Читать книгу Coming for Money - F.W. vom Scheidt - Страница 11

6

T he water ripples around her foot in gentle circles.

From one side of her foot, the circles disappear into shadows under the dock.

From the other side, the circles melt outward into the lake where the water and the sun become the same brightness.

The afternoon seems without beginning or end.

I walk down to the dock, sipping on a cold sweating beer bottle, bristles of sun-burnt grass stubble pricking my bare feet.

I am conscious of slowing my pace, taking shorter steps the closer I get to the dock, so that I can keep watching her.

Stretched out on the dock, she is leaning back against an old upturned wooden lawn chair. Bathing suit bottom. Baseball T-shirt. Her hair stuffed under a faded canvas hat, strands falling loose onto the flaking paint of the weather-cracked chair slats.

Reading her trashy paperback against one propped knee.

Her other knee bent over the side of the dock, her toes touching the water, her foot making a lazy circle. Casting ripples outward.

When I step onto the dock, I stop.

The air is motionless and scorched, with the faint smell of road dust and barbecue smoke and the algae on the rocks beneath the dock.

Laughter and children’s voices and the joyful yipping of a dog drift through the trees from the next cottage. And radio music. Rock-and-roll songs.

Feeling my weight on the boards, she glances up from her book.

“What are you looking at?” she asks.

“You,” I tell her.

“Why?”

“Because I love you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re beautiful.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re you.”

She smiles, lets her book slide. “Do you ever wonder why I love you?”

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes it’s because you do things like talking me into getting out of the city for a few days. This old beat-up place with all the spider webs in the rafters. Our anniversary here.”

I step to her.

I kneel down. I kiss her softly, her skin hot and salty with sweat.

“Be careful,” she whispers. “You could kiss a girl right out of her pants like that.”

“I was thinking more about making this last forever. Us. Having this afternoon together.”

“That too,” she whispers.