nightfall. Her eyes were like that, the color of last light.
They took me in all at once, gobbled me up.
I wondered how old she was.
I think I mumbled hi.
"It was me, wasn't it?" I listened for hints of mockery in her voice.
There weren't any.
"It was you. How'd you know?"
She smiled and the lips remained full even then. She didn't answer,
though.
She looked at me for a moment and I looked back and there was that
nakedness again, that easy nudity. She flicked the towel. The head of
a daisy shot off into the dust. She turned and walked a few steps back
to a dark green Mercedes parked between Rafferty's old Dodge and a
white Corvair.
"Drive me home?"
"Sure."
She climbed in the passenger side. I walked around and got behind the
wheel. The keys were in the ignition. I started it up.
"Where to?"
"Seven Willoughby. You know where it is?"
"Sure. Summer place?"
"Uh-huh."
"You don't sound too happy."
"I'm not. They call me at school and tell me they've got this
wonderful place lined up for the summer. I drive up and here it is.
On the way up everything has been shrinking--trees, houses, shrubs. So
I wonder if I'm not shrinking too. This town's a little dull."
"Tell me about it."
pulled the car out into the road. I'd never felt the least bit guilty
about not going to college. I still didn't, not exactly, but it was
getting close to that.
"You do, though, right?"
I am fabulous at conversation.
"Pine Manor over in Chestnut Hill. My last year. Steven goes to
Harvard, and Kimberley's with me only a year behind, and her major's
French. Mine's Physical Anthropology. I'll do field work in another
year if I want to bother."
"Do you?"
"So far. Sure. Why not. Don't you get bored?"
"Huh?"
"Don't you get bored around here?"
"Often."
"What do you do?"
"For a living?"
"I mean to kill the tedium."
"Oh, this and that. I see the beach a lot."
"I bet you do."
The road was narrow and twisting but I knew it blind by now, sc it was
easy to keep an eye on her. There was a small patch of sane on her
shoulder. I wanted to brush it off, just for the excuse to toucf her.
She sat very low in the seat. She really was in terrific physical
condition. Just one thin line where the flesh had to buckle at the
stomach. She smelled lightly of dampness. Sweat and seawater.
"Your car?" I asked her. "It runs pretty good."
"No."
"Your dad's?"
"No."
"Whose, then?"
She shrugged, telling me it didn't matter. "Is this your town? You've
lived here all your life and all?"
"Me and my father both."
"You like it?"
"Not much."
"Then why stick around?"
"Inertia, I guess. Nothing ever came along to move me out."
"Would you like to have something come along and move you out?"
"Never thought about it. I don't know."
"So think about it. What if something did? Would you want that?"
"You want me to think about it right now?"
"You going anywhere?"
"No."
So I did. It was a hell of an odd question right off the bat like that
but I gave it some thought. And while I was doing that I was wondering
why she'd asked.
"I guess I might. Yeah."
"Good."
"Why good?"
"You're cute."
"So?"
"So I couldn't be bothered if you were stupid."
There wasn't much to say to that. The road wound by. I watched her
staring out the window. The sun was going down. There were bright
streaks of red in her hair. The line of neck to shoulder was very soft
and graceful.
We were coming into town. Willoughby was just on the outskirts, the
closest thing we could claim to a grouping of "better" houses.
"You'd better pull up here."
"You're not going home?"
She laughed. "Not in this. Pull up here."
I thought she meant the bathingsuit, that her parents were strict about
that. It was pretty skimpy. I pulled the car off to the shoulder and
cut the engine. I reached for the keys.
"Leave them."
She opened the door and stepped out.
"I don't get it. What are you going to do about the car?"
She was already walking away. I slammed the door and caught up with
her.
"I'm going to leave it here."
"With keys in the ignition?"
"Sure."
Suddenly it dawned on me.
"I think you'd better tell me your name. So I know where to send them
when they come for me."
She laughed again. "Casey Simpson White. Seven Willoughb, Lane. And
it will be my first offense. How about you?"
"Clan Thomas. I've been up against it before, I guess."
"What for?"
"They got me once when I was five. Me and another kid set fin to his
backyard with a can of lighter fluid. That was one thing."
"There's more?"
"A little later, yeah. Nothing glamorous as auto theft, though You
wouldn't be interested."
I grabbed her arm. I could still feel the adrenaline churning. I
couldn't help it. I'd never stolen a car before. It made me nervous.
Her skin was soft and smooth. She didn't pull away.
"Are you crazy?"
She stopped and looked me straight in the eye.
"Buy me a drink and find out for yourself."
It was my turn to laugh then. "You're underage, though, right? You
would have to be."
"Just."
"Please remember you never told me that. Come on."
ffm mA^m
HAH
^^^^AH
^^^^^^AH
AH_
So that was the business with the car, and that was the first time she
scared me.
The truth was I liked it.
Here was a girl, I thought, who didn't play by our rules- whc hardly
seemed to know them. And I guess I'd seen enough of rules in twenty
years of Dead River.
It was rules that got you where you were and more rules that kept you
there, kids turning into premature adults, adults putting in the hard
day's work for wife and more kids and mortgaged house and car, and
nobody ever got out from under. That was rule number one. You didn't
get out. I'd seen it happen to my parents. The rule said, see, your
foot is in the bear trap now and you're the one that put it there, so
don't expect to come away alive; we didn't set it up for that. The
problem was always money. The slightest twitch in the economy would
sluice tidal waves through the whole community. We were always close
to oblivion. The price of fish would change in Boston and half the
town would be lined up at the bank, begging for money.
It might have made us tougher, but it didn't. All you saw were the
stooped shoulders and the slow crawl toward bitterness and old age.
I'd moved out on my parents three years ago, when it became too hard to
watch my father come up broke and empty after another season hauling in
sardines in Passamaquoddy Bay and to watch my mother's house go slowly
down around her. They were good people,