Summer Accommodations: A Novel (26 page)

Sarah frowned and cocking her eyebrow said, “You just can't believe he's not the person you wish he'd be.”

“All right. I'll tell you a secret. I'll keep your secret if you'll keep mine.” She nodded. “One night when I was down at the lake I heard a woman call out Harlan's name.” I told her about rowing the skiff across the lake and seeing Harlan and the woman at the cottage. “That woman turned out to he his mother, not some cheating married woman.”

“You took his word for that I suppose.”

“No, I took her word for that. Harlan's mother and father rent one of the cabins across the lake. Harlan's father is sick and he wanted to be near Harlan so they rented one of the cabins. He took me to meet them.” I had to restrain myself from telling her about his father, about judge Crater.

“Well, I don't know. He's just so, so slick.” She said the word as though it were some kind of filth. “Another thing I don't understand. You already have two older brothers why do you need another one?”

“Harlan's a friend, not a big brother,” I said, feeling stung but not showing it. “Harlan is someone I like and respect someone I might get some sense of direction from.” I weighed explaining to her the real extent of my admiration, the wish to get more than just direction from the person I admired and looked up to; the wish to experience the world as that person, to
become
that person, not permanently but for a discrete period of time. I had imagined that by concentrating my thoughts and attention upon that person I might consolidate all the forces that comprised my self into a small but dense body of energy and then, like a spark jumping a gap, transubstantiate my self into his self. How better to learn to be like someone you admire than to
be
that someone you admire, to dwell inside his mind and hear the thoughts as they form; to live inside his skin and experience feelings as they course through his blood and inform his every cell of the will behind his acts. Don't be alarmed, this was a telekinetic fantasy not a reality. Only a madman would believe that he has temporarily taken up residence inside of someone else's consciousness. But there were some times I felt so close to making that leap it was almost as though I was about to leave my body. Of course it never occurred; reality is ineluctable. And even then, as I listened to myself considering it, the whole notion sounded so insane to me I dared not tell Sarah. “He doesn't condescend to me, he doesn't bait me, he talks to me like he respects my intelligence and like my feelings and opinions matter for something. That's why when people criticize him I always defend him. He's been loyal to me and that's the least that I can do for him.” I finished my explanation just as we reached the vicinity of the dock and shed. Sarah was still rubbing her arms to warm them.

“I'm sorry but I just think that Harlan is not who you think he is. We'll have to agree to disagree on this one Mel. Boy it's cold.” She shivered. We moved closer to each other and I put my arms around her to warm her. But with that nearness the beckoning perfumes of her soap and powder released yearnings and desires in me that shrank the visible world to just her face and erased all sound save the windy rush of her breath; her touch as light as the stroke of a feather, her kiss the purest bliss, all of me, every molecule of every cell, in a state of perfect harmony with her every atom. I could have stood there with her for eternity.

“Let's go inside,” she said, nodding her head towards the shed.

“You sure that you want to?” She smiled a mischievous smile and started walking backwards towards the shed, beckoning me with her curling index finger she curled towards herself again and again. At that moment I was more in love with her than ever and the feeling she loved me was strong and thrilling. It was my first experience with the intense eroticism that flows when lovers reconcile after a quarrel.

