Waking Beauty (27 page)

“She used to be. Before she got ‘broad in the beam,’ as Mother says.” He laughed and grabbed my ass. “I bet married life wouldn’t ruin this one.” He gave me what I construed to be a meaningful look, then leaned in and kissed my ear. “I think I’m ready for a lie-down,” he said. “How about you?”

“I wouldn’t mind a nap.”

“You’re not still sleepy?”

“A little,” I lied.

“Why don’t you go have a snooze. I’ll take a shower and then join you.”

“All right.”

I got undressed and slipped under the quilt. I wasn’t planning to fall asleep, but the fresh air mixed with the smell of cedar, and the sound of the shower going in the en suite bathroom, sent me drifting off.

“Psst…”

I opened my eyes and saw George standing beside the bed, half hovering over me. His hard cock was pitching a tent in the terry cloth around his hips. “Hi, there,” he whispered, dropping the towel. I caught a whiff of Ivory soap coming off his moist pubic hair.

“Hi.” He looked pretty sexy, to tell you the truth. I felt a jolt of desire for his damp, perfect body.

George took his cock in his right hand and slowly peeled back the quilt with his left. “Oh,” he said. “What the hell happened to you?” He was staring at the bruises on my hip and thigh.

“Oh, um, I fell and crashed into a table at work the other day.” I ran my fingers over the cumulus cloud of purple, yellow, and black.

“Jeez. That’s too bad. Wow. It’s really bad, huh?”

“Well, it doesn’t hurt anymore.” I watched his penis shrink and drop soft from his hand.
Plop
.

“Oh, good. Good. I’m glad it doesn’t hurt.” He pulled the cover back over me. “So you want to keep napping for a while?”

“No. I’m up now.”

He picked the towel off the floor and carried it to the bathroom.

“Maybe I’ll go for a swim,” I said. I hadn’t gone swimming since I was a kid. I adored swimming.

“Um, shouldn’t we wait for the Dons?”

“Why?”

“To be sociable,” he said. He came out of the bathroom and started dressing. His bureau was full of clean summer clothes, all folded and pressed. “I’m sure they won’t be long. Hey, why don’t we play a game?” he said. “How about a game of Trivial Pursuit?”

I had just about trounced George when Don and Dawn appeared at the sliding glass door of the screened-in porch.
They were both wearing flip-flops and white robes with
Idlewild
—the name of the cottage—embroidered in black on the tit. They had beach towels slung over their arms.

“Hey, guys, feeling rested and refreshed?”

“You bet,” said Don.

“I just love these robes. It’s such a good idea!” said Dawn, coming closer to observe the game. “Ooh, someone has all their pies.” She put her hand on George’s shoulder and squeezed.

“That would be me,” I said. George had two pies, a sports pie and an entertainment pie.

“Oh!” Up went the eyebrows. “Good for you!”

“This lovely young lady is kicking your ass,” said Don with a laugh. Everyone seemed amused and surprised by it. George had certainly looked astonished every time I’d answered a question correctly.

“I know it,” he said, wiping the board clean. “Let’s go for a swim.”

George put on a pair of navy trunks, crisp and trimmed with white. He sat on the bed and surveyed my fluorescent pink bathing suit. It was hideous, too small in the tits and too big in the butt. It had cutaway sides that showed my bruises prominently, and the seat was covered with tiny balls of frayed material where the Rude Woman had sat on cement or some other rough surface. Still, I looked good in it. Downright
Sports Illustrated
. As Old Allison I didn’t even own a bathing suit. I refused to appear in public with my exposed flesh bulging. Man, I was looking forward to a swim!

“You know, that suit doesn’t really fit,” George said. “I know. I’ll have to get a new one eventually.” “We have spares, if you’d like to borrow one.” “Don’t worry about it. It’s going to get wrecked in the hot tub anyway.”

“I’m sure we have one that will fit better.” He left the room and returned moments later with a navy one-piece trimmed
with white piping. “Here,” he said, tossing the suit to me. “Now we’ll match.”

