"We only steal from chain stores."
"I suppose they can afford it."
"And we only steal delicacies. Look."
She dumped the book bag onto the seat. There were two big jars of
Icelandic caviar. Smoked sausages. Pates, liver and foisgras.
Cheeses. Oysters. Squid.
"We've got lunch, anyway."
"We sure do. It doesn't bother you?"
"Why should it bother me?"
"It's your town."
"But not my chain store."
She seemed to relax a bit. I wondered if I'd just passed some sort of
test with her. I wondered how many more to expect, and how many more
I'd want to deal with. She stared at me a long moment more than was
comfortable. Then Kim came out to the car, giggling. She glanced at
the backseat.
"Good haul?"
"The best. Hop in."
There was something in the tone of it. "Hop in." The words were
addressed to Kimberley, but I thought they were meant for me. I
guessed I was along for the ride. Something did a little two-step
across my spine.
"To the beach!"
"Ever go skinny-dipping out this way?"
Steven was doing an unhealthy seventy along the narrow, winding road,
but he still thought he had enough control to be able to shout at me
over his shoulder. He didn't. I leaned in close so he wouldn't have
to do it again.
"Not here. Over at Echo Beach maybe. There's a couple places at Bar
Harbor."
"Why not here?"
"Police. They frown on it."
"Fuck that."
He turned completely around to face me again, half-smiling,
half-scowling. His wicked look.
Odd guy, I thought. I wondered what his connection was to the women.
There was the obvious urge to impress them. The loud colors. The fast
driving. He had a peculiar way of glancing at Casey no matter who he
was speaking to It wasn't just a matter of including her. It seemed
to have something to do with approval. He was a good-looking guy, with
dark, even features, sort of Latin and WASP combined. But there was
something insecure about him. I had the feeling that in a way he was
just as much a stranger to all this as I was.
You could make an educated guess that he was a bit hung up on Casey.
That would account for the sidelong glances. But then what was he
doing paired up to Kimberley? Certainly she thought they were an item,
even if he didn't. Her blond downy arm draped itself gracefully over
his shoulders as he drove. Every now and then her hand would move up
to play with the hair along the back of his neck or behind his ears.
When he spoke she listened very attentively. Her gaze was proprietary.
He didn't return it very much, and when he did, it was without heat.
I wondered how deep the bravado ran. I decided to call him on the
nudity bit. See how he reacted. I knew a beach where the stones were
pretty smooth and the waves rolled in easily somewhat to the north of
here. You could do a bit of swimming. It was secluded enough. Nobody
bothered with it much except the shell hunters.
"Take your next right," I told him.
To be honest, I wasn't opposed to seeing how the girls reacted,
either.
We turned down an old dirt road and drove half a mile through the
Guiles farmland, then slowed down as the road turned rougher through
the dark pine forest that Van and I used to play in as kids.
Van was my older brother. He died in Nam when I was thirteen. It was
two days after my birthday, November 12.
My father and Mr. Guiles were old friends. But we never came out here
again after Van died. Maybe that was because his own son, Billy, had
the bad grace to survive intact while Van went down in a burning
helicopter over Khe Sanh. Maybe it was just too many memories. But we
stayed away.
I remembered it, though. It hadn't changed much. Forest roads take a
longtime to change. A little rockier, maybe, but just the same. It
gave me a pleasant feeling, like coming home.
Steven cursed the road so hard you'd have thought it was his car and
not Casey's. But it opened up soon and got smoother, and then there
was that familiar little stretch of meadow and the cabin we used to
call the Picnic Basket. Steve pulled over and parked, and we took the
food from the car. Casey was first to discover the view. I walked
over to her.
"Pretty good, isn't it?"
"Wonderful."
We stood thirty feet above as hallow bay with all the Atlantic back
dropped behind it. Directly below was a rocky beach. There were
boulders and crumbled slate.
When the seas were rough the water rose to maybe fifteen feet from
where we were standing. All the contours would seem to change
overnight. If you came here as infrequently as I did, it was never the
same place twice.
I led them down a path to the sea. We found a spot beside a thick
column of slate ten feet from the rock face and deposited our stolen
merchandise and our towels. I climbed to the top of the column.
The gulls had been here, as I'd thought they would. They smashed the
shells of crabs and clams and oysters against the rock to get at the
softer stuff inside. It was littered with tiny corpses^
I saw Casey watching me and waved her up. She was a good climber.
"See this? Seagulls' restaurant."
She stooped to examine the dry empty shell of a blue-claw crab.
"They fly over here and drop them. Their aim is very good. Usually,
that does it. If not, it will crack them a little. So they find
cracks and do the rest with their beaks. They'd probably be here now
if it weren't for us. See?"
We watched them wheel through the blue-gray sky a quarter of a mile
away.
"You know about things like that?"
"About the sea? Some."
"What else do you know about? Tell me."
I shrugged.
"Lumber. Wood. Henry Miller. Dostoevsky. I can make a fire with a
couple of sticks if I really have to. I build a pretty comfortable
campsite. I know about Dead River, what there is of it. I cook a
pretty decent fried egg. Not much, actually."
"What about me?"
"What about you?"
"What do you know about me?"
"I can guess some things."
"Yes, but what are you sure of?"
"Nothing."
"Liar."
She stood up and moved her hand around behind her back and saw her
halter shudder free. She slipped it off and tossed it away. It
drifted down the rock and settled below.
Her breasts were small, firm, with a high lift to them. Beautiful.
She stared at me. There was hard challenge in the blue eyes.
Challenge but no mockery. She stooped a little and drew down the white
shorts over her hips. She wore nothing underneath. The pubic hair was
sparse and delicate, a light golden brown. She watched me through all
this and then smiled.
"Now you know more."
"Now I do."
She turned away and moved easily down the rock, agile as a cat.
She walked toward Steve and Kimberley. I watched her. There was a
stupid grin on my face and very little immediate possibility of making
it go away. I watched the easy grace of her. There was nothing to do