus all the way around the inside of their hands."
The high adventure of going to sea in a shrimp boat dissolved into plain hard work. I saw an endless procession of nets and baskets of shrimp. Sleep was a luxury with which Uncle Enoch and Cootie dispensed completely.
I tried to keep up with them and I finally went to sleep sitting on the deck with a shrimp in one hand and a heading knife in the other. Uncle Enoch picked me up and packed me into one of the bunks where I dreamed that a thousand shrimp were staring at me from black, accusing eyes.
We headed back to harbor at the end of a week. Three thousand pounds of shrimp were iced down in the hold-a little below average catch for this time of the year.
Uncle Enoch referred to the catch as a thirty-box haul. Shrimpers reckon the catch by the boxes that the sheds pack the shrimp in. A hundred pounds of shrimp makes a box at the sheds.
Uncle Enoch explained that the average going price for shrimp right now was sixty cents a pound. He had a gross pay load of about eighteen hundred dollars. The owners of the boat got sixty percent-which would leave roughly seven hundred and twenty dollars to divide up between him and Cootie and me.
The header's normal share is three cents a pound of the total catch. However, since I was what Uncle Enoch diplomatically referred to as an apprentice, he based my share on the amount he estimated I actually headed-a thousand pounds. He gave me thirty dollars.
He asked me if that was all right and I said sure.
When Cootie swung off the boat he said, "See y' around, y' little fart," and did not look back. But when I got home and unpacked my sea bag I found a handful of Mexican coins that he had hidden there for me to remember him by.
I was a sorry sight when I limped to our summer cottage. The skin was peeling in raw shreds off my sunburned nose. My left hand looked as if it would require amputation. I reeked of dead shrimp.
My mother took one look at me and almost fainted. Debbie shrieked. I wanted to discuss nothing. I just wanted to take a hot bath and collapse into bed. Those clean sheets were the most delicious experience I had known. I thought I could sleep for a week.
Late that afternoon my mother brought a tray of food into my bedroom. I regained consciousness long enough to wolf down a meal. I went back to sleep again.
I woke up when my father came in. He said little. He asked how I was feeling. I said okay.
Then he said, "Well, I guess that cured you from going out on any more shrimp boats-" and left.
The way he said it irritated me. My father and I had a i strained and uneasy relationship. I don't remember his ever having shown me affection. He never had time.
My earliest memories are of a stern, tyrannical man towering over me and threatening me with hellfire and damnation if I misbehaved. The whole family was scared of him. I seemed to have a knack for irritating him.
My first trip on a shrimp boat had made a profound psychological change in me. In my trouser pocket, carefully folded, were thirty dollars. The sum was small. But this particular thirty dollars I had earned myself. It was not an allowance doled out by my father, along with ad-I vice about how it should be spent. It was my own money, earned by the sweat of my brow. The thirty dollars had brought me a sense of dignity my father had failed to recognize.
I went back to sleep after my father left. This time I dreamed about NeU. Nell was my girl now. We had shared a secret at the old shack that nobody else in the world knew about-including Nell's ostensible boy friend, Paul Edwards.
The next morning I felt a little stiff, otherwise fine. My mother insisted on taking me down to the doctor after breakfast to have my hand looked at. I rode my bike over to Nell's after I escaped from that humiliating ordeal.
She lived in a small frame house at the end of a lane covered with white shell. The house was dilapidated. Most of its paint had peeled off. In the yard lurked the hull of an old cabin cruiser that Uncle Enoch had salvaged somewhere. A jagged hole in its prow was large enough to drive a calf through. Uncle Enoch had propped the boat up on a platform of two-by-fours, planning to repair it one day.
Like most seagoing men, Uncle Enoch figured yard work was beneath his dignity. Consequently the place was grown over with weeds. Nell's little brothers had made cow trails running in all directions through the undergrowth.
I could feel eyes on me as I pushed my bike into the yard, and I knew members of the tribe of little Phillipses were peering at me from places of concealment under the house and in the weeds.
I saw Nell's bike on the porch. I parked mine against the porch steps, opened the sagging screen door and went into the house. Nell's mother, Aunt Bertha, was doing her ironing in the living room while she watched a soap opera on TV. She was thin, had scraggly hair and brown, dry skin.
"Hello, Mark," she said, raising her voice over a tearful passage in the melodrama. "How did you like your first trip on a shrimp boat?"
"It was fine, Aunt Bertha. Is Nell home?"
"She's changing Susie," Aunt Bertha said, nodding toward a bedroom.
She kept her gaze riveted on the television while her iron moved busily over one of Uncle Enoch's shirts. I guess she was doing the ironing by instinct.
I went to the bedroom. Nell had her youngest sister down on the bed. She was dusting talcum powder on the baby's bare bottom when I walked in. Susie was howling at the top of her lungs.
Nell smiled past a mouthful of safety pins.
"Hi, Mark."
"Hi, Nell."
She was too busy with Susie at the moment to give me more than a glance. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing."
I leaned over the foot of the bed, watching her. Nell wore a pair of ragged shorts and an old shirt. She was barefooted. I could tell she was wearing nothing under the shirt because of the way her breasts quivered as she worked over Susie. Some of the buttons on the shirt were missing and I caught glimpses of the pink and white mounds underneath. A compelling warmth stirred inside me.
"Want to go ride into town for a milkshake?" I asked.
"Thanks, Mark, but I can't. I have to help with the housework." She straightened, her face flushed from bending over the bed. Her mop of golden red hair was piled atop her head. The morning heat had brought out a fine beading of perspiration on her upper lip. "How did you like working on Pop's ship? He said you did pretty well for your first time out."
I wondered fleetingly what it would be like to be able to call your father Pop.
"It was okay," I said.
"Are you going out with him again?"
"I don't know. I might."
I hung around for a while, tailing Nell about the house as she worked.
Finally I left and rode my bike around the harbor and up the beach. The tour was no fun without Nell.
At lunch I heard Mother and Debbie talking about driving across the causeway to the city to shop. The thirty dollars were burning a hole in my pocket. I had already decided what I was going to do with part of the money. I was going to buy a present for Nell.
So I went with my mother and sister. I managed to get separated from them in the city. I went into a dress shop and a lady came to wait on me. It took a lot of nerve to tell her I wanted to buy a dress. I said it was for my sister. She wanted to know what size my sister wore. She had me stumped. Women's clothes sizes never had made any sense to me. I glanced about the shop and I saw one of the clerks who looked about Nell's size and we picked out a size to fit her.
The lady showed me a bunch of dresses on a rack. My eyes fell on one, a candy-striped green and white sun back job with a full skirt that I thought would look real keen on Nell. It was on sale for twenty dollars. The lady said my sister could exchange it if it failed to fit.
I said okay. She wrapped it up for me, took my twenty dollars, rang it up and gave me a sales slip.
I carried the dress back to where the car was parked and hid it in the trunk behind the spare tire. Then I went to a hobby shop and spent the remaining ten dollars on a flying model of a World War Two Spitfire.
The next day I sneaked the dress out of the car trunk and carried it over to Nell's on my bike.
Aunt, Bertha had gone to visit a neighbor and had taken Susie with her. The rest of the kids were scattered over the neighborhood. The house was quiet for a change and deserted, except for Nell, whom I found in the bedroom. All she had on was a white cotton bra and shorts. She had just finished painting her toenails a bright red and was lying across her bed, her feet propped on the foot, so the nail polish could dry in a breeze from a window. She was wriggling her toes in rhythm to music coming from a little white plastic radio on a table near the top of the bed.
"Hi, Nell," I said from the doorway.
She turned her head slightly. "Oh, hello, Mark. I didn't hear you come in. You should have knocked."
But she did not seem very embarrassed about my catching her partly undressed. She reached for her shirt and casually pulled it over her chest.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Oh, fixing my hair and nails. Paul is taking me dancing at a ritzy place in the city tonight."
I felt a stab of jealousy.
"What's in the package, Mark?"
I remembered the gift.
"I brought you something," I said awkwardly, holding it out. "I hope you like it. I mean-if it doesn't fit they said you could exchange it."
Nell's eyes brightened. She sat up.
"Mark-you're the sweetest thing. Why did you buy me a present?"
"Well-"
How could I tell her that she was the most beautiful girl in the world, that I would rather be with her than with anyone else, that she played the role of heroine, temptress or saint, in every daydream I had? These were all facts:-but facts that were locked in my inarticulate heart.
I could only hold out the present and blush. "What is it?" Nell asked. She swung her long legs from the bed. "Open it and see."
She came over to me, her shirt draped around her shoulders, walking gingerly, her toes raised off the floor.
She opened the bag and looked inside. Her lips parted. She sucked in her breath sharply. She squealed my name. She shook with excitement. She took out the dress, ran over to a mirror and held it up before her.
I felt proud and self-conscious.
"You can take it back if it doesn't fit," I repeated. "I want to try it on. May I?"
"Sure," I said, my ears growing hot. "You can stay there but close your eyes." I closed my eyes-almost.
Nell tossed her shirt to the bed. She pulled down the zipper of her shorts and stepped out of them. My breath began to catch and tighten.
She drew the skirt down over her head, tugged the zipper up the left side to her armpit.
"Okay, you can look," she said. She pirouetted before the mirror. "Mark, it's cute-I just love it." She ran over and kissed me. "You're the sweetest boy." She gazed into my eyes. Tears glistened on her lashes. "Thank you, Mark."
"Oh, that's okay," I said, tasting her lipstick.
She went back to the mirror.
"Let's see," she murmured in that preoccupied voice women use when they're studying themselves in a mirror. "I just have to take it in a little at the waist. Otherwise it's a perfect fit-"
She opened the zipper and slipped out of the dress. This time she forgot to say anything about my keeping my eyes closed. So I watched. She glanced over her bare shoulder in my direction. Her gaze traveled down and that teasing look came into her eyes.
"Mark," she said, shaking her head. "You're being a bad boy again."
She hung the dress over a chair, came over and kissed me. She reached down and rubbed me.
I made a strangled sound.
We sat on the edge of the bed, our arms around one another, and kissed. My burning face pressed her cool, bare shoulder. I plucked at her bra.
"I can't take it off, honey. Somebody might come in and catch us." Then: "Oh, well, I guess we'd hear the front door."
She unhooked her bra and slipped it from her arms. Her breasts popped out at me. We stretched across the bed. My heart was pounding, threatening to choke me. Blood hammered through my head.
My burning face was buried in the throbbing, sweet-scented world of Nell's flesh. She was making soft, crooning sounds in her throat. Her hand opened my belt.
She sucked in her breath and shivered.
"Oh, Mark, honey," she breathed. "You're getting me all hot."
She started kissing me. A lot of what followed felt to me like that day by the deserted shack down the beach-but a lot was new. The first time much of my excitement had come from curiosity and fooling around with something neither of us was supposed to be doing. And there had been all the good sensations and the feel of Nell's body. This time something important was added-something sweet and good about being with Nell and loving her touch and her body and the way she kissed me and ran her fingers through my hair and crooned in my ears.
I mean-none of this was dirty any more, or anything we were doing just because it was forbidden. I sensed a boy-girl feeling that involved us both and made me want to keep Nell very close to me.
She was breathing hard and squeezing up against me and giving little shivers of pleasure at the way our bodies were touching.
"Oh, let's do it again, Mark," she whispered into my ear. "I guess it's wrong and we'll go to hell for it-but I want it so bad. You do, too-don't you, honey? I can tell."
I nodded, my arms tightening about her.
This time I was not so inept. I knew what to do. Nell made little whimpers and grunts of pleasure and the old bed creaked under us.
I felt a white-hot explosion inside me. Nell was going frantic in my arms. She writhed, gave a hoarse gasp, shuddered against me and then was still.
We were like that for a while, tangled up in the sheets, both of us limp and practically knocked out. Nell was breathing softly now, stroking and patting my back.
Abruptly she screamed and fought away from me.
Jolted rudely back to reality, I sat up and spun around. Through horrified eyes I stared at Nell's boy friend, Paul Edwards, standing in the doorway. His face was a mask of shock. Then it turned purple with rage. He let out a squeal like a stuck pig and came stomping into the room. Nell frantically tried to cover herself with the sheet. She was making whimpering sounds of fright All the blood had drained from her face.
"You tramp," Paul yelled at Nell in an outraged howl of wounded pride. He leveled an accusing finger at her. "You act like you're too good to give me any-and the whole time you're doing it with this kid."
I finally managed to get my clothes in order. I jumped to my feet and was trying to collect my wits when Paul swung on me.
His eyes were glassy with homicide. He stared at me for a tense moment.
He informed me with deadly earnestness, "I'm going to kill you, fellah."
I got a feeling in the pit of my stomach like I had that first morning out on the shrimp boat. Paul Edwards loomed over me like a giant in towering rage.
"Paul, no!" Nell yelled.
But Paul's fury had found an outlet in me. He swung his fist into my stomach. My eyes almost popped from their sockets.
I heard Nell scream.
Paul's next blow spun me against the bedside table. The table, plastic radio and I crashed to the floor. My nose spurted blood all over my shirt.
The sting of pain from my throbbing nose awoke fury in me. I had hated Paul Edwards all summer. Now he had confirmed his villainy by attacking me, a kid half his size.
I crawled to my feet. In one hand I clutched the electric cord of the plastic radio. With murderous inspiration I swung the radio by the cord. It smashed against the side of Paul's head, sending pieces of broken plastic and glass tubes flying about the room.
The blow knocked Paul to the floor. He clutched at his head, rolling over and yelping with pain. I stood rooted to the spot, frozen with amazement and horror at what I had done. Until this moment I had led a life of nonviolence.
Nell was equally shocked. We both stood helplessly while Paul rolled and bled on the floor. Finally he was able to stagger to his feet.
He unleashed some parting curses at me and ran out of the house.
Nell was wringing her hands and crying. I told her I was sorry about lousing her up with Paul.
"Oh, I don't care." She sobbed. "I hate him-sneaking in here like that-"
She grabbed the thin gold chain at her neck, snapped it and threw Paul's school ring across the room.
Seeing Nell's engagement so dramatically broken compensated for the pain of my wounds.
Still crying, half angry and half frightened by what had happened, Nell put on her shirt, got a wet towel, cleaned me up and stopped my nosebleed.
The moment would have been good for me to tell her that I loved her. But I had no words.
A week later we closed up the vacation house for the summer and went back north. The summer ended without my having told Nell how I felt about her.
CHAPTER FOUR
IN DECEMBER MY FATHER announced we were going to celebrate Christmas out at the ranch this year. Debbie decided to invite Nell up as a house guest for the holidays.
To my father the ranch was both a profit-making business and a status symbol. As soon as school was done for the holidays we packed suitcases into the car. Mother, Debbie, my dog, Pete, and I drove to the ranch. Father was going to pick up my brother, Gordon, at college and join us in a couple of days.
I was not looking forward to the annual ritual. The holidays when my whole family got together at once were always grim. A lot of hate was bottled up in my family and it spilled out all over when we were in the same house for any length of time.
A Mexican ranch foreman and his family lived in the small house on the ranch the year around. Manuel kept the cattle fat and the fences up. My father knew nothing about ranching.
The day we arrived I took down my .22. Pete and I went exploring. A norther was blowing, kicking up dust and rolling tumbleweeds in front of us. The weather was too bleak even for jackrabbits. Pete walked along shivering. My fingers turned blue. Finally I went back to the house and watched television.
Debbie rode into town the next morning to meet the bus Nell was coming on. I rode along. I was excited at the prospect of seeing Nell again. But I was seized by a spell of shyness when we arrived at the bus station. I got out of the car but hung back when Nell's bus pulled in.
At first she was too busy hugging Debbie and talking to notice me. I went over to pick up her suitcase.
She saw me and cried, "Mark!" She ran to give me a hug and a kiss. "How's my favorite boy friend?"
She grinned, bringing a rush of warmth and exuberance to the bleak day.
"Hi," I mumbled, half smothered for a moment in her tangle of arms and coat.
Then I really looked at her for the first time since she had stepped down from the bus.
She seemed a lot older and more grown up than I remembered. I tried to recapture our last summer's feeling of relaxed companionship-but at that moment she was a stranger to me.
I put her suitcases into the car and sat in the back seat while Debbie and Nell sat up front and gossiped about boys and clothes all the way to the ranch. I gathered that Nell was between boy friends at the moment. Paul was definitely out of her life. I guess I should have been happy to hear that-but last summer seemed a long way off to me right now.
But that afternoon, when Nell came on a horseback ride around the ranch with me I began to feel our old comradeship returning.
Nell was pretty new to horseback riding. Manuel saddled up our gentlest horse for her. I had to show her how to mount and sit in the saddle. But she was a healthy, active girl and soon got the hang of it.
We rode all over the ranch. I showed her where the tanks were and the old mesquite rail fence down by the creek.
Nell's cheeks were pink from the cold. She breathed in little spurts of vapor when she laughed. She was real pretty, even prettier than I remembered. Once again I felt the warm, sweet, almost hurting feeling in my throat when I looked at her.
"Nell," I asked suddenly, "what's Christmas like at your house?"
She thought for a moment
"Well, it's kind of hectic. You know, with all the kids shooting each other with toy pistols and riding bicycles through the house. Pop's usually plastered. Last year he fell over the Christmas tree."
She giggled.
I gazed off into the distance and sighed. Christmas at Uncle Enoch's sounded wonderful.
Father and my older brother, Gordon, drove into the yard late the next afternoon. Instantly a gloom settled over the house. Even the sky seemed to me to grow darker.
Of course Nell, an outsider, was unaware of the undercurrents of hostility.
I could see that she went for Gordon as soon as they were introduced. He's a guy girls notice. He's tall and has black hair and dark eyes that sometimes burn as if he has fever. He was in his third year in college.
Father nodded cursorily at Nell and went into the house. He had no use for any member of Mother's family and made no bones about it.
That was the end of my Christmas season companionship with Nell. The ranchhouse filled with people. Debbie, Gordon and the older kids kept Nell busy.
She seemed to be having a wonderful time. The big cars and the gadgets impressed the heck out of her. Gordon really wasn't her type. He was too serious and bookish and wrapped up in college. But for a few days I guess he was something different and interesting to her.
I wandered around with Pete, sat on the corral fence and watched Manuel doctor a sick calf and wished it was time to start back to school.
The jollies were over finally and came the last night we were all on the ranch.
I was in bed and almost asleep when my door opened and Nell slipped in.
I sat up. "Hey-"
She whispered, "Quiet-" and slid under the covers with me.
She was barefooted and put her cold feet against my legs to warm them. She must have been in her room, preparing for bed. She was in pajamas and her hair was rolled up.
"I've hardly had a chance to visit with you since I've been here. We've been running around so much, Mark."
"So I noticed."
"Are you mad? Don't be mad at me, Mark."
"Okay."
"Still my favorite boy friend?"
"Sure."
She gave a kind of wriggle of contentment under the covers beside me.
"Boy, would we catch it if anybody found us here?" She giggled.
"Do you like Gordon a lot?" I asked, the words blurting out.
She laughed.
"Oh, he's all right. He's kind of a drag, though. I don't know what he's talking about half the time. He's got a lot of stuffy ideas. He doesn't know how to have fun."
I was glad she hadn't really fallen for him.
It was fun, snuggling under the covers with Nell, whispering in the dark. She was in a playful mood. She poked me in the ribs and started me laughing. I tickled her.
We horsed around for a while, muffling our laughter under the covers. Then Nell said we'd better quiet down or somebody would hear us.
"Will you come down to the coast again next summer?" she asked in a whisper.
"I guess so. Do you reckon your dad will give me a job on his shrimp boat again?"
"Sure, if you want one."
"I really liked going out with him. I'd like to work all summer on his boat. Some day I'd like to be a shrimp boat captain."
Nell laughed. "You'd better not let your daddy hear you say that. He doesn't think much of shrimpers."
