The Summer of Naked Swim Parties (25 page)

“It’s low tide right now?” Forget spinsterhood, Jamie thought, Scooter Ray will love me.

“Yeah. Come on.”

Scooter Ray picked up Jamie’s wrist. She thought he might have held her hand if she hadn’t been holding two beers. Jamie took sips from alternating beers as they walked to the cave.

“I think I’m wasted,” Jamie said, as she stumbled over some driftwood.

“Me too.”

“Why does everyone call you Scooter Ray? Why not just Scooter?”

“My mom’s from South Carolina,” he said.

“So..”

“People have two names in South Carolina.”

“Everyone has at least two names. A first name and a last name.”

“No, I have a last name.”

“Ray.”

“Hey, you don’t know my last name! It’s Smith.” Scooter Ray’s teeth glowed as he smiled.

“Your last name is Smith? I thought it was Ray.” Jamie laughed.

Scooter Ray put his hand on Jamie’s forearm and slowed her, as if he were gently pulling a horse’s rein. Jamie wobbled for a moment, then regained her balance and stood still, facing Scooter Ray. They were in front of the cave.

“My first name is Scooter Ray. My second name is Jackson. And my last name is Smith.” And with that, Scooter Ray Jackson Smith pulled Jamie toward him and kissed her, slow and sweet.

Jamie’s arms stuck out like a scarecrow’s as she held her two beers aloft. Scooter Ray dug his beer into the sand, then took Jamie’s and dug them into the sand beside his.

“C’mon,” he said, and he led her into the dark cave.

When she faced the inside of the cave, Jamie could see nothing. When she turned and looked out of the cave the beach had a hazy glow.

“Are you sure there’s no one else in here?” Jamie asked. 
“I mean, I can’t see anything. This is like death; it’s blacker than when you shut your eyes.”

“Anyone here?!” Scooter Ray shouted.

“But animals wouldn’t answer,” Jamie said. “Do you think there are mountain lions in here?”

“Any mountain lions in here?!” Scooter Ray shouted, and 
Jamie laughed because she felt hopeful and desirable—the proof being that Scooter Ray wanted to be with her.

Scooter Ray and Jamie lay on the mucky floor of the cave. Jamie was on her back with Scooter Ray on top of her, running his hands from her breasts to her hips, reading her curves. When Jamie had groaned about getting fat one afternoon, Betty had told her she wasn’t fat at all—she was growing more beautiful, replacing the flesh of childhood with the softer stuff of womanhood. With Scooter Ray stroking her, Jamie believed her mother, believed that this new body was better, sweeter to the touch. She was a siren whose call could not be ignored.

The sand was cold, dense: Jamie rolled over so that Scooter Ray was on his back and she was on top of him as they made out. Jamie’s mind flitted in and out—she thought about Flip and decided that everything had changed in the past thirty minutes: she no longer cared that he lied about breaking up with her and she had little interest in whether or not he was kissing Terry Watson. With her lips suctioned against Scooter Ray’s, Jamie felt so strong and beautiful she could imagine herself chatting with Flip, casually, about the waves or the new Monty Python movie, while Terry Watson silently stood by. And she suddenly didn’t care that Tammy and Debbie had cut her out of their lives with the incisiveness of a surgeon removing a giant mole.

Scooter Ray would shine the light of his face on Jamie until everyone could see that she existed. And Scooter Ray would introduce her to a whole new set of friends, Jamie thought, people who would care about Jamie just because they knew she made Scooter Ray happy. He probably had a sister who would be Jamie’s best friend; or maybe his mother would hang out with her in the same way that Flip 
had often hung out with Betty. Mama Scooter Ray would teach Jamie how to cook southern-style, show her how to hem her pants so she wouldn’t have to roll them at the bottom, and take her shopping at La Cumbre Plaza when her own mother was too busy to do it herself.

Jamie was so distracted imagining her future life with Scooter Ray that she had not been fully aware of the actions that led to her being naked. She also could not remember when Scooter Ray had rolled on top of her, or how it came to the point where Scooter Ray was slicing in and out of her, quietly, quickly. For a second it occurred to Jamie to stop him, only because she didn’t have her diaphragm in. But that second passed as her intellect was wiped clean from a surge of stringy, wet, body emotions. And then Jamie was instantly present as Scooter Ray pressed into her, urgently, hard, making tiny whimpering noises that sounded like crying.

Scooter Ray kissed Jamie as wetness pooled between her legs.

