"Love," I said.
"You do understand!" she said, and she slid her hand lower, across my stomach, and then back up onto my chest again. "Oh, God, I knew you would get it, because even when we were in that refrigerator there was just something about you that was different from everybody else I have ever met in my whole life and I thought maybe just once before it happens I can talk to somebody who really gets it and they won't look at me like I'm some kind of perverted sick twisted freak monster!"
"No, no, you're just so beautiful," I said. "Nobody could ever think that about you, just even your face is so amazing-"
"No, but that's not it-"
"No, I know that, that's not what I mean," I said. "But it's part of what makes you who you are, and to see that part really leads to understanding about the rest-I mean, if you're not a total idiot, you can't look at your face and not think, Wow, what an incredible person, and then to see that the insides are even more beautiful is just amazing." And because mere words could not really express it completely and I really wanted her to understand what I meant, I pulled her face down to mine and kissed her. "You are beautiful inside and out," I said.
She smiled with an incredible warmth and appreciation that just made me feel like everything would always be all right. "You are, too," she said, and she lowered her face and kissed me again and this time the kiss was longer and it led into another kind of feeling that was new for me and I could tell that it was new for her, too, but neither one of us wanted to stop until she stretched out beside me on the floor as we kissed and after a long time of that she did stop, just for a second, and said, "I think they put something in the water."
"I don't think that matters," I said. "Because what we have started to understand doesn't really come from anything you can put in water because it comes from inside us, the real inside, and it is really true, which I know you can feel as well as I can." I kissed her and she kissed back for a minute before she stopped and put both hands on my cheeks.
"In any case," she said, "even if it is just something in the water it doesn't matter because I always kind of thought that this is just so important-I mean love, and you know, I mean, not just the kind that you feel but the kind you do and I thought, I'm eighteen; I should do it at least once before I check out, don't you think?"
"At least once," I said, and she smiled and closed her eyes and brought her face back to mine and we did.
More than once.
THIRTY
"i'm thirsty," Samantha said. There was a whining note in her voice. I found it irritating but I didn't say anything. I was thirsty, too. What was the point to saying it again? We were both thirsty. We had been thirsty for some time. The water was all gone. There wasn't any more. That was the least of my problems: My head hurt, and I was trapped in a trailer in the Everglades, and I had just done something I couldn't begin to understand. Oh, and somebody was coming to kill me, too.
"I feel sooooo stupid," Samantha said. And again, there was very little to say in response. We both felt stupid, now that whatever was in the water had worn off, but she seemed to have more trouble accepting that we had acted under the influence of the drugs. As we had come back to our senses Samantha had gradually looked uncomfortable, then nervous, and then downright alarmed, scrabbling around the trailer for articles of clothing that had been enthusiastically misplaced. In spite of how awkward she made it look, I decided it was the right idea. I found and put on all my clothing, too.
And a small touch of intelligence returned to me with my pants. I got up and looked over the trailer from one end to the other. It didn't take long. It was only around thirty feet long. All the windows were securely boarded with three-quarter-inch marine plywood. I thumped on them. I threw my full weight against them. They didn't budge. They were reinforced from the outside.
There was only one door. Same story: Even when I ran my shoulder against it, I got nothing except more pain in my head. Now I had a matching pain in my shoulder. I sat down to nurse it for a few minutes. That was when Samantha had started whining. Apparently putting her clothes on made her feel she could complain about almost anything, because it didn't end with the water. And through some mean-spirited trick of acoustics or plain bad luck, the pitch of her voice was in perfect resonance with the throbbing of my head. Every time she complained it sent an extra pulse of dull pain deep into the battered gray tissue in my cranium.
"It smells… funky in here," she said.
It did actually smell funky, a combination of very old sweat, wet dog, and mold. But it was far beyond pointless to mention something when there was nothing we could do about it. "I'll get my herbal sachet," I said. "It's out in the car."
She looked away. "You don't have to get sarcastic," she said.
"No," I said. "But I do have to get out of here."
She didn't look at me, and she didn't have any response, which seemed like a small blessing. I closed my eyes and tried to will away the thumping anguish. It didn't work, and after a minute Samantha interrupted again.
"I wish we hadn't done that," she said. I opened my eyes. She still looked away, over to a plain corner of the trailer. It was completely barren and blank, but apparently better to look at than me.
"Sorry," I said.
She shrugged, still looking away. "It's not your fault," she said, which I thought very generous, though accurate. "I knew there was probably something in the water. They always put something in." She shrugged again. "I never had ecstasy before, though."
It took me a moment to realize she meant the drug. "Me either," I said. "Is that what it was?"
"I'm pretty sure," she said. "I mean, from what I heard. Tyler said-she takes it a lot-took it a lot." She shook her head and then she actually started to blush. "Anyway. She said it makes you want to… I mean, touch everybody and… you know. Be touched."
If that had indeed been ecstasy, I would have to agree. I would also have to say that either we had taken far too much, or it was a very powerful drug. I could nearly blush myself when I remembered what I had said and done. Trying to become a little more human was one thing-but this had been far over the edge into the sludge of dumb, yammer-headed personhood. Perhaps the stuff should be called excess-tasy. In retrospect, I was very glad there was a drug to blame. I did not like to think of myself as behaving like a cartoon.
"Anyway, I got to do it," Samantha said, still blushing. "I won't miss it much." Another shrug. "It wasn't that great."
I don't know an awful lot about what is popularly called "pillow talk," but I rather thought that this kind of honesty was not considered proper form. From the little I did know, I was pretty sure you were supposed to make flattering remarks, even if you thought it was a mistake. You said things like, "It was wonderful-let's not soil the memory by trying to equal that magic." Or, "We'll always have Paris." In this case, "We'll always have that horrible smelly trailer in the Everglades," didn't have quite the same ring, but at least she could have tried. Maybe Samantha was getting revenge for the massive discomfort she was feeling, or maybe it was true and she, as a callow youth, didn't know she wasn't supposed to say such things.