Everything was ready but the fish. That was slowly baking in the oven, according to her mother’s recipe. Just before serving it, Stevie would cover it with a sauce and slip it under the broiler for a fast browning. Otherwise, everything was fine. The salad looked fresh and colorful in its transparent bowl; the cold asparagus were laid out accompanied by two little dishes of fresh mayonnaise; even the rice and pea mixture would be served cold. The table was placed by the windows onto the ocean deck, set for two, with the pale blue china her mother never used because it was too good for summer dining; the practical flatware shined to a glitter; two ceramic candlesticks found hidden in a closet. She hoped he wouldn’t bring the dead leaves, as he had teased he would. She’d collected some late-blooming irises and long-stemmed willows from the garden of the Winstons’ house, closed weeks ago.
She should have told him which wine he was to bring. The house looked fine, finally. She’d spent all afternoon on it, hiding the awful throw pillows, taking down the paintings on the walls, those awful “textured” seascapes her father had bought years ago in the city, because he thought they were appropriately marine. Lord Bracknell. That fitted him. Neither a monster nor a myth; wasn’t that how Wilde characterized his character? That was Dad, all right.
Really, if Mother were here, she would see right off how much better the place looked with all that extra furniture stashed away in the shed under the house, the walls bare; the knickknacks packed away; those awful curtains down; the windows exposed. Maybe Stevie ought to go into decorating. No, too many fags.
She blushed then, looking in the mirror, applying her eyeshadow. Then she said out loud, “Idiot! What do you think Jonathan is?” and continued making up.
Of course she was out of her mind inviting him here for dinner. But then, what harm was there in it? She was merely being neighborly. Friendly. Repaying her social obligation to him. Even Lady Bracknell would have to agree with that.
“Inspection time!” she said, aloud.
Not bad. She’d gotten excellent color on the beach. What a beautiful day it had been, what a gorgeous sunset too! The very one she’d thought about on her arrival here in Sea Mist. The sun had become a huge, deep-red disk, flat on either tip, and had slowly sunk through layers of colored sky, each pastel more delicious and impossible than the next: fluffy magentas giving way to marbled pinks, in turn making way for sherbet oranges, followed by salmon mousses. Amid all these cool-hot colors had been one thin cloud—cirrus, she recalled, was its name—that had been an electric yellow. It had forked at one point to enclose an area of the sky untouched by the prevailing red spectrum—a satiny neon blue, like her brother Jerry’s basketball shorts. Every second the colors shaded and transformed themselves into subtle new shifts of tint, layer by layer. Then she became aware of the sudden silence around her: the lack of wind, the sudden cessation of birdsong. It was as though the entire day suddenly sighed for a minute. Then, from behind her, she barely made out an approaching sound—the muffled, distant flapping of many large wings. In an instant they arrived—brownish gray, flying low over the housetops and pine trees, coordinated, in a loose V-shape—the geese!
That had been exquisite. The second exquisite moment of the day—a day not yet ended.
The first, of course, had been her discovery of Jonathan this morning. She’d felt that primarily as lust, but after she’d dashed into the ocean, she’d come back to the house and analyzed the surge into several layers of meaning. Uppermost was the new fact of her intense desire for a man—that man, where he was, as he was at that moment. That had never happened to her before, and it had overwhelmed her. She’d wanted to possess him: to caress him like a mother, and at the same time to cover his body with passionate bites and kisses, like a courtesan. Bill Tierney would never believe it was possible, even if she were stupid enough to ever tell him. He called Stevie the Ice Princess; and it wasn’t always said jokingly. Not that she was frigid or anything awful like that. She simply had never felt that connected to physicality before. She had never really understood why it was that men and boys found her far more attractive than she ever found them, why they felt drawn to her when she could take them or leave them. Sometimes she thought it was a pose on their part, an affectation, or even worse, a merely mechanical working out of what they thought they ought to be doing and feeling around a halfway good-looking female: something men pretended without ever really feeling. She recalled how queasy she’d gotten one afternoon, on the sailboat with Bill out on the Long Island Sound, when she’d caught him looking at her with that stricken, fascinated, wounded look. It had given her the creeps. She’d certainly never expected to be on the other end of that bizarre an emotion.
Next, naturally, was the sensation—intuitive, yet no less strong for that—that she would do something, possibly a great deal, probably anything to sleep with Jonathan Lash. Despite the fact that he had a lover, was gay, was twice her age, and wasn’t obviously interested in her. All those negatives made it more of an adventure. She desperately needed adventure. That was why she’d come out here alone, to test herself against the unknown—whatever that might be—if only to prove to herself she was still alive, still unlobotomized. Which scientific writer had she skimmed last term who’d written that the only certain proof that an organism was truly alive was its struggle to change the life and environment around it? She couldn’t recall, but she certainly agreed.
