Sex & Violence (15 page)

“Whatever,” I said. But I didn’t look. Held my breath, kept my palms flat on the dock. Wondered if there should be some special, overly long German word for this feeling I was having, this intense mixture of turned-on irritation.

“What’s that?” She bent over and poked my collarbone.

I kept my eyes shut, though I could smell her. Cocoa butter. I thought she was talking about the circle necklace my mother had given me, but no. She’d spotted Lana’s hickey in the light streaming from her screen porch. The one mark on me that I’d never managed to get before this evening.

Great.

I wanted to die, but then I heard a splash and turned to see her treading water, her wet hair like little black whips down her shoulders.

“You know?” I said, all pissy. “You
do
have a dock of your own.”

“You know?” She mimicked my pissy tone. “
You’ve
been a dick. From a manners standpoint, you should be apologizing instead of being so goddamn hostile.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I swam out deeper.

“I wish you’d told me,” she said, her voice still annoyed.

“Instead of having to find out secondhand.”

I thought I knew what she was talking about. But I was currently naked in a lake in the middle of the night with a cute girl who was also naked and I wasn’t sure how to act. There wasn’t a handbook I could just look this up in, unfortunately. Though Baker Trieste probably could have written one.

“Jim and Conley,” she said. “Thanks a lot for telling me.”

Damn, she was pissed.

“I think it’s some drug thing,” she said. “Maybe they bonded over their hallucinogenic night together. Which sounds dumb, since what do I know about mushrooms? But then again, Conley and Jim
do
live on the same street back in Marchant Falls. Could it be just a convenience thing?”

Maybe, but what did I know? Plus this didn’t explain why she was skinny-dipping in the lake with me, unless I was just a tool she’d use to feel better. Which made me think of all the girls I’d known, nationwide, that I’d used similarly. Christ. Add some self-loathing to that overly long German word.

“I thought you weren’t having rules anymore,” I said. “
Non-monogramy.”

“Non-mono
gamy
, god!” she said. “Can no one pronounce that word? Is it
that
hard?”

“Whatever,” I said. “I thought it was open for you guys to see other people.”

“But not Conley! Not my best friend!”

“But did you say who was okay and who wasn’t? You can’t really expect him to know what the rules are if you don’t tell him first.”

I couldn’t believe I was taking up Jim’s side. Jim was sort of a tool, but Dirtbag Evan could relate.
Non-monogramy
was her idea, and she hadn’t been clear about it. That wasn’t Jim’s fault.

“I think Jim’s doing all this because of Taber.”

“What?”

She looked at me like I was dense.

“Yesterday, Jim was at Taber’s and he saw this photo of me sitting on Taber’s lap. It was from when Jim was at football camp last summer. So Jim freaks out and tells me I’m a whore for cheating with his best friend.”

“Just because of a picture?” I asked. “Why would …”

“Why would Jim get mad about me being with his best friend, if he’s already cheating with
my
best friend, you mean?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“It’s kind of a long story,” she said. “Jim and I weren’t even going out when that picture was taken. That was in August.

Jim didn’t ask me out until September. Conley, Taber, Jim, and me—the four of us hung out on the lake all last summer. Sitting on the diving platform, waterskiing, drinking, going out to eat.

All that shit. Then Jim leaves for his stupid football camp and Conley gets grounded and so it’s me and Taber, on our own for two weeks.”

I nodded, not really knowing what she was getting at.

“So I slept with Taber, okay! It was my first time!” she said in a loud, harassed rush, as if I had beaten it out of her like a cop with a phone book.

Well.
That
I didn’t see coming. Baker with Taber, the four-ton noseguard?
Jesus.

“It was kind of a weird accident,” she continued, less loud now. “We were watching a movie at his house in town while his family was out here at the lake. For two weeks, we’d done everything else you can do in Marchant Falls. There was nothing else left, you know?”

I nodded as if I understood. But I didn’t care, because now I was panicking about where the hell Jim Sweet was. Since I was cornered naked with his also-naked, kind-of girlfriend and backstroking across the lake didn’t seem like much of an escape plan.

