A Hundred Summers (18 page)

“Let me buy you a drink.” Basil White turned to the bar and waved his hand.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered to Graham.

“Oh, just making sure you girls don’t get into too much trouble.” He laid his arm across the top of my chair and fiddled with the ends of my hair. “You’re all wet.”

“Caught in the downpour.”

“What a shame.” He didn’t sound disappointed. I caught the direction of his gaze, and saw that it was just shaving the top of my dress.

I took a smoke, and chased it down with the rest of my martini.

“That’s the spirit,” said Graham. The waitress came back with a glass of scotch, no ice, and Graham clinked my second martini. “Cheers. To rain and jazz.”

We smoked and drank, and talked about jazz and baseball and the miserable weather, and by the time Basil White returned to his trumpet, Graham was on his third scotch, and my head was buzzing with warm gin and tobacco. “Dance?” said Graham, stubbing out his cigarette.

I looked at Budgie.

She waved her fingers at us. She wasn’t wearing her engagement ring, just her plain gold wedding band. “Go ahead, kids. I’ll be right here, admiring the scenery.”

Graham rose and took my hand to the shifting crowd gathered near the bar, some of whom clutched each other in a kind of rhythm, a semblance of dance. The bodies were closely packed, radiating sweat and heat. My right palm stuck to Graham’s, my left curled around his neck. His hand pressed against my back.

“I don’t know this dance,” I shouted in Graham’s ear.

“Neither do I,” he shouted back, and we jiggled and moved as best we could, guided by collisions with other bodies, our hips drawing closer and closer together until I could feel every detail of muscular Graham pressed along my length. We were both running with sweat. I thought of Nick and Budgie, stuck together on the veranda at the Fourth of July ball, moving in tandem, her lipstick staining his mouth. I thought of how Nick had taken her home that night, helped her undress, taken her to bed with him. Who could have resisted Budgie, with that bloodred silk shimmering down her body? Nick would certainly have taken her to bed, would certainly have made himself at home between his wife’s glistening limbs. How had Graham put it? Engaged with her in sexual intercourse. Screwed her for mutual satisfaction throughout the humid July night.

Graham pulled back. “Let’s go outside and get a breath, shall we?”

I nodded. Graham picked up a couple more drinks at the bar and led me out the front door and around the side of the building, away from the cars and the entrance. The rain had stopped, but a few drops still trickled off the gutters. The air drooped with warmth, not refreshing at all but at least smelling of wet leaves and automobile exhaust instead of cigarettes and perspiration.

A wooden bench leaned against the wall, both of them peeling with old blue paint. Graham set down the drinks, sat on the bench, and pulled me into his lap. “Lily Dane.” He shook his head and drank down half his whiskey. “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“I don’t know. Kissing you, I guess,” I said, and pulled his head down.

His mouth was strong with whiskey, adding to the tipsy spin in my brain, and his right arm draped around my back while his left hand balanced his drink. We kissed for some time, back and forth, a little deeper with each pass, until he pulled back and studied me with hazy eyes. “Well, well,” he said.

“Well, well,” I said. I lifted myself up and straddled him.

Graham set down his scotch and reached around my back to unfasten my dress, down to the waist. I held out my arms, and he drew the bodice down over my shoulders and let it drop in a pool of damp crepe de chine around my girdle. I wore a plain ivory silk brassiere underneath, not even edged with lace. “Now, that’s more like it,” he said. “Very practical, very Lily.” He slid his finger speculatively under the edge. When I did not object, his experienced hands ran around my back to unhook the fastenings and lift the brassiere away.

“Well, well,” he said again. He leaned back against the wooden wall, tipping the bench a bit, and dropped the brassiere by his side. The sun was setting behind the thick rolling clouds, and his face had softened with the beginnings of drunkenness. His heavy-lidded gaze slid over my chest, not missing a detail. “I didn’t count on this for weeks.”

“But you did count on it.”