"What I do after I grow up won't be any of his business. I'll do as I please."
We fell silent again, warm and cozy under the covers. A fresh norther was howling around the house. Nell snuggled closer to me. I could feel the curves of her body. The secret excitement I had felt with her last summer began tightening in me.
Nell slipped her arm around me. We were very close.
"You're really my boy friend, aren't you, Mark?" she whispered.
I nodded, feeling my ears grow hot. A trembling went through me.
Nell kissed me. First it was a friendly kiss. Then it became long and fervid, like the ones we had shared out on the island.
I could smell the perfume in her hair and the cold cream on her face.
She acted differently from any time before. She became excited earlier. She breathed fast and a thickness crept into her wordless whispering.
She unbuttoned the front of her pajamas to let me feel the big, rounded softness of her breasts. I felt the urge to kiss the fragrant bosom and taste the pink rosebud nipples. I acted on it. A shiver went through Nell and she pressed my head against her bosom.
"Mark-Mark-" she whispered.
I kissed her on the mouth again. Her lips were always warm and moist, her breath always sweet. We cuddled together under the covers, hugging each other. I was filled with so sweet an ache I almost bawled.
"Mark," she whispered. "We mustn't-we'll get caught for sure-"
But we could not stop. She kissed me again and pressed closer. Then she untied the string of my pajama pants and kicked them off. She ducked her head under the covers and rained kisses down my body.
In a matter of minutes we were joined and our bodies were working together. Later we lay in each other's arms, touching lightly. Nell's hair brushed my cheek. My head was on her soft shoulder. My senses were filled with her wonderful scent, the mingled cologne and clean, healthy young-girl sweat.
The words, I love you ... were struggling at my lips but I did not quite know yet how to utter them.
We made whispered plans for next summer-plans of exploring the island behind the dunes, of voyages in sailboats, of shrimping trips with Nell's father, of things to buy with the money I was going to earn.
But I did not see Nell the following summer or the summer after that. My father took the whole family to Europe. Five years were to pass before I saw Nell again.
And by then she would be the wife of Fred Turner.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE TRIP TO EUROPE was okay. I mean, it was interesting, seeing all those old castles and the museums-Debbie and my mother got full of culture. Father was busy most of the time, meeting with European representatives of his corporation. We saw as little of him as usual.
We returned to the States at the end of summer, in time for me to begin my fall school term. I was a sophomore that year. We had been back only a short while when I got the awful news about Nell's being married.
I came home from school one day and Debbie was reading a letter.
She said, "Guess what, Mark. Nell Phillips is married."
I said nothing. I felt as if somebody had dumped the ceiling on my head. I thought at first that Nell had made up with Paul Edwards.
Debbie said, "I'll bet you'd never guess whom she married."
I was feeling real lousy. I wanted to go off somewhere by myself and bawl. I shrugged. "I don't care."
I was wishing Debbie looked less smug.
"She married Fred Turner-can you imagine? He's the man that owns the shrimp fleet that Uncle Enoch works for. I'll bet he must be almost forty years old. I wouldn't have believed Nell would marry anybody like that."
She stared at the letter again, as if to make sure she had not misread it.
Mother came in.
She said, "Well, I'm not really surprised. Nell is like her father-nighty and irresponsible. Fred Turner is pretty well fixed. He can buy her pretty dresses and give her a big car to drive around in. That's all a girl like Nell really cares about."
I wanted to hear no more. I went up to my room and closed the door. I got my shell collection out of the closet and sat on the floor, looking at it dully, remembering the summer I had spent collecting it. I felt lonely and terrible. Why would Nell do a thing like getting married to old Fred Turner? I remembered what he had looked like and I got sick at my stomach thinking about Nell's being his wife.
My brain was a dull lump in my head. But certain inevitabilities were gradually seeping into it. I was going to spend no more summers on the beach with Nell. She and I would have no more bicycle races, no more secret moments behind the dunes where exciting events took place that were elsewhere forbidden.
The fun, the adventures, the hot, sweet yearnings were over.
I was angry at Nell and at fat, piggish Fred Turner. While I was at it, I threw my brother Gordon, my father and Debbie, too, into my personal perdition. I thought bitterly that Uncle Enoch probably would have backed out on his promise to take me out on his shrimp boat again. Suddenly I trusted no one. To hell with them all.
I gathered up my shell collection and dumped it into the trash. I took a key from a secret place in my desk drawer and went to my closet. I dug under a bunch of boxes until I found one I had put a big lock on. I unlocked it and lifted the lid. I looked at Nell's island treasure-the stuff she had given me the summer before last. I took all those things and dumped them, too, into the trash. The gesture made little sense. I still felt lousy.
Not much worth telling about what happened while I was in high school. My father saw to it that my activities followed a "respectable" pattern. I conformed because I could think of nothing else to do. My grades were okay. I went out for sports. That I was too light to make it big as a football player failed to bother me.
I found no other Nell. I dated the girls in my crowd. They came from nice, respectable families. Families like mine. Most were conscious about the money their parents had.
Some made a big deal out of being virgins while others would go pretty far if you caught them in the right mood. I made it in the back seat of my car with a girl whose name did not matter then or later-on the night of my last prom. She was scared stiff the whole time and kept blubbering about how she had never before done anything like what we were doing-which was a fat lie. I knew a guy who had made out with her in her freshman year.
I remembered how Nell had been and wondered if any other girl would ever make sense to me.
Finally I was on my way to college. Leaving home was like being let out of a concentration camp.
My father and I had a big row about what I was going to major in. I wanted to teach school, maybe on a junior college level. My father hit the ceiling.
"You want to starve to death? Teachers make no money."
Then he informed me that I was going to major in business administration like my brother, Gordon, so I could equip myself to "get into the business." Which meant being "a member of the team." Or, to put it more simply, a "company man" in his corporation. I felt like puking.
But leaving home made up for the old man's telling me what I had to study, at least to a degree. I won the fight to choose my own college and selected one in another state. Freedom tasted like a rare wine.
The very first week I was in college something important happened. I met Alice Rawson. Alice was a beautiful, long-legged girl whose father owned a ranch large enough to lose the state of Rhode Island in.
I had just taken my seat in my first class when she came in. Her gray eyes swept the room, collided with mine. I felt a special kind of excitement crawl up my spine.
The class was over. I stood outside on the top steps of the building. Other students hurried past me on their way to other classes. I had taken few notes during the class. I had been more interested in the dark-haired girl with the high-voltage eyes whose name I did not yet know.
She had chosen a seat near the front of the class. I had spent the hour gazing at the back of her head and her shoulders, speculating about her. You can tell a lot about a girl from her back. This one wore her hair smartly, yet casually. I could imagine it tumbling freely on a pillow. She carried her shoulders squarely and walked well. She seemed to have an assurance about her fenfininity. She did not remind me of Nell one way or another. She was a girl in her own right.
She was obviously a daughter of money-but enough of her self was visible at a glance to make her worth investigating.
She passed me. She trotted down the steps on clicking heels. I read style to the swing of her body.
She had long legs. I needed a couple of healthy strides to fall in step with her. "Hi," I said.
Her head jerked around. She looked startled. Her eyes hit me again-pleasantly. She smiled.
"Oh-I saw you in class."
"I'm Mark Harris."
She cocked her head.
"Hello, Mark. I'm Alice Rawson."
The name Rawson registered. My father had mentioned it. I associated it with money older than my father's. There were, of course, many Rawsons. But if Alice belonged to the clan I had heard of-her family could probably buy and sell my old man a couple of times.
The possibility pleased me.
I said, "Let's take a coffee break."
She gave me a long look, shook her head.
"Thanks, but I have another class."
I watched her turn and stride away. She walked with a sexy swing. Her dress tugged at the smooth lines of her thighs. I wondered what they would look like freed from that skirt.
I checked with the student register, found out she was living at one of the sorority houses. It figured.
I telephoned her that night for a date.
She said she had to study.
I tried her again the following night.
She agreed to a date during the weekend.
On Saturday night I took her to a pizza parlor where they had a sing-along banjo group. We stuffed on pizza, washed it down with keg beer, sang loudly and laughed. I decided Alice was okay. I was glad to find out she was no phony.
How would she be in making out? She had given me no clues during the evening. She had exuded healthy spontaneity but had given away no secrets about herself. If she had arrived at some conclusions about sex, she kept them to herself during our first date.
I managed to kiss her good night in front of her sorority house. That was as far as I wanted to go, first time out. I was sizing her up as a challenge.
"How about a swim tomorrow afternoon?"
"Gosh, I don't know, Mark. I have to work on my chemistry notebook and I haven't yet finished unpacking."
"You don't want to stay cooped up all day, do you?" She smiled.
"I guess you're right. All right, then. About three o'clock?"
"Sure."
The next afternoon we took a drive up into the hills to a lake where some of the college crowd went to ski and swim. The weather was still warm. Alice came out of the bathhouse in a red bikini and my eyes went out on stems. Clothes can sometimes fool you about a girl but a bikini tells the truth. And the truth about Alice's figure was poetry in flesh. It had to do with more than proportion and symmetry-it dealt with how she used them.
We swam and horsed about in the water. Every time I touched her an overwhelming truth about myself became more evident-it had been a long time since I had made out with a girl. I was suddenly as horny as a guy could get.
Alice sensed what was happening. A girl had to be able to figure out things like that about a guy. She played the scene cool. I did the same.
Something started to build up between us.
The weeks passed well into the fall term and I began to wonder when one of us was going to knock the thing down. We had drawn the line at fervid good-night kisses but I was willing to bet she was not frigid. A virgin maybe. But she came on real strong when we kissed, breathing hard and fingering the back of my neck and sometimes letting out a sound that could never be translated into words.
I had no idea of what both of us were waiting for. And I don't know what I would have done if some good buddies hadn't told me about a cathouse located out in the country about twenty miles from town.
I patronized a little hustler named Ginny. She was about five feet tall and weighed all of ninety pounds soaking wet-but she put her heart into her work. And she never .seemed to get tired. Also, she looked the opposite of a whore. She had a little turned-up nose with freckles sprinkled across it. Her eyes were wide and blue. Her figure was cute, no more, no less. She could have passed for the girl next door and she told me she had been hustling since she was thirteen.
I believed her. She knew her business. Part of it was to look like the girl next door and to be able to kill a guy in bed-but leave him breathing.
Ginny was a fine little swinger as prostitutes go. But I always felt vaguely dissatisfied and disgusted when I left her. I could find no real satisfaction in commercial sex-so that not even Ginny explained why I held back from really putting everything on the line with Alice.
One morning I awoke feeling particularly bugged and disgusted. I lay in bed, looked around my pad. I had decided not to five at the frat house. The idea of living where a bunch of guys were constantly walking over each other iced me. I liked my privacy. And my father was footing the bills. So I rented this little garage apartment.
It consisted of a room with a lumpy day bed-a miniature kitchen the size of a closet was set in an alcove. The ceiling was right up against the flat-top roof, with no crawl space or insulation between. This morning I heard sparrows walking around on the roof. Or so I told myself. Life was not beautiful.
I had pasted over the pathetic wallpaper with its faded flower design with travel posters and full-length, four-color nudes from fold-out sections of girlie magazines. Normally these made a pleasant enough scene to awake to. I could he in bed and take a world cruise by looking at the travel posters. And when I felt like making port, I could shift over to the girls.
This morning neither prospect pleased.
I had a glass of orange juice laced with gin for breakfast. The juice was for my health. The gin was for me.
I got on a small glow, sipping spiked orange juice and gazing at travel posters of Tahiti. I was on my third orange juice and had gone from Tahiti to a field of tulip blossoms in Holland when I heard a knock on my door.
I said, "Go away."
Alice Rawson's muffled voice came insistently through the door panel.
"Mark, you let me in."
I crawled from under the tangled covers, pulled on a robe and opened the door. "Hi."
I blinked uncomfortably at the bright sunshine she was letting in.
My pad was reached by means of a rickety outside staircase. Alice stood on the landing, looking like an ad from a coed dress shop. I looked like a guy in a bathrobe, hair uncombed and yesterday's beard still showing.
"Now that you're here, Alice," I said, "come on in."
"All right, be sarcastic. Mark, you're supposed to be in math class right now."
"Well, what do you know? Listen, I've got some crazy orange juice. Like some?"
She came in, dumped her books on a chair and closed the door.
"Mark, you're drunk."
"Maybe it's the vitamin in the orange juice. You have to watch that stuff."
I mixed up a fresh pair of screwdrivers and handed her one.
She put it on an end table without tasting it.
"Mark," she said. "You've already had four cuts this month in that math class. If you take more they'll kick you out of the class."
"Swell," I said. "I never did like math."
I went to my record stack and selected a program of unobtrusive modern jazz. I had a fine set of stereo components. Debbie had given it to me. The sound they delivered was too much. I kept the volume soft. The faintly discordant notes of the cool jazz remained at a discreet level.
Alice was still being severe with me. I liked it. She looked and sounded fine and good to me-what I needed.
"I wish I could understand you, Mark. Do you want to flunk?"
I flopped on the bed.
"I don't imagine it makes much difference one way or the other."
She shook her head in bewilderment.
"You're something else, do you know that? What do you want, Mark?"
I gazed at her. She had sat down in my sagging, overstuffed chair. The tight gray skirt of her suit had pulled well above her knees. I decided to start kicking down whatever it was we had built between us.
"Well, to start with," I said frankly, "I want you."
She blushed. "Now don't start that-"
"Why not?"
She shifted uncomfortably. "You know why not. You and I-"
"No, I don't know why not. Aren't you interested?" She took a sip of her screwdriver finally, stared into the glass.
"You know I am," she said.
"Well, then why do we keep holding out on each other? Sex is supposed to be life's sublime experience." She gave me an angry look.
"You're so-so darned cynical about everything. I'll bet you figured out this pitch in advance-"
"How could I have figured you'd come here this morning?"
"You make my being here sound cheap-"
"You make it sound phony," I countered. "Why should you care about my grades? It bugs me when people are phony. I'm trying to be honest."
She flushed angrily. "You're all mixed up-"
"I'm not mixed up. I'm drunk."
"That's another thing. Do you realize how much you've been drinking lately? You're going to wind up getting yourself thrown out of school-"
She broke off and we glared at each other. I picked up my drink. I felt lousy. I hated the morning again, screwdrivers and all.
A painful silence ensued. The only sounds in the room were soft, cool jazz and my imaginary sparrows walking around on the roof.
Alice suddenly put down her drink, got out of her chair, came over to sit on the side of the bed. She put her hand on my arm.
"Mark, honey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to start a quarrel."
"That's okay," I said. "I don't even want to be the easiest guy in the world to get along with."
"All right. I shouldn't try to change you or make you over. And maybe you're right about my reasons for coming here. I hate to see you banging your head against a stone wall all the time. I-I guess I care a great deal for you, Mark."
We kissed and made up and then we necked for a while on the bed. I put my hand on one of her breasts. She pushed the hand away.
She sat up, looking flustered and slightly disheveled.
"Mark, we have to stop."
"Why?" I wanted to know.
"It's not right. It's dangerous-when we're alone this way."
"I don't dig. So we're alone and in the mood. What's to be afraid of? We don't have to worry about anybody here."
"Except us, Mark." She plucked at the sheet. "What you're suggesting is a big step for a girl."
"Do you want to spend the rest of your life being a virgin?"
Her flush deepened.
"Of course not," she said, in a voice so low it was almost inaudible. "But when I-go all the way with a boy ... I want it to mean something. I want it to happem with a boy who feels it's as important to him as it is to me-"
"It means a lot to me, Alice." I wondered if I was lying. "You know I've flipped about you."
She looked at me searchingly.
"I wish I could be sure how you really felt about me, Mark. I don't think you're sure yourself."
"You talk too much," I said impatiently. "You want to analyze everything."
I pulled her back into my arms. She resisted. But when my lips found hers she relaxed against me with a shuddering sigh. We kissed long and deeply. The kiss shook up both of us. I felt her eager young body straining against mine. Hunger for her tore through me. She was right-I was not entirely sure of what she meant to me. How could I be sure of how I felt about her until I knew her all the way?
My thoughts were vague and confused.
Our kisses became more heated. Alice's head was turning' slowly from side to side as our mouths fused, parted, strained together until I could feel her teeth touching mine and her quivering tongue searching deeply. My arms were tight around her and I could feel the heat of her through her clothing. She was stretched out on the bed with me now, shivering and breathing raggedly.
Suddenly she tore her lips from mine and sat up. Her hair was a lovely disarray. Her mouth looked swollen and her clothes were rumpled. The pupils of her eyes were wide with lust and fright. She seemed on the verge of tears.
"Mark, you're driving me crazy-"
"What do you think you're doing to me?" I said. "You get a guy all steamed up-then chicken out."
She buried her face in her hands and began to cry softly.
"I'm sorry, Mark. I shouldn't have come. I don't mean to be a tease. You know I'm not like that. It's just that-" She raised her tear-streaked face, looked at me steadily, "If I once start-I won't be able to go back. I have to be sure-"
"Sure of what? That I'll marry you? We can't get married in the middle of the school term. My old man would squeal like a stuck pig."
She gave me a reproachful look.
"Why do you have to say things to hurt me? Do you think I'm acting as I am because I'm holding out for a wedding ring?"
"I asked you a question. What do you have to be sure of?"
She was looking at me steadily.
"For one thing-I have to know there isn't anyone else you're involved with."
"Oh, for cripe's sake-I haven't got a lousy harem, if that's what you mean."
"How about the girl you told me about? Your cousin Nell."
One night when I had been drunk on beer I had told Alice about that summer with Nell. Perhaps telling her had been a mistake. It's never wise to tell a girl about your past.
"That happened when I was a kid," I told her. "Nell doesn't mean anything to me any more. Anyway, she's married."
I was tired of all this fencing around. I pulled Alice back into my arms. This time she put up no resistance. Again our kisses grew heated. We were clamped together on the bed, both of us breathing hard, perspiring and straining as if to weld ourselves together. My hand moved down to her thigh. It touched flesh, as smooth and soft as velvet. Her tight skirt had risen far up her legs. I caressed the softness of her inner thighs. She did not stop me this time. She only breathed harder and strained more tightly against me. She made a throaty sound.
My blood surged in hot waves. My hand moved. Her body leaped.
She choked out my name. Her hips began a rhythmic, instinctive movement.
My bathrobe had fallen open. I felt her quivering against me.
She gasped, "Mark, don't make me-"
But I forced the issue now. Excitement thundered through me.
She whispered breathlessly, "What's the use of lying? I want it as much as you do. I think about it all the time-"
She writhed in frightened eagerness.
I took her as decisively-and perhaps with much the same passion-as a matador moves in for the kill. The game was over between us and she no longer had a chance. I heard Alice's cry of pain. I ravaged her virginity ruthlessly.
Then I felt her body leaping and surging. Something in her died in that moment, I remember thinking.
Was something new born?
Exquisite waves of ecstasy mounted to a thunderous crescendo and exploded in a white-hot burst of sensation. I left her and we sprawled in tangled bedclothes, panting.
After a while she crept into my arms.
She whispered, "You hurt me, Mark." Her fingers touched my cheek. "But it's all right, honey. I love you and that makes everything right. Doesn't it?"
"Yes," I said.
But I was anything but sure. Did I feel guilt? What had made matters right between Nell and myself? The fact that she had taken the initiative, the lead, and so removed me from all possible guilt?
Whatever I felt now, it was something new. As I had sensed when I first saw her, Alice was a girl in her own right.
What was our relationship now? I wished I could be more certain of how I felt about her. Something inside kept me from being sure about anything.
After a while I kissed her again and we started fooling around. Suddenly she sat up and took off her jacket and blouse. Her face turned pink and she looked away.
"I guess, if we're going to do it again-we might as well do it right," she said.