Swimming felt gloriously good. Dear God, it felt good. The lake was frigid-sixty-nine degrees, according to the thermometer dangling slimy from a submerged lower rung of the dock ladder. But I loved the coldness all over my body, especially on my hot skull. I loved the strong strokes my new arms could make, moving me fast through fresh water, and when finally I couldn’t take the chill for one more moment, when my teeth were chattering happy, I would climb, confident and carefree, up the ladder and onto the dock, with everyone’s eyes on my goose-pimpled flesh. It was freedom I felt. Pure, exhilarating, yellow-day joy. If the sun wasn’t behind a cloud when I emerged from the lake, I would flop down on my stomach on the dock and feel the warm starting between my shoulder blades. I would listen to my heart beating hard, inhale the good wood smell, and peer through the slats to the lake below, at my blue eyes reflected in the dark water. If a cloud was hanging in front of the sun, I would dash up the hill to the hot tub, sink into the churning, pleasantly scented chemical bath, and listen to the whir of the jets, feel them working on my glad muscles, and the bottom of my feet if I stretched my legs long across the expanse of tub. When my face was shiny with sweat and I couldn’t take the boil for one more moment, I would dash down the hill and dive into the lake again. Heaven.

“
My gosh, you’re like a fish
,” said Dawn as I emerged from yet another swim. I smiled and wrung out my hair, much water falling from locks onto the dock.

“Like a mermaid,” said Don. And Dawn shot him a frown.

I found a dry spot and stretched out on the wood in the late-afternoon sun.

“Why don’t you lie on a lounge chair?” said George.

He had asked me this earlier. “I’m okay,” I said.

“You’d be more comfortable on a chair.”

“I’m all right.”

“Indulge me and try it for a sec.”

I got up and lay down on a chair next to Dawn.

“I just don’t know how you can stand it,” she said, referring, presumably, to the sixty-nine-degree water. Her voice was edged with quiet hysteria. Her husband had been eye-balling me all day from behind insufficiently opaque sunglasses. This seemed to please George a hell of a lot more than it pleased Dawn.

“I find it invigorating,” I said, watching three kids at the neighboring cottage take turns swinging into the lake from a rope tied to a big tree.

“Ugh!” Dawn shuddered and let out a peal of high-pitched laughter. She did not brave the icy lake. At one point, she had tried entering gradually from the beach area. I saw her standing for at least ten minutes, submerged to mid-calf, dipping her hands in the water and patting her upper arms with it. But no go. Eventually she lumbered back to the dock, applied a thick coating of SPF 45 sunscreen, and donned a colossal straw hat (a wide-brimmed affair that looked as if it could pick up several hundred channels). Don jumped in once, cannonball style, treaded water for twenty seconds, and then got out. George dived in twice, once before a hot tub and once after. A cooling in/out. I was the only one who swam.

At five o’clock, George announced that it was “cocktail time.” I slipped away to take a long, hot shower. The shampoo smelled like mango. The moisturizing body lotion smelled like cucumber and avocado. I pilfered some soft cottage clothes from George’s dresser—a baggy black T-shirt and a pair of khaki army shorts. I combed out my hair and plaited it in one heavy braid down my back. I felt fresh and slightly buzzed from too much sun. And I was famished. In a good way.

Off I went to the kitchen in search of something to eat.
There was a glass pan on the counter, full of thick steaks marinating in soy sauce and fresh garlic. The smell drove me wild. I swung the fridge door open. Another glass pan, this one full of gigantic scallops in a citrus marinade. There were peaches plump, blue plums, green grapes, cheeses of all kinds, pâté and dips: humus, Baba Ganoush, roasted red pepper…but I needed grease. I required crunch. I rooted around in the pantry until I stumbled across a snack bonanza: giant jars of honey-roasted peanuts, tinned cashews, and an embarrassment of cookies, crackers, and chips. I grabbed a bag of Barbecue Kettle Chips, ripped it open, and shoved a handful of delicious into my gape. After several fistfuls I calmed down, licked the orange residue off my fingers, dumped the remaining contents into a bowl, and carried it onto the deck, where the others had assembled for drinks.

“There she is,” said George. He stood up and stirred a tall glass pitcher of martinis with a glass swizzle stick. “Cocktail?”

“Yes, please. Anyone want a chip?” I held out the bowl.

“No, thanks,” said Dawn, putting up a halt hand, then patting her belly—international sign for “I feel I am too fat to enjoy chips.”

“Not for me,” said Don, chawing on a cigar. The smoke smelled wonderful.

I took a seat and placed the bowl in front of me. George handed me an elegant long-stemmed martini glass. “There you go.”