After securing the door we embraced and slowly lowered ourselves to the blanket covered chaise longue we kept under the window. Over the weeks our petting had gone from holding and touching to passionate kisses after I gave up cigarettes. There was a night or two of dry humping, as we called it, which involved my rubbing myself against her until I climaxed, but there had been no touching under the clothing, until that night. They say that the smoothest and softest skin is that of a woman's inner thigh. Sarah's skin felt like that everywhere on her body; smooth skin, smoother than silk, softer than satin and warm, alive, pliable flesh with its vital and unique texture. The chill that had driven us indoors was gone replaced now by flushed and heated flesh that wept a fine mist of perspiration. I removed my shirt, she her sweater, and our bodies touched very lightly, teasingly, before pressing together tightly. Her soft breasts spread out under the pressure of my embrace and then sprang back into their tear-shaped contours when we parted. My heart was pounding so hard I was breathless from its concussion and my excitement made muscles all over my body jerk out of my control, as though I was receiving tiny electric shocks, but stopping was unthinkable. We rolled apart only long enough to shed the rest of our clothing and then fell back into one another's arms. When we looked into each other's faces we'd smile but we never spoke. Rolling onto my back I pulled her on top of me and slipped my erection against the moisture between her legs. I wanted to look at her almost as much as I craved holding onto her, pressing her against me, running my hands over her body, over the slightly moist and warm flesh that rose and swelled into buttocks and thighs and neck and brow. She pressed her thighs together enclosing me and began to rock slowly at first, then more intensely and more eagerly, all the while staring into my eyes until our excitement drove me to release, ejaculating wildly, an ammonia like smell rising from the creamy ejaculum running down our legs. Life is never more complete than at that stunned, satiated moment after climax, one that for all its vigorous force is as insubstantial as a dream; intense, alive with power, and then gone even as you try to sustain its presence and arrest its departure.

“We should quarrel about Harlan more often,” I said, “that was fantastic.”

“Well, it was okay but fantastic? For you more than me.”

“You're kidding, right?” I was surprised by her reaction, surprised and hurt. She just shrugged.

3.

After that night I began to look at Harlan through different eyes. Sarah had been so certain that it was Harlan with her camper's mother that I no longer could lull myself with easy assurances that he was simply the honey that drew flies. Would honey want flies in its syrup or did Harlan want his syrup in these honeys was the question. After all, the woman on the tennis court, the woman on the softball field, the women who flirted with him, these all could not have been members of an aggressive tribe of Amazons. And then I remembered the woman at the pool who wanted Harlan to teach her son to dive. Her little boy's name was David. Half the children in the camp were probably named David, a favorite name for Jewish boys, but Harlan had agreed to teach that one only after a careful appraisal of the mother's physical assets. The more I thought about it the clearer it became that he must have encouraged these women, given some indication he was interested or available or both. But why should that have mattered so much to me? Wasn't it the ambition of every healthy young man to bed as many women, scores and scores if possible, before he found that one true love he would take away with him and then live happily ever after? I was certain that it was not envy or jealousy that was propelling my feelings about Harlan's seductions and liaisons. Only a fool would begrudge a Cary Grant or a Robert Redford his amorous successes and to me Harlan was in possession of that kind of star-like charisma. It was his disloyalty, his betrayal of Heidi that had gotten to me. Sarah was right to mistrust him. That woman on the softball field was not Doris Braverman and there never was a birthday party for Heidi that week.

While this realization discomfited me it did not put me off enough to distance myself from Harlan and his plot to retrieve his father's ring. The reservations I'd had on the first hearing had been discarded, my credulity triumphing on Harlan's behalf. And why not? This whole story, his father the notorious missing judge Crater, a precious, ancient heirloom lost on the grounds of the hotel I had known for years and was now working for, Harlan's quest to retrieve the ring for his dying father, it was irresistible. It was as though I was living as a character in a great and grand novel, an observer somewhat peripheral to the main plot but always available to witness its unfolding. Who would not be enchanted by such a tale? And who would turn his back and walk away from the chance to participate in and maybe even affect the outcome of the story? It was impossible for me to even consider such a course.

And for all the suspicion about Harlan that Sarah had stirred in me, my nagging doubts about him and his seeming disloyalty, there was still a desire to win his admiration and affection with a grand and unexpected act of discovery. I wanted to find that ring. I could not yet redefine him as a bad person, a calculating and self-serving opportunist, a grifter. That sounded like Ron's and Abe's position, a sour grapes position. No, I wouldn't boast to Sarah about my loyalty but I wouldn't relinquish it either. At least not then.