I watched silently as she slipped out of the blouse. Satin bra straps indented the soft flesh of her shoulders and back. She reached behind her to unhook the bra. She let it slide down her arms and threw it over a chair. She drew a deep breath, stood up beside the bed, divested herself of her skirt and hose and came to me.
This time our love was more abandoned, more complete. I knew no impulse to conquer or to seek out moments of truth. Instead of taking, I gave and accepted.
Yet something was lacking in the midst of the glory and the fulfillment-and presently I discovered I was again using her roughly, almost angrily, trying to find the totality that should have been in our new relationship.
Later we lay side by side on the bed and sipped screwdrivers.
Alice asked, "Mark, what is that crazy sound I've been hearing all morning?"
She was getting a little drunk.
"It's sparrows walking on the roof."
She propped herself on one elbow, staring incredulously at me.
"What?"
I nodded.
"Honest. That's what it is. Sparrows walking on the roof."
I never did find out what that sound was-maybe it was simply caused by the roof components expanding in the day's growing heat.
I stared up at the ceiling. Suddenly my thoughts were a long way off. I knew what had been lacking while I had been making love with Alice. It was something Nell had been unable to teach me. I wondered if any girl could.
CHAPTER SIX
SPRING CAME. The last cold, wet March storm was gone. Bluebonnets peeped out along the shoulders of the highways.
Through my bedroom window I could see budding trees across the street and a patch of blue sky. I wished I were out where the air was clean and good to breathe. Sullen hostility filled my room like a leaden mist.
My father threw a handful of papers to a table. They were the record of my accomplishments at college this past winter, a list of flunking grades and a bundle of hot checks he had had to make good to keep me out of jail.
"I don't know where I've failed," my father said. "I've given you every possible advantage. Can you explain yourself?"
Reluctantly I pulled my gaze from the patch of freedom outside the window and focused it on my parent. The past five years had taken nothing from him. He was still a big man with bulky shoulders. Slashes of steel gray trimmed his temples. His blue eyes could still probe right into you, find a weak spot and turn it into mush.
Fear gets to be a habit. I felt it crawling through me now, although I no longer had to worry about physical punishment. The fear had bred hate.
"No, I can't explain myself," I said. "Can you? Have you ever tried?"
His cold blue eyes tightened angrily.
"I don't want to listen to any smart remarks from you. Be careful. You're walking a high rope now." He swept his hand toward the papers on the desk. "Hot checks, D.W.I, charges, trouble with girls, trouble in school." He had heard about my patronage of Ginny. A look of angry disgust filled his eyes. "I never thought I'd father a delinquent. What is it with you anyway? Why can't you straighten out and be decent like Gordon? I never had this kind of trouble with him."
"Good old Gordon," I muttered. "A chip off the old block. A member of the team."
Anger snapped between us like sparks of electricity.
"It wouldn't hurt you to emulate your brother. And you don't have to be sarcastic about Gordon's being a member of the team. No company-or a society, either-ever ran smoothly without its people pulling together. Misfits like you only stir up trouble. But don't worry, young man-you'll learn how to get along with the rest of us, if I have to teach you the hard way. Another of those checks and you go to jail."
"Wouldn't it be a little embarrassing for a state representative to have a son in the cooler?" I inquired blandly. "Especially when the representative has hot pants for the governor's seat?"
My father had recently found a new outlet for his ambitions-politics. Last fall he had been elected representative from his district. How could he have lost? All the money in the district had been on his side.
His voice turned hoarse with rage. A vein throbbed in his forehead.
"You keep your filthy mouth clean. You're talking to your father."
"I'm glad you reminded me," I said. "Let's stop kidding each other, though-You didn't bail me out of trouble because there's any love lost between us-"
He slapped me across the mouth. There was brute strength in his big palm. The blow dazed me.
I recovered and my body stiffened and my fists doubled but I did not hit him back. Taboos run deeply. Honor thy father and thy mother....
My father's voice trembled with suppressed fury.
"I'm not going to stand here and argue with a delinquent. Now I'm going to tell you how it will be in the future. You're going to straighten out, fly right, keep your nose clean and make decent grades. I'm not going to throw money away on an education a kid doesn't appreciate. If you behave like this again, I'm going to jerk you out of school and put you to work at our plant on the coast and, by Harry, you're going to work. You'll load bauxite with the Mexican laborers. You'll sweat and break your back until you learn how to get along with people and be a responsible citizen."
I started to laugh. He was threatening me with hard work-and one of my favorite times in life had been the days I had worked my head off on Uncle Enoch's shrimp boat. Work was not what I minded. I could have passed my courses in a breeze if I'd given a damn. I might even have gone on my father's team if I could have felt he was on mine.
My father walked out after delivering his ultimatum. He slammed the door behind him. The ugly tension slowly filtered from the room. I found I could draw a free breath again.
After a while I went downstairs, walked across the campus and stood on the curb of the main drag, looking around. I felt depressed.
A red convertible swooped to the curb. The attractive brunette behind the wheel waved.
"Hi."
It was Alice. We were still going together-she had remained my chief romance the entire school year. "Hi," I said.
I opened the door and flopped in beside her. "How did it go?" she asked. I shuddered. "Ugh."
Her eyes clouded. She reached over to squeeze my hand.
"Want to tell me about it?"
"I'd just as soon not," I said. "I'd hate to vomit all over your upholstery."
"Was it as bad as that?"
"Worse," I said. "Why do we have families? Babies should be born in bottles-then let the state raise the kid."
She laughed.
"Honey, don't be bitter. All parents are not jerks."
"Well, it so happens mine are." We were silent for a moment. "I'm sorry," I apologized. "I guess I'm in a lousy mood."
"That's all right."
I admitted, "Oh, what the hell-I guess the old man has a right to be sore. I can't blame him for that. But if he'd just once try to talk to me like one human being to another-"
What was the use? Neither he nor I understood each other.
Alice asked, "Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?"
"You can take us where I can get drunk."
"Okay."
She was an agreeable girl. She handled the car expertly in traffic. Her parents had given it to her this year for her nineteenth birthday. She drove well, as she did all things conventional. And some that were out of the ordinary. She could handle a quarter horse, fly a plane or shoot the neck off a beer bottle with a .22.
We went to a place some distance from the campus, drank beer from pitchers, listened to a loud rock-and-roll combo and watched go-go girls until dark. Then we drove around under the stars with the top down, drank more beer from cans, talked about life and tried to figure out where we came from and what we were doing here and where we might wind up.
Later we went to my room. We stumbled to the day bed and became involved in a long, heated kiss.
She let me unbutton her blouse, moonlight spilling through a window into the darkened apartment gleamed like silver on her pale flesh.
I think we were partly in love and I sensed that Alice wanted to marry me. I was not ready to marry anyone. I was still too mixed up about my own life to take on another's complexities.
We made love, then fell asleep on the couch. I awoke in the early dawn, feeling stiff and cramped. Alice was curled in a ball beside me, her knees poking me in the stomach. Dawn light was soft and kind on her fiercely proud breasts. One of her hands rested on the cushion beside her face, fingers curled against her cheek. She looked sweet, young and vulnerable. Something besides a hangover tugged at my throat as I gazed down at her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE END OF THE SCHOOL TERM arrived. I had no intention of spending my summer vacation at home if I could possibly arrange not to do so. I told Alice goodbye. She was going to her parents' ranch for the summer. She extracted a promise from me to spend at least part of my summer at their ranch-but the promise was one I had no idea I could keep.
I owned a beat-up car and had about fifty dollars cash on hand. I tossed a suitcase into the heap and hit the road. My plans were indefinite-but something magnetic was drawing me toward the coast. Back to my past-and my cousin Nell? I was not sure but I found myself driving south.
The direction seemed the most natural. I wondered why it had taken me so long to go back. Then I remembered that this was the first summer I had been independent enough of my family to do as I pleased.
The drive took two days, pressing hard. I slept overnight in the car. By the second afternoon I had covered eleven hundred miles and came to the familiar scattering of frame houses. The early June sun bounced off white shell streets and dug at my eyes.
I put on sunglasses, drove slowly down the main street. The town was less to look at than I remembered. It was small and dusty. The buildings along its principal street were drab, one-storied, many with false fronts. I passed a hardware store, a couple of dime stores, some chain drugstores with modern fronts. The bank on the main corner had been remodeled and looked out of place with its glass and chrome design.
I stopped at a filling station. I put a coin in the cold drink machine. The wet bottle slid into my hand. I thought it was probably the coolest thing in town.
A kid filled my tank. The old guy who ran the station sat on a box, his back against one of the gasoline pumps. He looked bored and lonesome.
"Don't look like we're ever going to get any rain," he complained. "Does it?"
"Nope."
He looked as if he hoped I would help him pass the time of day.
"Didn't see any showers where you came from, did you?"
I finished my drink and dropped the empty bottle into the rack beside the machine. "Nope," I said.
He shook his head. "I guess it's just forgot how to rain."
I got into my car and turned down the road that led to the harbor. The sun hammered angrily down at me. Some dusty mesquite trees beside the road drooped. Sweat glued my shirt to the seat cushion.
I drove to the top of the levee, pulled up and gazed down at the harbor. It seemed unchanged.
Shrimp boats were still tied up at the unloading dock. Others were sailing out through the channel. The place had neither grown nor shrunk. It was exactly what it had been five years ago.
Or so I told myself. I looked hard for confirmation.
Even the signs on the tin sheds around the semicircle of the docks were the same. harry's place-cold beer we buy and sell shrimp fisherman's supply company mac's place-beer net shop gulf coast ice company eddie's fine foods-beer sammy's diesel service.
The good waterfront smells of tar and rope and salt brine mingled with fish reached my nostrils. I enjoyed it, even the odor of dead shrimp.
And then I knew how the harbor had changed-and why I had looked so hard for no change. The vacuum where Uncle Enoch's shrimp boat had been sucked at my thoughts. Uncle Enoch had been caught in a sudden squall two winters ago and had been washed off the deck of his boat and drowned. My father had said Uncle Enoch had probably been drunk when he fell overboard. Was there a virtue in dying cold sober?
I seemed to hear Uncle Enoch's voice floating on the sea breeze.
Hi, mate....
The winter he had died I had gone off by myself and bawled. Now his absence was more than a vacancy-it was a total emptiness that pulled at my mind. I remembered him at the helm of his shrimp boat, his white hair a halo, his eyes slightly out of focus from booze.
I drove down from the levee, took the road around the harbor and up the shell street that led to Uncle Enoch's house. My Aunt Bertha was still living there, I knew, with the young Phillips kids.
The yard was as full of weeds as ever. The old cabin cruiser was just where Uncle Enoch had left it. I saw that he had never gotten around to patching the hole in the prow. I parked my jalopy in front of the house and walked through the weeds to the front porch. I could hear kids yelling in the back yard. The television was loud in the house. I grinned. Uncle Enoch's death had changed less here than it had in the harbor. The realization gave me a warm, homey feeling.
I banged on the screen door. But the television was making so much noise Aunt Bertha would hardly have heard the front porch fall down. I opened the front door, stuck my head in and yelled at her. She came out of the kitchen with a steaming pot in one hand.
She failed to recognize me. I opened the door wider and walked in.
"It's Mark, Aunt Bertha. Don't you remember me?"
"Land sakes alive! But you're suppose to be a little boy-" she smiled accusingly. Next she gave me a hug, getting flour all over me. We sat on the couch, Aunt Bertha clutching the warm pot. She wanted to know all about my family. We had to talk at the top of our voices to be heard above the television.
Aunt Bertha had changed more than the house. She had aged, become frail and even more brown. Her skin had turned into wrinkled leather.
I brought her up to date on news of the family. Debbie was engaged to be married this fall to a young aircraft designer. Gordon had become manager of one of my father's chemical plants. I said nothing about my latest row with my father. That was too personal.
I was itching to ask her about Nell but was unable to find words. Maybe I was afraid of what I might learn.
Aunt Bertha insisted I stay for supper. I washed up in the bathroom and in a little while sat at the table with her and the family. I had to get acquainted all over again with my cousins, who regarded me with suspicion and reserve.
We were halfway through supper when the front screen door twanged. High heels tapped through the living room.
"Mom, I brought you the drapery material you wanted," Nell said.
Her voice broke off. She froze in the doorway. We stared at each other.
Five years disappeared for me like a puff of smoke. I knew what had been bugging me all this time. I was still in love with my beautiful red-haired cousin. It was as simple as that. Or maybe not simple at all. Love should last out of sight. Perhaps what I felt owed something to the confusion and surprise and joy in Nell's eyes.
"Nell, you remember your cousin, Mark, don't you?" Aunt Bertha said. "He came down for the summer when your aunt and uncle owned the cottage here on the beach. You and Mark played together-remember?"
Nell put her package on a chair.
"Mother, don't be silly. Of course I remember." Her gaze was tangled with mine. "How are you, Mark?"
She came toward me and our fingers touched and clung. I felt a warmth race up my arm.
Aunt Bertha was prattling on and Nell's young brothers and sisters were talking among themselves and to Nell. Nell and I kept looking at each other in all the confusion.
Later we went into the living room and tried to talk. Nell sat in an easy chair and crossed long, sleek legs. Most of my memories of her had her in bathing suits or shorts. Now she wore a sleeveless, white summer frock that looked both simple and expensive. Her legs were bare but her shoes were money.
She saw me looking at them as we talked. She smiled, kicked them off and dug her toes into the rug.
Her beauty had bloomed. Her hair was no longer in a ponytail but it still sparkled with glints of copper and gold and her skin was still as flawless as fresh cream.
We talked about what had happened to us since the last time we had seen each other. I gave her my news about the family, again leaving out my own unpleasant difficulties. She was mainly interested in hearing about Debbie's forthcoming marriage.
"I was sent a wedding announcement," she said. "I'm all excited. I always thought a lot of Debbie. It's too bad we stopped writing." Then she asked, "How long are you going to be here, Mark?"
"I don't know," I admitted. "I'm just knocking around this summer. I drove down here on an impulse. I might stay and work on a shrimp boat for a while."
She said impulsively, "I want you to see my home. Can you come over now?"
"I guess so."
"You can sleep here tonight, Mark," Aunt Bertha said. "I'm not going to have you staying in a motel when we have plenty of room. You can have Nell's old room."
I remembered the afternoon Nell's boy friend, Paul, had caught us in bed in that room. I glanced at Nell and I caught a look of amusement in her eyes. Pinkness touched her cheeks and I thought she was probably remembering the same incident.
Nell and I left the house together. Dusk had fallen. The last streamers of sunset lashed across the purple sky. The rotting cabin cruiser was a dark blob among the weeds. Nell led the way to a Cadillac convertible parked before the house.
I got in, glanced around at the chrome and leather.
"Well, you said one day you'd own a Cadillac."
She shrugged, turned her face away. She started the big car, backed, turned, then drove at a fast clip. She followed the shell road along the foot of the levee until we arrived at a section of expensive waterfront homes. Most had private marinas and boat sheds. The homes, none of them worth less than forty thousand, were mainly redwood and brick.
Nell pulled into the driveway of one of the biggest on the street. Obviously Fred Turner was still the big man in town.
Nell slid out of the car, flashing lovely legs. She came around and we walked up the flagstone path together. Her fingers slipped into mine in the growing darkness. For me to be holding her hand seemed completely natural.
She opened a sliding glass panel, touched a switch. Soft, indirect lighting flooded the main room of the large house. I saw a beamed ceiling, mahogany paneling, and a great open fireplace of cut stone. Mounted above the fireplace was a giant blue and silver tarpon.
Nell saw me looking at it.
She said, "Fred caught it last year."
"It's a big house," I said. "No family yet?"
"No. Fred doesn't want me to have children because it would spoil my figure."
She tried to laugh. The happy note failed to come off. She flushed and turned away.
A sick feeling crawled around in my stomach.
She led the way through the house to the den. The entire south wall was plate glass overlooking a patio enclosed by a redwood fence. Thick grass carpeted the patio. Floodlights glowed on native mesquite and retama.
Nell's husband, Fred Turner, was stretched out comfortably in a redwood patio chair, sipping out of a tall glass. Nell and I went out.
Turner was heavier than I remembered. The florid fines of his face had settled into what I suspected was a perpetual scowl. He regarded me heavily, suspiciously.
Nell bent down to kiss him.
"Fred, this is my cousin, Mark Harris. Remember when he visited here in the summer with his family?" Fred looked at me morosely.
"Oh, yeah. You were a skinny little kid last time I saw you. How ya' doin'?"
He obviously resented the effort of pushing himself up from the chair to touch my hand perfunctorily.
He said to Nell, "Where you been? I got home-nobody was here."
"I drove to the mainland to do some shopping. The traffic slowed me down or I would have been home sooner. I'll fix you a snack right away."
He grunted.
It was obvious to me that Nell was afraid of him. She hurried away. I had a drink with Fred on the patio. I sensed that we despised each other equally. But we went through the motions of civility.
Later I watched Nell waiting on him hand and foot and my insides crawled with anger. I made futile efforts to picture Nell sleeping with this gross, sullen man.
The situation was painful for all of us. I endured the visit as long as I could for Nell's sake. She was so obviously and pathetically proud of her home and wanted me to see it-wanted me to know that she was no longer poor. But I thought she had paid too big a price for what she had gotten. I wished she still just owned a few pairs of blue jeans and a bicycle-and had not married this Pig-
I took the first opening to announce that I was tired from my trip. I asked Nell to run me back to her mother's.
We said little to each other in the car. I leaned back and let the cool night air blow the stink of Fred Turner from me.
Nell pulled off the road into the shadows in front of her mother's home and turned off the ignition. We sat for a moment in the darkness. The night was silent except for the night breeze rustling through the weeds and a dog barking somewhere.
"Nell," I said. "I still care for you-I guess more than you know."
"Hush, Mark." She sounded frightened. "You mustn't say things like that."
"How do you feel, Nell?" Her voice trembled slightly.
"You'll always be my best boy friend, just as you always were."
"Just as always?"
"You know what I mean. I'm married now, Mark."
"Will that make a difference?"
"Of-of course," she whispered, unsteadily.
"You don't love him, Nell."
"Mark, please, I-"
"You couldn't be in love with him. It's impossible." She reached for the ignition. "Mark, it's late and-"
"You're scared of him." I sighed heavily, staring at her through the darkness. "Why did you marry him?" She said nothing for a moment.
Then: "You know better than to ask that. You know how poor my people have always been. You've never been poor. You don't know what it's like. One reason I liked being around Debbie so much was to see her pretty clothes, your home-" Her voice faltered again. Then: "Please, Mark, I do have to go home right away or he'll give me a bad time."
I opened the car door and got out. I walked slowly through the front gate of Aunt Bertha's yard. I heard Nell start the car. Then she switched off the engine. The door slammed. I heard her high heels stumbling toward me, scraping on the shell.
I turned. She was in my arms. Our mouths locked. Our bodies strained together. She was crying. Tears ran down her cheeks to the corner of my mouth. She held me tightly, cried and kissed me. I felt her trembling.
She looked at me through her tears.
"Mark," she whispered, "I'm glad you've come back."
I had come back. That was what it really amounted to-back to a summer of my youth, back to a time and to a girl who had altered my entire life. How could anything ever have been the same for me after that summer when Nell had opened the door to life for me?
Whatever had been bugging me, chewing at me, giving me no peace, was forgotten in Nell's fervent kisses.
Just as before-Nell took charge of the situation. She drew me down into the weeds with her and her hands searched as skillfully as ever. She laughed softly into my ear.
"You've grown up."
"How about your mother and the kids?"
"The house is dark," she whispered. "They're all in bed. They won't see us out here. But we don't have much time, honey."
She was still ahead of me. Why was she realer to me than Alice and the several others who had served me? Because she was older-more expert?
We were hidden by the weeds and the night, exploring one another until I felt Nell's familiar nakedness press against me.