“Thanks.” There were fine ice crystals floating on top of the gin, and a curlicue of lemon rind at the bottom of the glass. I said, “Isn’t it funny how beverages that make you clumsy are served in the most tippy glasses, while beverages that make you alert are served in heavy ceramic mugs?”

“That’s true,” said George with a tolerant smile.

“What a cute observation,” said Dawn, as if I were a five-year-old who had just tied my shoes successfully for the first time.

“Cheers.” I raised the glass and took a sip. My God, it
tasted good! Clean and sharp and impossibly bracing. I alternated swallows of martini with handfuls of greasy chips. I smiled and nodded at the conversation bouncing across the table, but I was focused on the truly amazing deliciousness of the martini and chips, the pleasant sun-kissed feeling of my flesh, and the tantalizing smells all around me: the sweet cigar smoke in the piney air, the mango coming off my damp braid, the hint of avocado and cucumber when I brought my hand close to my face. It occurred to me that all I’d have to do is smile and nod politely, all I’d have to do is be unbruised and a willing backsplash for semen, all I’d have to do is wear the navy suit with the white piping, and all this could be mine. It really could. I could marry George. I could marry him and move into his penthouse loft and soak in his claw-footed tub. In the winter I could frolic at his condo in the Caymans and accompany him on his business trips to the Bahamas. In the summer I could head up to the cottage and stay for an entire season while George helped his father with real-estate developments or played movie producer in the city. I could go from hot tub to lake all summer long, smiling and nodding on weekends if necessary. It would be endless luxury, but more important, it would be the end of drudgery. No more scrambling to make the rent, no more crappy low-paying jobs, no more peeling-ceiling apartments (I shuddered as a flash of Jeannie Coombes on her porch flitted through my head), no more Laundromats with washed Kotex pads and mucus-encrusted children, no more Sunny Delight orange drink. I sipped my martini and watched a bird fly across the low sun. I imagined a life of perfect cocktails and crunchy Kettle Chips and banana-leaf body wraps and all the time in the world to do whatever the hell I wanted. I could read
Remembrance of Things Past
. Or take up fencing.

“Sounds like a plan,” said Doug when George suggested firing up the barbecue.

“Shall us girls make the salad?” said Dawn.

“Yes, let’s,” I said, and the perkiness of my voice surprised
me. I downed my drink and followed Dawn into the huge kitchen, where I tipsily chopped up the reddest tomatoes with the sharpest knife on the biggest butcher block I’d ever seen.

After dinner
, George and Don went out to the deck to smoke cigars, while Dawn and I cleared the table and loaded the dishes into the dishwasher. Dawn castigated herself for having consumed too much food, and complained about a recent dental whitening procedure that had left her teeth inordinately sensitive to hot and cold. She asked me if I had had mine done. I said no, I hadn’t. She asked me if I thought Matthew Broderick would be at Heaven & Earth later. I said I didn’t know. She asked me what I was going to wear. I said a red shift.

Eventually we all reconvened in the main room, in front of the impressive quartz fireplace, to sip wine and have dessert, wild-blueberry pavlova with fresh whipped cream, whipped up fresh by me, don’t you know.
Shall us gals prepare dessert? Yes, let’s!
Don and Dawn were going on about how much fun we were all having and how they should purchase a cottage in the area. George was telling them about a property that was for sale. But it wasn’t on the same lake, and Dawn and Don wanted one on the same lake so they could boat over. I wasn’t really paying attention or participating in the conversation. Earlier, Dawn had asked me what I did for a living. I was about to answer, when George interjected, “Allison’s between jobs at the moment.”

“Oh,” said Dawn, smiling. “Me, too. Although I do a lot of volunteer work and fund-raising activities.”

I smiled back. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say very much at all after that. For example, I didn’t say a thing when Don started ranting about a high-profile artist who had received government funding for a painting that Don felt he himself could have done with his eyes closed. I didn’t make a peep when Dawn said that her book club read all the titles recommended by Kelly Ripa. I was quiet as a mouse when George
admitted he rarely read anything besides the sports and financial pages. I just sipped my wine and smiled politely and stared into the impressive quartz fireplace.

“I like the looks of that place next door,” said Don.

“What, the Parker place?”

“The big stone one.”

“Yeah. It’s prime. Awesome boathouse. But they’ll never sell. It’s been in the family forever. The Parker kids will get it next.”

“Too bad,” said Don.

“No, honey, it’s good to keep these things in the family,” said Dawn. “That way you can retain the integrity of the lake.”