What It Was Like (4 page)

I grunted some acknowledgement, but I didn't stop looking at the girl. I like to think that I'm not easily impressed, but there was something undeniably appealing about her. Even from across the room.

“What's her name?” I whispered.

“Rachel . . . Prince,” he intoned softly, and I heard, for the first time, the name that would be forever linked with mine.

≁

That was the first time I saw her. I saw her several times more before I actually spoke to her. It wasn't a question of my not having the courage to go up and speak to her – well, it
was
that – but it's mainly that there was no opportunity. I saw her twice a day, at morning and evening Line-Ups around the flagpole, in those first couple of days. She looked as if she were in her own perfect little world, standing quietly with two or three adoring girls around her. Once I saw her at the pay phone outside the Main Office, twirling the phone cord around and around her forearm as she talked intensely to someone on the other end. I looked at her, and I think she looked at me, but we didn't really meet until the fourth night. I suppose that I could have just walked up to her at any time and struck up a conversation like a normal person, but that's not me.

The first time we talked – the very first time – it was the night of the fourth day, and the Doggies, along with the rest of the Inter Boys, had their first Evening Activity with just the Inter Girls: square dancing. Now this was a pretty hard-core-sissy, squirm-inducing activity for a bunch of nine- ten- eleven- and twelve-year-old boys. But it was the first real icebreaker with the Inter Girls, something that had to be done sometime.

So Stewie and I herded the Doggies – all of us dressed like cowboys, or as close as we could come – to the upstairs of the Rec Hall, all the way fighting their reluctance to do anything that combined girls and dancing. But I have to hand it to Jerry or the Marshaks or whoever at Mooncliff found these square-dancing people; they had this old geezer (I guess that's redundant, but he was so old, redundancy in this case is simply the correct emphasis) named Pecos Pete, and he called one helluva square dance.

“Honor your partner! Honor your corner!” Pete's charming, rinky-dink combo of bass, banjo, guitar, and kazoo/apple-cider-jug/washboard/spoons/Adam's apple, played by what must have been his family (the whole bunch looked like the Joad family, but with sequins), got even the shyest kids up and dancing. Oh, sure, some of the kids were goofy, but the music eventually worked its honky-tonk magic. We circled right and circled left; we dozy-doed this way and that way. I'm not the greatest dancer, but this I could do.

I don't remember exactly what songs they played as I tried to “dance” and keep my kids in line. But I do remember those glimpses I had of Rachel, all night long, as she danced.

How she danced! She was two squares away from my square, but as I circled right and circled left, as I allemanded left and allemanded right, I could see her, her dark hair flying, her eyes sparkling, graceful hands reaching out to help the little kids in her group or whipping them around the square, their feet barely touching the floor. She was having such fun that it made
me
have more fun. The drive and good humor in the music, the dancing, and the general tone of just-barely-controlled confusion (kids giggling, beaming, sweating) made the night fly by. Swing by, really.

The square dance ended in a big, yahoo circle, and the boys who until recently couldn't stomach the thought of dancing or even
holding
some girl's hand for more than a second had to be dragged out of the Rec Hall bodily.

Coming out of the wide back doors into the night air, herding my sweaty Doggies, is when I literally ran into Rachel . . . well, almost. This was the first actual moment of contact, under the pool of floodlight, right outside the doors. She, stumbling over her girls; me, counting my kids, struggling still to recall their names, and tangle-footed too. And then, there we were, face to face.

She smiled at me. There was a slight pause in the Universe.

I said, “It's hot.”

She said, “It's summer,” looking me right in the eyes. Her eyes were very blue.
Blue-
blue. Right then,
right then
, I felt that something was going to happen between us. I didn't know exactly what, but I knew it was going to be something . . . significant.

The path back to the bunks from the Rec Hall divided – Boys' Campus, one way; Girls' Campus, the other way – but for a while, before the split at the big baseball backstop, girls and boys could walk together. That's where the older campers, the boyfriends and girlfriends, could get one last kiss before being separated.

So Rachel and I, with the other counselors, walked the kids back down the path toward the big backstop, all together. This is when we talked for the first time, introducing ourselves carefully. At least I was being careful.

“You're new,” she said. That was a good sign; it meant that she had noticed me.

I didn't say anything. (Did I freeze, or was I just being smarter than usual by
not
being me?)

“You'll like it here,” she added, with an easy certainty in her voice.

“I believe you,” I said. Not sure if she was being sincere or condescending.

We walked for a moment in tantalizing silence.

“I've been coming here, to the Moon-shak, forever.”

