We stopped at the same time and pulled back a little from each other. Her hands were still on my shoulders. Mine were on the sides of her waist, just above her hips. Her face was composed enough, but her eyes were more brilliant than ever, and there were slants of color in her cheeks, rising along the cheekbones.
‘Oh boy,’ she said. ‘I really wanted that. Ever since Ki tackled you and you picked her up I’ve wanted it.’
‘John wouldn’t think much of us kissing in public,’ I said. My voice wasn’t quite even, and my heart was racing. Seven seconds, one kiss, and every system in my body was red-lining. ‘In fact, John wouldn’t think much of us kissing at all. He fancies you, you know.’
‘I know, but I fancy you.’ She turned to check on Ki, who was still standing obediently by the tree, watching the juggler. Who might be watching us? Someone who had come over from the TR
on a hot summer evening to get ice cream at Frank’s Tas-T-Freeze and enjoy a little music and society on the common? Someone who traded for fresh vegetables and fresh gossip at the Lakeview General? A regular at the All-Purpose Garage? This was insanity, and it stayed insanity no matter how you cut it. I dropped my hands from her waist.
‘Mattie, they could put our picture next to “indiscreet” in the dictionary.’
She took her hands off my shoulders and stepped back a pace, but her brilliant eyes never left mine. ‘I know that. I’m young but not entirely stupid.’
‘I didn’t mean — ‘
She held up a hand to stop me. ‘Ki goes to bed around nine — she can’t seem to sleep until it’s mostly dark. I stay up later. Come and visit me, if you want to. You can park around back.’ She smiled a little. It was a sweet smile; it was also incredibly sexy. ‘Once the moon’s down, that’s an area of discretion.’
‘Mattie, you’re young enough to be my daughter.’
‘Maybe, but I’m not. And sometimes people can be too discreet for their own good.’
My body knew so emphatically what it wanted. If we had been in her trailer at that moment it would have been no contest. It was almost no contest anyway. Then something recurred to me, something I’d thought about Devore’s ancestors and my own: the generations didn’t match up.
Wasn’t the same thing true here? And I don’t believe that people automatically have a right to what they want, no matter how badly they want it. Not every thirst should be slaked. Some things are just wrong — I guess that’s what I’m trying to say. But I wasn’t sure this was one of them, and I wanted her, all right. So much. I kept thinking about how her dress had slid when I put my arms around her waist, the warm feel of her skin just beneath. And no, she wasn’t my daughter.
‘You said your thanks,’ I told her in a dry voice. ‘And that’s enough. Really.’
‘You think this is gratitude? ‘ She voiced a low, tense laugh. ‘You’re forty, Mike, not eighty.
You’re not Harrison Ford, but you’re a good-looking man. Talented and interesting, too. And I like you such an awful lot. I want you to be with me. Do you want me to say please? Fine. Please be with me.’
Yes, this was about more than gratitude — I suppose I’d known that even when I was using the word. I’d known she was wearing white shorts and a halter top when she called on the phone the day I went back to work. Had she also known what I was wearing? Had she dreamed she was in bed with me, the two of us screwing our brains out while the party lights shone and Sara Tidwell played her version of the white nana rhyming game, all that crazy Manderley-sanderley-canderley stuff?. Had Mattie dreamed of telling me to do what she wanted?
And there were the fridgeafator people. They were another kind of sharing, an even spookier kind. I hadn’t quite had nerve enough to tell Mattie about mine, but she might know anyway. Down low in her mind. Down below in her mind, where the blue-collar guys moved around in the zone.
Her guys and my guys, all part of the same strange labor union. And maybe it wasn’t an issue of morality per se at all. Some thing about it — about us — just felt dangerous.
And oh so attractive.
‘I need time to think,’ I said.
‘This isn’t about what you think. What do you feel for me?’
‘So much it scares me.’
Before I could say anything else, my ears caught a familiar series of chord-changes. I turned toward the kid with the guitar. He had been working through a repertoire of early Dylan, but now he swung into something chuggy and up-tempo, something that made you want to grin and pat your hands together.
‘Do you want to go fishin
here in my fishin hole?
Said do you want to fish some, honey,
here in my fishin hole?
You want to fish in my pond, baby,
you better have a big long pole.’
‘Fishin Blues.’ Written by Sara Tidwell, originally performed by Sara and the Red-Top Boys, covered by everyone from Ma Rainey to the Lovin’ Spoonful. The raunchy ones had been her specialty, double-entendre so thin you could read a newspaper through it . . . although reading hadn’t been Sara’s main interest, judging by her lyrics.
Before the kid could go on to the next verse, something about how you got to wiggle when you wobble and get that big one way down deep, The Castle Rockers ran off a brass flourish that said
‘Shut up, everybody, we’re comin atcha.’ The kid quit playing his guitar; the juggler began catching his Indian clubs and dropping them swiftly onto the grass in a line. The Rockers launched themselves into an extremely evil Sousa march, music to commit serial murders by, and Kyra came running back to us.
‘The jugster’s done. Will you tell me the story, Mike? Hansel and Panzel?’
‘It’s Hansel and Gretel,’ I said, ‘and I’ll be happy to. But let’s go where it’s a little quieter, okay?
The band is giving me a headache.’
‘Music hurt your headie?’
‘A little bit.’
‘We’ll go by Mattie’s car, then.’
‘Good thought.’
Kyra ran ahead to stake out a bench on the edge of the common. Mattie gave me a long warm look, then her hand. I took it. Our fingers folded together as if they had been doing it for years. I thought, I’d like it to be slow, both of us hardly moving at all. At first, anyway. And would I bring my nicest, longest pole? I think you could count on that. And then, afterward, we’d talk. Maybe until we could see the furniture in the first early light. When you’re in bed with someone you love, particularly for the first time, five o’clock seems almost holy.
‘You need a vacation from your own thoughts,’ Mattie said. ‘I bet most writers do from time to time.’
‘That’s probably true.’
‘I wish we were home,’ she said, and I couldn’t tell if her fierceness was real or pretend. ‘I’d kiss you until this whole conversation became irrelevant. And if there were second thoughts, at least you’d be having them in my bed.’
I turned my face into the red light of the westering sun. ‘Here or there, at this hour Ki would still be up.’
‘True,’ she said, sounding uncharacteristically glum. ‘True.’
Kyra reached a bench near the sign reading TOWN COMMON PARKING and climbed up on it, holding the little stuffed dog from Mickey D’s in one hand. I tried to pull my hand away as we approached her and Mattie held it firm. ‘It’s all right, Mike. At VBS they hold hands with their friends everywhere they go. It’s big people who make it into a big deal.’
She stopped, looked at me.
‘I want you to know something. Maybe it won’t matter to you, but it does to me. There wasn’t anyone before Lance and no one after. If you come to me, you’ll be my second. I’m not going to talk with you about this again, either. Saying please is all right, but I won’t beg.’
‘I don’t — ‘
‘There’s a pot with tomato plants in it by the trailer steps. I’ll leave a key under it. Don’t think.
Just come.’
‘Not tonight, Mattie. I can’t.’
‘You can,’ she replied.
‘Hurry up, slowpokes!’ Kyra cried, bouncing on the bench.
‘ He’s the slow one!’ Mattie called back, and poked me in the ribs. Then, in a much lower voice:
‘You are, too.’ She unwound her hand from mine and ran toward her daughter, her brown legs scissoring below the hem of the white dress.