Thief (18 page)

When I came back from the dock that evening, I peeled off my wet suit and stood looking at myself in the bedroom dresser mirror.
The mirror was big and low, and I could see my bare vulva, which looked both familiar and disturbing. Familiar because it
reminded me of what that triangular patch looked like when I was in fifth grade, and disturbing because I wasn’t a ten-year-old
girl. It was an unusual sensation to be ten years old and thirty-three at the same time, and I had to walk away from the mirror
and pull on my cotton nightgown again.

I thought Breville might call that night at nine— his usual time— but he didn’t. The silence made me feel foolish, like I
was all dressed up with no place to go. But I did not feel so foolish that I couldn’t lie on the sofa and play with my newly
bare and lake-damp self for a few moments. And in another few moments I knew I had to go into the bedroom, to where my vibrator
was, plugged in and ready.

Before I lay down, though, I got two clips from the bathroom. They weren’t real nipple clamps, just two flowered hair clips
from Target. But I figured they’d work. And they did. Their light pinch made everything more urgent, and between those sensations
and the feeling I got when I touched my own skin, I came hard— once, twice, a third time. I thought the shaving might change
how things felt, but it didn’t. Yes, there was more air surrounding my orgasms, and a new sharpness, like someone had music
on too loud, but the contractions and feeling of falling were the same. If anything, the experience of the orgasms was stronger,
but I didn’t know if that was a result of my bare skin or the chilly tightness I felt in my nipples.

But the main change was the one in my head. I felt vulnerable and exposed just as I knew I would, and I didn’t like seeing
my ten-year-old self when I looked in the mirror. But I also felt other things. Blatant. Straightforward. Even to me the silkiness
was be-witching. The whole thing seemed to be some kind of declaration. But what exactly was I declaring? That I was willing
to be seen? That I was willing to do something that someone asked? I didn’t know. But it was a declaration I made on my own
body.

On my skin.

WHEN BREVILLE CALLED
the next night, I still wasn’t over the bare sensation of my vulva, but the thrill I’d felt when I first read his letter
came back. I could barely wait for the “This is a call from an inmate at a Minnesota correctional facility” message to play
through.

“So, did you get it?”

“Your letter?” I said. “I just got it yesterday.”

“No, did you get the job?”

“Oh, I did. I did get it. And I accepted it.”

“I knew you would.” “I know, I know. And I guess I’m going to rent my neighbor’s house when he goes away for the winter.”

“Why can’t you stay where you’re at?”

“It’s just a cabin. But I’m going to rent Merle’s house.”

“That’s a good deal for him.”

“It’s a good deal for me.”

“So you have it all worked out already,” Breville went. “See? I told you. I’m happy for you.”

But he sounded anything but happy. His voice was tight and
quiet. So I said, “Well, I did get your letter. And do you want me to cheer you up?”

“Cheer me up?”

“Yeah, do you want me to tell you something good?”

“Sure. Tell me something good.”

“Well, the letter came yesterday, and I already did it.”

“Did what?”

I didn’t want to come out and say it. I thought he should be able to figure it out, plus I knew the phone call was recorded.
So I said, “You know. The thing you talked about in your letter. The thing you apologized about asking for? I did it.”

Breville waited awhile and then he asked, “What did you go and do that for?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought you’d be happy.”

“Happy? Why would I be happy when you’re out there and I’m in here?”

I felt defensive then. Embarrassed. “I guess I wanted to try it,” I said. “I wanted to see how it felt.”

Again there was silence on the line. I wondered if something had happened in between the time Breville had written me the
letter and now, or if I had entirely misunderstood.

“Well, you have to at least let me see it,” Breville told me. He sounded tired as he said it, though, and I began to wonder
why I’d gone through the trouble.

“The next time you visit,” he said. “You can give me a little show.”

“A show?”

“When are you coming down?”

“I was thinking about tomorrow, but I don’t know.”

“Come on Monday. It won’t be as crowded. I’ll lean over and tie a shoelace. Like I did last time.”

“Don’t worry,” Breville said. “Plenty of women do it.”