Her face was done, her hair in two long barrettes, swept up behind her ears and down. The blouse and slacks she’d bought this afternoon at the harborside boutique looked really good. That had been a stroke of luck; she’d almost run past in her hurry to get dinner shopping done. Thank God, she could never bypass a sign that read, “Season Closing—Fifty Percent Off!” She had few enough clothes out here to begin with: nothing but denims and work shirts. But, then, who’d considered when she’d packed her bag that morning that she’d be doing this—having dinner with a man she wanted. It seemed that everything was conspiring to help her.
“Wicked woman,” she said to her reflection. “Whore of Babylon.” She pursed her lips. “I wish,” she responded tartly.
It was nine o’clock. Where was he? Outside on the ocean deck it was dark, clear, starry, quite warm. She could see the lights from his house. What was he doing now, this minute? Getting dressed? Standing in that big bathroom, a towel wrapped around his hips, shaving, around his beard, trimming it, inspecting his face for tiny nicks? She hated not being there.
Faint steps on the boardwalk. He was coming.
The footsteps approached, and went past the entry to her family’s house: someone walking to the beach.
It made no sense to just wait out here, agonizing. She ought to do something, check the fish, mix them drinks. What if he wanted a drink? Had they left any liquor in the house?
In the kitchen, she found a bottle of cooking sherry and a small flask of brandy—not a great brand either: for cooking too, she supposed.
“Hi! Anyone home?”
Calm yourself, Stevie. He’s here.
She felt like a parody of her mother, sweeping graciously out of the kitchen to greet her guest.
He’d dressed as though for a garden party: beige open-necked shirt of some silky material, pale blue jacket, white pants pleated at the waist, cinctured with a thin beige belt, and white shoes. Tan, dark-haired and bearded, he looked smashing—like an oil sheikh’s playboy son on the Riviera.
“I’m not too early, am I?”
“No, fine. Come in.”
He held a bottle of white wine in one hand. Naturally. He would never—even unconsciously—do the wrong thing; she’d already expected that. He offered the bottle to her, label up.
“You didn’t say white or red,” he apologized.
“This looks exactly right,” she said. He was still waiting in the doorway. “Please come in.”
He did and she felt more comfortable.
“I just discovered we have almost nothing in the way of liquor,” she said, hoping it was spontaneous. “So I can’t offer you a drink. Should I chill this?”
“Serve cool,” he said, looking around the living room.
She couldn’t recall if he’d ever been inside the house before. His scrutiny made her edgy: as though he were evaluating her through the house. She hoped not.
“It looks different,” he said. “Nice.”
“Not like your place,” she said, but felt relieved. It was the simplicity and rich texturing of the lovers’ house that had inspired her own patchwork redecoration. “Correction on the drinks. We have sherry and a little brandy.”
“Soda? Tonic? Lemon?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Good. I’ll throw together a brandy cocktail I know how to make. Everyone eventually ends up drinking the cooking sherry, you know.”
“This is delicious,” she said a few moments later, sipping the tall, fresh drink. “What’s it called?”
“Brandy and tonic, I guess. The British drank it in the Orient, to ward off malaria.”
She led him out onto the deck, where he held his drink up and tapped its rim against her glass.
“To your decision.”
They clinked glasses again.
“You don’t even know what my decision is yet,” she said. “I don’t think I do either.”
“No. But I support it. Whatever it is.”
Earlier in the afternoon, Stevie had pictured this very moment: the two of them here on the deck, having cocktails before dinner, the Milky Way stretched across the sky above them, the soft pounding of the surf. Several times while thinking of this moment she had panicked, wondering what they would talk about. Today, on the beach, hadn’t been a particularly illustrious beginning, she thought.
But there was no problem. At ease here, as he must be anywhere, it seemed, Jonathan immediately began to speak of Sea Mist and its residents. He’d spent several full summers here, and seemed to know the people of the resort far more fully than she or her parents. He talked about the community, the ecology of the island, with a sense of pride and an evident pleasure that made her regret having only perceived it as a beach. Jonathan seemed to know everything about Sea Mist. He knew the various birds and flowers, the incredibly varied insect life. He knew which buds on which bushes opened in May or June, which insects were attracted to their blooms, what week the flowers fell and the leaves began to turn, which birds passed over them migrating south. He’d revived birds that had flown into plate glass windows and doors, had seen those very birds return later on in the summer, and then, the following summer with their families. He’d nursed back to health during the early spring cats and dogs lost out here the summer before, who’d managed somehow to survive the brutal island winters. He knew all the constellations wheeling majestically overhead, and as he pointed them out, he could make Stevie see terribly clearly for the first time in her life why they were called Archer, Whale, Swan.