“I didn't see you at Orientation,” I replied, feeling what it was like to walk next to her. I was just tall enough for her.

“They made me come up with the campers. In the
buses
,” she said, reliving the unpleasant memory. “But at least I'm a C.I.T. now –
finally
.”

“So now you get the best of both worlds.”

“Or the worst; my curfew is an hour earlier than you counselors,
and
I can't go off campus.”

“Oh, that's not so bad. I'm sure you'll find a way around that.”

Which made her laugh, once. Good. That was a start. The laugh, and a look. As we walked and talked, I was listening not only to her words but also to the sound of her voice. Her voice was
musical
, the way she ran her words together or lingered over individual syllables. She played her voice like it was some instrument: she was quick to laugh, quick to darken everything; one moment celebrating the smallest detail of something, and the next, condemning something or someone else with a surprising, full, throaty ferocity. She had this insolent, confident manner, so relaxed about her beauty that as she walked next to me, talking to me, I felt myself being
drawn in
.

“I like my girls, the girls this age,” she said. “They're very honest and pure, before all the
teenage
drama begins.”

“You don't like teenage drama?” I asked.

“Only my own,” she said. Which made
me
laugh.

“But this is definitely my last year here,” she went on. “So I want to try to be a good counselor.”

“Why is it your last year?” I asked.

“It just is,” she said, with a simple finality that made me ask nothing further. At least for the time being.

“They put me in with Sara Molloy,” she went on. “Who is a very good counselor. They call her Serious Sara, but I like her anyway.”

“Well, I'm sure
you're
going to be a very good counselor too,” I said.

“How would
you
know?” she shot back to me.

I was a little stung by her sharp response but didn't show it. I liked how she talked, her quick words and her sly smiles, how she didn't simply accept my cliché of a compliment. I liked how she was playing with me.

“I just have this feeling,” I said, completely casual.

She smiled when I said that.

“I saw the way you danced back there,” I said. “Tossing those kids around like rag dolls.”

“I'm very strong . . .” she smiled. “For a girl.”

“I bet you are,” I answered right back, trying to keep looking in her eyes and not down to her upper arms and the rest of her body.

With a twist of her mouth, she was about to say something flirtatious (I think) when Estelle, standing guard at the big backstop, stopped us all cold.

“OK, boys! Back to Boys' Campus nowwwww!” announced Estelle. “Girls – you know where to go!”

Rachel moved away from me, gathering her campers. “OK, Bunk 8 – you heard Estelle!”

I had to say something to her before she got away.

“So, that was fun,” I said, indicating the Rec Hall and the square dancing.

She paused, turned on me, and purred, “I approve of any activity where you honor your partner.”

The formality of her diction and the direct way she looked at me stood me still for a moment. I laughed, and she liked that I laughed. Then she turned with a smile, knowing that she had almost certainly conquered another male heart.

She looked great, walking away bouncily, quickly hugging one of the girls to her side and joining in their song or game or whatever they were doing. I stood there for a moment, watching her go. When she walked away, it was as if the world had dimmed. Everything was a little darker, a little less exciting, a little less alive. I noticed that the very first time she left me, and it was never, ever really any different.

I was snapped back to the present world by the Redheaded Doggy, pulling at my arm. I had promised to read them a story after Lights-Out if they cleaned up the bunk a little before Evening Activity, and kids unfortunately never forget a promise. So I walked with Stewie, herding the Doggies and the other Inters back to the Boys' Campus, all the while thinking of Rachel. Marcus caught up next to us, falling in step through the damp night grass.

“That's where
you'll
have to break up the boyfriends and girlfriends, later in the summer.”

“Boyfriends and girlfriends?” Stewie said. “But these kids are only eleven!”

“Are you kidding?” Marcus squawked. “These horny little suckers! Summer is all about raging hormones. Besides, some of 'em are almost twelve. All they whisper about is ‘cuppies.'
This
girl's got cuppies,
that
girl's got cuppies.”

“What's ‘cuppies'?” I asked.

“Oh,” he said. “That's Mooncliff slang for ‘breasts.' I don't know how it started. Did you see: Mazlish? That little twerp has this poster of Nancy Sinatra in his closet that
I
want!”

I laughed and said, “I bet your boots are going to walk all over
him.
”

“I, uh, saw you talking with Prince back there,” said Marcus.

“Yeah,” I said neutrally.

“So . . . ?” he demanded some elaboration.

“So what?” I said. I didn't owe him any explanation. There was nothing to explain at this point.

Marcus laughed and shook his shaggy head. “Oh, boy. She's gonna chew you up and spit you out! A girl that pretty, who
knows
she's that pretty? You sure she isn't too much for a regular dude like you?”

