Things You Should Know (4 page)

BOOK: Things You Should Know
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A phosphorescent dream. Everything hidden under cover of night becomes abundantly clear, luminescent.

Hiding in the dunes, she is a foot soldier, a spy, a lusty intruder. The sand caves in around her, the silky skin of another planet.

What was so familiar by day is inside out, an X ray etched in memory. The sands of Main Beach are foreign shores. With her night-vision goggles she scans the horizon on the lookout. At first there is just the moon on the water, the white curl of the waves, the glow of the bathhouse, the bleached aura of the parking lot. Far down the beach Tiki torches light figures dancing, ancient apparitions in a tribal meeting. Closer, there is a flash, the flick of a match, a father and daughter burst out of the darkness holding sparklers. They have come to the sea to set the world afire; thousands of miniature explosions erupt like anti-aircraft fire.

“More,” the little girl shouts when the sparkler is done. “More.”

“Do you think Mommy is home yet?” the father asks, lighting another one.

Checking her watch, she feels the pressure of time; the window of opportunity is small, twelve to twenty-four hours. Ready and waiting; her supplies are in a fanny pack around her waist, the car is parked under a tree at the far edge of the lot.

She has been watching them for weeks, watching without realizing she was watching, watching mesmerized, not thinking they might mean something to her, they might be useful. Tall, thin, with smooth muscled chests, hips narrow, shoulders square; they are growing, thickening, pushing out. Agile and lithe, they carry themselves with the casualness of young men, with the grace that comes from attention, from being noticed. These are hardworking boys, summer-job boys, scholarship boys, clean-cut boys, good boys, local boys, stunningly boyish boys, boys of summer, boys who every morning raise the American flag and every evening lower it, folding it carefully, beautiful boys. Golden boys. Like toasted Wonder Bread; she imagines they are warm to the touch.

She checks to be sure the coast is clear and then crosses to the tall white wooden tower, a steeple at the church of the sea.

She climbs. This is where they perch, ever ready to pull someone from the riptide, where they stand slapping red flags through the air, signaling, where they blow the whistle, summoning swimmers back to shore. “Ahoy there, you’ve gone too far.”

She puts out supplies, stuffing condoms into the drink holders. She suspects they think the town is providing them as a service of some sort; she waits to read an angry letter to the editor, but no one says anything and they are always gone, pocketed, slipped into wallets, a dozen a day.

Carefully, she climbs back down the ladder and repositions herself in the sand. As she crawls forward, the damp sand rubs her belly, it slips under the elastic waistband of her pants and down her legs, tickling.

It began accidentally; fragments, seemingly unconnected, lodged in her thoughts, each leading to something new, each propelling her forward. At cocktail parties, in the grocery store, the liquor store, the hardware, the library, she was looking, thinking she would find someone, looking and see
ing only pot bellies, bad manners, stupidity. She was looking for something else and instead she found them. She was looking without realizing she was looking. She had been watching for weeks before it occurred to her. An anonymous observer under the cover of summer, she spent her days sitting downwind, listening to their conversations. They talked about nothing—waves and water, movies, surfing, their parents and school, girls, hamburgers.

She found herself imagining luring one home. She imagined asking for a favor—could you change a bulb?—but worried it would seem too obvious.

She could picture the whole scenario: the boy comes to her house, she shows him the light, he stands on a chair, she looks up at his downy belly, at the bulge in his shorts, she hands him the bulb, brushing against him, she runs a hand up his leg, squeezing, tugging at his Velcro fly, releasing him.

They have a mythology all their own.

She caught herself enjoying the thought—it was the first time she’d allowed herself to think that way in months.

Now, she catches herself distracted, she puts her goggles back in place, she focuses. A cool wind is blowing the dune grass, sand skims through the air, biting, stinging, debriding.

A late-night fortune hunter emerges from the darkness, creeping across the parking lot, metal detector in hand. He shuffles onto the beach, sweeping for trinkets, looking for gold, listening on his headphones for the tick-tock of Timex, of Rolex. When he gets the signal he stops and with his homemade sifter scoops the sand, sifting it like flour, pocketing loose change.

