Figuring she’d come crashing in when she came crashing in and no sooner, Sandra and I made up Pia’s place in the center of our tent: sleeping bag rolled out, makeshift pillow next to ours. The three of us got oriented in the tight quarters by flashlight, tucking supplies where we could, then stashing our lights close at hand, until we all lay staring at the deep blue nylon of the tent, feeling the night breathing all around us.
“Do we even know this kid, really?” Rachel said, tossing in her bag. “What if he’s a maniac?”
I thought of the gun hidden in his pack and zipped my bag up tight to my chin. “He’s not a maniac. He’s a normal twenty-year-old kid.”
Rachel smacked at her pile-of-clothes-as-pillow. “My point exactly.”
“Rachel,” Sandra said sleepily, “they’re doing whatever they’re doing. There’s nothing we can do about it. Try and relax and get some sleep, okay?”
“I don’t get it. We go away together to be together and catch up as friends, and then Pia goes and does this—this—acting like a fifteen-year-old.” A rustling came from outside the tent, a fussy, scrabbling sound. Rachel jerked upright, snapped on her flashlight, and covered it with her hand, which glowed red with her living blood. “What the fuck is that?”
Sandra stayed motionless in her bag, her thick black hair spilling out, the sparks of her eyes shining. Her eyelashes cast freakishly long shadows against the tent from the odd angle of Rachel’s flashlight. “The food. We left it out.”
“Fuck, we’re such idiots.” I lunged for the zipper of our netted door.
“Wini, don’t!” Rachel yanked me back by my T-shirt. “Anything could be out there!”
We all sat up now, listening to our ragged breathing and the sound of a can hitting a tree, rolling, rattling. Claws scraped on metal. I thought of the can of baked beans Rory had opened earlier and eaten without heating them, how he’d offered some to us and no one had taken him up on it. Cellophane rustled; I pictured the energy-bar wrappers by the fire. The pile of fish bones stuck to sheets of foil.
“We need to scare it away!” I whispered.
“Why?” Rachel breathed.
“Because Pia and Rory are out there.”
“What if it’s a bear?” Rachel’s eyes were huge, dark circles underneath.
“I have a knife.” Sandra scrambled through her pack, flashlight bouncing. She pulled out her Swiss Army knife. We all stared at the ridiculous thing.
“Just let it eat the food and go away, whatever it is,” Rachel whispered hoarsely. “Do we have food in the tent? Anybody?”
I thought hard. “An apple, that’s it.”
“Nothing,” Sandra said.
“Turn off all your flashlights,” I said.
They clicked off. The sounds continued, from all over the camp now. Whatever was out there, there were more than one of them. Our eyes adjusted to the new darkness. Tree shadows fell starkly across the nylon ceiling; I pictured the heavy limbs looming over us. Getting down on my elbows and worming my way to the front of the tent, I unzipped the mesh a few inches and lifted the flap.
Six pairs of eyes glowed silver in the blackness. A family of raccoons, midchew, gaped at me from different sections of the camp. A well-fed one sat up on its haunches. It clutched a piece of granola bar with its eerily human claws, peered at me through bandit eyes.
“Get away!” I cried, scrabbling out of the tent. But even when I’d gotten to my feet, they didn’t budge; they just kept eating and scavenging, some not even bothering to acknowledge me. I took a step toward the biggest one, hesitated. Felt the cool, wet earth soak up through my socks as a new equation occurred to me. Whose habitat was being invaded here? The big papa one dropped down to all fours, took a few steps toward me, its big ass waggling. Behind me, Sandra stumbled out of the tent, then Rachel.
Yelling, “Get out,” Rachel snatched up a stone from the fire circle and hurled it at the thing, smacking it square in the face. It let out a squeal of pain and indignation, then turned and ran into the forest, the others scuttling after it.
Without speaking we fell upon the scattered garbage and gathered it up. We triple-bagged it and lashed the sack of trash high up on a tree limb several yards from the camp. The rest of the food we tied in baggies that we stowed in the cooler and stuffed that under the raft for lack of any better ideas.
We’d just reinstalled ourselves in the tent when we heard Pia’s laugh and Rory’s low voice, soft footsteps in the camp, whispers. We tensed in our bags, waiting for Pia to lift the flap and crawl in next to us.
But she didn’t.
Rory’s front screen unzipped; we heard the thump of bodies on canvas over hard dirt, more zipping. Pia giggled, the sound ringing up into the night like bells until she clamped down on it, but soon it was unloosed again and morphed into her signature cackle. We three lay there listening, helplessly, to a symphony we couldn’t escape. Pia’s laughter was cut by the low rumble of Rory talking, and I found myself straining to hear what he said, or any part of it. I caught something idiotic like his opinion on the best kind of boots to wear for stomping around in shit on the farms in aggie school, followed by something lower I didn’t catch that prompted another squeal from Pia.
Things got quiet and for a few seconds I thought we might be spared, but no. We had, without question, front-row seats at the opera of love. Just before the main event, I found myself straining to remember the last time I’d had sex, and it came to me as foreign and ancient as if it were someone else’s memory. Who: Richard (of course); when: summer, two years ago; where: a cheap hotel in Chatham after a wine-soaked afternoon on the beach; how: not very well—even then he’d felt far away from me, barely present in the room. Followed by a pinot grigio hangover like no other and not even sunset.
I slapped a mosquito on my forearm, shattering a momentary quiet in both tents. Sandra had curled herself into the corner of our tent, her arm flung over her ear. Rachel lay on her side, staring at Sandra’s spine. I stretched out on my back, watching the top of the tent as if it were a movie screen. On it played Pia and Rory getting it on. A sudden urge to laugh bubbled up in my chest, passed, then turned into a cough that ricocheted among the trees.
Soft moaning and more rolling and zipping followed the few quiet moments. My God, they might as well have been in the tent with us. We could hear them climbing the mountain, deep breaths followed by short bites of air, then back to slow. The night in its emptiness only amplified their sounds of lovemaking. What better way to fill it? Though keenly self-conscious and embarrassed (later I thought, Why? Was I the one screwing a twenty-year-old three feet away from my best girlfriends?), I also felt alive; that way of being in the moment that doesn’t waste time on reflection, and it was great to feel it, even though—hell!—I wasn’t the one being radically, inappropriately, wrongly, wonderfully fucked.
Rachel flipped over and got up to her elbows, glasses flashing in the darkness. “Doesn’t she know we can hear them?” she hissed.
Sandra said nothing. She had cocooned herself, feigning sleep.
The sounds stopped next door, but beneath the silence was a sense of gathering, and I could feel that old train climbing that old hill, just as the orchestra started up again in earnest, with much panting and shuffling. Pia cried out, evidently having herself a fine orgasm, one of those beauties launched from the darkest planet in the deep space of your spine, the kind that leave you hoarse and dizzy, that make your legs fall off and float away and that’s just fine with you.
Rachel dropped her head in her hands. Took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. Some stray hair, black curls shot through with silver threads, popped loose from her ponytail. “Jesus H. fucking Christ,” she said loud enough for all the forest to hear. “This is ridiculous. I did not sign up for this.”
I smiled into my hands.
Whether or not Rachel had signed up for anything, after a brief pause the lovers started up their engines once again. I felt as if he were touching me, and part of me wished that were the case. And why not? I would have loved to fuck Rory too, to fuck the star-pinned sky, the shining moon, the trees full of birds, all of it. Instead I lay there in awe of their stamina and capacity for simply getting it on, again and again, as if this was what they’d come here for, as if they were the only two people on earth, as if this was the last time they’d ever get the chance.