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"No one tells me better stories," he assured me. I was aware of the point at which a compliment becomes a trap, because you are expected to keep doing the thing you are praised for; resentment will follow when you stop.
"Lie back," I said.
That night I had worn my grandmother's diamond earrings. I thought I might leave one behind in his bed the next morning. The moment this occurred to me, I thought, Why should he require an object to bring me to mind?
The music he had put on was a medieval motet. Two voices begin, and are joined by two more, then two more, until forty-eight singers are holding forth together. It has the hypnotic effect of a chant, but it is song. I knew that if he ever hard this music out in the world, I would be the person he would think of. There it was again, thinking in terms of souvenirs, what you take away from a place to help you call it back.
I kept on a sea green slip and joined him, sitting on the bed so as to force his legs apart. |
Obediently, he lay back in the barely lit room. I kept on a sea green slip and joined him, sitting on the bed so as to force his legs apart. I stroked him slowly and said, "The time in the pool at night? There was something I left out before."
"This was in Laguna?" he said, as though he could have forgotten.
"Katherine and I drove down in a day. We left at dawn and took the Grapevine south — not much to see, but we wanted to make the best time. I wanted to watch the sunset from her sister's pool. We only stopped at that place that has the oysters."
"I know that place — "
"That's the one," I said.
"Her sister lived in one of those heavily landscaped compounds where several bungalows share a large pool. Night-blooming jasmine was planted around this pool, so the air smelled good when you swam after dark."
"You wear jasmine sometimes when you come to me," he said.
"We both gave in to the drone of the drive, that line down the center of the state. It was driving with a destination, but with nothing required of us when we got there."
"The way you can drive in California!" he said. "I used to love that about it."
I reached for a bottle of almond-scented oil. I poured a little in my hand.
"We didn't unpack at first," I said. "We pulled on bathing suits from a duffel bag and wrapped beach towel sarongs around them. Except that I had been unable to find mine, and had packed a leotard instead, the Danskin kind with the narrow straps, flesh-colored.
"There were only two other people in the pool. Two men were doing laps in the deep end. Katherine and I stood in water up to our breasts and held on to the edge of the pool with our arms stretched out behind us. The water was heated, and it swayed against us slowly from the emotion of the swimmers doing laps."
"Time was slown way down," he said, he eyes closed.
"We stayed like that," I said, "until the men climbed out of the pool and lay down on chaises spread with towels at our end.
"Are you listening?" I asked. "Because one of the things I just told you was a lie. Can you tell me what was the thing I made up?" |
"Are you with me?" I asked.
"Darling," he said.
"Katherine churned the water around her, and when she did a handstand, I saw that she had taken off her suit. The men saw, too, of course. They were quite a bit older than we were, and wore plaid swimming trunks. What an awful word — trunks.
"Are you listening?" I asked. "Because one of the things I just told you was a lie. Can you tell me what was the thing that I made up?"
"You mustn't tease an old man."
"But really," I said, suddenly exhausted, "don't you have something like this on video? Maybe we could just watch that?"
My voice was raw, and when I coughed, he got up to get me a glass of water. On his way back from the kitchen, he stopped to play back messages left by callers during the night.
He asked about the place on the lake but he never came to see it. He had done all the traveling he was ever going to do; that was the impression he gave. Now he traveled in time, taking me with him to where he had gone when he was a go-er. I was not so eager to go anywhere, really, so this didn't bother me, except for once when I thought we should drive to Maine. I wanted us to drift in a canoe across a calm, cold lake, and listen to loons.
He had been to a lake in Maine with someone else years before. He said his Maine had been a week at a famous fishing camp whose pricey guides took your family out at dawn and then fried your catch for lunch. What occupied him now was seeing how far a person could go in the realization of pleasure, without leaving home, two people in a bed.
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