"Mark, have you been with other girls since I saw you?"
I answered with a muffled sound.
"You're a bad boy," she whispered. Her chuckle was low, throaty. "Were you in love with any of them?"
"I never loved anybody but you, Nell."
"You're sweet, Mark. Gee, I'd honestly forgotten about how sweet-I love you, too."
Then neither of us could speak. Our breathing and the rustle of our bodies in the weeds were the only sounds we made. The earth spun in our private orbit. This was total sensation. I felt I was plumbing emotions to their ultimate depth.
Flame leaped, died in creation's flooding.
Then I was looking up at the stars. They did not seem far away at all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE SUMMER MORNING was warm. Blue waves broke lazily on the beach. Gulls hovered over the dunes. The setting was beautiful, peaceful. Nell and I were part of it. We were going on a picnic.
Nell was at the wheel of her Cadillac. The big tires drummed smoothly on the hard-packed beach. In the back seat was a picnic basket. I sat beside her, watching the island scenery sweep past us. The last time we had been this far down the beach we had been carefree youngsters on bicycles.
We were different now. Guilt rode with us. My gaze shifted to Nell's hands on the steering wheel-the wedding ring on her finger. We had suddenly become adults. I didn't much like it.
"There's a pretty spot about two miles further down the beach," Nell said. "There's a hull of an old boat washed up there. I found it last week."
"Do you come down the island very much?"
"Whenever I can. It's so pretty and peaceful here. Sometimes there's no one else within miles."
We fell silent again. I was thinking about yesterday, about coming back, about seeing Aunt Bertha and all my young cousins again, the mixed emotions I had felt upon coming face to face with Nell-and our incredible moment of reunion in the darkness of her mother's front yard. She had promised before leaving me to come back early this morning, so we could be together all day. And now we were in her car on our way to a picnic.
Nell drew a deep breath, shook out her hair and stretched her arms against the wheel in a gesture of pleasure.
"We can spend the whole day together, Mark. I don't have to be home until late this afternoon. Fred went to the mainland on business."
I was glad we were going to be together but I wished she wouldn't talk about her husband. I was trying to forget he existed.
"There it is," she said suddenly. "See it up there ahead, Mark?"
I gazed through the windshield. Up ahead the beach dissolved into a perpetual haze. The outlines of a wrecked old hull sticking out of the sand dune emerged as the haze retreated.
We reached the wreck. Nell had parked the big car on the hard-packed beach. She jumped out and ran across the sand to the hull. She clambered up on the rotting hulk and waved to me like an excited kid.
She looked fine standing up there. The breeze from the water molded thin summer fabric to her body. Her auburn hair flagged in the breeze. Her long legs were braced against the wind and the slant of the hull.
Her mood infected me. I removed my shoes and socks and rolled my trousers to my knees. The hot sand felt good between my toes as I strode to the wrecked ship to join her. She kneeled, laughing, to extend a hand to me.
I swung up to stand beside her. I sucked in a deep lungful of the wet wind, tasted its salt. From this vantage point I could gaze far out to sea. I felt a wave of exultation.
"We're pirates," Nell said. "We've come ashore to bury some treasure. Where do you want to hide it?"
"I know just the place."
I made a flying leap from the prow of the wreck into the side of a dune. I scrambled on my hands and knees over the spilling sand, ran between the dunes, plowed my way up the highest dune. I waved to Nell.
She shouted something to me but the wind carried her words away.
She jumped down, disappeared for a while. I waited. She reappeared, lugging a small, portable ice chest. She reached my dune and collapsed, laughing and out of breath.
She said, "I brought the treasure."
I fell into the sand beside her. I opened the ice chest. There, nestling in a bed of crushed ice, were frosted cans of beer. I took out one and tossed it to her. She caught it. I seized one for myself. We pulled tabs, lay back in the warm sand. I let the cold beer trickle down my throat.
Nell reached for my hand and our fingers laced together tightly. We drained our cans, buried them in the sand and opened two more.
"Tell me more about what you've been doing since that summer, Mark," Nell demanded. "We didn't really talk much yesterday."
"I don't know what more to tell."
"Oh, silly-there must be a lot. My goodness-you went abroad, didn't you? Debbie wrote to me-but you only sent postcards. Then you finished high school. What happened there?"
"What do you want to know?"
Nell stared up at a circling seagull, then beyond it into the blue sky.
"Oh-I want to know all about Europe-the things you saw-and tell me about high school-the proms you went to and the girls you dated and the pretty evening dresses they wore and the parties and everything." Her eyes swept down to my face and I felt the full impact of their blue hunger. "And tell me about college, Mark. What's it like to go to college? Tell me what the girls wear and what you all talk about and do."
We lay on the hot sand, the wind blowing against us and the sun beating down, and I told her. I answered endless questions. She listened intently. I had the feeling that I was telling her a phony movie plot-except, of course, there was no plot. But she seemed as interested in what my family and I did as if we lived in some sort of fantasy. To her, being rich was glamorous-and I guess she was still getting used to living with Fred Turner's money.
Finally she got around to the subject of girls in my life. I felt embarrassed and uncomfortable. But she kept after me, teasing and pestering and wanting to know, so I told her.
She stared at me amusedly.
"Did you kiss any of them, Mark?"
I felt my ears grow hot.
"I kissed some."
Nell continued to gaze at me in that amused, probing way.
"I'll bet you did more than that, Mark Harris. I remember how you get. Did you neck with some of them a whole lot?"
"Well, yeah."
"Did you go all the way with some of them?"
"Nell, damn it, you sure can ask personal questions!" I couldn't tell if she was jealous or having fun teasing me or curious or what. I never could figure Nell out exactly.
"I really want to know. Aren't you going to tell me?"
"What do you want to know for?"
"Don't be silly, Mark. You can tell me. I knew you before anybody else did."
I sighed. I reached for another beer. The hole we'd dug was getting pretty full of empties.
"Well, if you must know, I did score with one girl in high school."
Nell giggled.
"Mark, you bad boy. Did you have fun with her?"By now I felt as if my ears were scorching. I laughed self-consciously.
"It was pretty awful. She was so stupid and clumsy-"
Nell laughed. Her face had become slightly flushed.
"But you made love with her and I'm jealous, Mark. It makes me mad to hear about your going all the way with some girl."
I stared at her.
"Why the heck did you ask me then?"
She seemed pretty illogical because she kept after me to tell her about the other girls in my life.
"Whom have you been going with since you started college?"
I tried to get her to change the subject but she persisted until I told her about Alice.
"I've been going with her most of the past year."
Nell looked at me closely.
"Have you been sleeping with her?"
I shrugged. "Yes." .
Nell continued to look at me. Her expression changed but remained unreadable to me. "Are you in love with her, Mark?" Her voice sounded a trifle unsteady. I shook my head.
"Alice is a great girl. She isn't a phony or a square-and she isn't a gold-digger, either. She's got plenty of bread herself. You'd be surprised how many chicks around the campus let me know they're available because my old man has some money. Well, Alice isn't like that. She's smart and sweet and comes from a nice family. But there's just something missing." I suddenly looked directly at Nell. "I've stopped kidding myself Nell. I don't love Alice-or any of the girls at school What I'm trying to say is that I love you. I mean that Nell. I don't care if you're married or what. I've been in love with you ever since that summer and I haven' changed. I never will."
Nell's eyes widened. Suddenly her gaze faltered and slid away from mine. She squeezed my fingers tightly.
"You mustn't talk like that, Mark."
"Why not? I love you. I can't help it."
"But, honey, I'm married-" Her voice was muffled.
"Nell, I want to know how you feel about me."
"Why, Mark, I love you, honey. I always have. You know that."
"No, Nell. Don't give me an answer like that. You're talking the way you did when I was a kid. Sure you love me-like a big sister or a friend or someone to have fun with, in a kind of a fond, playful way. But we're no kids and we're not playing any more. And what we've done isn't done between brothers and sisters. I want to know how you really feel about me."
Her eyes were troubled now.
"Mark, I wish you wouldn't talk like that," she murmured. "You-you kind of scare me."
"Why? Are you scared of talking about how you feel?"
She nodded slowly. "Yes, I think that must be it. I-I've made up my mind about my life, Mark. Fred treats me all right. I was tired of being poor-now I'm not poor any more. Fred gives my mother money, too. She and the kids need it."
"Damn it, Nell." I picked up one of the empty beer cans and hurled it. I whirled and glared at her. "Will you stop talking like a damn whore?"
Tears spilled from her eyes and ran down her cheeks. Her head was bowed.
"You didn't have to say a thing like that," she whispered.
I felt like kicking myself.
"Nell, I'm sorry. It's just that this whole deal makes me so damned mad. I hate that fat bastard's guts. You don't belong to him. You belong to me."
I grabbed her desperately, anxiously. I rained kisses on her face, tasting salty tears. Her arms went around me and she clung to me, shivering.
"Mark, I wish you wouldn't talk wild like this," she whispered against my shirt. "Can't we just be sweethearts again, the way we were when we were kids? We had fun. Don't spoil it."
"You don't have to stay married to Fred," I insisted. "You can get a divorce." She started to cry again. "He'd never let me go."
"You're scared of him, aren't you, Nell?" I grabbed her shoulders and shook her, angrily. "Tell me the truth. You're scared of him, aren't you?"
"I don't know," she said, miserably. "Yes, I guess so. Mark, you're spoiling the whole day. Is that what you want?"
I felt lousy again. I picked up a fresh can of beer and stormed off the dune. I walked all the way down to the beach. I sat on a driftwood log and stared out at the breakers. I wished Fred Turner would choke to death on his own fat.
I realized that Nell was right. I had loused up the whole morning. I should have kept my big mouth shut and just enjoyed being with her. Maybe that was all there was to life anyway-grabbing what happiness you could from the moment at hand.
Nell came to sit beside me.
"Mark, honey, be sensible. What can we do? You want me to leave Fred and go away with you?"
I traced a pattern in the sand between my feet with a splinter off the log.
"Of course that's what I want you to do."
"Mark, use your head. You're in college. You don't have any money-or even a job. Your father would be furious if we did something crazy like that. You know how he is. He wouldn't give you a dime. He'd probably disown you. What would happen to me? and my mother and the kids? Fred has been good to them-I have to give him that. He's been paying my mother a pension ever since my father was killed. He doesn't have to do that-"
I continued tracing patterns in the sand. Nell was making me feel like a fourteen-year-old again. I thought I had grown up but I was beginning to wonder. Whenever I was with Nell I always had the feeling that she was the mature one, the one who had the sensible grasp of the situation. Was that part of her appeal to me?
I stabbed the splinter into the sand.
"I guess you're right, Nell," I said. "I guess I actually am acting pretty silly. It's just that seeing you married to Fred Turner bugs me-"
She squeezed my hand.
"I know, Mark. But sometimes we just have to make the best of a situation."
We sat in silence for a while.
But it was not Nell's nature to remain glum for long. She suddenly brightened and gave my hand an impulsive squeeze.
"For goodness sake, let's stop sitting around wasting the whole morning feeling sorry for ourselves." She jumped up and brushed the sand from her palms. She looked down at me, her eyes alert and sparkling, her hair a red-gold cloud blown around her face by the strong breeze. "We came out here for a picnic and to have fun." She grabbed both my hands and pulled me to my feet. "Let's go for a swim, Mark-okay?"
We ran like a pair of kids, fell against the side of the car together, laughing and out of breath, and suddenly we were in each other's arms. Nell's trembling mouth was crushed under mine like ripe fruit.
"Mark, honey, I'm crazy about you-"
I kissed her again. She grew heavy in my arms, started to sag. But she pushed me away, laughing, when I began to go down with her.
"It's too early for that. Behave yourself now, Mark. We're going swimming, remember?"
I grinned at her fondly. I felt good again. The sun was warm all the way through me. The deserted island beach was the greatest place in the world and I was with the one girl in the world who gave meaning and happiness to my life. I was even pleased that she had insisted on the swim we had planned.
The world was an orderly-yet infinitely exciting-place with Nell.
She took our swimsuits and towels from the car. She stood holding them and looked at me with a sudden teasing gleam in her eyes.
"I don't know why we have to bother with these, do you? There isn't another person around for miles."
How innocent were Adam and Eve really-even before their fall from grace and their resort to a fig leaf?
A surge of excitement jolted me. Nell had a sure way with my hormones. Nature had made her a hundred percent my kind of female, and she knew it.
"I don't know why we should bother with suits," I said, excitement tightening my voice.
She laughed deep in her throat, slowly unbuttoned her shirt. It parted and fell from her shoulders.
She looked at me steadily.
"Mark?" she murmured. "Remember that first time I took off all my clothes for you-here on the island? How old were you-about fourteen?"
"Of course I remember," I replied thickly. "Do you think I could ever forget?"
Again the soft, teasing laugh.
"That was the first time for you, wasn't it, Mark? I was the first girl you ever had." I nodded.
She tossed her shirt into the car. She unhooked her bra and slipped it from her arms. Her unsupported breasts sagged only enough to be real. Sunlight caressed them. She leaned back against the car, watching the expression on my face, a speculative gleam in her eyes.
She asked, "Am I still pretty, Mark? Do I still look as good to you as that first time?"
Blood was thundering in my temples.
"Of course," I whispered.
I could not tear my eyes from her. She was as beautiful as ever-why did the nagging thought suddenly intrude that she ought to seem more so? Was I subtly disappointed?
No, I decided. Her body had taken on maturity, ripeness. Did these detract or add to her charm for me?
Abruptly, I did not care. It was enough that she was still what she had been.
She flushed under my stare, stripped completely. The thundering in my head reached an explosive level. I lunged toward her.
She slipped out of my grasp and ran toward the breakers. The wind carried her over-the-shoulder challenge to me.
"Last one in is a monkey-"
She waited, ankle deep in the foaming surf, the sun gleaming on her naked flesh. I quickly divested myself of my own clothing. I raced to join her.
I splashed into the breakers. The water foamed around me, fresh and life-giving. I was buoyed, lifted, dropped. Nell had plunged in before me, was swimming far ahead, disappearing and reappearing between the waves, waving and challenging me to catch her.
She was a strong swimmer. I was strong, too. I pursued her until the beach and the car receded into distance. I felt a momentary apprehension. Then I saw her up ahead, apparently treading water, waving and laughing at me. I reached her side and felt sand under my feet.
"I didn't know it was shallow this far out," I said.
"We're on a sand bar," she told me.
I moved close to her and she did not try to avoid me. She turned to me and her laughing, salt-wet mouth met mine. Her body pressed against mine under the water and her arms wound tightly around me. We stood in shoulder-deep water, hugging and kissing, swaying with the movement of the waves. Nell's naked flesh slid against mine. Fires I had not thought possible were lit in me-hot and cold contrast fighting a battle that was probably as old as first creation.
She drew back from me, her gaze searching and frowning toward the beach. I turned to see what she was looking at. I saw a jeep stopping on the beach near her Cadillac. A man got out, walked over and picked up the clothing I had left on the sand beside the car. He turned to stare in our direction for several long moments. Then he dropped the clothing, went back to his jeep and drove away.
My eyes swung to Nell. She was biting her lower lip. She looked worried.
I asked, "Who was that?"
"A man who works for Fred. I wonder what he was doing this far down the beach?" I felt a wave of anger. "Was he checking on you?" Nell was grave and concerned.
"I don't know," she murmured. Then she shook away her uneasiness. "Oh, hell-he was probably just driving down the island on some errand and saw the car. It doesn't mean anything."
She splashed water in my face and swam away, laughing.
I, chased her. She swam toward the beach. I caught her in the shallow, foaming surf. We tumbled, laughing, as our legs tangled.
We stopped laughing. Nell's mouth locked hungrily on mine.
Again she squeezed me in a fierce embrace. We let the foaming water wash us to the water's edge. Nell's legs parted, clamped about me.
She gasped, "Oh, Mark-"
Her glistening body threshed against me wildly in the shallow water. We clutched at each other, groaning with ecstasy as the sun beat down on us, the water foamed around us and a seagull whirled above and called to his mate.
CHAPTER NINE
THAT DAY ON THE BEACH turned out to be the only day I would spend with Nell that summer.
The next morning she telephoned me at Aunt Bertha's and told me not to try to see her that day. Her voice sounded strained and she closed the connection quickly.
I spent the day roaming the waterfront, poking among the boats and packing sheds. Aunt Bertha greeted me with a peculiar expression when I got back to her late that afternoon. She handed me a note she said Nell had left with her an hour before. I tore open the envelope. The note was hastily scrawled and brief.
Mark, Fred is leaving tonight on a business trip and I am going with him. I'm not sure how long we'll be gone-it could be most of the summer. It was fun seeing you again. I'm sorry we won't get to spend more time together during your vacation.
Love, Nell
I stared at the words, feeling stunned. Next I looked at Aunt Bertha. She was busy fumbling around with some dishes on the table.
"Did you know Nell was going away on a trip?" I demanded.
She avoided looking directly at me.
"No. It seemed to come up all of a sudden."
I was thinking about that character who had seen Nell and me swimming on the lonely strip of beach far down the island yesterday-the guy Nell had said worked for Fred. That he had recognized either of us at the distance was un-likely. But he had probably known the car and might have found some identification in my clothing. Had he reported to Fred Turner? Had Fred decided that Nell was too friendly with her cousin? Was jealousy the reason for this unexpected trip that would take her away for an indefinite period?
"What do you know about this trip, Aunt Bertha?" I persisted.
She wiped her palms on her apron, still avoiding my eyes.
"Land's sakes, Mark, I don't know what goes on in : Nell's home. It's none of my business. If Fred wants to j take her on a trip with him-that's their business." She looked embarrassed and uneasy. She moistened her lips. "Mark," she finished awkwardly, "maybe you'd-you'd better spend your vacation somewhere else. There isn't much around here for a nice young fellow your age."
I looked at her closely.
"Are you trying to get rid of me, Aunt Bertha?"
Her hands flustered toward her hair. The poor old lady looked distracted and more than half frightened.
"Now-you know it isn't that at all, Mark. You're a fine boy and I love you just like I love my own kids. It's just that I don't want any trouble. I don't want to see you getting involved in something that-well, that might not be pleasant."
She was scared. That was it. Both she and Nell were afraid of Fred Turner. The fat bastard had the whole family cowering under his pudgy thumb. I felt a new wave of hatred-I also felt utterly frustrated and helpless. What could I do? Nell was Fred Turner's wife and likely to remain so.
Aunt Bertha was right-no point in my continuing to hang around. I left that day.
I spent an uninspired summer, part of the time at home and part of the time knocking around aimlessly. I ducked out of Alice's invitation to spend some time at her parent's ranch. Back home everything was in a hopeless state of confusion over Debbie's frenetic wedding preparations. No one paid attention to me-so that for me it was a time of glum peace.
I was glad to see the fall college season begin.
I was hardly back on the campus before I ran into Alice. She ran to me and kissed me.
I was glad to see her, I guessed, but kind of uncomfortable about it, too. We had had some swinging times together last year. But my recent contact with Nell had dimmed my feeling for Alice to a considerable degree. I saw Alice from a new perspective-I saw in her a sweet but young girl. Not dime a dozen, certainly-but a girl who could make it with any of a number of guys. No matter how she felt about me, I felt I was nothing special to her.
Nell had a certain maturity-and she had made me feel special, selected, from the start.
Alice had linked her arm through mine and was dragging me off to a coffee shop near the campus, chatting a mile a minute.
"Why didn't you answer any of my letters, Mark? And you were coming out to the ranch, remember? I'm furious at you. Are you trying to brush me off?" she demanded.
I made up excuses about being all tied up with my family and having to spend some time at one of my father's plants. I thought of breaking cleanly with her on the spot-but I couldn't make up my mind. Not seeing Alice at all could make for an unpredictable school year. I looked at the fine clean lines of her body and figured I would be a damn fool to give up someone like her.
