Caroline reached the end of the path first. Berry ran to catch up to her and swung an arm around her shoulders.
“What are you thinking?” Berry said.
“What am I thinking at this moment? I’m thinking I wouldn’t mind a beer and some men.”
“Really? ’Cause that is completely what I am thinking.”
“No kidding. You?”
“Shut up. Look, I mean today. Let’s go take a break. We can hitch down to Little Falls and stay in a motel overnight,” Berry said, clapping her hands together.
“And eat some hamburgers and smoke and go to a bar.”
“Candy bars.”
“Men.”
“TV and newspapers and—”
“Men.”
“Yeah.”
Neither of them had been farther than the tiny town of New Harmon since they arrived. Caroline thought of it: men. Young and dumb. Old and mysterious. Unshaved faces. Whiskers, what it feels like to kiss a man with whiskers. The prickle of it. Handsome, square-jawed men with short haircuts. Beer bellies. Large hands. Some men had gnarled veins that poked out from the muscles of their arms. An arm that fit around her waist. Some men, Bobby for instance, could reach an arm around her when she lay beneath him, lifting her gently to him by her midsection. They were all like him, and yet none of them could compare at all. But still, having not seen any men for so long did make her giddy and almost delirious with anticipation. Surely that wasn’t the intended effect of a women’s community?
Clothes changed, money in pockets, the two women walked the long trail to the road and hitchhiked to New Harmon. They waited and hitched a few more miles. They waited and hitched some more until they reached Little Falls. The Big Town. They ate dinner in a small Italian cafe on Main Street. Berry was thinner and tanner than when they’d first arrived in New York. Caroline could see that now. She hadn’t sat across from Berry and really looked at her the way other people might. Berry ate and spoke and drank all at the same time and in the same way — fast. They were receiving what seemed to Caroline an excessive amount of attention. Both of them felt a little overexcited, and this feeling radiated from them. As they left the restaurant, the people at the other tables stared at them. They both wore dirty jeans and gauze blouses with angel sleeves and tiny embroidered designs. Berry had sewn them out of scarves. The bottoms of the blouses came to points in the front and the back, but the sides were cut high, so if you reached an arm up, a flash of waist peeked out. Caroline’s red hair dye was fading and starting to grow out. She wrapped a scarf around the roots and tied it by the nape of her neck, the ties hanging down, gypsy-style. She wore large hoop earrings that, along with the dangling scarf tips, brushed her neck and tickled her whenever she turned her head. When they got outside, Berry undid her braid and pulled her curls loose.
“Do I look okay?”
Caroline nodded. “That choker looks good with your hair down. You look like a fallen Gibson girl. You look really great.”
Berry rolled her eyes.
“Like a former lady who has been shipwrecked and still clings to a few scraps of her past gentility.”
“All right already.”
They shared a hand-rolled cigarette, herbal in taste and sweet in scent. Caroline felt suddenly very happy.
An older man slowly walked by, staring at Berry from her legs to her neck.
They walked to the edge of the Mohawk River. Several bars were situated on a sort of barge between the river and the canal. All of them were dives, but one called the Waterfront had loud music and some traffic in and out. They went in, and Caroline immediately noticed two men drinking at a table. Their long hair reached well below their shoulders and looked incongruous with their tan work boots and mashed-up carpenter hands. Since she had arrived in New York, she’d noticed more and more of the shit-kicking truck-driver types let their hair grow long. It was no longer a sign of grooviness. Good old boys, rednecks and freaks became hard to tell apart. They all even smoked pot. The bar was full of similar men, but these two were the best prospects. For the first time Caroline had no problem thinking of sex as something abstract that she could want, independent of someone, and then find a man to fulfill her want, instead of the other way around. Sex floated around her. It seemed mystical, magical. The last person she was with was Bobby. She knew that this would have nothing to do with that.
Berry went to the bar to get drinks. Caroline watched the two men sitting by themselves. They talked and sipped beer. Occasionally they would look up at the room but not with the focused determination of men on the prowl. She watched them for only a minute, then she turned away. She looked back again and caught the men staring at her. She examined her hands and smiled to herself.
Berry returned with two schooners of dark beer. “Let’s stick together tonight. Maybe find two guys already hanging out, if we can.”
Caroline barely turned toward the two men, and Berry gave a once-over to the whole room to check out who Caroline indicated.
“Like those two,” Berry said, turning back to Caroline. “Maybe.” Caroline glanced at the men again. Neither was actually very good looking, but they also weren’t unattractive. The men leaned back in their chairs and sipped at their beers and smoked.
The driving riff of a Creedence Clearwater Revival song came on over the speakers.
“We could just get high with them and see how we feel,” Caroline said. “Or we can get a motel room. I mean just us, if you want.” She realized then, in the course of speaking her last sentence and with a sigh of relief, that the thought of the unencumbered sex was enough really; she was almost ready to call it a night. She suspected that this was a real difference between men and women. How easy it was for her to live with the unrealized fantasy, already imagining the reality to be more complicated than sexy. The dynamics, for instance. They might both be more attracted to Berry, and they would be subtle about it (or not), but she would still pick up on it somehow. She would be with the disappointed one. Or up close they might not smell or taste good. Or they would do or say something hopelessly sad or corny. And then she would be stuck in some compromised position with these flawed fantasies. What were the chances they would not disappoint?
Now The Band was playing “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”
Besides, so much of what seemed fun about the idea was feeling the desire of someone else for her. Because being wanted was an essential part of her desire. Having to deal with some man’s disappointment, no matter how faint, felt way too depressing.
That was what they looked like, these two men, like the studiously unscrubbed and unglamorous members of The Band. With the big, shaggy Civil War sideburns. What were they called? Muttonchops.
“We’ll see,” Berry said and held up her beer to Caroline. They tapped their glasses together and then took two foamy sips. She could feel, to the depths of her body and without even looking around, the stares of the two men. Caroline watched Berry glance toward the two men, who had now stopped smoking and seemed fully occupied with looking at them, half-smiling, one tilting his chair all the way back and the other leaning into his elbows on the table.
“Wow,” Berry said. She took a long swig of beer, and then Caroline looked past Berry’s shoulder, in the opposite direction of the men, and noticed what hung on the wall behind Berry.
The Rolling Stones’ “Tumbling Dice” started next, with its big raunch gospel chorus up front before the lead kicked in, and Berry sang along with the ohs of the female backup singers — except they were really front-up singers at this point — shaking her head back and forth, then switching to singing with the lead vocal when that kicked in, messing up the words.