Summer People (23 page)

“Noooo, all they did was kiss.”

“For half an hour.”

“Yes.”

Nathan nodded and refocused his concentration, wanting to make sure that he had drawn the amused curve of her lips before compelling her to speak again. When a few minutes had passed, he said, “Did you visit your ex-boyfriend when you were there?”

Leah hesitated but then shrugged. “Yeah, he fixed me dinner at his skanky co-op one night. Eldwin told you about him?”

“He assumed I already knew.” Nathan let her acknowledgment of this
most recent boyfriend—a boyfriend she'd never mentioned to him—linger like a ghost in the room. “So what was skanky about his co-op?”

“It was just dirty. The kitchen was dirty, the bathroom was dirty,
they
were dirty. It's like the whole house was all artists and musicians, and none of them could take the time to wash a glass.”

“Hmm.” Nathan nodded sympathetically, although more conscious now of the pile of dirty clothes beside his closet.

“And I think they wanted me to have group sex with them.”

Nathan smiled uncertainly but kept his eyes on his drawing. “Yeah? What makes you say that?”

“After dinner, I was in Marcus's room and we were just talking, but you could hear other people in the room next to us having sex, and it sounded like it was more than one woman.”

“Maybe it was a lesbian couple.”

“No, I heard a guy's voice, too.”

“What was he saying?”

“He was just mumbling and grunting. I did hear him say, ‘Now back that up.'” Leah tried to imitate the man's guttural voice, but then she broke down laughing, leaning over with hands clasped.

Nathan told her to hush and waited for her to right herself again. “Well, what makes you think they wanted to have sex with you?”

“First of all, who wouldn't want to have sex with me?” Leah smiled with an only slightly ironic glint in her eyes. “Second, we'd just had dinner with these people. I mean, we were all sitting around, and when they got up to leave there was just a weird, kinky vibe in the room. I don't know. I don't think I would have thought anything of it, but Marcus said we should go over and knock on the door.”

“Whoa, he said that?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Hell, no.' I wasn't going to interrupt a group of people having sex.”

“So you think Marcus wanted you to participate in group sex with
him?” Nathan asked, wonderingly.

“Yes, Midwestern boy. That's what I'm telling you.”

Nathan shook his head but did not look up from the drawing.

“Would you ever have sex with more than one person?” Leah asked.

Nathan's eyes widened. “You mean at the same time? I don't know. It sounds kind of complicated. I'm not sure where everything would go.”

“I thought that was every boy's dream. Two girls at one time. I don't think you can know until you've been asked.”

“That's probably true.”

“Lindsey went down to this resort in Jamaica with this friend of hers and they said there was tons of group sex going on—that people would just meet in the pool or in the hot tub, and then you'd see a group of them leaving together.”

“Did Lindsey do it?”

“Well, she said this one guy who looked just like Richard Gere invited her to go with him and his wife upstairs to their room to have drinks, but she didn't go. She said it was happening
so
much that it began to seem normal. For one week she could resist it, but she said if she was down there for two weeks, she wasn't sure.”

A moment passed and Nathan sighed. “All right, we've got to talk about something else. How was your interview with what's his face?”

Leah laughed. “Why do we have to talk about something else?”

“I can't concentrate.”

“Oh.”

“So how was your interview with what's his face?”

“I think it went okay, but who knows?”

“What'd you talk about with him?”

“Books—about the kind of fiction I like and want to help publish. I think I kind of ended on a good note with him. When we were getting up to leave, he asked me if there was anything else he should know about me, and I told him I was addicted to lip balm, and he said he was, too.”

They talked for a while about her job search until it was clear that she wasn't searching for a particular job in publishing—as an assistant editor,
say, or publicist—but for almost any job in the industry. Her fondness for books was intertwined with an idea of life in New York City as she'd witnessed it in early Woody Allen movies. Such people—hadn't she just met some at Epoch?—spent their days performing thoughtful, gratifying work, then retired to friends' spacious, book-lined apartments to laugh and drink wine with other smart and stylish New Yorkers. Leah wanted to find a way to be included.