I grunted out a “ha” and let him have his laugh. I had better things to think about. And how did he know I was a “regular dude?” I certainly didn't feel regular, walking alongside Rachel Prince.

We got the Doggies back to the bunk, and with about the expected amount of chaos from getting twelve little boys into bed –
with
toothbrushing, please! (What is it about young boys and hygiene?) – I settled back on my bed and thought of Rachel, how she looked when she was dancing, how she looked walking next to me, how she looked when we were face-to-face. I mean, I was watching and counseloring and shouting at the Doggies who were screwing around and not getting ready for bed, but in the back of my mind, I was thinking of Rachel. The seed had been planted: real events that I could then relive, re-imagine, and spin into fantasy. Even when I got them into bed and was reading them the story of
The Tell-Tale Heart
(I'm a huge Poe fan) in the dark by flashlight, I was still thinking of Rachel, seeing her in my mind's “vulture” eye as I read them Poe's tale of madness, obsession, and murder.

Looking back on everything now – with
my
vulture eye – I can't even begin to describe Rachel Prince in a way that would do her justice. It wasn't just her physical beauty (the hair, the eyes, the perfect nose); it was her restless, intense attitude and the way that she used her beauty and charm and wit almost as weapons, but
selectively
, that made her different from any girl I'd ever met. After all, there are a lot of medium-height, nicely shaped, moneyed, long-dark-haired beauties from the Island and in this world, but none of them had the Life Force that Rachel possessed. If she was selfish and moody sometimes, she could just as easily turn gentle and almost angelic in a moment. If that made her difficult for some people to take, it made her attractive to me. Some people say that Rachel was self-centered. I guess that was true, but if you had a self like Rachel Prince's, you'd be centered on it too. But there was no objective, external reason for my feelings. Love is not logical, and a great, all-consuming love, which is what we had, creates its own
super
logic. Only It matters; only It makes sense.

≁

The next morning – the mornings in the mountains were shockingly cold – we tramped the kids through the dew-soaked grass to Line-Up around the flagpole before breakfast. I was tired: this getting up at 7:00 reminded me too much of school, not summer vacation, and now
I
had to be the enforcer, getting slugabed kids out on time when I was the one who wanted to stay in the sack. Stewie was always the last out of bed, throwing his sneaker at any Doggy who was slower than he was. Through gritty eyes I looked across the big circle of the whole camp – all yawning and toeing the ground, listening to Jerry drone the announcements, saying the Pledge of Allegiance – and looked for Rachel. There she was, standing behind her girls, calmly keeping them in line and quiet. I watched her for a long while. She wore this big coat with a hood that almost hid her face. She didn't look at me, or even look my way.

Which was fine with me. Just because I was looking at her didn't mean she had to look at me. After all, she was much better to look at than I was. Of course, ascribing good motives to questionable actions became something of a habit with me, later on.

So I went into breakfast and brooded all the way through the meal – if she wanted to ignore me, fine. Oh sure, we were attracted to each other last night, but I was also sure that a lot of guys were attracted to Rachel, came on to Rachel, fantasized about Rachel. So if she was wary, perhaps she was right. She didn't know me from Adam. I would have to be patient . . . and have some kind of a plan.

The meals in the Mess Hall were a lot of things: loud was one of them. Four hundred-plus people eating in one huge, barn-like building make a lot of noise. Kids are noisy, and counselors trying to control noisy kids are noisy. Add to that the clanking of glasses and silverware, the drumming feet of the hustling waiters and waitresses, the mind-numbing inanity of eleven-year-old boys in deep discussion, and you get the idea. Especially first thing in the morning.

“You shouldn't eat that. They put saltpeter in the food.”

“What's saltpeter?”

“It's this stuff they put in the food so we can't have sex.”

“You can't have sex anyway! You're eleven, you dork.”

“But even if I wanted to.”

“Who would want to have sex with
him
? He's eleven
and
ugly!”

“
And
mental.”

“Look who's talking? The human zit!”

“Peter
who
? From Bunk
Twelve
?”

Then Stewie finally yelled for all of them to shut up so we could all eat just one meal in peace.

And the food itself? Well, let's just say that every meal featured a fruit punch they called “bug juice.” Pitcher after pitcher of bug juice. Sometimes it was red, sometimes orange, sometimes even green (lime, a/k/a “Mooncliff Moonshine”), but it was always bug juice.