But Baker obliviously jabbered about Taber. How he bought her Dairy Queen. How they played tennis and went bowling. I was getting a little nauseated, when she paused and looked back to shore, as if someone was coming.

Was it Jim? Jesus Christ I needed to get out of here!

“So that night?” she continued. “When the movie ended?

We were sitting on his bed, and he just kissed me. And the next thing I knew, we were doing it and …”

She stopped. Which was understandable. But I was glad she was done describing the fuck out of it. My head was busy with exit strategies that didn’t involve my male frontal nudity.

“It was pretty awkward,” she continued. “But also very cool. I mean, he’s this huge guy, you know? And because he plays football, you might think he’s super rough. But he was a virgin too. And the whole time he touched me, he was so gentle. And shy. It was like he was almost worried, like he thought he would break me or …”

“Well, no kidding,” I interrupted, because I couldn’t help it anymore. “Taber’s
huge
. He probably
could have
broken you.”

I wondered if I’d been an asshole to say that, but she went on.

“So then Jim came home and Conley got ungrounded. For a while, it was kind of awesome. Romantic and tragic.”

“So, you’re non-monogramous because you’re secretly in love with Taber?” I blurted out, because I was anxious for her to get on with it. Girls have this way of telling stories where you think they’ve come to the point, but then the whole thing shifts and then they’re explaining their eating disorder or some other thing you don’t see coming. Reason #476 to never have a girlfriend.

“
No! I mean, Christ. I don’t know! The first time you have sex with someone it’s not necessarily wonderful in terms of per-formance. But that doesn’t mean anything, right?”

Sure it does
, I thought.
It means don’t have sex with
her
again.

“I guess before that night, I hadn’t really considered Taber, you know?” she said. “Until those two weeks, I assumed a lot about him. Around Jim, Taber’s always quiet. Jim sort of domi-nates everything. So after we did it, Taber went back to being quiet. And then Jim asked me out. Which was stupid—why did I say yes to Jim? Probably because I was mad at Taber. Why was he such a pussy about it?”

“Maybe it wasn’t him,” I suggested. “Maybe Taber knew Jim liked you and felt guilty or something.”

“Maybe” She swam toward me. I could hear loons calling across the water, and a Roman candle flew up and sent spools of reflected light in spirals on the water around her shoulders and everything, Baker, too, was so beautiful that I felt dizzy.

Almost-Weepy. Dr. Penny had been on me lately about medication for my anxious brain; I wondered if it would kill my chronic crybaby tendency too.

Hey, Dr. Penny?
I imagined myself asking.
What about a
pill for when you’re naked with this cute chick in a lake in the
middle of the night after you got caught making out with your
boss’s half sister and the cute girl’s telling you all this shit about
some dude she slept with and also she’s gorgeous, but you can’t
imagine touching her because you’re afraid of everything and
everybody …

“Anyway, Conley’s a cunt and I’m just … I’m a complete wreck, I guess.”

In addition to feeling certain my insanity was now probably visible to Baker, I was reeling how she could look so pretty while calling someone the c-word.

“Jesus, Evan, are you even listening?”

“I should have told you about Jim,” I stuttered. “I’m sorry.

I didn’t get it, I guess. I thought that was how you wanted it with him.”

“Well,
no
. But it’s okay.” She swam past me toward the dock. “I forgive you. Friends?”

I nodded and looked away when she got out of the water.

Waited the appropriate time for her to put on her bathrobe and step into her boots.

But when she said good night, I stopped her.

“You want to go to Story Island tomorrow?”

“Sure. Get Tom and come by for breakfast in the morning.”

I flopped back into the water, watched her go. Exhausted by the whole thing. How would I ever get clean again?

Dear Collette,

Is half of the shit guys do to impress chicks entirely lost on you? I
think you don’t even notice all the crap that we do.

For example, I suspect you don’t know this, but no guy wants a
girl who is bigger than he is. This is not a fatness thing. Most guys
want a girl who looks like a woman, with tits and ass and stuff. But,
also, he wants to be as big as her, so side-by-side things look propor-tional. He doesn’t want to look like a little scrawny weasel with a
caved-in hairless chest and stuff.