Nathan occasionally looked up to view the lovely, shadowed hollow at the base of her neck, or the loose, lustrous curls of her hair. He was aware of the sound of his pencil scratching against the paper and how long it was taking to draw her.

“What are you thinking about?” Leah asked.

“I'm thinking about you.”

“What about me?”

“I was thinking about how much you've slouched from your original posture.”

Leah sat up and resumed a ridiculously regal demeanor, then sighed into a pose that was not quite as she'd originally been sitting.

Nathan said, “I was also thinking that for the next portrait, you should be stretched out nude on top of my bed with a pencil tucked behind your ear…like you're copyediting or writing a press release or something.”

“Weren't you just talking about having problems concentrating?”

“The nudity wouldn't be about your…nudity…but about creating a representation of the purity of your devotion to the craft.”

“What craft?”

“Nude copyediting, or nude press release writing.”

Leah sighed as if disappointed with his tactless methods of trying to see her naked. But a moment later she asked, “Would it be any easier for you if I sat closer—to make sure you're getting it right?”

Nathan feigned indifference, but she sat on the edge of the bed, close enough that he could smell the apple scent of her shampoo. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and stared up at him through long lashes. Nathan pretended to concentrate on the drawing as Leah leaned far enough
forward that he could feel her breath on his neck. She looked down at the sketch. “I look blurry,” she whispered.

“Well, it's a rough sketch—like an outline.”

“Am I blurry to you?” she asked, leaning closer.

“You make me feel blurry,” Nathan said, which was true, generally, but right then he felt like he'd been holding his breath a long time and that kissing her was like breathing. The sketchbook dropped to the floor as he and Leah scooted back on the bed with one of Nathan's hands clasped behind her slender neck. In time, as they kissed, he brought the same hand over her right breast and then underneath her shirt to feel the warm smoothness of her skin.

Leah flinched and whispered, “Your hands are cold.”

“I'm trying to warm them.”

Her forehead pressed against his, and he moved his head away to kiss her, but also to take the excruciating pressure off his bruise. They pulled the covers back and scrambled beneath them, kicking off shoes, pulling off shirts, until the creaking springs sounded so much like the cliché sex sounds of movies that they stopped. Leah laughed into Nathan's shoulder. He reached over to turn off the lamp. When they were both undressed to their underwear, Leah whispered, “I don't think we should have sex.”

“All right.” Nathan had an old condom in his wallet, and he had been hoping that the evening would end in lovemaking, not wholly for the sensual pleasure—although that was no small part—but also because it would be a way of pulling her closer, of establishing, implicitly, that he had nothing (besides bodily harm) to fear from Thayer or any other young man.

“Is that okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, no, of course,” he said, wrapping his arm around her and pulling her toward him. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he glanced down at her lovely, moonlit shoulders, Nathan's discontent evolved into something like gratitude. Sex was apparently a gift she bestowed only on the most worthy, and Nathan's heart lightened at the possibility that he might be worthy, if he tried.

 

B
y the time Leah arrived Saturday evening, Nathan had already filled a picnic basket with a bottle of pinot noir, a wedge of Brie, a baguette, and a blanket from one of the spare bedrooms. As they left the house, he pulled a flashlight out of his back pocket and she followed him toward the shed. Opening the white wooden doors, Nathan shone the broad beam of light over old fishing poles, garden tools, and finally the
Little Red Hen.

“You might have to go alone,” Leah said, frowning beside the small rowboat.

“Why?”

“Because I think we're both going to drown if we go out in that thing.”

“We're not going to drown. It just looks old. It
is
old, but it works.” Nathan pulled the boat down off its stern to conduct a more thorough inspection.

Crouching down to pull a piece of flaking paint off the interior, Leah asked, “How do you
know
that it works?”