Sometimes I wish I could get lost in those silly memories. My memories of Camp Moon-shak and the trivialities of life there that seemed so . . . trivial, now seem so significant and precious. They are my refuge. So if I might be, shall we say, unsure of myself right at this moment, as I sit behind bars, on that particular morning after the first night we met, when I walked out of breakfast onto the sunny flagstone porch of the Mess Hall, in the clear, warming air of morning, and saw her waiting for me as if it were the most completely natural, inevitable thing to do, that's when I knew that
she
felt the same way too; something
was
going to happen between us.

She was sitting on the low wall on the Girls' side, with two of her campers sitting beside her, but her eyes were on mine as I came out the Boys' door. She had a smile that said:
What took you so long?

I walked over to her, as Steve McQueen as I could. Which wasn't much, I admit, but I didn't scare her away.

“Hi,” I said to her, trying to keep my voice normal. “How did you sleep?”

She hesitated. I don't think she was expecting me to say that. “Oh . . . I had crazy dreams.”

“All dreams are crazy,” I said.

“Some more than others,” she answered back. I liked this flirting.

“What do you have this morning?” I asked. Her eyes were even bluer during the day.

“We have kickball!” she said, faking enthusiasm for my amusement. Or was she really enthusiastic? I liked trying to
read
her.

“A
girls'
sport? I've never played a girls' sport.”

“You don't know what you're missing,” she said archly. “Girls' sports are the best. How about you?”

She squinted in the sun, looking up at me, tilting her head.

“Arts
and
crafts!” I intoned.

“Both of them at the same time?” she laughed. “That
is
a challenge.”

“Hey, I'll make you a lanyard,” I offered.

She smiled and shot back, “I'll see your lanyard, and raise you an ashtray.” Which made
me
laugh. I liked that she liked to play. But as if on cue, she was called by a chorus of her loving campers –”Rayyy-chlllll!” – waiting for her at the bottom of the steps, down from the porch.

I just looked down at her, and she looked up at me, and we smiled. We said nothing because we didn't have to.

“Later,” I mouthed.

She let herself be dragged away by her girls.

“Save me!” she yelled back to me as they pulled her in the direction of the Girls' Campus.

“I will,” I said, knowing that she probably couldn't hear me. But perhaps she could
feel
me. In any case, I should have learned right then that I'd have to, as my Mom used to say, “
make do.”
Make Do with the amount of time, whatever it was, that I had with Rachel. Something or somebody always seemed to be pulling us apart. That was a hard lesson to learn, and one that I always fought against. If only they had just left us alone. . . .

So as I walked back to the bunk to watch the Doggies clean up for Inspection, I thought about Rachel, and I could think about her all morning. Of course, through this whole thing/experience/ordeal, I spent much more time thinking about Rachel than actually being with her. The ratio is pretty alarming when you think about it, but really, what we do most during our waking hours is talk to ourselves continually, back and forth, remembering and imagining and reliving, all the stupid/monumental/trivial/tragic things in our lives: this inner monologue
is
our life.

≁

From then on, my goal for the summer changed. Oh, I still wanted to be a good counselor, have a hassle-free summer in the country, and walk away with a decent chunk of change at the end – all those things – but suddenly my life became all about seeing Rachel. Nothing else really mattered. I mean it was the
obvious
thing to do.

I learned her bunk's schedule so I could make it my business to run into her at various times during the day. (All of the bunks' schedules for the week were posted in the Main Office.) Fortunately, because she and I were counselors for the Inters, our paths could cross more often “naturally,” whenever our kids had a co-ed Evening Activity, like that first square dance. But that wasn't enough for me. There was never “enough” for me: I had to see her more.

I had a free period that next afternoon and devised a plan to cross Rachel's path “accidentally.” (Yes, counselors occasionally were treated like actual employees, with some of the benefits of real workers, so we had a free period each day and a day off each week. Mine was Wednesday.) I found out that Rachel's bunk had boating first thing that afternoon, right after Rest Period. So during the Rest Period, I signed out a rowboat from Captain Hal, the old, beer-bellied head of the boating program, who really didn't care if I
ate
the boat, as long as I checked it out properly. Under the supervision of his suspicious red eyes, I moved the colored tag for Rowboat #4 on the Big Board from one hook to another hook, and stepped uneasily into Rowboat #4. I got control of the oars and pushed myself away from the other boats along the dock. Carefully, I rowed out to the far end of the lake. Then I stopped the oars and waited.