She hears them approaching, the blast of a car radio, the bass beat a kind of early announcement of their arrival. Rock and roll. A truck pulls into the parking lot, they tumble out. This is home plate. Every morning, every night, they return, touching base, safe. Another car pulls in and then another. Traveling in packs, gangs, entourages, they spill onto the sand. And as if they know she is out there, they put on
show, piling high into a human pyramid. Laughing, they fall. One of the boys moons the others.

“Are you flashing or farting?”

Pawing at the sand with their feet, they wait to figure out what comes next.

There is something innocent and uncomplicated about them, an awkwardness she finds charming, adolescent arrogance that comes from knowing nothing about anything, not yet failing.

“We could go to my house, there’s frozen pizza.”

“We could get ice cream.”

“There’s a bonfire at Ditch Plains.”

They piss on the dunes and are off again, leaving one behind—“See ya.”

“Tomorrow,” he says.

The one they’ve left sits on the steps of the bathhouse, waiting. He is one of them—she has seen him before, recognizes the tattoo, full circle around his upper arm, a hieroglyph. She has noticed how he wears his regulation red trunks long and low, resting on the top of his ass, a delicate tuft of hair poking up.

A white car pulls into the lot. A girl gets out. The light from the parking lot, combined with the humidity of the sea, fills the air with a humid glow that surrounds them like clouds. They stand, two angelic figures caught in her crosshairs. They walk hand in hand down to the beach. She trails after them, keeping a safe distance.

The night-vision glasses, enormously helpful, were not part of her original scenario. She bought them last weekend at a yard sale, at the home of a retired colonel. “They were mine, that’s the original box,” the colonel’s son said, coming up behind her. “My father gave them to me for Christmas, they were crazy expensive. I think he wanted them for himself.”

“Is there some way I can try them?”

He led her into his basement, pulling the door closed behind them. “I hope I’m not frightening you.”

“I’m fine,” she said.

“We unwrapped on Christmas Eve, my father turned off all the lights and made me try. I remember looking at the Christmas tree, weaving around the room, watching the lights move and then tripping, going down hard, and starting the new year with two black eyes like a raccoon.”

“May I?”

He handed her the glasses, she reached out, feeling her way forward, their hands bumped. There was something terrifying about this unfamiliar dark; she stared at the glowing fish tank for comfort.

“The
ON
button is between the eyes.” She flipped them on and suddenly she saw everything—ice skates, an old rowing machine, odd military memorabilia, a leaf blower, hammers and saws hanging from pegs. She saw everything and thought that in a minute she was going to see something extra, something she shouldn’t see, a body in a clear plastic bag, slumped in the corner, a head on a stick, something unforgivably horrible. Everything had the eerie neon green of a horror movie, of information captured surreptitiously.

“If you’re interested I’d be happy to throw in a bayonet and a helmet,” he said, handing her one of each.

 

The boy and his girl are on the sand, making out. There is something delicate, tentative, in how they approach each other. Kissing and then pulling back, checking to see if it’s okay, discovering how it feels, a tongue in the mouth, a hand on the breast, the press of a cock against the thigh.

He lifts her shirt, exposing an old-fashioned white bra. She unhooks it for him. Her breasts are surprisingly large, his hands are on them, not entirely sure what one does, his lack of skill endearing.

She feels the urgency of their desire. Without warning she finds herself excited.

He takes his sweatshirt off and lays it on the sand. They are one atop the other. She imagines the smell of him, suntan
lotion, sweat, and sand, she imagines the smell of her—guacamole, fried onions, barbecue, stale cologne. She works either in a local restaurant or as a baby-sitter: formula, vomit, sour milk, stale cologne.

He rises for a minute, unzips his pants. His erection, long and lean, throbs in the moonlight. The girl takes it in her mouth. The boy kneels frozen, paralyzed by sensation, while the girl bobs up and down, like one of those trick birds drinking from a water glass.

She becomes alarmed, hopes they don’t keep at it, not wanting to waste her shot.

“The condom, put on the condom,” she is thinking out loud.