Not that I want a lot of hair on my chest, really. But just that I
don’t want it to look like the chick I’m with is babysitting me.

Also, you know that strutting thing guys do? With their chests
all puffed out and their arms hanging from their sides in an affected
way, like they’re carrying invisible beach balls? Like their biceps are
just TOO HUGE for their body and they can’t walk normally from
all the bulk? Tell me this doesn’t turn you on. Tell me this is something
you laugh at. Because I HATE that strutting douche shit. And sometimes I think guys don’t do that for chicks, anyways. I think they do it
for other guys, just to demonstrate their toughness and muscularity.

Which makes me want to punch something.

Also, do you really give a shit about our muscles? Or our cars?

I think you only care about hair. I swear, chicks used to talk about
my hair all the time. Which made me feel gayer than anything else.

I mean, literally gay. Like, if a girl liked my hair so much, it must
mean I was cultivating some hairstyle thing. Really I just never wanted to get it cut. It was laziness, not style.

Later, Evan

The next day, after scarfing down waffles with sweetened ricotta from Keir’s farm—everyone complimented him on it, but all I could wonder was how Brenda could sleep with a guy who wore a shark’s tooth necklace with the world’s tightest purple muscle shirt—Tom dropped Baker and me at Story Island, saying he’d be back around noon.

Baker didn’t say much the entire walk to the Archardt House, which sucked, because it meant I had nothing to think about except for how I shouldn’t stare at her ass. That and how I wanted to hide from her the whole reason for my coming back to the island in the first place.
Soren & Melina.

We went into the Archardt House, just like before, me pushing open the door for her, though this time she didn’t bitch about it and I didn’t lord it over her. She was excited to show me the library, and it was very cool. Every wall was crammed with books, and there was a long ladder that rolled along a track. Plus a couple of rotted-out leather chairs and a desk that probably weighed as a much as a tank.

“I think it’s my favorite room so far.”

“That’s because you haven’t been upstairs,” she said. Was she being flirty? I didn’t get her. Still, because I was a damn dog, I watched her go upstairs, just like before, except this time it was 100 percent pervy. Then I hauled ass back to the oak tree.

I hadn’t imagined it.
Soren & Melina.
The letters were blocky and masculine, but it wasn’t like you could exactly write in cursive with a knife.

I walked until I came to the summer kitchen. We’d only looked in it briefly, so I stepped inside, and a bird skittered out over my head, which made me almost shit myself. The summer kitchen was full of dead leaves and old nests and had a musky, nasty scent. There were chipped enamel countertops and an old black stove. The place looked like a perfect location for kids to get wasted or make out. Baker called that kind of thing a historical desecration. She said it was bad enough we were damaging the integrity of the Archardt House by coming in without permission and proper equipment.

The cupboards were full of broken mason jars, but there was one in the corner that wouldn’t budge. I knocked it with my fist until it swung open. On the top shelf was a glass peanut butter jar full of dead bugs, fishing lures, and lead weights.

Beside it, an old BB gun. On the bottom shelf was a ragged, blue cloth-covered book, big as a notebook and bound with a faded leather strap that looked like a man’s belt.

I unstrapped the belt and opened the book. The cover page had a circle drawn in pencil and inside it, also written in pencil, was this:

Soren,

I have always loved how you love your home.

This is your book to show me how much.

Love,

Melina

The book was all drawings and charts and lists. A diagram of a raven’s wing, sketches of beaver dams. Lists of fish caught, the dates and times and coordinates in the lake, weights and lengths. Bullhead, northern pike, walleye, bass. Feathers and flowers and leaves pressed into the pages. It was kind of beautiful, actually.

I knew just a little about my Uncle Soren. He’d been an outdoorsman and a marine. He didn’t have a permanent address. And he didn’t get along with my dad. That he was an artist on top of all that was unexpected. He couldn’t have been more different than my father.

Soren’s book pushed through the seasons as if they weren’t months apart but days. Winter ice fishing. Summer storms. And drawings. Dragonflies, geese migrating, a hand-built canoe, boats turned over on the shore, leaves changing colors.