“Well, maybe you should ask one of them for a show.”

“I’m just saying plenty of women flash their husbands. Their boyfriends. That’s all I meant.”

I didn’t know why I was surprised. Of course Breville wouldn’t want to just hear about it. Of course he’d want to see it.

“Maybe,” I said. Yet even as I was saying it, I was figuring out which dress was heavy enough so it wouldn’t cling to my ass.
Dark enough so it wouldn’t show damp.

After I got off the phone with Breville, I felt unsettled, and I kept on feeling that way even after I went for a long swim.
I knew it was from the phone conversation and the plan Breville had cooked up, but I also felt odd because I kept feeling
like I was being watched. That’s how that four-inch bare patch made me feel— and I felt it even with clothes on. Most of the
summer I hadn’t missed the distractions of the Cities, but just then I wished I could go somewhere for a cup of coffee, or
wander in a store that was open late— anything to get out of the cabin. I knew there would be nothing open in town, but I
thought I should go anyway. Even walking around the grocery store would be better than not doing anything.

So I drove to town and went grocery shopping. It was calming to walk through the aisles, putting things into my cart. But
it wasn’t until I was headed home and passing the Royal that I realized the real reason I’d been willing to get in the car.
Before I could even really think about what I was doing, I slowed down and began to look for the truck. I didn’t remember
the license plate number, but it didn’t matter: I was looking for a blue Ford with Wyoming plates.

I circled the block and even drove down some of the side streets, but the cowboy wasn’t there. For a second I thought about
going into the Royal to see with my own eyes that he wasn’t there, but I
didn’t want to walk in the place. I was lonely, but there was nothing to do for it— at least I knew that. So I told myself,
Just go home
.
Just go home and call Julian.

But it was not that simple. You could not have the amount of wanting I had inside me and be out in the world and not have
the world send you something back. Or so it seemed to me, because when I pulled up to the cabin, I saw that someone had been
there while I was gone. Not because of a garage door left ajar and or a note quickly penned— I knew it because someone had
left a half-empty beer bottle on the stoop of the cabin, tucked beside the door.

HE, HIM, GABRIEL
— though I never called him by his full name— came to the cabin around midnight. I was waiting.

“You didn’t even wait until the bar closed this time,” I said. “I’m flattered.”

“Jesus Christ, I was here earlier. You were the one who wasn’t here.”

“Did you ever think of calling? Do you ever just call people?”

“I’m here now.”

“I know,” I said. “I saw the bottle. I looked for you in town.”

“Why? Why would you look for me there?”

“Because I can feel you out there,” I said. “Don’t you get it? I can feel you out there somewhere.”

“I’m in between places. Can we leave it at that?”

This time I was the one who took a step toward him. I rubbed my fingertips and then my hand over the fly of his jeans and
over his cock.

“What places are you between?” I said. “Here and Blackduck? Here and Thief River?”

All I got for an answer were his hands on my breasts and between my legs. We were done talking for the time.

A little later, though, after we’d made it into the bedroom and were stripping down, he saw my bare patch of skin and said,
“Jesus Christ, what did you do?”

I didn’t answer. I knew what he was thinking: he wondered if he was the only one I was fucking. But there was no answer for
that. I wasn’t fucking anyone else, but I would never tell the cow-boy about Breville. It was none of his business anyway.

“Do you like it?” I said.

For an answer the cowboy shook his head and kept looking at me. I still didn’t explain anything. Let him go on looking.

When we got on the bed, he made me lie back and spread my legs wide. He ran his fingers over the skin.

“It’s like you want to play or something,” he said, and his voice sounded far away and a little angry— not so different from
Breville’s on the telephone.

“Do you like it?” I said again, but this time I had my palm around the base of his cock.

“What do you think?”

“Do you want to play with me?” I said.

“What do you think?”

