“Oh boy, do I ever go for that,” she said, swaying from side to side, her pentangle clipping him in the nose as she jiggled her breasts and cooed, “You never guessed, didja?”
“How Lyndon was lost in the mail?”
“Nooo! How I had them made as a fortieth-birthday surprise for Barney.”
“Your breasts?”
“They’re implants, you silly.”
A troubled Moses retreated from her, unwrapped a Monte Cristo and lighted it with a shaky hand. “Did he pick the size?”
“He didn’t exactly, but hint hint, he did show me pictures from magazines of the kind of tits that turned him on. I’m such an airhead. Nothing could happen. I knew that, the doctor assured me, but for the first few months I wouldn’t let anybody squeeze too hard and I didn’t dare sit close to the fireplace at the ski lodge, because I was scared they might—Well, you know. The heat.”
Moses inhaled deeply, wishing that he were somewhere else, somewhere alone. Sensing that he had begun to drift, a pouting Darlene got him out of his shirt and began to probe between his legs, fishing for him. “There isn’t a manual I haven’t read,” she said. “Talk as dirty as you want. Order me to do things.”
She bit his ear. Moses yelped and bit right back.
“Hey, there! Hold your horses. Woa!” she said, thrusting him from her with surprising strength.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s my fault. I shoulda told you right off that there’s to be no scratching or biting or even hard pinching, honey, because he checks me out for bruises every night.” She had him out of his trousers now, but stopped abruptly short of descending on him, her face clouding. “How many times can you come at your age, honey? I should know that before I risk spoiling any multiples for me.”
Possibly, he thought, back in Chapel Hill, where they were very big in furniture, she did door-to-door surveys.
“Are you still there?” Reaching down to root out his testicles, she discovered, to her consternation, that he only had one. “Holy Toledo,” she said, a shopper short-changed.
“What did you expect? A cluster?”
“FAR OUT!” she exclaimed, running her tongue from his groin to his throat like he was an envelope to be sealed.
But now her camera had become painfully lodged in his back. Moses pried it free. “What did you bring this for?” he asked, holding it up.
“Silly. I brought it along because I thought you’d surely want to take some pussy pictures for a souvenir to remember me by. Look!”
Leaping up, she turned her back to him and bent over to clasp her knees, ass riding high, and then she hooked one finger through her black bikini panties, tugging at them. Shifting to an upright position, her back still turned to him, she shot him an over-the-shoulder naughty wink, licked her lips and then popped her thumb into her mouth, fellating it. He was reminded of the Goldberg Brothers Auto Parts calendar stapled to the wall in the Texaco station on Laurier Street. Unable to help himself, Moses shook with appreciative laughter. “Oh, Darlene, you are perfection. Honestly.”
“Then why aren’t you snapping any pictures?” She struck another Playmate pose, this one obliging her to at least partially dress. “Go ahead and shoot the whole roll, but please remember to take it with you.”
Only then did she notice that he was also dressed.
For her, he hoped, it would not be passion frustrated or, God help us, unrequited love so much as gym class cancelled for today.
“Maybe it’s better this way,” she said, “our being, well you know, platonic friends … but I did think we had come here to fuck our brains out and I never did it with a real highbrow before.”
“Maybe we should start thinking about getting back.”
“Not yet. Jim Boyd says you can make a salmon dance on its tail. Show me,” she said, her eyes taunting. “Show me.”
“Okay, but it will be strictly catch-and-release.”
“Like me,” she said, startling him.
He led her down the steep embankment to where he had beached Gainey’s canoe on the edge of one of the Shaunnessy pools.
“If Barney comes by now and sees us together,” she said, “he’ll beat the shit out of both of us.”
“He’s on the other side of the camp way upriver.”
“Lucky for you.”
Lifting Gainey’s rod out of the canoe, he took his anger out on his casting, whipping the line harder than was necessary, straining for the far shore before he even covered the near water. Within minutes he had hooked a big one, but it didn’t bolt downriver or break water. Instead it made for the bottom and sat there. Moses tightened his line, jiggling his rod, sweeping it to the right and then to the left.
“Can’t you finish anything you begin?”
“It’s a sulker. Hand me your car keys.”
“What are you going to do?”
He fed the key ring with the heavy brass disc on to his line. “Bop him over the head.”
“But what about THE KEYS?” she asked, wide-eyed, as they shot down the line.
“There’s nothing to worry about.” He would retrieve them as he released the fish in shallow water near the shore. “Hey, there he goes.”
His line screeched. About sixty feet out the silvery, sea-bright salmon came thrashing out of the water, sailing high. Twisting, flapping. It snapped the leader. The keys, flying free, caught a glint of the failing sun before they plopped into deep water and disappeared. “I’m afraid we’ve got something of a problem now,” Moses said, reeling in.
“A problem? Holy Toledo! Ass-hole! I don’t believe it. This isn’t happening to me. It’s a dream. You know what Barney’s going to do? He’s going to kill me and then he’s going to cancel all my credit cards again.”
“But not necessarily in that order.”
“If I were you right now I wouldn’t be coming on smart-ass. I’d be hoping I was covered by Blue Cross. And how!”
“Right now I’m not worried about me. It’s Jim I’m worried about.” He would never forgive him. “The two hundred jobs. The furniture factory.”
“You’re not only crazy but for a highbrow you sure take the airhead prize.” She explained. “How about that, Moe?”
Moses didn’t answer immediately. Instead he slowly unwrapped a Monte Cristo, bit off the tip, and smiled at her. “I’m going to tell you exactly what to do.”
BARNEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN JUBILANT. He was top rod. The salmon he had caught, while it was certainly not a whopper, had been sufficient to allow him to tip the scales five pounds better than Moses. But only the Logans and the guides were there to witness Barney’s triumph at the weigh-in outside the ice-house, and Jim seemed somewhat troubled by it. Barney was not surprised that Moses, obviously a sore loser, had yet to return from wherever he was visiting, but he was beginning to worry about his car. He had forgotten that Miss Calculation still had the keys. She never should have driven off without his permission.
“Maybe somebody ought to go out and look for her,” Mary Lou said.
Rob cleared his nose of snot with one wipe of his sleeve. “Daddy’s smoking,” he said.
Larry ground his cigarette into the gravel with his heel. “Where would we look?” he asked.
“The nearest pit stop is where,” Barney said. “She drives back here drunk she could slam into a tree. You know what that car cost me?”
Larry passed Barney his flask. His eyes burned bright. “I think she’s with Berger somewhere.”