In the coffee shop we put our heads together and made small talk. I told her about Debbie's impending marriage.
"The old man is making a three-ring circus out of it-he wants to impress everybody. There's going to be an enormous reception at the country club. He's hired a big-name band and the most expensive caterer. He's going to blow thirty thousand bucks on the thing before he's through."
Alice laughed at my disgust, holding my hands and looking into my eyes as if unable to pull her gaze away. The look and the warmth of her hands on mine began to stir my blood. Her thigh found mine under the table and began a sliding caress. I began to pay attention to the deep V of her neckline.
She was warming up, too. I felt a trembling in her fingers.
I said, "Why don't we go over to my pad for a while?" She blushed, but her eyes didn't waver. "All right, Mark," she said.
We went outside and got into her red convertible and drove quickly to my place. I had again rented the garage apartment.
Alice locked the door and turned to me. The pupils of her eyes were wide with excitement and her breath came quickly. A lovely blush tinted her cheeks and throat.
She whispered thickly, "Mark-"
Then we were in a clinch. Her kiss was sweeter than I had remembered.
"How much I missed you," she whispered against my lips. She kissed me again deeply, hungrily. "I've been a good girl, Mark-I've been saving myself for you." She drew back to look at me. "How about you? Any other girls?"
"No," I lied.
We kissed again. I unbuttoned her blouse and pushed it off her bare, white shoulders. I unhooked her bra and took that off, too. Undressing her was a familiar chore. Her small naked breasts were familiar, too-but I found myself comparing them to the fullness of Nell's. But Alice's were delicately and beautifully formed.
"Mark, you're driving me out of my mind. Don't make me wait any longer."
Within seconds we were both stripped and on the bed. What I felt was not quite love. The bed became a battlefield and Alice a challenge-could I find with her a sub-sdtute for what I had lost with Nell?
I still did not know by sundown.
Alice and I made the college scene again-the registration, the classes, the pep rallies, bonfires, football games, dances and parties.
That fall I made friends with Sandy Cleary, a way-out type, a halfway intellectual who became a philosopher if you got him drunk enough. Sandy majored in drama but spent so much time getting involved in meetings and demonstrations that I don't know how he ever made any classes. He had a pint-sized, sexy girl friend named Flip Gordon. Both of them were nuts. I dug them because they were honest. I was bugged by people with pretensions and found the off-beat honesty of Sandy and Flip refreshing.
Alice did not share my taste for Sandy and Flip. She had a feminine suspicion and distrust of them, especially of Flip, who was a first-rate swinger.
"You shouldn't hang around with people like that, Mark. You're in enough hot water as it is. They'll just make it worse."
"Why are you always trying to reform me? You're beginning to sound like my old man."
"It's just that I care. I know how close you came to getting kicked out of school last year. You're headed in the same direction again."
"Big deal," I replied. "This whole culture scene bugs me. Look at the phonies you and I know-the kids from families like ours. Sandy and Flip are different. Maybe they are a little out in left field-but they're there because that's where they like to play. Not because somebody told them that's where they belong."
"Mark, you're going to have to latch onto some kint of values."
"Stop bugging me, will you?"
Suddenly we were glaring at each other. Alice slammed out of my pad. It seemed as if we either had to fight or make love. Our relationship swung from one extreme to another.
I didn't care what Alice thought, I went right on seeing Sandy and Flip. Sometimes I was able to talk Alice into double-dating with Flip and Sandy. One night we went to hear the performance of a big-name folk singer at the campus auditorium. Later, we stopped at Sandy's pad. He had an apartment more disreputable than mine. The walls were covered with Flip's outlandish paintings. She was an art major and she was using some kind of experimental impressionistic style that nobody understood. Her paintings looked like something out of an LSD nightmare. They well might have been. Sandy and Flip turned on with anything available, including LSD.
That night we were drinking rum.
"A square," Sandy said of the singer we had heard. "Pure commercial junk."
Alice gave him a testy look.
"I thought he was great."
"Junk," Sandy repeated.
"Sandy, you think if someone isn't so avant garde that nobody will pay to hear him-he puts out junk," Alice said heatedly.
She and Sandy seldom agreed on anything.
Flip broke up the argument by getting her guitar from under the bed and singing some of her own songs. She was really talented.
I sat back, getting sozzled on the rum and coke, taking in the whole silly scene. We sat on the floor because the only furniture Sandy had was a pallet and some rugs and pillows and bookcases made out of apple boxes. They were crammed with volumes on philosophy, leaning heavily toward existentialism. Flip's pint-sized figure was sheathed in skin-tight stretch pants and an equally clinging blouse. Alice wore a pink cardigan over a blouse. Her legs were curled under her. Sandy was listening to Flip and staring at Alice's legs.
Flip got tired of singing. She propped her guitar in a corner and put some classical music on Sandy's portable stereo player. Muted violins filled the pad. Sandy and Alice got into an argument about the accepted practice of homosexuality among the ancient Greeks.
Sandy advocated permissiveness today.
Alice gave him a disgusted look.
"You're absolutely decadent," she said.
"Why, because I am not afraid of change? Nothing stays the same. How are we ever going to find the truth unless we experiment? The thing to do is to experience every sensation, try everything-then you can pick the false from what's true and good."
"That sounds like a rationalization, a license to indulge yourself."
"No. What keeps you to a rigid social conduct," Sandy said, earnestly, "is not a rational approach. It's an emotional approach based on guilt. Guilt makes us all too cowardly to re-evaluate our concepts of right and wrong."
"But our concept of right and wrong has been handed down to us by generations who have learned from experience what is good and bad. And maybe it sounds trite-but these values are eternal."
"You think so? Then why has our morality resulted in hydrogen bombs, overpopulation, mass starvation, water and air pollution, prejudice-"
Their argument wasn't making much sense to me-and I doubted they were very clear in their own minds about what they were saying. By then we were all getting pretty well bombed.
Sandy said, "The whole point is, we need to be jerked out of a rut. We need to reach up to other planes of consciousness, to look down from the heights. Like right now. We're just sitting around here talking, and our senses are dulled and everything is routine and commonplace. Now, suppose all of us took their clothes off. We'd be in revolt against convention. We might find fresh insights and new viewpoints-"
Alice flushed angrily.
"You'd have a new viewpoint all right. All that so-called philosophy of yours is just a disguise for a dirty mind. Mark, take me home."
Our evenings together usually wound up this way. Alice and Sandy fought. Flip boozed and sat listening to music as it evoked inner voices in her.
I took Alice back to her sorority house as she requested. We said little on the way home. She was half-mad at me, too, because I refused to drop Sandy and Flip. I suspected she was a little jealous of them.
I left Alice, I picked up a fresh bottle of rum from my apartment and went back to Sandy's. He and Flip were necking on the bed when I walked in. Neither was at all embarrassed. Flip made no bones about the fact that she was sleeping with Sandy.
I mixed up a fresh round of drinks, put a couple of them near the bed where Flip and Sandy could reach them. I looked through Sandy's record collection. He went in for the longhair stuff. I preferred jazz. I finally located an album I could stand. I put it on, leaned against the wall with my eyes closed and listened to fine jazz. After a while the candle went out and I went to sleep. I woke up once and heard the bedclothes on the far side of the room whispering rhythmically. The sounds steamed me up but presently they ceased. I went back to sleep.
I felt a nudge during the night. Flip was curled up beside me.
"Hi," she whispered. "Hi," I said, surprised.
She moved closer. I reached out and touched bare flesh. She wore not a stitch.
The next thing I knew she was helping me get out of my clothes.
"How about Sandy?" I whispered.
"He's asleep."
"What if he wakes up?"
"He won't mind."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course. Sandy likes for me to-to have other experiences. He says it makes me more interesting."
She stopped talking. Her mouth became busy. The night turned into a wild one.
Sandy did wake up and, as Flip had said, we didn't bother him at all.
He came to sit on the floor beside us. He said this kind of situation was very sexy and gave a guy a whole new perspective of love and friendship. We finally all went to sleep on the bed and in the morning we all got up and sat around, naked as jaybirds, while eating a weird breakfast of yogurt, wheat germ and rum that Sandy served up.
CHAPTER TEN
THE NEXT DAY I WALKED across the campus to the Administration Building to drop one of my courses. My father had talked me into adding an elective dealing with business law to my schedule. He had probably gone on the assumption that the more work I had to do the less trouble I was likely to get into. It made a total of nineteen hours that I was carrying, and I had decided to heck with it. My heart was not in the program he had laid out for me and I could see no point in knocking myself out. I had made up my mind to settle for the bare minimum-fifteen hours a week.
I stopped at the campus post office and checked my box in the hope that I might have a letter from Nell. My box was empty. I was not surprised. Nell was not one for writing-and what could she safely put into a letter?
The registrar's secretary explained that Mr. Reed would be out of the office until that afternoon.
"I'm Mrs. Clinton," she told me briskly. "Perhaps I can help you."
I saw something sexy about her this morning. She seemed in her late twenties, possibly thirty. She wore a simple navy blue suit with no frills or foolishness about it. Her only jewelry was a wedding band on her ring finger. She had raven hair and huge brown eyes. She was tall and slender and had a fashion model's grace. I remembered vaguely having heard Sandy make some remarks about her. She was the wife of one of the professors-a chemistry prof, I thought. Sandy, I seemed to remember, knew them socially.
"Yes," I replied to her question, "I guess you could take care of it for me, Mrs. Clinton. I want to drop one of my courses."
"I see. What is your name?"
"Mark Harris."
She slipped on a pair of no-nonsense hornrims, kneeled at a filing cabinet to sort through files in a lower drawer. From where I was standing I found myself enjoying the view immensely. Her blue skirt drew tightly over her smooth hips. The hem hiked several inches above her knees, revealing a strip of creamy white flesh above her stocking tops. Her legs looked good to me.
She discovered the file she wanted, pulled it out and half-turned back to me as she arose. She caught me sampling the view of her legs and blushed angrily.
Hell, I thought. If she wore skirts to show off her legs she could expect a guy to look at them. She took the file over to her desk. "Sit down," she said impersonally. I helped myself to a chair next to her desk. "Here is your class schedule," she said, taking out a form.
I was more interested in looking at her form. Something about her was getting to me-perhaps her cool and detached manner. It gave me an odd sense of being taken care of--of having only to wait for her to make the next move. Oddly, I thought of Nell, who had always carried the initiative in our relationship. Was this woman's take-charge air a lid kept tightly clamped on a smoldering charge of sex? Was this what I sensed?
My eyes slid over the wide red slash of her mouth and the lovely white curve of her throat. She had high cheekbones, accented by faintly shadowed hollows. Her simple suit, I suddenly discovered, was also full of subtle accents-all hers.
She said, "Let me see now. You have nineteen hours altogether. What did you want to drop?"
I told her I had lost interest in business law.
She nodded and made a notation on my class schedule.
"I think we have a mutual friend," I said.
Her brown eyes nicked up from the paper toward me.
"Oh?"
"Yes, Sandy Cleary. Do you know him?" She relaxed slightly.
"Oh, Sandy. Yes, we-my husband and I-know Sandy quite well. He and his girl come often to our house."
"Sandy's quite a guy."
"Yes. My husband thinks he's brilliant."
"I haven't made up my mind if he's brilliant or if he has everybody snowed."
She smiled. She had a lovely smile, surprisingly.
A silence ensued. I tried to think of something else to say. I was in no hurry to leave.
She said, "You must come over with Sandy some time."
Was the invitation real or was she simply making conversation? I looked my question into her big brown eyes. They faltered and a slight flush stained her cheeks.
"Oh, I mean it, all right," she said. "You come over with Sandy and Flip. And I'll change your schedule as you requested. Is there anything else?"
"I'll check Sandy's social calendar, Mrs. Clinton."
I left.
I ran into Sandy that afternoon at a malt shop near the campus. He was sitting at a table, drinking coffee, his nose in Ibsen. I got some coffee at the counter and joined him.
I said, "I went over to the Administration Building 100 this morning to drop a course. I met the registrar's secretary."
Sandy looked up at me.
"You mean Sandra Clinton? She's quite a gal."
"What's the story on her?"
Sandy gave me a closer look.
"Watch it boy. She's a married chick."
"That I know. Where do you fit her scene?"
"Well, she's married to Howard Clinton, my chemistry professor. For some reason he digs me and we're a little buddy. He's quite a bit older than Sandra. I'd say she's pushing thirty and he must be in his fifties." Sandy suddenly laughed. "Listen, get off the sanctimonious kick. I'm your buddy. What you'd really like to know is does Mrs. Maddox-or doesn't she? Right?"
"Well, your knowing her kind of set me wondering."
"Don't apologize-not that I heard you apologizing. Insult me freely. But I can't help you. My business is with her husband. I kind of have my doubts that old Howard can keep her satisfied. I've heard rumors that she's been involved with students in the past. But she's always played it cool around me, the faithful model wife." Then he added, "If you want to meet her socially, I'll let you know the next time they invite Flip and me. You can tag along."
"That's what she suggested," I told Sandy and left him.
Sandra Clinton kept stealing into my thoughts at odd moments during the next week. She was, as Sandy had said, an unusual woman. The next encounter I had with her was at a Friday night gathering at her home. Flip and Sandy had been invited. I went along.
Howard Clinton owned a comfortable two-story cottage on Faculty Row. The house was old but had been remodeled and renovated. It now had a modern heating system and air conditioning. The rich, old woodwork gleamed. The furniture was rock maple. The action took place in a large, comfortable study that was lined with bookshelves. Howard Clinton owned an impressive set of stereo components and had a pretty extensive library of classical records. Sandy had told me he was a nut for serious music.
The other people included intellectuals and culture buffs. Some were members of the faculty. Others were students. The Clintons apparently liked people of all ages, discriminating more on the basis of I.Q. than on race, color, creed, sex or age. In the group were intense young psychology and sociology majors, an exchange student from India, an attractive young Negro couple, several college department heads.
Sandy and Flip mixed but I felt out of place. The last thing I considered myself was an egghead. I reminded myself that I was here because Sandra Clinton was the hostess.
She had been polite and coolly hospitable to me when I arrived, as she was to the other guests. She remembered me pleasantly from that day in the registrar's office. I kept an eye peeled for an opportunity to catch her alone. It came when she disappeared into the kitchen to prepare a new batch of refreshments. I wandered after her, holding an empty glass.
I found her at the drainboard, busying herself with goodies. She heard me and turned.
Her glance touched the empty glass in my hand.
"Need a refill?"
I nodded. My eyes trailed down her figure. She wore a simple dark sheath that molded the smart, elegant lines of her body. My stare became compulsive-she was a woman one had to look at. I realized her cheeks had become flushed. When she took my glass from me I noticed a slight trembling in her fingers. Was she afraid of me-or of something or someone else?
"Nice party," I said because I had to say something.
I watched her pour my drink.
"Thank you," she replied, in a low voice.
I like your house." She handed me the drink.
"Thank you again, Mark." She hesitated then said, "Please call me Sandra. We're never formal at home."
Her huge eyes fastened on my face. They seemed somehow to seclude us from our surroundings. I could almost feel the heat of her body. What did she have for me? Whatever it was, it moved me to the same kind of direct simplicity I knew with Nell. Did she remind me of Nell?
Her mounting attraction to me gave me a surge of boldness. I said, "You're very beautiful."
Something happened to her face. It took on an inner radiance as if, for the moment at least, she believed me.
She smiled.
"You must be flunking of someone else, Mark-"
I let out my breath slowly. She was right, of course-I had actually been thinking of Nell. The inward glow on Sandra's face and her smile had definitely been reminiscent of Nell's teasing look.
"You look good to me," I said simply.
"Whom do I remind you of?"
"Why should you remind me of anyone else?"
I was suddenly and curiously on the defensive-but I felt I was defending her, not myself.
Against what?
Against Nell's image? For some reason I wanted Sandra to appeal to me-be beautiful to me-as herself. Was I fleeing Nell's memory?
But she said, "Every woman a man thinks beautiful reminds him of some other woman he once thought beautiful. Now I have to get back to my other guests."
I don't know what desperate impulse made me seize the initiative-perhaps the fact that I had never done so with Nell.
"Listen," I said, "I have to see you alone. You've been on my mind ever since I first saw you. I came here only to get to know you better. I don't know why I want to-but is there some way I could see you alone some time?"
Her face had whitened. From anger? A fork tumbled out of her hand and clattered on the drain board.
She whispered furiously, "Get out of here. What right do you have to say something like that to me?"
"What did I say?" I asked.
"Get out," she whispered.
I heard the words but I wouldn't buy them. She was not fighting me-she was fighting herself. Her fury had risen too quickly to be directed at me. I took a deep breath. I moved up to her, put my hand on her shoulder. Her body was rigid as a board. It trembled without relaxing. Then she sagged against the sink.
"I-I wish you'd leave me alone. It isn't right. You shouldn't be saying these things to me, Mark. We're going to get into all kinds of trouble."
"When can I see you?" I persisted, unable to retreat now. "And I don't know why we should get into trouble."
She gave in.
"All right-Saturday night, then. Howard has to attend a lecture. I'll tell him I have a headache and want to stay home. You'll have to pick me up in a car. I'll be waiting down at the end of the street Be there at eight-thirty."
I could hardly believe I had actually made a date with Sandra Clinton. I went around pinching myself after I left the party. The whole thing was wild, crazy-but it had happened.
What would happen next? Where the rumors about her that Sandy had mentioned true?
On Saturday night I was at the appointed place on time. I only partly believed that she would be there. I saw no one the first time I drove past the corner. I was disappointed, but not altogether surprised. I drove past again-with less hope-but this time a figure broke out of enveloping shadows.
I pulled up at the curb. The car door opened. I heard 104 a swish of nylon and a rusde of clothing. Perfume filled my car.
In a low voice Sandra Clinton said, "Hurry and drive away from this neighborhood. I mustn't be seen with
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SANDRA SAT TENSELY beside me. The darkness had not given me a good look at her face.
"Where can we go?" she asked. "Driving around is no good. We might be seen."
Excitement drummed in my temples.
"How about my apartment?"
She asked a few questions, seemed satisfied.
"All right, yes. Your place would seem all right."
Minutes later we were in my apartment. I mixed drinks while Sandra walked around nervously, touching objects, smoking in quick, jerky movements. What had become of what I had imagined would be defenses?
I brought her a drink and drew her to sit on the daybed that doubled as my bed at night.
She looked down at her drink, then brought the glass to her lips and downed its contents in a few swift gulps. She held the empty glass out to me.
"I'm going to need another one of these, Mark."
I brought it to her. She accepted it. I sat down beside her.
"I'm doing a terrible thing," she said. "I shouldn't be here." She pressed her palms against her cheeks. "I'm really a terrible person-you must have heard. Howard is good to me. He's a fine, intelligent, considerate man. I shouldn't be doing this to him."
I didn't know what to say. Howard seemed to have nothing to do with me. Certainly I had no wish to discuss him. I said nothing.
Sandra finished part of the second drink and seemed to settle down a bit. Her eyes swept over me, fastened on mine.
"You're a handsome boy, Mark. I suppose I ought to tell you that-" she smiled suddenly, nervously-"since you called me beautiful."
"And do I remind you of someone?"
She nodded.
"Yes."
A flush rose to her cheeks-again that inner radiance. She seemed a creature of sudden changes. Abruptly she was calm and again her eyes seemed to seclude the two of us from the world-even from our immediate surroundings.
My disreputable pad was suddenly a place of fateful-perhaps glamorous-intrigue. Sandra might be, I thought, the most woman I had ever tangled with.
A kind of unbearable pressure was building up inside me. I wanted to feel her close to me, to taste her lips. I moved toward her on the daybed. My knee bumped hers. I took her clumsily into my arms. Her body stiffened. She stared hard at me. The brown of her eyes darkened. Her red mouth was inches away. I tried to kiss her.
