From the Chrysalis (33 page)

“My God,” she said, when every petal in her had unfurled and the last spasm had subsided. “Can we do that again?”

“Probably,” he said, then chuckled and stroked her trembling limbs.

Looking down, she saw he definitely could. His cock was standing straight up, ready to go. “Should we have … should we …?” she asked shyly, a blush still warming her cheeks. Determined to be prepared, she had gone to Student Services and was now on the Pill, but it had only been a week.
 

“I did, and I am,” Dace said. “So shut up,” he begged, crawling up from her lower body, sliding along her until he damn near got lost in her hair. He curled behind her, entering from the side, his large hands almost covering her breasts. “I wish you wouldn’t talk,” he said. “This one’s for you too, beautiful,” he promised, stroking slowly and shallowly with his penis, nudging up against her pubic bone until that feeling—that liquid, painless fire—spread from her clitoris to her throat again and she almost cried.
 

“I’m not the first,” he said, sounding a little sad, after they’d come together at last.

“You’re the first to make me feel …”

“Hmm, yes, but that’s not exactly what I meant.”

“I know,” she said, ashamed. He was still holding her, though. She took a deep breath, languishing under the warm grip he still held on her breasts. “There was somebody in Ireland, when I was sixteen. The worst part is I didn’t even love him, I don’t think. Um, I don’t know exactly how it happened. Well, I mean, I know how it happened, but he wouldn’t … he didn’t touch me there.”

“On your clit, you mean?” Dace said bluntly, rolling her around to look at him.

She lowered her eyes, embarrassed to be blushing. “Well, okay, my clitoris. I guess it’s a little hard to find.”

“Trust me. It’s not that hard. What did this Irish boy need, a road map?”

“Englishman.”

“Whatever. Sounds like a goof to me. A man, eh? Somehow I doubt you knew a real man. What were you hanging out with him for anyway, a little girl like that?”

“Dace, you wrote me one letter. Then you didn’t write for two years.”

“Because I felt like shit. I was shit. So why didn’t you mention him before, you bad girl?”

“But Dace, you always say the past is the past.”

He sighed. “That’s okay. Don’t tell me more. You’re not my first, either,” he answered, ostensibly slapping several black flies dive bombing her posterior. “You have a great bum,” he added, regarding the imprint of his hand.

“Well, you’re older than me. Besides, there’s the old double standard,” she said, not even trying to escape. “Nobody expects
you
to be a virgin. How old were you the first time? Fifteen? Sixteen?”

“The first time I was with a girl? Baby, I was sixteen, just like you,” he answered. One of his fingers traced the outline of her heart-shaped face.
 

“Really?”

He didn’t answer, just gazed blankly at her face.

“Dace?” she said, unaccountably afraid.

Suddenly he was on his feet, slamming his fist against the nearest tree, a hapless poplar that swayed under his assault. He didn’t look at Liza. “I was nine when somebody tried, but he didn’t get too far.”

Feeling almost sick to her stomach, she waited, watching him bend back down, rummage in his discarded jeans and light up a cigarette while he studied the late afternoon sky. Clouds were moving in.
 

“In that fucking school, there was a priest. Father Danby.
Nothing happened.
He wanted me to touch him and I didn’t.
I hit him instead. Accidentally. And his German Shepherds chased me up a tree. I went to court then and as luck would have it, the Priest’s uncle was on the Bench. Silverton. I remember because he had silver hair. I …”
 

By now, Liza was on her feet, her arms wrapped around him, her face pressed into his strong back. His sex, she noticed, was nowhere in sight. “Dace, don’t tell me if hurts,” she said. “I don’t have to know.”
 

“It’s too late, baby. I can’t stop now. That’s what happens when I start talking. That’s why I almost never do. It was really Rosie that Father Danby was after. She was such a little tomboy. You know what she was like. Still is. I went with him so he wouldn’t, you know, touch her. Whatever those fucking creeps do.” He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. “Other than that the school wasn’t all bad. I finally learned how to read.”

“You should sue!”

He spun around to face her. “Do you think anybody would listen to me? Besides,” he said, a little more quietly, “Rosie doesn’t want to.”

“Has she said?”

“She doesn’t even remember the dirty old bugger who wanted to get into a four-year-old’s pants.”

“Is he still alive? Is he still here in Maitland?”

“I don’t know. And it’s really better if I don’t.”

“Dace, we’ve got to get out of here. I’ll transfer, work part-time and we’ll find something for you to do, too.”

“Ah, Liza, little Liza! You can’t do that. You’ve worked too hard to get here. Besides, I can’t leave my father right now. All his business is here. And then there’s the Wolfhounds. They’re after me to join them. I’d like to ride with them for a while, have some fun.”