“A man can hope.” He picked up his whiskey and poured a few drops on the curve of my right breast, then bent his head and licked them off. “That’s good. Scotch and Lily. Very good.” He did the same with the other breast, this time allowing the whiskey to trickle all the way to the tip before catching it with his warm tongue. He set the glass down.

My eyes were closed by now. I was floating, drifting in a warm, wet cloud. Somewhere in the fog of my brain, Nick and Budgie were copulating, over and over, their blurry bodies stuck together and her lipstick on his mouth. Graham’s thumbs rubbed against the tips of my breasts, and then his hands covered them both, strong and large, squeezing gently. I arched my back.

“So, Lily.” He kissed my wet neck. “What now?”

“I’m afraid I’m a little drunk,” I said.

“So am I. Drunk and not very gentlemanly.”

I opened my eyes. We kissed again, even longer this time. I slung my arms around his neck. He picked up his scotch and finished it, almost without breaking the kiss, and played with my breasts. His hands felt hard on my skin, hard and smooth-polished by baseballs and bats and lowball glasses. “I think we’d better stop now,” he said.

“You’re right.”

“I didn’t bring a rubber with me.”

“Then we should certainly stop.”

Graham sighed and started on the second drink. “All right,” he said. He picked up my brassiere from the bench and put it back on, fastening the hooks as if he’d been born to do it, and I raised my dress and pushed my arms through the holes. Graham tilted me around and did up the buttons in the back. My heart was slamming against my chest; my hands were shaking. A cool thread of sobriety began winding through my head, making my face flush with shame.

“Hey, there.” Graham took my chin. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“No regrets, right?”

I didn’t answer.

Graham kissed my nose, picked up my hand and kissed that, too. “Tell me something, Lily. When was the last time you kissed a man?”

“About six and a half years ago.”

Graham swore. “Is that so?”

“That’s so.”

He put his hands on my knees and slid his fingers under the hem of my dress, right up to the edge of my stockings. “Then I’d say it’s about time, wouldn’t you?”

I didn’t say anything. I thought of Graham’s whiskey kisses, his warm hands on my skin, how different and how much the same as the kisses and hands I’d known before. My insides were a muddle of desire and shame and impatience. Nick’s face flashed before me, guarded and reproachful, a little accusing. I wanted to crawl away, but Graham’s hands held me in place, straddling his lap.

“The way I see it,” said Graham, “we have two choices here. One, we take this very interesting conversation back, say, to your bedroom, or some other convenient spot. There, properly equipped, in privacy and comfort, we take things to their natural conclusion. Maybe even do it again, for good luck. Maybe even make a habit of it.”

“Fun all around,” I said. “And what’s the second choice?”

Graham took another drink. “The second choice is, we start again. No bars, no jazz, no drinks, no kissing below the neck. Just a fellow courting his girl.”

A drop of rain clunked on my head, and another. From somewhere above came a faint warning rumble. “The rain’s starting up,” I said.

“What is it?” Graham asked. “None of the above?”

“I don’t know. What do you mean by
courting
?”

“A very good question. What
do
I mean by
courting
?” Another drink. “I’ll tell you a little story, Lily. When I called up Budgie, before I drove out to Seaview, she told me you’d be here. She asked me to look in on you, show you a good time.”

“What did you say?”

“I said sure, why not? Lily’s a pretty girl, a nice girl. So that’s why I came down on the beach last week. To sound you out, get the lay of the land, make sure you hadn’t let yourself go. But the funny thing is, Lily Dane . . .” He checked himself and drank again. “The funny thing is, when I saw you sitting there in the sand, with the sun on your hair and your little girl hugging you like that, I thought . . . well, I thought . . .”

“What did you think?”

“I thought . . .” Graham’s eyes had lost their good humor. He looked bleary, earnest, a little lost. He drummed his fingers against my thighs and shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I thought. Don’t listen to me, been drinking too much. Let’s just forget all this happened,
hmm
? Start over, you and me.” He withdrew his hands from beneath my dress and gave my bottom a pat, and then picked up his scotch and finished it.