She tensed more, turned her face away. "No. Don't do that."
I forced the issue. My lips covered hers. Hers were cold and unyielding. She fought free, spilling her drink, and stood up. "Please take me home." I stared at her in amazement.
"Are you completely nuts?"
I blurted the question. For some reason it sounded inane.
Her face was like porcelain.
"I said, take me home. I had no business coming here." I jumped up. She had started toward the door. I was suddenly angry.
"Why, you damned tease-"
I caught up with her in two quick strides, grabbed her and swung her around. I felt like hitting her and knew an insane wonder-would she shatter like an animated porcelain toy?
I jerked her roughly against me and my mouth smashed down on hers. I bruised her lips with the savage kiss and tasted blood. I was startled-at the same time I knew a hot surge of elation. Nothing about this reminded me of Nell. I wanted also to erase the image of whomever I reminded her of.
Her reaction was not what I expected. For a moment she remained a frozen statue in my arms. Then she turned into a wild woman.
She uttered a sobbing moan. Suddenly her nails were raking through my clothing. Her mouth came alive under mine. Her body seemed to unlock and a tumbling rapids of dammed-up passion was unleashed. Her body convulsed against mine.
We fought our way down to the floor. She made unintelligible sounds. Her dress had pulled up and I glimpsed flashing thighs. They became a part of a kaleidoscopic montage of sight, sensations and sound. I barely grasped what was happening. I realized dimly that she was clawing at me, ripping buttons off my shirt in her wild haste to get it open. At the same ripe she was sobbing as she rained kisses over my face.
The details of how we became undressed will always remain a blur to me. But abruptly long, slim legs were vising instead of fighting me and she was panting wild obscenities in my ear as we rolled on the floor.
I found myself meeting insanity with insanity. I remember wondering-was this maturity? No question about it, she had taken over-as Nell usually took over in our relationship-but with a difference. Sandra seemed at the opposite pole from Nell's gentle normalcy.
Normalcy? What in Nell's and my relationship had been normal? I found myself questioning, for the first time, the very fundamentals of what I had always accepted as the one completely joyful joining of my entity with another's as my being was sucked into the maelstrom of Sandra.
We fused-Sandra and I-in explosive sequences like thunderous waves crashing on a night-darkened shore.
Later we sprawled, naked and exhausted, still on the floor. Sandra found and lit a cigarette. She inhaled deeply. For the first time I was able to see her clearly, my mind unfogged by uninformed desire.
I propped myself on an elbow, allowed my gaze to trail slowly, lingeringly, over her. She was as slender as she had seemed when dressed. Her body was firm without girdle or bra. Below her breasts I could see the tracing of her rib cage and below that her belly dropped concavely. Her hip bones protruded slightly.
Her breasts were fuller than I had imagined. They spread slightly from their own weight. Her shoulders were sculptured over finely formed bones.
She puffed on her cigarette, staring at the ceiling, breathing slowly and evenly. I could almost see renewed desire creeping back into her body, giving it a tone and tension, and I knew it would soon be storming against me again.
She turned her face toward me and I felt the impact of her eyes.
She asked, "Who is Nell? Is she whom I remind you of?"
Had I called her Nell while we were making love? I shook my head.
"No," I said. "You're not at all like her." I neither lied nor told the truth.
* * *
I cut classes for a couple of days to go home for Debbie's wedding. The whole deal impressed me as a barbaric, pagan ritual. Debbie walked around with a glazed expression. I guessed she was experiencing whtt socially passed for happiness. If a bride was supposed to be happy-Debbie was happy.
I was relieved when the performance was over and I could return to my life at school. Its tempo had picked up.
I came back on a Sunday, late in the afternoon. I shed my suit, put on comfortable slacks and an old sweatshirt. I stacked the stereo with jazz, opened a can of beer and flopped on the daybed. For two hours nothing got to me except jazz and four cans of beer.
Then a knock came at my door. Alice Rawson came in.
"Hello, Mark," she said quietly. "Hi, honey."
Something was on her mind. I sensed it the minute I tried to kiss her hello. She turned a cool cheek to my lips. She moved away from me, picked up a book from my desk, stared at it blankly and put it back down again.
"What's the bug?" I asked.
No answer.
"Want a beer?"
"Do you have anything stronger?"
"Sure, I think I have some whiskey here somewhere."
"That would be fine. With soda." I mixed her drink, opened another can of beer for myself. The familiar pad, jazz and beer had wrapped me in a warm and comfortable glow. Alice did not seem about to come in with me and I felt a little irritated.
I sat on the daybed. Alice made it a point to sit in a chair. She drank some of her highball, then held the glass in both hands. She looked sad.
She said, "I haven't seen much of you the last two weeks, Mark."
"Last few days you know about. I had to go home. Before that-I decided to reform and get in some studying."
She gave me a brooding stare.
"Mark, don't he to me," she said quietly.
I shifted uncomfortably on the daybed. I wished she had picked some other time for what I guessed was coming.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. "Why should I lie to you?" She drew a breath. "Because of Mrs. Clinton."
My guess as to what was bugging her had been correct. I wondered who had told her about Sandra Clinton.
Alice said, "You're always making a big thing about honesty. Now be honest with me. It's true, isn't it? I mean you and that woman-"
I shrugged.
"Okay, I've seen her a few times. Who told you?" Her face was pale and stiff.
"You ought to know you can't keep a thing like that quiet on a college campus. A student running around with one of the professor's wives-everyone is bound to hear about it."
Apparently Sandra and I had not been as discreet as I had imagined.
I could think of nothing to say. I felt embarrassed. I was particularly sorry that Alice had found out. I owed her nothing-we had no deal on about fidelity or any of that jazz. I had been straight enough with her about my feelings-no strings were attached to either of us. Still, I had no wish to hurt her feelings.
Alice swallowed the rest of her drink.
"I realize it's silly of me to come over and make jealous sounds. The number one rule of a successful female is-don't get jealous. The number two rule is-if you do get jealous, don't show it. All the columns tell a gal that the worst thing she can do if somebody is beating her time is to run over to her boy friend or husband and make a big noise. I am jealous. But the reason I came has more to do with your chances of getting into trouble. If you were involved with anyone but the wife of a college professor-I might have been able to stick to the rule book."
"What's your point?"
"If you don't already grasp it-I don't know why I bother to tell you," she said heatedly. "I find it difficult to stand back biting my tongue while you're jumping into soup with both feet. Mark, what the hell is it with you anyway? Have you got some kind of death wish? Are you on a self-destruction kick?"
"Alice, damn it-"
"Let me finish. I know what you're going to tell me. You're free to do as you please. I don't have any claim on you and I ought to keep my mouth shut. Well, it's true that we're not married, not even engaged. But I have been sleeping with you off and on since last year-and you matter to me."
Her eyes filled with tears.
If she had come over to make me feel lousy she was succeeding. I had the uncomfortable feeling that what she had said about my being bent on self-destruction held an element of truth. Something was bugging me, had bugged me for years. Even before Nell-although Nell had at one time seemed to me an answer to my frustrations. Even now my thoughts went back to her. She had come to epitomize my restlessness, my anger and dissatisfaction with things as they were. In Sandra Clinton I had at least found a new area to search and question-I had not yet managed to pigeonhole her as I had Alice and all others-except Nell.
Sandra might not have the answer I sought-but she filled me with questions.
Alice told me she had come without much hope that she could talk any sense into me. She was right. We argued pointlessly while I drank more beer and became nastily drunk. Alice finally blew up and slammed out of the apartment.
But her visit upset me. It had stirred up some shadowy demons that had been lurking around the dark edges of my mind. I found myself in a black mood after she left.
I'm not sure how the evening would have ended. Fortunately Sandra telephoned me around nine o'clock. The minute I heard her voice my mood lifted. I felt challenged.
I said, "I'm glad you called." Her voice was guarded and tense as always. "Howard has to spend some time tonight at the laboratory. I have about two hours. Will you be home?"
"Of course."
Silence at her end of the line. I thought she had hung up.
Then: "I've missed you very much." The line went dead.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE EVENING HAD BRIGHTENED for me. My senses were abruptly alive and singing. I shucked my sweatshirt and slacks, took a hasty shower, shaved. I had just slipped into a robe when I heard a furtive tap at my door.
I opened it. Sandra brought perfume and a gust of cold night air. I closed and locked the door and we faced each other. Her eyes were as black as the night outside-they seemed to be all pupils.
"I've missed you," she whispered huskily.
She stripped before she touched me. Then she pulled loose the cord of my robe. I knew better by now than to make any move.
The madness began. She threw herself into my arms, kissed me savagely. I had not yet fathomed her insistence she be the aggressor-her demands were fiercer than Nell's gentle guidance and had, I was sure, nothing to do with any personal attraction I might have had for her. Did it pertain to a predecessor of mine in her affections? Or simply to herself?
She could really go way out. She had some odd-ball ideas-dark corridors of passion I thought were worth exploring.
I remembered one evening when she had insisted on giving me a bath. She had made herself my servant. She had stripped and had worked over me, making me soak in a hot tub while she scrubbed every inch of my body. Then she had dried me with a rough towel and had given me a rubdown. Her smooth hands had worked the oil into me while she perspired nakedly. Next she had oiled herself and kneeled beside me, her mouth busy on me, trailing all but unbearable sensations over me-until she had flung herself violently on me.
Later she had explained.
There are things I've always wanted to do. I can do them with you. I can never let myself go with Howard. Our sex is a ritual. I think he even believes I'm a little frigid. That's the way he believes a woman should be. Perhaps I am with him. But fantasies grow in my mind. I can act them out-get rid of them-with you....
What about the guy I remind you of? Did you also gePrid of fantasies with him?
Yes....
That was what we had said that night. I had not known whether to believe her. She was a strange woman, but very much a female. I was unable to imagine her as cold or inhibited-even with her husband.
Sometimes I had the uncomfortable feeling that there was something sick about Sandra. I had no doubt that she was a highly intelligent woman, also highly civilized and organized. But she left the last two qualities behind when she got into bed. She turned primitive. But I still respected her intelligence-without quite trusting it.
Now she lay beside me, smoking and talking. She asked me about Debbie's wedding and I told her.
After a while she put out her cigarette. She propped herself on an elbow and looked down at me fondly. Her fingers touched my hair and caressed my cheek.
"You're sweet and handsome-and so young, darling. You're achingly young." A shadow touched her eyes. "But you're troubled, too, aren't you?"
"Not when I'm with you," I said.
Her fingers gently massaged my brow, smoothing away, temporarily, fines of confusion and anxiety. She sighed. "I see you on the campus every year-oh, not you personally, but so many like you. The young of today. You're vital, intelligent-and troubled. What's bothering you, Mark?"
"How should I know?"
She frowned slightly.
"You youngsters today take sex too lightly. You start too soon. The girls around the campus-most of them think virgmity is a cumbersome bother. This off-campus sexual permissiveness-I wonder what it all means. Is it the direction society is heading?"
I gaped at her. Had she forgotten that she was lying naked beside me-that she was part of the sexuality she deplored?
She sighed, still looking disturbed, and continued talking half to herself.
"It makes it hard for me to stay faithful to Howard. Boys like you come into my office. You look at me in that knowing way. I see you with girls on the campus. I think about you young people, knowing that very possibly that night you'll be somewhere in bed together. I think about it and I go home to Howard and there's no satisfaction there. The restlessness keeps building up in me-the fantasies-"
Suddenly she stamped out her cigarette. She looked at me. Her hair had fallen around her face. She was bent over me. Her breasts seemed out of proportion to her willowy figure-they were swollen like ripe fruit. Her eyes burned with fierce intensity.
In a husky voice she whispered, "Mark, I want your youth. Give me its excitement-the excitement you give to the young girls on the campus-"
She flung herself on me again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE WINTER PASSED AGAIN into early spring. I was on my way across the campus to the Administration Building where Sandra worked.
One of the last northers of winter was blowing itself out. The afternoon was chill and gray. I was bundled up in a heavy jacket. My fists were thrust in the pockets.
I entered the building, walked down the hall to Sandra's office. When I stepped inside I saw that she was busy with a student. Her cool eyes flicked in my direction but displayed not a fraction of emotion.
"Please have a seat," she told me briskly. "I'll be with you in a moment."
We might have been total strangers.
She was talking to a coed, who gave me a coy glance. I lit a cigarette and ignored her.
Sandra said in her most business-like tones, "Let me check the files for your transcript, Miss Adams."
Sandra left her desk, high-heeled to the files. I stared at the slim ankles and sleek legs above the high heels and felt my guts churn. I had not seen her for two weeks. That was long enough. Our deal was that she was to call me-not I her.
She was on my side of the room, checking the files. She crouched over one of the lower file drawers. Her skirt pulled so tightly over her hips that I could see the outiine of her panties.
Blood raced in my temples. She was deliberately waving it in my face-as she did with all males, I had begun to understand. Her business-like exterior was pure pretense. She used it to emphasize her sexuality.
I waited impatiently until the girl left, closing the office door behind her. I killed my cigarette immediately. Sandra sat behind her desk, staring at me from wide eyes. She stood up when I walked toward her.
"Why haven't you phoned?" I asked.
Her eyes were devouring me.
"I could tell you down to the minute how long it has been since we've been together. I've been going quietly insane-but I couldn't call. Howard's been home every evening. Mark-I'm afraid. I think he suspects I have a lover."
I had walked right up to her. We stood inches apart. I felt her body warmth, smelled her perfume. She had turned pale. Her stare was fixed. Her mouth looked like a wide, bloody slash.
I moved enough to touch her. It was like touching her with a high-voltage wire. She jerked and shuddered.
"Mark-"
Suddenly we were pressed together. Her mouth found mine with desperate haste. Her arms clutched me. Then, as quickly, she stepped back. "Just a minute," she whispered.
She walked to the door, opened it, cautiously looked up and down the hall. Then she closed and locked the door.
She came back to me. Her eyes were feverish. I felt blood hammering in my temples. Again we were close. "Oh, baby," she sobbed.
We kissed again. We were standing in the middle of the room. Her body ground against mine. I guess we both nipped.
I reached down and pulled up her dress. She shook with mingled lust and fear. "Don't-"
But she stood helplessly as I ran my palms over her bare, petal-soft flesh. I palmed her quivering hips and drew her against me. She dug her nails into my shoulders. Her head fell back. Her eyes rolled.
"I want you," she moaned. "I've missed you-" She caught my hand, led me through a door into an inner office.
She told me, swiftly, "We're taking a terrible chance-but I think we'll be safe here. And there's a couch-"
She was standing there holding her skirt up around her waist where I had pushed it. A new kind of excitement seized me-I had never carried my rebellion against convention to the extreme that now seemed imminent. Sandra's lacy nylon panties concealed very little. She shed them in a single impatient motion and stepped out of her shoes. She stuck her undergarments into her purse and lay down on the couch.
I was with her in a matter of moments.
She rained kisses over my face. "Mark, darling-"
Her sentences became disjointed, incoherent, finally dissolved into simple sound.
This was interrupted by a piercing scream.
Hers.
I was momentarily frozen. Her face was close to mine. It had gone deathly white. She was staring past my shoulder with horrified eyes. I twisted around. Her superior stood in the doorway, still holding his office key in his right hand. He gaped at us in disbelief, his mouth hanging open.
He looked so damned ludicrous that I had to laugh.
Sandra scrambled from under me and leaped off the couch. I stood up and quickly arranged my clothing. I became aware of two more witnesses to our indiscretion-two students, a girl and a boy, stood directly behind the registrar. The girl's face had turned pink. The boy was grinning.
My laughter had stopped but its sound still hung-a disembodied but almost tangible presence-in the room. I wanted to disown it but it mocked me.
The registrar, Dr. Herbert Reed, recovered from his first shock. His face had turned cold as granite.
"Please leave," he snapped at the two kids behind him. "I'll discuss your transcripts later."
They left in a hurry. Sandra stood near the couch, her face deathly white, her eyes downcast. I was beginning to boil with unreasoning anger-a normal enough reaction to a profoundly, even desperately embarrassing situation, I suppose, but completely illogical. I wanted to sock Reed right in the kisser. What business did he have pussy-footing here like this? Nothing was, of course, more his business-but the fact that he was entirely in the right, Sandra and I in the wrong, only made me more furious.
Too furious, fortunately, to utter the obscenities I felt like hurling at him.
He said icily, "Mrs. Clinton, I want to speak to you privately. You wait in the outer office, young man."
I stood my ground and glared at him. Sandra raised her eyes, shot me a miserable glance.
"Do as he says, Mark," she choked out.
Her voice, the crushed expression in her eyes, helped to bring me to my senses. I could see I'd only make matters worse for her by stirring up a big rhubarb with her boss at this point. I walked out of the office, slammed the door loudly behind me. In the outer office I lit a cigarette and puffed on it furiously. Suddenly I was living a nightmare.
I stepped to the door and put my ear against it. I could hear Reed's voice.
"... have no alternative but to discharge you at once, Mrs. Clinton. I must confess I'm in a state of shock. You're a respectable woman, married to a man with a responsible position with this college. How could you allow yourself to become intimate with a student? Didn't you realize what a campus scandal like this could do to your husband? Howard is a friend of mine, a fine man whom I respect. I shudder to think what this-this ugly mess-will do to his career. For his sake I'd keep it quiet if I could, but those two students who were with me-they'll spread it all over the campus."
I heard Sandra sob. My stomach started to turn and suddenly I had the premonition that I was going to throw up. I had never intended to cause Sandra or her husband this kind of trouble. I had never thought much about the risk she was taking-I myself had so little at stake. And I had, of course, never seriously believed we would be caught. Now that we had been-I could scarcely understand how I could have taken the crazy chance of making love in a virtually public place.
But Sandra had been so sure we would be safe-no, strike that. She had not been sure at all. And I was suddenly a prize heel in my own eyes for trying to shift any blame on her, even in my own thoughts.
She had not asked me to come here. I was the one who had broken our arrangement-I should have waited for her to telephone.
Reed finished tongue-lashing Sandra. He came into the outer office, asked my name and wrote it on a piece of paper.
"I'm going to speak to the dean about this matter," he told me coldly.
He didn't have to draw me a picture. I could see I was in serious hot water this time. I remembered Alice's warnings-they had been prophetic. I had the feeling that my college career was about to come to an abrupt close.
I made a belated effort at gallantry.-"Look, Dr. Reed-what happened in there wasn't Sandra's fault. I'm to blame for the whole thing-"
Reed was giving me a cold, fishy look. My voice trailed off as I realized how fatuous my words sounded.
I wanted to say something to Sandra-to try to make her feel better-but she rushed past me, her face stony. I followed her out of the office but she walked away from me quickly and I decided that the kindest thing I could do at that point would be to stay away from her. I had caused her enough trouble.
I left the campus, went to a beer joint where Sandy Cleary and I sometimes hung out. I was in no mood to be alone. I sat in the booth drinking beer and eventually I was glad to see Sandy come in.
I didn't tell him what was bugging me. I consumed beer morosely while he talked. I was in a black mood. I thought, to hell with this whole lousy scene. Where was there any sense in any' of it? Next I knew painful guilt.
I wondered remorsefully if I could do something to make things easier for Sandra. Would she immediately confess her infidelity to Howard-or would she wait until he heard about it from someone else? The scandal was bound to sweep the campus like wildfire. By tonight everyone would know.
Sandy and I left the beer joint at sundown. Sandy walked away from me in the twilight, heading for the auditorium where he was rehearsing that night with the dramatics class. I thrust my fists in my jacket pockets and started across the campus in the direction of my apartment.
I was halfway across the campus when a figure came striding toward me. The man was hatless. His overcoat was flapping around his knees. I recognized Professor Howard Clinton.