“Ride with them?” She felt dizzy. So much had happened in the past few minutes, maybe she wasn’t thinking straight. “A motorcycle gang? But Dace—”

“Ah, c’mon. They’re all right. It’s just bikes and stuff. And they throw some helluva good parties. Hey, where do you think you’re going, Miss?”

“I don’t know. I just want to walk,” she said, pulling away. He caught her by one hand.
 

“Are you sure you want to go somewhere?” he asked, his other hand moving down her body to the place he had mapped between her legs. “Because you’re not wearing any clothes.”

“I don’t know what I want.”

“Yes, you do. You want me. Open up and let me in.”

For as long as she lived, she treasured the interlude that followed.

Chapter 23

Hold On Tight

And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,

My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,

And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

*
[
Eliot, T.S.,
The Waste Land,
“Burial for the Dead.’]

Maitland, Ontario, Summer
.

Back in February she’d applied for a summer job as a counsellor at a day camp in Maitland. She accepted their offer the day after Dace came home. She didn’t make much money, but thought maybe she could earn some extra cash typing term papers in the fall. To her great joy, she had also qualified for an English scholarship, so Granny Magill was off the hook.
 

For now she was staying in residence, where she paid summer rates and had almost the entire place to herself. Her mother had wanted her to come home, but she didn’t have the space in her flat. Mel was traveling in Europe, through Denmark and Scandinavia. Janice was working on a tobacco farm not far from town. And Dace was staying with his Dad for now. He wouldn’t be alone.

So things weren’t perfect, but they were working out. She got to see Dace whenever she wanted, no questions asked, and all she really wanted was spend time with him.

“I’ll get a job too,” Dace promised when he saw her after work a couple of weeks later. They were eating onion rings at the local A&W. Onion rings hadn’t been on the menu when he’d first gone to prison. The A&W hadn’t even existed in Maitland.
 

“Well, you
could
work for your Dad, no questions asked.”

“No, I can’t,” he said, his face expressionless.
 

By now Uncle Norm owned three automotive shops in Maitland. He would never belong to the Golf and Country Club, but he was an up and coming businessman in spite of Dace’s less than illustrious profile. Sister Rosie, six years younger than Dace, was working in his west end shop. She’d started right out of high school and was doing so well she was engaged to a local boy named Ben, much to her father’s relief. She had always been such a tomboy, he’d wondered. She was practically living at her boyfriend’s now, but that was okay. Times had changed. Young girls did pretty much as they pleased.

“It’s not that I mind hard work,” Dace assured her. “I just don’t see myself under the hood of a car. Maybe your hood, though,” he said, flicking the green baseball cap with the day camp logo off her head and laughing at the startled expression on her face.
 

She caught the cap and tapped his cheek with the visor, more sharply than she’d intended. She still had to be careful around him. He was still on edge a lot of the time. His eyes narrowed and he captured both her hands in his.

“Careful,” he warned.

“What about opening up a motorcycle shop?” she asked, looking out the A&W window at his carefully preserved Harley. His father had saved the bike for him, taking care of it after Dace was sent Inside. The chrome was so shiny she could practically see herself in it.

He shrugged. “If we stay here. I need to get some money first.”

Suddenly her onion rings didn’t taste so good. She coaxed a strip of onion out of one ring and left the rest. He pulled her plate over and helped himself. “Hmm, these are good,” he said.

Oh, no
, she thought stubbornly,
you’re not changing the subject.
“Uncle Norm would lend you money,” she insisted. She’d already anticipated the obstacles he would have to overcome. It was so much more difficult talking to a real person than it was to write letters and revise. “It might be hard to get a job in Maitland and you can’t go anywhere else,” she added. “You’re on probation and you haven’t finished high school. What the hell happened to those courses you took in prison? Oh, right. A riot and a shutdown. Great excuses!”
 

He glanced at her then down at his plate. She watched the muscles in his forearms ripple as he finished eating the onion rings and she thought:
What a waste.
 

“Ah, Liza,” he said, finally looking up. He smiled, but he was slow to answer. “It’s too soon to say much, but I’ve got plans. Sure, I can open up a motorcycle shop here or down in Toronto, or we could just get the fuck out of here. How about that? We’ll go somewhere down in the States. I bet you could go to school anywhere, isn’t that right? A little smarty pants like you?”

Liza frowned. She knew nothing about American schools, except from books. “Maybe. But how? You can’t cross the border with a … a conviction.”

Pushing the empty plate aside, he reached across the little table and took her hand again. “C’mon. You’ve heard of phony names. You can be Anastasia-Romanov-my-dark-eyed-beauty and I’ll be Leopold…uh, something. Besides, I know some guys who can help me.”

Bikers, she thought, smiling in spite of herself. But maybe they
could
run away. Life at university was starting to sound a little boring. “And Uncle Norm?”

“He can come, too. Rosie is all set.”

“Ah, I don’t know,” she groaned, lacing her fingers through his. “He has his business.”

“He’ll come later then.”