And then, finally, he pulls away, falls back on the sand, reaches into his pocket, locating it. He has trouble rolling it on—the girl helps. And then the girl is upon him, riding him, her bazoombas bouncing, floating like dirigibles. The boy lies back flattened, devastated, his arms straight up, reaching.

As soon as the condom is on, she feels her body opening. As soon as the girl is upon him, she is upon herself, warming to the touch. She wants to be ready. She is watching them and working herself. This is better than anything, more romantic, more relaxing than actually doing it with someone.

It ends abruptly. When they are done they are embarrassed, overwhelmed, suddenly strangers. They scramble for their clothing, hurry to the car, and are gone—into the night.

She waits until the coast is clear and then rushes toward the spot, finds it, and switches on her other light, a head-mounted work light, like a miner’s lamp. She plucks the condom from the sand, holding the latex sheath of lust, of desire, carefully. The contents have not spilled, that’s the good news, and he has performed well—the tip is full, she figures it’s three or four cc. Working quickly, she pulls a syringe—no needle—from her fanny pack and lowers it into the condom. She has practiced this procedure at home using lubricated
Trojans and a combination of mayonnaise and Palmolive dish detergent. With one hand, she pulls back on the plunger, sucking it up. Holding the syringe upright, capping it, taking care not to lose any, she turns off her lights and makes a bee-line back up the beach to her car.

She has tilted the driver’s seat back as far as it goes, and put a small pillow at the head end for her neck—she always has to be careful of the neck.

She gets into the car and puts herself in position, lying back, feet on the dash, hips tilted high. She is upside down like an astronaut prepared to launch, a modified yoga inversion, a sort of shoulder stand, more pillows under her hips, lifting her. The steering wheel helps hold her in place.

She is wearing sex pants. She has taken a seam ripper and opened the crotch, making a convenient yet private entry. She slips the syringe through the hole. When she’s in as far as she can go, she pushes the plunger down—blastoff.

Closing her eyes, she imagines the sperm, stunned, drunken, in a whirl, ejaculated from his body into the condom and then out of the condom into her, swimming all the while. She imagines herself as part of their romance.

After a few minutes, she takes a sponge—wrapped in plastic, tied with a string—and pushes it in holding the sperm against her cervix.

Meditation. Sperm swimming, beach sperm, tadpole sperm, baby-whale sperm, boy sperm, millions of sperm. Sperm and egg. The egg launching, meeting the sperm in the fallopian tube, like the boy and girl meeting in the parking lot, coupling, traveling together, dividing, replicating, digging in, implanting.

She has been there about five minutes when there is a knock at the window, the beam of a flashlight looking in. She can’t put down the window, because the ignition is off, she doesn’t want to sit up, because it will ruin everything—she uses her left hand to open the car door.

“Yes?”

“Sorry to bother you, but you can’t sleep here,” the police officer says.

“I’m not sleeping, I’m resting.”

The officer sees the pillows, he sees the soft collar around her neck—under the dim glow of the interior light, he sees her.

“Oh,” he says. “It’s you, the girl from last summer, the girl with the halo.”

“That’s me.”

“Wow. It’s good to see you up and around. Are you up and around? Is everything all right?”

“Fine,” she says. “But I have these moments where I just have to lie down right then and there.”

“Do you need anything? I have a blanket in the back of the car.”

“I’ll be all right, thank you.”

He hangs around, standing just inside the car door, hands on his hips. “I was one of the first ones at the scene of the accident,” he says. “I closed down the road when they took you over to the church—it was me with the flares who directed the helicopter in.”

“Thank you,” she says.

“I was worried you were a goner. People said they saw you fly through the air like a cannonball. They said they’d never seen anything like it.”

“Umm,” she says.

“I heard you postponed the wedding,” he says.

“Canceled it.”

“I can understand, given the circumstances.”

She is waiting for him to leave.

“So, when you get like that, how long do you stay upside down?”

“About a half hour,” she says.

“And how long has it been?”

“I’d say about fifteen minutes.”

“Would you like to get a cup of coffee when you’re done?”

“Aren’t you on duty?”

“I could say I was escorting you home.”

“Not tonight, but thanks.”

BOOK: Things You Should Know
3.27Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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