4.

Harlan woke me with a gentle tug on my shoulder. Expecting his summons I was prepared to be very quiet and simply nodded to him. My clothes were balled up at the foot of the bed and I took them into the hall with me and dressed in the shower room. The snores of one sleeper, more like the ratcheting of a metal gear than the sawing of a log, disturbed the early morning stillness of the quarters.

“Do you…” Harlan put his hand across my mouth and shook his head sternly. Grasping me by the elbow he led me out the door and did not speak until we were well away from the building. “Loud as that snoring was it becomes like a white noise, a soft protective curtain of sound, and even a whisper can wake someone if he hears that. Now, you get over to the lawn beside Heidi's house and I'll go to the field near Lenny's. Don't slink or look suspicious, you're not doing anything wrong you're just looking for my I.D. bracelet, OK?”

“It's five fifteen, is half an hour enough time?” I was worried that Ron would wake up before six and wonder where I'd gone. He was used to seeing Harlan's bed empty at that hour but would be very interested in knowing where I'd disappeared to.

“Half an hour is fine. It's just to divert attention from what I'm doing, don't worry.” We waved and separated.

The birds were chirping happily at the dawn but a pack of crows began a raucous protest as I intruded too close to their area of the grounds. Disney had convinced me that crows were the gangsters of the bird world. He caricatured them sporting battered porkpie hats and gripping cigarettes in their pointy beaks. Frowning and arching an eyebrow at them I walked onto the Braverman property and slipped around the side of the house. There were some sounds of people stirring inside and I hunched over and scurried to the side lawn. It was beginning to feel like this wasn't such a good idea after all. Why would Harlan send me here when it made much better sense for him to be the one searching the area near Heidi's house. The grass was wet and in need of a mowing and each step I took left a record of my trail. Crouching on my haunches and brushing the grass aside, I raked my fingers through the growth and hoped no one inside the house would see me, but if they did at the least it would appear as though a search was in progress. As a boy whenever I lost something in the park I would toss a heavy object, a cap pistol or a baseball, up in the air and then scour the site where it landed for the missing object hoping that serendipity had guided the landing. That had worked once or twice and wedded me to the process with an unrealistic loyalty. There was nothing heavy with me to toss in the air, nothing lost to find here, but I told myself to bring something the next time anyway. Still on my haunches I ventured further into the side garden. Harlan should be the one searching here and I should be scouring the field near the old gambling room, I thought, raking my fingers through the moist grass. After fifteen more minutes of fruitless search I heard an alarm clock go off in the house and scurried through the range of trees framing the side of the yard that abutted the main building of the hotel. That half hour had seemed to take years. My hands were green with grass stains and there were dark lines under my fingernails where the soil had embedded itself. I was supposed to be a decoy and yet I found myself thinking seriously about ways I might actually discover the missing fictitious bracelet. When I appreciated the absurdity of this it became even clearer to me how passionately I wanted to be the one to find the judge's ring. The morning charade could continue for a while but there would be times, maybe right after a meal when the dishwashers were working or at night when they were passed out drunk, when it would be possible to search that field. To find that ring and bring that prize back to Harlan and the judge would be to become a hero of a sort. No dragon slain, no battles waged but a treasure wrested from the earth, a treasure the dying judge cherished and longed for. I marched confidently back to the bunkhouse. I'd do it, damn it, whatever it might take. I'd find that goddamn gimmal ring myself.

Harlan met me as we approached the quarters from opposite directions.

“How'd it go?” he asked.

“Fine. I don't think anybody saw me. How about you, did you find anything?” Smirking and releasing a burst of air through his nose in an attenuated laugh he extended his arm and opened his hand to display a collection of rusty old “Meyer's 1890” soda bottle caps which he then flipped over his shoulder into the grass behind him.

“I know it's out there somewhere. I've just got to make more time to find it without attracting attention.”