Читать книгу Lighting Out - Daniel Duane - Страница 19

After a long, meandering drive out to Point Reyes, carasick from apple-strawberry juice and fig bars, Kyla and I parked in an empty dirt lot near a dairy farm. We put on warm clothes and walked out through sheep and cattle pasture toward the fogbound beach of Abbotts Lagoon. I rambled for a while about my epic with Nick and how he’d apparently had some kind of mental break over the whole subject, but I couldn’t quite find the right tenor for the story—was I thrilled by the danger? Exaggerating it to impress her? Contemptuous of Nick or supportive? She didn’t seem sure on any count, and I realized I wasn’t either. So I asked about the women’s music festival. Tried to keep my voice neutral, not sound mercenary.

“Overwhelming,” she said. She pulled her arms into the body of her thick fisherman’s sweater and let the sleeves swing around as she walked.

“How? In a bad way?”

“Yeah . . . sort of.” She looked at me with wide eyes. “I thought it’d be different with women. Not such a pickup scene, but it was totally the same.” She got an arm free and pointed suddenly—an egret stood in the reeds of the lagoon like a white flamingo in a northern garden. Its long neck arched with an elegance contrived and almost un-Darwinian. Friends had warned her that the Yosemite Festival was notorious, that it probably wasn’t the best place to look into being with women.

“Look,” she said, sounding very frank, “the whole thing with me wanting to be with women was just that men weren’t making me happy. Or not the ones I’d been with, anyway. I’ve had fun sex with men, but only a couple of times.”

And where does that leave me, I wondered. Sure, like most guys I secretly fancied myself an artful, healing lover, but this could be quite a burden. Men, she said, just never bothered to find out what felt good for her; her mind usually wandered to phone bills or to imagining what her body would look like from above. She poured wet sand into circles as she talked. A leather thong around her ankle was encrusted with salt from walking in the surf.

“I’d really decided not to be with men at all anymore,” she said. “You should know that.”

The past-perfect verb tense was a tip-off . . . she was open to a change of mind. She drew a finger along the lovely downy hair above her lip. Again I wanted to kiss her, to just get past this nutty talk. I mean, here we were! On a deserted beach! But instead, I said, “Why should I know that?”

She took my left hand and held it for a moment. She started to pick at the scab of a climbing cut, then leaned forward in the sand and, without looking at me, put her arms around me. I hugged back, firmly but without any idea what it meant. I could smell the wool of her sweater and some oil she was wearing; far down the beach a person slipped in and out of my range of vision—a shimmering little stick figure in the sand.

“Can I kiss you?” I asked.

“Yes.”

She kept her eyes open and put her closed mouth softly against mine, then turned and walked on.

Later, we were sitting with our backs against a driftwood log watching the undertow when she smiled to herself.

“What?” I asked.

“I had this thought,” she said. “I just sort of pictured us taking off all our clothes.” I kept looking at the ocean.

“You mean . . . to swim?” I asked, still looking at the ocean.

“Yeah, or whatever.”

“Do you . . . do you want to?”

“What, swim? Or take my clothes off?”

“Either.”

I found myself sitting in the fog, a wet wind blowing from the north, naked. But how to sit, naked? Akimbo, and I’d feel exposed. Slouched back on my elbow, and not only would I feel preposterous, but I’d freeze. I put my arms around my knees and looked at Kyla. She sat akimbo with her back straight and reached her arms up to the sky; goosebumps spread across her breasts. She smiled just a little, without implication, and looked at the surface of my eyes. Her body looked strong and beautiful, and I thanked God I was too cold to embarrass myself. As I shifted my chilled butt a little in the fine white sand I wondered whether it was even OK to think such things, or if she was counting on me to stay neutered in platonic hyperspace.