What happened next was not pleasant. I still remember it as a waking nightmare. Professor Clinton spotted me and came charging toward me like a madman. I had no desire to fight him. But neither could I run away. I stopped and stood still, feeling like a clown.
He came closer. His eyes were wild, his face gray. He stopped in front of me, shaking with fury. It was obvious that Sandra had told him. He made a choking, incoherent sound and swung wildly at me. His fist smashed into my cheekbone with more force than I had expected. I sprawled on the concrete walk. Half-dazed I climbed back to my feet.
"Listen-I don't want to fight with you-"
But he hit me again and again. I couldn't bring myself to hit back. I tried to protect myself but too many of his wild blows landed.
I went down again, the breath knocked out of me. Dimly I realized that a crowd had gathered around us.
Professor Clinton stood over me. He was looking down at me with that wild expression. His sparse, reddish hair stood in odd little tufts. He looked disheveled and distraught. Suddenly he turned and walked away, pushing his way blindly through the crowd.
I felt sore and bruised all over. I gradually got my breath back and dragged myself to my feet. Curious faces ringed me. This topped my day, I thought. The gossips were going to have a field day.
I reached my apartment, took off my clothes, washed the blood and dirt from my face, mixed myself a strong drink and lay down. I felt like hell.
After a while I turned over and went to sleep.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A WEEK LATER I WAS PACKING to leave. I had already crated my stereo components, records and books and had shipped them home. Only my clothes remained. A suitcase on my bed was piled high with shirts. A bundle of neckties hung over a chair. I was carefully folding a pair of slacks when I heard a knock at the door.
I stepped over a couple of suitcases to answer it. Alice Rawson stood on the landing. She said, "Hi."
I was genuinely surprised to see her. My involvement with Sandra had kept me from seeing much of her. I had heard she had been dating an upper-classman pretty steadily since Christmas. After my indiscretion with Professor Clinton's wife had become an open scandal, resulting in my being kicked out of school, I had expected her to wash her hands of me altogether.
Had she come to gloat about having correctly predicted my future?
We stood looking at each other. I felt embarrassed and rather foolish. I was ashamed to face her, I found.
"Can I come in, Mark?"
I nodded. "Yes. Things are in a mess. I'm packing."
Alice walked in. She glanced at my suitcase, then looked at me. An awkward silence followed. I wondered how she felt about the place where she had ceased to be a virgin. She had made a big deal of the occasion and maybe it had been.
Was that why she was here-for old times' sake? To take one last look down memory row? I felt anger. How square could you get?
She said, "So you're leaving."
"Somebody must have told you."
She rubbed her arms. She bit her hp, then murmured, "I'm truly sorry, Mark."
She sounded sincere. My annoyance waned with any guilt feelings. Alice was basically fine.
I shrugged.
"That's how the pill bounced. I don't really care. I never really did dig this college scene anyway."
She looked at me long and steadily.
"I think you care, Mark," she said. "I think you care very deeply about things-and that's why you're always trying to get hurt."
"You don't make sense," I growled. "You're taking your sophomore psychology course too seriously."
She shrugged. "Have it your way."
I went to the bed and fiddled with the trousers I had been trying to fold. I wanted Alice to leave and I wanted her to stay. It had been so between us from the beginning.
"I'm serious," I said, "I don't mind leaving this place. About the only nice thing I'll remember is you."
She said quietly, "Thank you, Mark. I feel good about having known you-that's why I had to come to say goodbye. I knew you wouldn't come to see me before you left. Are you going home?"
"Yes. And my old man is mad enough to bite nails. He called me up long distance and spent thirty minutes telling me how worthless I am. He has to be pretty sore to spring for a thirty-minute phone call."
"What are you going to do?"
"Well, I'll have to go home and feel the family wrath. No way I can see to get out of it. Then the old man is shipping me to one of his chemical plants. He figures maybe a little physical work will be good for my soul."
"What about your schooling?"
I shrugged.
"I guess I blew that. It doesn't matter. The old man says I'll get a liberal education working my way up his lousy corporation."
"Couldn't you get out on your own and study what you want to study?"
"Maybe. I might still do that. Right now I'm not sure. I'll have a whirl at this job the old man has fixed up for me. To be perfectly frank-I'd welcome a little hard work for a while to get the cobwebs out of my mind. I guess I'm a hell of a host. I should offer you some refreshments." I went to the cupboard, found a bottle of whiskey and some glasses. "We might as well finish this."
We sat on the cluttered daybed and killed what was left of the whiskey, toasting the nice times we had known together, getting a little drunk and sentimental.
"How about this guy you've been dating? I hear you've been getting pretty thick with him."
She looked at me thoughtfully.
"Do I detect a note of jealousy?"
"Could be."
Alice sighed.
"Dean's nice-that's his name, Dean Pike. I told myself I was going to get you out of my system. I promised myself I would fall in love with Dean. He's nice and steady and I think he wants to marry me. There's only one hitch. I'm not in love."
I sighed. "For your own good, marry him."
She leaned forward, put her hand on my arm. She looked tearful.
"Mark, I'm glad you had this liquor. I had some inhibitions to put down. They're down. Let's make love once more before you leave. I don't want to think about anything beyond right now."
We did as she suggested. We made love among my pile of shirts and ties and socks. Alice was lovely in more than flesh, I thought. She was also, I realized, fiercely strong. My need of her surprised me with its intensity. Her wholesome and simple sincerity enabled me to forget the ugly mess I had been through.
But the forgetfulness was temporary. After a while she was gone and I was packed. I locked the door of the apartment behind me for good.
I drove my battered car slowly through the streets of the small college town, leaving it all behind me.
My homecoming was unpleasant. My father promptly shipped me to the chemical plant to which he had assigned me. It was on the coast, less than a hundred miles from our old summer cottage.
I went to work doing exactly the kind of labor he had threatened me with-loading barges. I found I rather enjoyed sweating in the sun and working off some of my anger and frustration.
The thought that Nell lived a few hours' drive away kept chewing at me. At night when I flopped on my bed in my rented room, bone-weary from the day's work, I closed my eyes and saw her smiling mouth, felt her hair brush my cheek and remembered the great times we had known together.
One day I had suddenly had my fill of remembering. I simply walked off the job. I picked up what money I had in the bank-a couple of hundred dollars-threw a suitcase into my jalopy and drove out of town. My feelings were mixed-I was partly exhilarated, partly scared. This time I had really burned my bridges behind me.
But the only thing in my life that had made any sense at all up to now was Nell. No one else had accepted me as completely, no strings attached. Alice had tried to reform me. Sandra had used me to free herself from her own repressions.
I had to see Nell again. I seemed to be hooked on her like an addict to one particular brand of dope. In an undefinable-and perhaps unattainable-way she represented happiness to me.
As I drove along the coastal highway that morning, I saw the scrubby coastal trees, dwarfed and misshapen by the constant wind off the water. The grass was green with early spring. Wildflowers bloomed in the ditches along the road. I passed fields where cattle grazed. From time to time I saw wells with pumping machinery that looked like giant praying mantises, bobbing their heads up and down. Every twenty or thirty miles I would pass through a small coastal village-homes and stores clustered around waterfront docks and strips of beaches. Motels were strung all along the route. They ranged from white frame structures-where a trucker could get an overnight rest for two dollars-to ultra-modern tourist havens with swimming pools, cocktail lounges and social directors.
Ten miles from my destination I pulled into one of the luxury motels. I blew twenty dollars for accommodations for the night, bought a quart of whiskey from the motel's liquor store and locked myself in.
The place had class. The carpet nap was deep enough to wade in. The bed was king-size and if you dropped a quarter in a slot in the headboard it gave you a gentle massage. The room also featured color TV and real oil paintings on the wall. The furniture had the gleam of rich mahogany-the bathroom was dazzling with tile, chrome and glass.
There was a sensuous, almost lecherous elegance about the place. Everything from the whisper of the air conditioning to the subtle strains of piped-in music suggested a luxurious setting for clandestine love-a kind of twentieth century do-it-yourself sultan's palace for the night. The management furnished everything except the harem. I washed the day's heat and grime from myself under a stinging shower. As I was toweling myself briskly I noticed under the lavatory a hairpin that had been overlooked by the cleaning woman. The small symbol of a previous female occupant of this room gave me a restless feeling and started my imagination working overtime. A few hours ago-or possibly last night-the owner of that hairpin had perhaps taken a shower in this bathroom, as I had just done. What had she been like? I preferred to believe that she had been young and pretty.
Naked and bare-footed I padded across the lush carpet, poured some of the whiskey over ice, dropped a quarter into the slot in the bed's headboard. I flopped across the mattress and sipped my drink. The vibrating mechanism under me, like tingling, sensuous fingers, put small caresses through me.
I lay there for a while, sipping whiskey, listening to piped-in music, enjoying the massage and thinking of Woman. Inevitably she assumed the face and form of Nell.
I felt reckless. I picked up the telephone and put in a call to Nell. The time was three-thirty in the afternoon. I doubted Turner would be home.
Nell answered. I knew her voice at once. I reacted with a feeling of tingling joy that had nothing to do with the bed vibrator. I was suddenly happy, able to forget the ugly mess of the past weeks.
I said, "Hi, cousin."
I thought the line had gone dead.
Then Nell said, "Mark? Is that you, Mark Harris?"
I grinned. I was feeling right with the world again. "How many Marks do you know?" Nell's tinkling laughter came over the wire. "Mark-it's so good to hear from you. Where are you?" I gazed around the room. "The local upholstered house of assignation."
"What?"
I chuckled. "Private joke." Then I explained, "I'm at a motel about ten miles down the coast from you."
"What are you doing there? I thought you were at school."
"I got kicked out."
"What?" Her laughter faded. She sounded genuinely concerned. "Mark, what happened?"
"It's a long story. And past history." I drew a deep breath. Then I said, "Nell, I'd like to see you. I mean I really want to very much. I have a lot to tell you."
She hesitated.
Then: "Yes-of course, Mark. I want to see you, too. Can you come over tonight?"
"Nell, I don't want to come over there. I don't want to have to force myself to be pleasant to Fred. Can you meet me somewhere else? Can you come over here?"
"I don't know-"
"Please, Nell."
"Yes-all right, Mark. I do want to see you. I've missed you."
Excitement boiled through me.
"Can you come over this afternoon? It isn't very far-" I named the motel.
"I know the place," Nell said. "I'll be there in about an hour. What's your unit number?"
I gave it to her and we broke the connection quickly. I think she was suddenly as anxious to see me as I was to be with her.
I had put on a pair of shorts and slacks and made another drink. I spent the next hour impatiently prowling the room, drinking and smoking. I was too keyed-up at the thought of seeing Nell again to sit still.
Finally a soft tap came at my door. She had timed herself almost to the minute.
I opened the door. Nell entered, flushed and slightly out of breath. She had on skin-tight black stretch pants and a frilly peek-a-boo blouse. Her hair was longer than I remembered it. She still wore it casually but a touch of expensive artfulness had been added.
We faced each other. I drank in the sight of her. She seemed as eager to study me. For a moment we simply stood there. Then Nell rushed into my arms and hugged me.
"It's so good to see you, honey." She kissed me breathlessly. Then she stepped back again for a second look. Her eyes clouded. "You've lost weight, Mark. Have you been sick?"
"I've got no sickness I can take pills for. But I guess I'm sick of the general mess I'm in."
Her eyes grew warm with compassion.
"What do you mean, honey? Come here and sit down and tell Nell all about it."
She led me to the bed and we sat facing each other, our knees touching. She held both my hands.
"What's been happening, Mark?"
I asked accusingly, "Why didn't you write to me at all?"
She looked contrite.
"Don't fuss at me, Mark, honey. You know I'm just terrible about writing. I never write letters to anyone. Words on paper just don't sound right. I was gone most of last summer, you know. Fred took me on a long trip. It was exciting, Mark. I got to see Las Vegas and San Francisco-so many places I'd always dreamed about seeing. When we got back Mother said you'd gone. By then I knew the school term had started." With feminine irrelevance she asked, "How was Debbie's wedding? We got an invitation, you know. I sent her a gift but I couldn't go. I wanted to, but Fred couldn't leave his business and he didn't want me to go alone." I shrugged.
"The wedding was okay, I guess. If you like three-ring circuses."
"What did Debbie wear? I'll bet she was just beautiful. Oh, I wish I could have been there-"
"Damn it, Nell, I didn't get you over here to talk about Debbie's corny wedding."
Nell smiled.
"I'm sorry, Mark, honey. I guess men never will understand how women are about such things. Ail right, we won't talk about Debbie's wedding any more now. Some time I want you to tell me all about it though." She noticed the bottle on the dresser. "Could I have a drink, Mark?"
"Sure." I made drinks for both of us. "How are you and Fred getting along?"
A shadow seemed to pass over her. She said, "Oh, just fine-"
I figured she was lying. She was thinner, I suddenly noticed, and I saw a tense, wary expression around her eyes-the look of someone who is chronically frightened. My dislike of Fred Turner brought a taste of acid to my mouth. I washed it out with whiskey.
Nell said, "Now, Mark, I want you to tell me about the trouble you've been having. I want to know about everything that happened to you-and why you're down here."
I sat on the bed again and I told her. I omitted little. Nell was one person to whom I was able to talk freely. I was anything but proud of some of the scrapes I had been in but I felt Nell would understand.
She listened quietly, giving me her full attention.
"Poor Mark," she murmured finally. "Both of us seem to have done a good job of messing up our lives, haven't we?"
It was the first time she had openly admitted that she was unhappy with Fred Turner. I was surprised.
"You're miserable with Fred, aren't you? Are you afraid of him?"
Nell buried her face against my shoulder.
"Yes, Mark. I'm afraid-and sometimes I despise him. He can be a beast. Some of the things he makes me do-"
She shuddered. I held her fiercely.
"Leave him, Nell. Come with me."
She sighed.
"Oh, honey, I really want to. But not just yet. I'm too dependent on him-my whole family is dependent on him."
"I can take care of you," I said, angrily. "Nell, listen-"
She silenced my rash words with her fingers against my lips. She raised her face. It was inches from mine. I felt her warm breath against my cheeks.
"Honey, let's not talk about it right now. You have to give me a little time. I'm glad that you're here-so glad. You have to promise to see me often."
"That's why I came."
She looked at her watch, frowned.
"I don't have much time this afternoon. I'll have to be home in an hour."
We looked at each other and I felt the hunger surge between us.
I whispered huskily, "Nell, I want you."
She nodded.
Shakily she whispered, "I need you too, Mark. When you make love-things are the way they should be-" Suddenly she stood up. "We'll have to hurry. The next time we'll have longer."
I watched her walk to a chair. She stripped, keeping her back to me. She draped her clothes carefully over the chair. She turned to me, her eyes dark with excitement.
An excited flush highlighted her cheeks.
I was out of my slacks and shorts in an instant. Then Nell was in my arms and we made love.
And it was the first time all over again for me. To me she was always the beginning.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I COULD ONLY AFFORD the luxury motel for one night. The next morning I drove into town and rented a one-room efficiency apartment for ten dollars a week in the cheap waterfront section. I told myself I was taking temporary quarters. Soon I would talk Nell into going away with me.
But I made little headway with Nell. We saw each other irregularly as the days followed one another. But she refused to commit herself to our going away together.
I began to drift into a kind of lethargy of living from day to day, drinking a lot, more than was good for me, I suppose. I slipped into a kind of limbo. My main concern was to stay out of my father's reach-and the realest moments to me were the stolen ones Nell and I shared.
Sometimes she came to my room. At other times we met elsewhere. Often we took crazy chances. One night she telephoned me.
"Mark, honey, Fred's asleep. He was tired when he came home tonight and went to bed early. He's sleeping like a log and I know he won't hear me leave. I'll meet you down at the boat."
Fred had bought a cabin cruiser.
"What if he wakes up and finds out you're gone?" I asked, not particularly caring if he did.
"He's a sound sleeper. If he does wake up I don't think he'll think anything about it if I take the boat. I sometimes take it out at night. It'll be all right, honey."
Minutes later I was dressed in swimming trunks and a bulky old gray cotton sweatshirt. I got into my jalopy and drove to Nell's part of town. I parked a block from her home and walked down the levee to the beach where the water lapped along the sandy shore. All along here were private docks and marinas belonging to the wealthy homes above the levee. Presently I came to the boat stall where Fred Turner kept his cabin cruiser. Nell was already on board.
I jumped from the dock to the swaying deck. I heard the slapping of small waves against the boat and the muffled thud of the prow nudging the dock at the mooring. Nell gave me an eager hug. She was wearing the briefest of bikinis. Moonlight turned her body into silver.
"Hurry, Mark," she whispered. "Help me get her untied."
I jumped back to the dock. I cast off and, as the boat drifted by, jumped back aboard. Nell was at the wheel.
She pressed the starter. The big engine under the deck whined and growled, settled to a steady rumbling. The cruiser moved out with a smooth powerful surge. Within minutes we were far out in the bay. The lights of town became dots in the blackness behind us. Nell handled the big boat skillfully. She must have inherited a feel for the sea and for ships from her father, I thought. I looked back at the phosphorous gleam of our silver wake. The night air was cool and salty.
Nell cut the engine when we were far enough out. The boat wallowed gently in the waves. Nell turned to me. Our lips met in the darkness and we clung together silently. Then she led me to the cabin below. With eager fingers she helped me shed my sweatshirt and trunks. There seemed to be a strange urgency about her tonight.
"Hurry, hurry, baby," she kept whispering."
Next we were on one of the bunks. Nell kissed me hungrily. She made low, guttural sounds in her throat. Tonight she was more than the instigator in our love-making-she was almost an aggressor. She virtually fought her way to a sobbing, moaning release.
She fell against me, panting.
After she caught her breath she whispered, "Love is good with you, Mark. It's always been so good-"
I held her in the darkness. For some reason tears rose to my eyes.
"Yes, Nell." Why were our meetings so often tinged with sadness? "Nell, when are you going to leave Fred and come away with me-so we can be together all the time?"
"Soon, Mark, soon."
"That's what you keep saying."
"Be patient a little longer, Mark. I have to get more money together and fix things so Mom and the kids will be okay. But soon we'll go. I promise."
We lay in each other's arms, gently rocked by the motion of the boat. Nell snuggled her face against my shoulder.
She whispered, "Tell me how it will be, Mark-when we leave together."
"We'll never be apart. v We'll go somewhere where there's big water-one of the seacoasts. We'll sleep together every night and we won't have to sneak around and be afraid. Every day when I come home you'll be there waiting for me."
"Will we have a nice home?"
"Sure-a swimming pool-the works. We'll have everything. Most of all-we'll have each other."
"Yes, and children-we'll have children, too, won't we? I'd like to have children. It would be so exciting for you to get me pregnant. Maybe we could have two girls and a boy. Or would you rather have two boys and a girl, Mark?"
I grinned in the darkness.
"I don't care. Maybe two of each."
"All right, then. Two of each."
We were both silent.
Then Nell whispered, "Please don't stop talking, Mark. Tell me more about how it's going to be."
I told her what she wanted to hear. There in the gently swaying boat, in each other's arms, we could tell each other the impossible was really all going to happen some day....
* * *
The next morning I got up and went down the waterfront to the shrimp packing sheds to see if anything was doing today. I had been earning a little money by working intermittently in the packing sheds. The pay was small and uncertain, not enough for me to survive on for any length of time.
Most of what I was living on at the present was coming from Nell.
She insisted that Fred gave her plenty of spending money and asked no questions about what she did with it. She pressed money on me. To know that I was partly living off Fred Turner made my stomach squirm-but I had little choice if I wanted to continue hanging around Nell.
The shrimp sheds were all idle this morning. I hung around the waterfront for a while talking to men I had come to know. I thought I might get a job as a header on one of the shrimp boats-but so far nothing along those lines had developed.