“You’re cool,” Scooter Ray said.

“What do you mean by that?” Jamie nudged Scooter Ray off her; he rolled onto his back so they were side by side.

“I dunno. You’re not giggly.”

“I think maybe I’m more giggly when I’m with my friends.” Jamie slid atop Scooter Ray’s warm, slick body; her cheek pressed against the top of his chest. He was as flat and hard as a surfboard.

“Well, I like you without your friends.”

“Do you know about the baby that died in my pool?” Jamie felt she had to ask; she thought of Lacey’s death as her handicap and she needed to point it out lest it be discovered later and cause even more horror.

“Yeah. Flip did mouth-to-mouth on it or something.”

“What?”

“I heard Flip tried to save a baby from your pool. Your parents were all fucked up or something and no one was watching the kids.”

“And?”

“And Flip went to check on them and did mouth-to-mouth when he saw the baby.”

“Jesus did mouth to mouth,” Jamie said.

“Hey-soos as in Jesus? Are you a Jesus chick?”

“No. I mean Jesus, a person, our gardener. He did mouth-to-mouth.”

Scooter Ray laughed. “Man, you scared me for a minute. 
I thought you were like my mom or something. She’s a total Bible-lady and she takes all my old clothes to this Mexican church in Ventura, you know, and when she comes back she’s always saying ‘Praise Hey-soos’ and shit like that.” Jamie’s fantasy of shopping sprees with Scooter Ray’s mother fizzled like a dead firecracker.

“Flip didn’t do mouth-to-mouth,” Jamie said.

“Cool. I believe you.”

“And my parents weren’t fucked up. Or maybe they were. 
But it wasn’t their baby, it wasn’t their responsibility.”

“Hey, I’m not blaming you. I’m just telling you what I heard.”

“Okay, well then, here’s the story: my parents had a party. The baby was being watched by a kid named Franny. 
The grown-ups were jumping on the trampoline. Flip and I went to the pool and I saw the baby. I screamed, or something, and Jesus, our gardener, jumped in, pulled the baby out, and did mouth to mouth. And the baby died. The next day, Flip called me up and broke up with me.” And for the 
second time that night, Jamie was crying, her floating happiness having plummeted into the muck below her.

“Hey, it’s okay.” Scooter Ray wrapped his arms around Jamie, real tight, like a boa constrictor, and kissed the top of her head. The longer he held her, the better Jamie felt, until it seemed as though Scooter Ray had squeezed the tears from Jamie and replaced them with the joy she’d been feeling only minutes earlier.

Scooter Ray gently wormed out from underneath Jamie and sat up.

“I gotta get back before Kim starts looking for me.” He kneeled into the sand and felt around for his clothes.

“Kim? Kim Redson?” Jamie felt hope streaming out of her—like ghosts flying out of a body.

“Yeah. She’s my girlfriend.”

“God, I . . . I completely forgot you were with Kim.” As she said this, Jamie remembered Tammy telling her that Scooter Ray and Kim Redson had fallen in love. Why hadn’t she remembered? Was she so intent on her own internal drama of loneliness, rejection, and eating in solitude that she could no longer keep track of the lives beyond her own? She was like her father, Jamie decided, who when he was immersed in his work couldn’t get his daughters’ names straight and never knew whether he’d had breakfast or not.

Jamie patted the sand, looking for her clothes.

“We’ve been together for about a week. She’s really serious about this, man.”

“Are you in love?” The stain of hope resurged in Jamie’s belly. She prayed that Scooter Ray would say that he loved her, not Kim Redson.

“I guess, but being in love doesn’t mean I don’t have a mad crush on you.”

“You’ve never spoken to me until tonight.” Jamie found her clothes and began dressing with shaking hands.

“I thought you were ignoring me.”

“No. I just didn’t know you.” What if Scooter Ray was the perfect boyfriend? Jamie thought. What if her relationship with Flip turned out to the worst thing that had ever happened to her—the thing that prevented her from getting to know Scooter Ray before he met Kim Redson?

“Well, too bad we didn’t get together sooner, ’cause now I’m really in it deep with Kim.”

“And you love Kim?” Jamie was giving him one more chance to profess his love to her. She and Scooter Ray could avoid each other for a week or so, letting things settle down after he broke it off with Kim, gently, slowly.

In person.

“I guess I do love Kim.” Scooter Ray reached a hand down to help Jamie up.