“Because Thayer borrowed it a little while ago and unfortunately survived the experience.” Nathan pressed his hand against the floor of the boat to check for dampness even though he knew any water that had seeped in while Thayer was using it would have already dried. In the flashlight's sickly beam, the boat looked older than Nathan remembered, and now that he was planning to use the boat himself, the amount of peeling paint disturbed him. He had been looking forward to the trip, but now he hoped Leah would try again to dissuade him.

“All right,” Leah sighed with arms crossed, shifting her weight. “But if you kill me, I'm going to be pissed.”

Leah picked up the oars, picnic basket, and blanket while Nathan pulled the boat upright and carried it out onto the lawn. He positioned himself under the boat, knees bent, then hefted it above him. He staggered forward a few steps to find his balance.

“Do you want me to help you?” Leah whispered.

“No, I'm good,” Nathan said, frustrated by the heaviness of the boat, remembering how easily Thayer had borne the weight. As Thayer had done,
Nathan held on to both sides, with the boat a foot or so above his head, but a few steps down the lawn he let the boat rest upon his stooped shoulders.

“Are you sure? That looks painful.”

“It is painful,” Nathan said.

He tramped a few yards farther, then bent his knees to let the stern rest on the ground. Stepping out from underneath, he held the boat up with one hand while massaging the back of his neck.

Leah said, “Why don't we put the oars and food in the boat and then we can both carry it?”

“You mean besides the fact that I'll feel less masculine?”

“Oh, don't feel less masculine. I saw you pick it up.” With lips pursed in mock admiration, she wrapped her hand around his slender bicep. When they had deposited the oars and picnic items on the floor of the boat, Leah lifted the stern, her flip-flops flopping behind Nathan as he guided them through the tall grass to the bay. Setting the boat down in the shallow incoming tide, he pressed his hand along the rough bottom and used his flashlight to check for leaks.

Leah put a hand on his back for support as she absently brushed at a pebble beneath her foot. “Do you think it'll hold both of us?”

In the reflected glow of the boat's bottom, Nathan smiled with grim satisfaction at his own thoughtlessness. During all of his planning, and the shoulder-searing experience of lugging the
Little Red Hen
to the shore, how had he not considered that question? Thayer was muscular, but he was not the size of
two
people. And although Ellen's husband and son had used the boat in the father-son derby, that was more than forty years ago, while Glen was still a small boy. Nathan doubted his ability to swim the breaststroke for very long, particularly in such frigid water. But if the boat had a leak or could not hold them, he figured they would find this out long before he'd rowed too far from shore. “I'm sure it's fine,” he told her.

There was only one seat for a rower, and Leah eased herself down in front, knees pulled to her chest, watching Nathan arrange the two oars. He rowed the boat thirty yards, then withdrew the oars and turned on the flashlight to see if they were sinking.

“You feel anything?”

“Lust,” Leah said. She had already uncorked the bottle of wine and was drinking out of the plastic cup. “You look very masculine when you're rowing.”

So Nathan continued to row. Initially he'd been undecided about which of the harbor's islands they should visit. But the farther he rowed from the well-lit shore, the more he steered toward the closest: Stone Island. The sweeping glow of its lighthouse also offered refuge from the uncertainties of the dark.

“Would you like a sip?” Leah asked, apparently undisturbed by the fact that they were now hundreds of yards from the coast or the island.

“I try not to drink and row.”

“Hmmph—since when?”

On the island's narrow shore, Leah helped him pull the boat past the nearly continuous strand of seaweed that marked the farthest reach of high tide. Nathan carried the basket and blanket as they stepped carefully among the rocks and crunching seashells toward the far side of the island. Clusters of dense shrubbery on their left thinned into a grassy, dandelion-speckled clearing beneath the towering lighthouse.

When they had spread out their blanket and drunk half the bottle of wine, Nathan lay back, looking up at the stars. He pulled her toward him to kiss her. When he let her go, he asked, “What do you think about those relationships where the woman wears the pants?”