I brought a book with me, but I couldn't concentrate on it. My mind kept wandering, going over every word Rachel and I had exchanged and every look she had given me, even going so far as to imagine how she might be as my girlfriend. I know it might have been premature, but I couldn't help thinking what I was thinking. I mean I had had girlfriends before, in high school, but no one very serious. The girls I really desired never seemed to like me (except as a “friend” or homework helper), and the girls who liked me just didn't seem to be all that desirable. If that sounds borderline silly and frustrating and futile, all I can say is that most human relationships are that way, so far as I've seen. That's why this sudden spark with Rachel seemed so promising, so surprisingly real.

I pulled my Mets cap down over my brow, reclined carefully across the rowboat's seat so that I could prop my feet up, and I drifted. As I settled in, the up-and-down movement of the water rocked me uneasily. I thought of Rachel's dark hair swinging and bouncing as she square-danced, how she radiated joy and vitality. Marcus said that she teased a couple of guys every summer, but I didn't pay too much attention to that. He was probably just jealous; no girl as fine as Rachel would ever show any interest in him, that's for sure. No, I could tell from the way that she looked at me, with those x-ray blue-blue eyes of hers, that she definitely liked something in me. It wasn't just my imagination. I definitely felt something from her. Definitely . . . something . . . definitely . . . something. So many scenarios to imagine . . . so many possibilities.

“Hi.”

I guess I must have fallen asleep, but I don't think I flinched too obviously when I heard her voice. I sat up quickly and saw Rachel in a rowboat with two of her campers at the oars, bobbing on the lake, right next to me. They were all wearing these huge orange life preservers and had big grins on their faces.

“Oh, hi,” I stammered out, trying to retain my cool.

“Looks like you fell asleep,” Rachel said with a sly smile.

“No!” I lied, trying to salvage my dignity. “I was just lying there, thinking –”

“Thinking with your eyes closed?” she asked sharply.

I regained my balance in the boat and shot back, “I do
lots
of things with my eyes closed.” Which made her snicker and made the little girls giggle.

Rachel looked at me for a moment, x-raying me, and said, “I thought it was you out here.”

“No,” I said coolly. “I simply
drew you
to me.” And, for a change, she didn't know if I was serious or not;
she
was the one who was stopped in place. The little girls giggled louder, whispering to each other, and rocked their boat a little.

“Stop it!” Rachel snapped at them. “Remember what Captain Hal said about moving around in a boat?” The girls stopped moving, obeying her instantly, gripping their oars.

“What
did
Captain Hal say about moving around in a boat?” I asked her.

“I have no idea,” she whispered to me. “But probably not to do it too much.”

I liked the way she joked. I liked the way she looked, even in a life preserver over a Mooncliff T-shirt over a bathing suit. She had nice, smooth thighs.

“What are you reading?” she asked me.

“
Gatsby
,” I said simply, and waited.

She said nothing at first, but the pleased look on her face said everything.
Gatsby
was the perfect bait
and
the perfect hook.

“I've read it,” she said. “Twice.”

“Try the short stories,” I said.

“I
have
,” she said.

“Can we go now??” one of the little girls whined, but before the words were out of her mouth, Rachel turned on her and spat out, “Be quiet, brat!”

Both little girls were instantly silent, with wide, scared eyes.

“After the stunt you pulled,” continued Rachel, sounding very adult. “You shouldn't be allowed out of the bunk at all!”

She let them sit and listen to her words ring out on the open water. I was quite impressed by her command over the girls – I wished the Doggies listened to me so automatically –
and
by the quickness of her temper.

Rachel turned to me and winked.

I played along, saying, “Oh, come on, Rachel, be nice to these girls. They've been rowing so hard, you can see the beads of sweat on their poor little foreheads.”

That really made the girls giggle.

One of the girls, a pudgy one with a mischievous smile, said, “Rachel said that ‘boys are toys.'”

This made both little girls burst into laughter as Rachel objected.

“Hey, you two!” she said. “Did I tell you you could talk?”

“‘Boys are toys'?” I repeated thoughtfully. “You think that's true?”

“It is for some boys,” she said back with that sly smile. She was very pretty, and, yes, she knew it. It was going to be a challenge to get close to her and yet not give her the upper hand.

“How about if I race you lovely young girls back to the dock?” I offered, and they accepted faster-than-instantaneously as I knew they would. With a shriek and a clatter and a big push of their oars, the little girls started to row vigorously.

“Row! Row fast! Come on – before he's ready!” Rachel cheered them on as I hustled around in my seat and took up my oars. They splashed me and splashed themselves as they rowed like demons away from me and across the lake. As soon as I began, I had to stop rowing to keep my copy of
Gatsby
from sliding off the seat and into the bilge water in the bottom of my rowboat, but then I started rowing medium-hard.