“I don’t know where my flip-flops are,” Jamie said, and she wanted to cry again but held her tears in, sensing that she was verging on the ridiculous.

“I lost my boxers,” Scooter Ray said. “They’re the only pair I like.”

“Maybe it’s a sign that you need a new pair.” Jamie’s voice was high and strained as she tried to shake off her disappointment through forced cheer.

“Yeah, fuck it,” Scooter Ray said.

“So we’re leaving your underwear and my shoes?”

“Yeah.” Scooter Ray laughed. “Let the next person wonder about them.”

“God, what if Kim finds out about this,” Jamie said.

“She’ll hate me. Everyone will hate me.” Jamie wondered if this was how girls like Taffy Longue got bad reputations: a 
series of misunderstandings in which one party thinks she’s sleeping with her future boyfriend, the only person she’ll have sex with for the next two years or so, and the other party thinks he’s getting a wet, instantaneous thrill—an act never to be repeated or seen again, as fleeting as a sand sculpture built just before high tide.

“No one will know,” Scooter Ray said. He kissed Jamie on the lips, then took her hand and led her, barefoot, out of the cave. “Maybe if it doesn’t work out with her—” Scooter Ray didn’t finish his sentence.

“Yeah. Whatever.” They were out of the cave. Jamie pretended to search the sand for the beers. She wanted to look anywhere but into Scooter Ray’s face; she couldn’t bear the thought of him knowing how hard she’d just landed after only a few soaring moments with him.

Jamie still held the two beers when they returned to the party. Scooter Ray gave the top of Jamie’s arm a squeeze good-bye, then slipped away and settled next to the fire, beside Kim, who brushed the sand off his face and gave him the look of a mother tending to her rascally son. Tammy was sitting on Debbie’s lap, blowing the smoke from the joint she had just inhaled into Debbie’s open mouth. Jamie finished off one of the beers, placed the full one inside the empty cup, and stumbled toward Tammy and Debbie. They were not more than a few feet ahead, but it felt like miles.

Jamie’s feet weren’t hitting the sand right, weren’t moving forward the way she intended. Finally she reached them.

“I’m wasted,” Jamie said, collapsing behind Tammy. “I need to go home.”

“So go,” Tammy said.

“How? I just had sex with Scooter Ray.” The words floated in front of Jamie as she said them; she knew that she 
should have trapped them before they hit Tammy’s and Debbie’s ears.

“You have no morals!” Tammy said. “He’s with Kim!”

“I know,” Jamie mumbled. “I totally forgot.”

“I told you!”

”I know you told her,” Debbie said. “You told me you told her.”

“Man, Jamie,” Tammy said. “You have got to get yourself together. I mean, you’re baptized now! You need to act like a good Christian! Christian girls don’t do immoral shit like that!”

“Do you know what morals are?” Jamie asked in earnest.

Even though Tammy went to church, even though she told Jamie that Lacey was in a better place now that she was sleeping in heaven with Jesus, it had never before occurred to Jamie that Tammy thought there was something better, more pure, in being Christian.

“Of course she knows what morals are!” Debbie said. 
“And if you ever read the Bible you’d know too!” 

Jamie pushed herself up and stumbled away from them, away from the party, to the parking lot of Henry’s Beach, toward Brett’s truck, which she hoped she could find as her eyes were milky and heavy, as if she were looking underwater in a fish tank that had never been cleaned.

Eventually Jamie stumbled into Brett’s truck. Like Bone-Man at the cliff, she tried to mount the truck bed, but instead toppled to the ground. Jamie lay in the gravel for a moment, waiting for the spinning to stop, or at least unify so that her head and body whirled in the same direction.

When all felt still, Jamie sat up and put one hand on top of the tire to pull herself up. She remembered the bumper, how easy it is to get into a truck bed when you mount the 
bumper first. With a few clunky knee bangs, Jamie hoisted herself into the back.

Jamie’s clothes were damp from the cave, her feet were cold, and there was sand in her right eye. Lying in the bed of Brett’s truck seemed appropriately uncomfortable—as if there were some perfection in having everything feel hard or itchy. Her stomach roiled and Jamie said a quick prayer to the Chumash celestial gods to not let her barf in the truck.

Jimmy and Brett were talking about Brett’s weed, where he hid it in the truck. Jamie opened her eyes and realized she’d been sleeping, or passed out, or had simply, somehow, not been present. And then Jimmy spotted her.