Near noon, I wound up in one of the waterfront haunts, a small place where many of the shore characters spent their time. About all you could say for it was that the beer there was cold and the jukebox not too deafening. An enormously fat woman ran the place.
The sign over the door said fat's place-cold beer.
I had money in my pockets, some that Nell had given me last night before bringing the boat back to shore, so I was in no immediate financial bind. I put a handful of quarters into the jukebox and relaxed in a booth with a cold beer. As I sat I thought about my college friends. School would be out for the summer vacation now. I wondered where they were.
How many would recognize me right now? I was beginning to look like a waterside bum. Dressing up around here made no sense. I wore a faded old sports shirt, cotton slacks, sneakers without socks. My complexion had taken on the ruddy tan that comes from exposure to the water, sun and wind. I could have used a haircut and a shave.
I couldn't seem to work up enough energy to spruce up, except when I expected to meet Nell. It was easier just to hang around at Fat's during the day and drink beer until I lost track of time and place, and finally to stagger the few blocks down the wharf to my pad and tumble into bed. Half the time I couldn't remember how I got home.
Today was shaping up along familiar lines. And then, about two in the afternoon, I looked up and saw Fred Turner. Fred stood near the bar, chewing on a two-dollar cigar and looking the place over. I was surprised to see him there. This was a hangout for shrimpers and dock workers and considerably beneath Fred's social stratum.
He stood there, his eyes squinting until they became accustomed to the gloom of the saloon. Then he spotted me in a rear booth and started walking toward me. I realized that his sole purpose in coming here had been to find me.
He knew, of course, that I was in town. He had seen me around the waterfront on several occasions. We had exchanged strained, unfriendly greetings. He had asked me to drop around to see Nell and had obviously not meant it. I had managed to thank him without choking, and had promptly forgotten the invitation. I had no intentions, either, of giving him reason to become suspicious about Nell and me again and take her off on another trip. If he really had suspected anything the last time. I wondered if I could fool him if he were actually suspicious. Stupid he was not. A man didn't get to be the big wheel in the shrimp business by being stupid.
He grunted his bulk into the booth across the table from me. He took off his forty-dollar Stetson, laid it on the table, took out a handkerchief and mopped his damp, balding head. I felt myself grow tense and on guard as I waited to hear what he had to say.
He munched on his cigar and his piggish little eyes, half buried in their pockets of flesh, scowled at me. The summer heat was hard on a fat man. His shirt was soaked and his face was greasy with sweat.
He said, "You know, Nell's real cute when she thinks she's outsmarting me. The fact is that I'm' always two jumps ahead of her." He took the cigar out of his mouth, cradling it between the second and third fingers. I saw the gleam of the expensive diamond ring on his little finger. He rolled the cigar between his fingertips. He was still looking at me. He said, "Take that business with the boat last night. She thinks I don't know she took the boat out"
I felt a warning prickle run up my spine. He was looking at me closely.
He said, "Nell don't really get by with anything. Sometimes I just let her think she does."
I thought, You ugly fat bastard. I'd like to bust this beer bottle across your head....
But I said nothing. I was waiting to see what he was driving at. With a guy like Fred you could never be sure.
He leaned back, still looking at me speculatively and thoughtfully, as if sizing me up. Suddenly he adopted a paternal attitude.
He said, "You know, Mark, you're a real nice boy. I mean you look nice and you've got manners. You come from a family with class. Anybody can see that. Since we're related, you might say, by marriage, I want to give you a little advice. I'm a few years older than you and I've seen a little bit more of life, so you listen to me. I know you youngsters don't like to take advice, but it don't ever hurt to listen to somebody a little older than you. I found that out some time ago."
He sucked thoughtfully on a front tooth, his eyes retreating even more in their fleshy beds, as if drawing a closer bead on me.
He went on: "What I mean is that a nice young boy like you with a whole lot on the ball hasn't any business hanging around this crummy waterfront, turning into a lush." With a grunting, ponderous movement he reached into his hip pocket and took out a fat wallet. His thick fingers counted out some bills. "Now-I don't know for sure what happened between you and your folks. I don't want to pry into your affairs but I've talked to Nell about it a little bit and I get the idea that you had some trouble with your daddy. Now, I think you ought to get on the bus today and go on back home." He put the bills on the table and shoved them toward me. "There's a bus leaving out of here at three-thirty this afternoon. You get on the bus like a good kid, Mark. Before you know it your draft number's going to come up and you'll have to be in the army. You want to get some education before that happens. Go on back to your folks and to college where you belong."
He had made his little speech. The jukebox was playing one of the popular ballads. Across from me Turner was breathing heavily the way fat men do. I slowly picked up the bills. I turned them over looking at them.
Then I folded them into a neat wad, leaned forward, stuffed them into his shirt pocket and said, "Go to hell."
For a moment he simply sat there, breathing strainedly, stertorously. His face turned red as sluggish blood surged through his veins. His eyes became glittering slugs of metal.
In a voice that rasped with anger he said, "Boy, you're heading for some serious trouble."
I was full enough of beer to feel cocky.
"Listen, you fat bastard. I'm sick and tired of everybody running my life for me. At home it was my father and my big brother. Now you want to take over the job. All of you can go take a running jump. From now on I do whatever I please."
"You've just cut yourself a large slice of misery, son," he whispered. "You could smart-mouth at home to your father-that's one thing. What you're getting into here is entirely another. I've tried to give you a fair break-which is a lot more than I'd do for anybody else. I'm doing it only because you're blood kin to Nell." He got to his feet and picked up his hat, towering over me like a heavy black shadow. His voice was a low, rasping whisper. "I don't know what's going on between you and my wife. But I've got a pretty good idea. Now you be on that bus out of town this afternoon or you're going to wish you'd never seen this town."
He walked out of the beer joint. I sat there, mad and disgusted. He didn't scare me even a little bit. The bus deadline came and went and I sat there, drinking more beer. Finally, late in the afternoon, I left Fat's and walked home.
When I neared my pad I saw a familiar red convertible parked outside. I went upstairs to the dumpy little hole where I lived. I found Alice Rawson. She looked chic and tanned in a summery blouse and Bermuda shorts.
I said, "I'll be damned."
I could tell by the expression on Alice's face that she was surprised and more than a little dismayed at my appearance. I apologized for not having shaved. I could see no point in apologizing for being drunk.
"How did you know how to find me?" I asked.
She blushed. "I-still seem to find it hard to get you out of my system. I phoned your family last week. Your mother told me you were living down here. She gave me this address."
My father's reach was longer than I had thought. I had not been in touch with anyone at home. He must have had me traced-I didn't bother to wonder how or why.
"How about the guy you were dating in college?"
She shrugged.
"It's over. I couldn't very well date him any more-after that little goodbye scene in your apartment-could I? He and I were actually through even before that. We just couldn't seem to make it-you know?"
She made the last two words a question.
"I know," I found myself replying, somewhat to my own surprise.
Alice and I seemed to share a deeper understanding than I had imagined. I should have guessed that that last bit between us in my apartment at college would never have happened if she had even then been serious about the other guy.
She looked around my present hovel, at the unmade bed, the stack of magazines on the floor, the dirty dishes in the sink, the streaked, fading wallpaper, the dirty floor. Her eyes came back to me. They were sad.
She said, "You're a mess, Mark."
"Tell me something I don't already know." Tears filled her eyes.
"Mark, why are you going off the deep end like this? You've turned into a first-class bum."
"Second-class," I corrected.
"Don't joke. This isn't funny. Your mother sounded worried about you when I talked to her on the phone. I can see why."
"Everybody's worried about me." Alice looked angry.
"Your cousin Nell is behind this, isn't she? You can't get her out of your system, can you?" Her voice became bitter. "I hate her because of what you're doing to yourself on account of her-and at the same time I envy her. I envy her for the way you love her. No wonder she won't give you up. It would be hard for any woman's ego to give up a guy who keeps insisting on throwing his life away on account of her."
"Alice," I said angrily. "Damn it-"
"Oh, I know. We're going to have another fight." She stood up and paced the room angrily. She cried, "Mark-don't you see that what you're doing is hopeless? Nell is never going to leave the man she's married to. As long as you want to hang around her she'll be your girl friend. But you're never going to have her in any permanent way."
She reached me in a way not even Fred Turner had managed. I started to shake all over.
"That's a damn lie," I said. "You don't know what you're talking about."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SHE HAD BEEN RIGHT-we fought. We argued violently, then lapsed into sullen silence. She finally persuaded me to leave the apartment and get something to eat with her.
"You look as if you haven't had a solid meal in a week," she told me angrily.
We went downstairs, got into her convertible and went to a drive-in on the edge of town. I wanted to order beer but Alice insisted on hamburgers and malts. By then I was tired of fighting with her. The carhop brought the hamburgers and I forced myself to eat one.
It was dark by then and the neon signs of the drive-in had flashed on. The parking area was dimly lit. Cars were coming and going. One parked next to ours. Two men were in it. They looked like a couple of tough waterfront characters. I noticed that they were highly interested in us. They stared at Alice, then at me.
The carhop took their orders and left. Presently she brought a tray with two bottles of beer to their car. Both men were still staring at me.
They drank their beer, got out of their car and slowly walked over to where we were sitting. I felt sudden apprehension. Alice was talking about her family's plans for the summer. I lost track of what she was saying. The two men had come up beside the car. I put my hamburger down. Alice broke off in the middle of a sentence.
One of the men put his hands on the door beside me. "You're Mark Harris, ain't you?" I could feel trouble in the air like a thunderstorm. "What if I am?"
"I heard you were supposed to be on a bus this afternoon. How come you missed it?"
So that was it. At first-since Alice had found me through my family-I had thought the men might be my father's emissaries. But evidently Fred Turner was checking to see if I had obeyed his instructions.
I looked at the two men again. The closest one to me was short and stocky. A nasty scar ran down one side of his face. He stank of tar and dead shrimp and I recognized a header's callus on the hand he rested on the edge of the car door. His companion was big, dark and confident.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Alice's face. She had turned pale. I had no desire to be a hero. I made a quick motion toward the ignition key. If we had not been in a convertible I might have gotten the engine started and into gear. But the scar-faced thug beat my hand to the keys. He jerked them out and tossed them away.
He said, "It's too bad you didn't make the bus."
I was scared but I was also mad. Alice's half-finished malt was on the console between the bucket seats. I picked it up and threw the mushy contents into the guy's face. He took a step backward, swore and began to paw the slop out of his eyes.
I jumped up to stand on the seat. The big guy made a grab at me. I kicked him in the face. He spun backward. Alice screamed as I tumbled over the side of the car and sprawled on the gravel.
A well-aimed kick found my ribs. Fiery pain ripped through me.
By then other people at the drive-in had noticed us. I heard doors slamming and people yelling. Alice was standing up in the convertible, screaming her head off.
I tried to fight. But the scar-faced shrimper outweighed me by a good thirty pounds and he was as solid as a rock. He and his friend got me pinned down and started working me over. I felt as if my body were being pushed through a hammer mill. Blows and kicks dazed me. A fist rammed into my belly and the breath gushed agonizingly out between my bloody lips.
That seemed to end it. Through a haze I saw the two guys standing over me. The header looked down at me.
He said, "Don't you miss no more buses. This town ain't healthy for you any more."
He gave me a parting kick in the side. Then he and his buddy got into their car and drove away.
I was vaguely aware of Alice standing over me, sobbing as she wiped the dirt and blood from my face with her handkerchief. By then a crowd had gathered around us. I did not want to get involved with the law on this and I figured somebody would have put in a call to the local cops. I told Alice to help me into the car and to take me home.
With her help I managed to stagger into the convertible. She drove back to my apartment. The cool night air felt good on my face but I was one big ache from head to foot.
"I should take you to the hospital," Alice said.
"I'm all right," I mumbled. "Just get me home to bed."
Alice helped me up to my pad. Then she insisted on calling a doctor. The guy came out, checked me over and gave me a shot.
I heard him say to Alice, "I can't find anything seriously broken. I think a few days in bed and some good nursing will have him back on his feet. Keep him quiet and-"
His voice faded away as the shot took effect and I sank into a pleasant state of euphoria and then into a dreamless sleep.
Alice hung around the apartment for the next few days, playing Florence Nightingale. I think she was almost glad I'd gotten beaten up. For once she ran the show without getting any lip from me.
She kept bugging me about leaving town.
"Mark, I'm afraid of what's going to happen. You should get away."
I couldn't figure her. Why would she give a damn?
After a few days I was up and limping around. Alice had to leave for a day. She had to attend to some family business. She promised to be back early that evening.
The silence of the apartment screamed at me. I was healing on the outside but my guts were all churned up with hate and pain and loneliness. Alice had carted oft or dumped all the booze in the place. But I had some money. Early in the afternoon I limped downstairs to the nearest liquor store. It was my first venture out since the beating. I was surprised I was able to get around as well as I did. I took the bottle back up to my apartment and sat there in loneliness and misery, drinking by myself. I don't know if it was the booze, the loneliness, the beating or what Alice had said about Nell, but suddenly I knew I had to see her.
I limped across town, half drunk and half insane.
I went straight to Nell's home. I didn't give a damn whether or not Fred was there. I almost hoped he would be.
But his car was not in the garage or driveway. I walked across the patio and banged on the back door. Nell came out of one of the back rooms of the house. She wore a white bathing suit. It made me remember the time when we were kids-the time I had peeked through the hole in the wall of our summer cottage and watched her peel a white bathing suit from her lovely body.
Her eyes flew wide when she recognized me. She opened the door.
"Mark-what on earth happened to you? Fred told me you had left town."
"I almost did," I mumbled. "After his thugs worked me over I almost left town in a pine box."
She looked stricken.
"Oh, Mark-"
She caught my hands and pulled me into the house. She led me to a couch. We sat down and I felt the soothing balm of her fingers caressing my bruised face. Tears spilled out of her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She kissed my bruises.
"Mark, honey, tell me exactly what happened."
I told her everything.
"Cousin Fred plays real mean."
Nell paled.
"Mark, maybe you should leave for a while. I thought we had him fooled. I didn't dream he suspected us."
"He knows everything," I said, bitterly. "He even knew about your taking out the boat the night before he had me beaten up."
Nell looked even more distressed.
"I'll leave, Nell. But I want you to go with me." I grabbed her hands, held them tightly. "You love me-you know you do."
"Yes," she whispered. "Yes, I do, Mark. I always have. Ever since that summer when we were children-"
"All right. You don't love Fred, do you?"
She shook her head.
I drew her to me, kissed her fervently. Insane furies throbbed in my mind.
Her lips parted under mine. We could not kiss without unleashing raging storms in both of us.
"Mark, Mark-" she moaned, writhing in my grasp. "Don't, honey-you're driving me crazy. It's too dangerous-"
She was right about the craze in us. My fingers ripped the flimsy bathing suit from her. All reason was blotted from my mind.
My own clothes fell into a heap beside the couch. Nell's naked flesh merged with mine. Her arms and legs clamped about me. Her head fell back. She was drawing shuddering, sobbing breaths through her clenched teeth. Her nails dug into my shoulders. She moaned.
The universe spun in a tight circle around us. Nell was the beginning and end of everything for me.
Suddenly rough hands seized me. The raging fantasy of the moment shattered against harsh and ugly reality. Clawing hands dragged me from Nell. I heard her scream as a curious echo from some past nightmare. I spun around-in a blur I saw Fred's livid face.
I felt like an actor in some grotesque farce. The three of us were locked in an emotional compartment that was thick with hate and lust and jealous rage-and shot through with crude comedy, a joke told to often. Fred could have been Paul Edwards, who also had surprised me with Nell-or Dr. Reed, who had caught me with Sandra Clinton. I sensed a key of sorts in the repetitive pattern of my experiences but this was no time to figure it out.
I dressed quickly. Nell crouched, naked and shivering. She tried to get into her bathing suit but Fred grabbed it out of her hands. Then he slapped her across the face.
Rage exploded in me. I leaped at him. His fists slashed out, pounding me against the wall. He moved fast for a big man. His blows awakened all hell in my half-healed body. For a moment I was paralyzed with pain.
Before I could move again he said, "You just stand there, Mark boy. Fighting ain't gonna get you nowhere. Your fun with my wife is all over. This is the end."
I had no idea of what he meant. Was he going to kill us? I wished to hell I were all in one piece. I wanted to take him apart.
Nell cowered on the couch, her shame underscored by her nakedness. She covered her face with her hands.
Turner looked at me, at her and back to me again. His smile was cold and ugly.
"You two thought you had me fooled. Hell, I've known for weeks about what was going on. It went on last summer, too, when you were here. I figured, okay, let her have her fun with you. Let her get it out of her system like she did with the others. With the others it was just a few weeks and she'd get tired of them."
His words were spinning around in my dazed brain. What was he talking about?
He went on, "But with you it's different. She don't seem to get tired of you. She keeps wanting it from you. It was bad enough-the two of you sneaking around on the beach or out in my boat or in motel rooms. But now in my own home and in broad daylight." He shook his head. "That's too much." Then he said, "Ah right-you want her so much, go ahead, take her. Take her on out of town with you. I won't even try to stop you."
I was bewildered by his sudden change of attitude. Had he flipped? I didn't really care. The only important thing was that he was giving Nell her freedom.
I moved toward the couch.
"Nell?"
Fred broke in loudly.
"You want him, Nell? Go ahead, go to him." Nell was looking at Fred. Her face was chalky. Her trembling lips formed words. "No-no, Fred. Please." Fred scowled at her.
"Tell the kid you want him, why don't you? You don't want to stay with me no more."
She whimpered, crawled off the couch and stretched out her hands to him.
"No, Fred. Please, honey-"
My insides turned to ice. I stared at her. Nell was begging Fred not to make her leave.
The two of them were looking at each other. I was unable to analyze the emotion in Fred's eyes. Everything was there from agony to lust and a rage to kill.
He said hoarsely, "I thought you wanted to go with him."
Nell sank to her knees. Before my shocked eyes I saw her grovel in front of that fat pig of a man. I saw her crawl on the floor before him, pleading and begging.
"Don't throw me out, Fred. I'm sorry about this. I swear it won't happen again. I swear it never will. Please give me another chance-"
Fred's face turned from granite to putty. I saw him come apart inside. For a moment I saw his naked soul in his eyes. It was a shocking thing to see. He looked old and gray and pathedc.
"I wish you'd stop making me scare you, Nell," he said. "I don't like your doing things that make you afraid of me." Fred turned to me. He said, in a voice that was almost apologetic, "Nell just can't leave men alone. I always take her back. She's young and beautiful. A man like me is apt to forgive a woman that young and beautiful a lot of things. I know she don't love me. I know it's my money and the things I can give her that make her stay. But I'll keep her on those terms. I don't figure you want to hurt her-but she'd be real scared, living with you and being what she is. Reckon she was born to live scared." He gestured helplessly with his pudgy hands. "Better leave her alone-"
Suddenly I had to vomit. I made it to the bathroom. Later I leaned over the sink, weak and trembling, staring at my reflection in the mirror. After a while I washed my face. I got out of the house without seeing either Nell or Fred again. I went to a bar and sat drinking until dark. I left the place and walked aimlessly. After a while I saw a car coming down the street. It stopped close to me.
I heard Alice Rawson's anxious voice. "Mark?"
I hesitated, then got into the car. She asked me where I wanted to go.
I said, "Anywhere, just so it's away from this town."
We drove with the top down. I lay back wearily, looking up at the stars. I wondered what they knew about my future. Another college, maybe. But the army would probably get me first. My mind was too tired to think.
I was suddenly an adult. A little drunk and not too bright-but a grownup. My love for Nell had been a young thing-and as such it had probably once been beautiful as all things young are beautiful. But nobody can stay young forever and today had been ugly.
It would be ugly forever. Nothing could change it back to what it might once have been. But today was almost over.
Alice took one hand from the wheel and put it in mine. It felt warm there.