I couldn’t get anything else out of him, but when we were fucking, he kept saying, “I want to see it, I want to see it.” So
even though it was still easier for him to stand beside the bed and fuck me as I knelt, I kept having to turn over so he could
look at my cunt. He wanted to get so far inside me with his hands and his face and his cock that it seemed like there wasn’t
enough of my body. As for me, the thing I wanted most was his mouth. When we kissed I rubbed my tongue hard over his teeth
so I could feel their edges, and I kept my fingers by our lips so I could feel us kiss. I bit his lips and I sucked his tongue
and I drank his spit. And no matter how we fucked or where he came, the cowboy howled. But no matter how much the cowboy howled,
he never did get to the end of me.

Sometime in the night I got up from the bed and went down to the dock to swim, and again he didn’t stir, just as he hadn’t
the first time we were together. But when I got back into bed, he reached over to the back of my neck and wrapped his hand
with my wet hair.

“Do you have to go and wash it away?” he said in the darkness.

“It’s not that.”

“What is it, then?”

“It cools me,” I said.

He didn’t say anything else, but I got the feeling he wasn’t asleep. I kept myself awake, listening to his breathing, to the
way he moved on the bed, but then I must have fallen asleep, too, because the next time I opened my eyes the room was blue
and I knew I’d had some kind of dream and his hand wasn’t in my hair anymore.

This time when the cowboy was leaving, he didn’t say,
I’ll call you in a couple days
, or
I’ll see you soon
, or
We’ll make some plans
— we were done with the pretense. Instead we just lay down on the bed and he sucked my pussy one last time. Then he was gone.

THE NEXT DAY WAS MONDAY
and I was supposed to be driving down to Stillwater, but when I woke up, I didn’t want to go. Even though I spent most of
Sunday napping after the cowboy left, my head was tired and I felt achy— from not enough sleep, I knew, but also from everything
that had gone on in the last few days. I was on overload, and it reminded me a little of the mixed-up way I used to feel when
I was in my teens and early twenties and always seemed to be tee-tering on the edge of one crisis or another. It had taken
me a long time to understand most people didn’t live like that, with constant drama in their lives, and I wondered at myself
now. It seemed clear I was doing the same old thing all over again with Breville and the cowboy.

There was a quieter way to live, I knew— it was why I’d come north and it was what I pursued half the time. It was why I went
on long swims, why I spent afternoons reading and napping on the dock, why I bought a red Huff y three-speed bike with coaster
brakes at the Ace Hardware in town. I didn’t think you could still get a bike with coaster brakes, and now I had one. I even
bought one of those tacky plastic baskets with flowers on it for the handle-bars, and the whole thing made me happy. But dozens
of things
had made me happy this summer: the painted turtle that floated into me one day, listening to Merle tell me his recipe for
boiling up the jewelweed that grew along the lakeshore to make a tincture for poison ivy, or the way everyone in one town
diner reminded me of a Thoreau essay from 1860 that talked about “men who are not above their business, whose coats are not
too black, whose shoes do not shine very much.” They were small things— some of them just moments— but they were real, and
I trusted them, so much that I’d staked the next year of my life on them. Because even though I said I was taking the new
job because I wanted a change, it mattered to me what kind of change it was. If I didn’t think I could make a different kind
of life up here for myself, and a better one somehow, I never would have accepted the offer.

But along with believing in smaller bits of happiness, I also believed in my own strong emotions, and the way I felt when
I was in the thick of something vivid. And that was how I felt now. What-ever and whoever Breville and the cowboy were, my
experiences with them were real. What I felt was real, and I could not walk away from the intensity of my feelings for either
of them, no matter how unwise my emotions were. And I could not walk away from feeling itself.

But on this particular day I’d had enough. I wanted the day to myself. I knew Breville was waiting to see me down in Stillwater,
but after fretting about it for a moment, I decided it would be good for him to wait a day to see me. Not because I wanted
to punish him for his reaction to me on the phone the other night, and not because I wanted to pay him back for the wasted
trip I’d made when he was on lockdown. Rather, I thought it would be good for him to wait a day to see me because he was the
one who told me I did not need to do his time with him. On this particular day my life— my real life, not the artificial one
I shared with him in the visiting room at Stillwater— had intervened. I was tired from fucking
the cowboy. I didn’t want to drive four hours to the Cities. That was all.