“All right.” I lifted myself from his lap and adjusted my dress. The rain picked up. I could already hear it shattering against the nearby leaves, the leading edge of the wave. “We’re going to be soaked,” I said.

“No, we’ll beat it.” Graham rose and grabbed my hand, and we ran around the corner to the entrance, only just making it through the door before the downpour hit in a crash of falling water.

The fug of jazz and smoke enveloped us. A burly man nudged past, wearing a cheap, loose-fitting brown suit. He glanced at me, looked at Graham. “Say, you’re the relief pitcher for the Yankees, aren’t you? Pendleton, right?”

“That’s right,” said Graham. He took his hand from mine and held it out. “Graham Pendleton.”

“Brother, I’m a Red Sox fan,” the man said, and he hauled back his fist and punched Graham in the jaw like a sledgehammer.

I CLINKED MY NICKEL
against the metal pay phone and looked at the pair of them, Budgie and Graham, sitting on the bench in the manager’s office. Graham held a dripping red New York strip to his jaw, his eyes half closed. Budgie cuddled into his arm, humming, pink-faced and drunk. I couldn’t call the Palmers, that was certain. Aunt Julie, perhaps?

But then Mother would hear Aunt Julie leaving, starting the car. She’d ask questions.

I slid the nickel into the slot and dialed up the Greenwald house. It was a Thursday; Nick was still in New York. Mrs. Ridge knew how to drive. Mrs. Ridge could take the other car, the station car, and meet us here. Plenty of room for all of us in the station car, a large Oldsmobile.

The phone range twice, and a male voice said, “Greenwald.”

“Nick?” I gasped.

“Lily?”

“Oh, God. I thought you were in New York.”

“I came up early. What’s the matter? Where are you?” Nick’s voice came back urgently.

I took a deep and shuddering breath and clutched the receiver with both hands. A click came down the line, and another. Phones were going up all along the Neck.

Think, Lily. Choose your words
.

“Everything’s all right. I’m with Budgie. We were going to dinner in Newport, remember?”

A little silence, and then: “Yes, of course.”

“We had a bit of car trouble, I’m afraid. Right outside South Kingstown.”

Budgie hiccupped loudly.

“Good God. You’re not by the road, are you?” Nick asked.

“No, no. We found a . . . I suppose it’s a sort of roadhouse. . . .”

Nick swore softly. “I’ll be there right away. Where is it?”

I gave him the address. “It’s a little hard to find, though. Hard to see from the road.”

“I’ll find you, don’t worry. Just stay put. You’re all right, Lily?”

“Yes, we’re all right.”

“Give me half an hour.”

He clicked off, and I set down the receiver and turned to Budgie and Graham. “Nick says he’ll be here in half an hour.”

Budgie groaned softly and turned her face into Graham’s broad shoulder. Graham groaned, too, and turned his head and vomited onto the floor.

Nick arrived thirty-five minutes later, his brown hair dark and damp, his eyes narrowed with worry. He took in the sight of Graham and Budgie on the bench without a murmur. Together we helped them into the Oldsmobile and arranged them on the backseat, groaning and stirring. Budgie’s dress was loose, the top buttons unfastened. Nick lifted the sagging neckline, did the buttons. He pried the steak from Graham’s fingers and tossed it into the woods.

We drove in silence along the wet highway, back toward Seaview. Nick turned on the radio, where someone was reading the news in a resonant voice. The Oldsmobile had a high roof, but Nick’s head hunched down slightly from habit. His long limbs folded around the steering wheel, the floor pedals. He smelled like damp wool and cigarettes, or maybe the cigarettes were me.

Halfway back along the coast, Nick spoke: “Can you tell me what happened?”

I looked down at my hands, which were folded on my lap. “We were going to Newport for dinner. That’s what Budgie said. We ended up stopping at that place on the way.”

“Her idea, or yours?”

My voice was raspy with smoke and gin. “Well, hers.”