Over dinner, he continued talking—about the history of Sea Mist from its earliest days as a lookout station for shipwrecks, to the free port era in the middle half of the nineteenth century, when the China trade clippers dropped half or more of their cargo here, hiding it until it could be transported across the bay. Then they sailed into New York Harbor, where they naturally paid much lighter duties fees than they would have had they shipped in fully laden. The Ginkgo and red maple trees that grew like mad in the community all came from the Orient, he told her. They weren’t indigenous. They’d arrived as saplings, even as seedlings; gifts for wives and families. Some were a hundred and thirty years old. As were some of the large old houses on the other side of town—built by smugglers and stolen goods fences, low-life pirates whose descendants had become millionaires, stayed long enough to have streets named after them, then moved away.
He pronounced the meal a complete success—and she thought so too.
The warm night rustled indoors, touching his fine curly hair, making it glitter a strand at a time in the candlelight. His eyes were huge and dark and compelling.
He hadn’t said anything about how she looked, so she decided to bring it up in a roundabout way, by telling him that if she’d invited Bill Tierney instead of him, Bill would have dressed all wrong for the occasion.
Jonathan almost frowned; then, casually, with the wineglass tipped up to his mouth, in preparation for a sip, he said:
“One of the few advantages of aging is that generally the older one gets, the easier it is to figure out what to wear.”
“You make yourself seem as though you’re a hundred years old!” she protested.
“I recently read that people’s height begins to decline after the age of thirty-five. That means I’ve already begun to shrink. Horrible, huh?”
Unwilling to allow him to belittle himself, she said, “I think you’re beautiful.”
There was an embarrassed momentary silence.
“Thanks,” he said. “I wasn’t fishing for a compliment.”
“I was.” She stood up, taking the dishes.
“Didn’t I say how marvelous you looked?”
‘‘No.’’
“Well, I thought it.”
“I can’t read your thoughts,” she said. “Coffee?”
When she returned to pour it, he was standing out on the deck.
“You aren’t angry at me, are you?” he asked.
“No-o. Of course not.”
“It’s really a great night,” he said, more softly. “It hasn’t been a terrific summer for weather. Too much rain. It was cool most of July. We used blankets at night, as late as the first week of August. Damp, muggy, misty: weeks at a time. But it’s going to be really fine from now on. Better than all the rest of the summer.”
Odd; Stevie had thought exactly that this evening, watching the sunset, the geese flying.
“If it doesn’t storm again,” she said.
“It won’t.” He replied so firmly, she asked how he could be certain. She wished she could see his eyes as they spoke. How could she steer him back inside where they could look at each other? So much seemed to depend on that.
“I’m used to feeling out the moods of places I know,” he said. “It’s a telluric connection; as though a plumb line were dropped down from inside me, right into the center of the earth, with everything—the weather, the life placed around us—in a certain relationship. I don’t feel this everywhere, of course. Not in the city, for example. Here at Sea Mist, I do.”
He was the one who turned and led her inside then, where she refilled their coffee cups. Facing him over the flicker of candlelight, Stevie felt better; he’d seemed so distant out there for a minute.
“You know something,” he offered, apropos of nothing in particular, “you remind me of another girl, a girl named Fiammetta, in a story I’m working on.”
“A new show?”
He seemed surprised at her question. “Yes. A new one.”
“I loved Little Rock. I saw it twice. Downtown, and when it moved to Broadway.” She almost immediately regretted her gushing. The last thing she wanted was for him to think her a groupie. “Everyone is recording ‘Unreal,’ you know,” she added, hoping to make good her error.
“Not everyone,” he said, barely holding back a smile.
“Everyone is. Come on. It’s all right to be proud about that.”
“Billie Holiday isn’t recording it.”
“She’s dead. Even I know that.”
“Just testing.”
“Who’s Fiammetta?” she asked. She was dying to know whom or what he thought could compare to her.
“A young lady in thirteenth-century Florence, whose favorite hunting falcon has flown off. She sends three suitors to find a new one for her, equal to the first in speed, beauty, and prowess. Every time they return with a great hunting bird, she criticizes their selections. Each time she describes her falcon to them, it’s different: more fabulous than before. Each suitor goes farther and farther away from her, for longer periods of time, searching for a falcon she will accept. When they return, Fiammetta’s idea of the falcon has become more exaggerated. Two suitors give up eventually. But one, Gentile, continues to search. You see, he’s come to think of Fiammetta herself as so extraordinary, so unobtainable, that he believes no bird he will ever encounter can come up to her—to his own—expectations.”
Stevie would have to ponder that fable later on, she thought. Meanwhile, she had a question: “Does he marry her at the end, anyway?”
“See the show.”
“How can I, if it isn’t even completed yet?” Then, “Do you think I’m like that? Chasing after rainbows? Is that why you told me her story?”
“No. Chasing after ideals, perhaps. But don’t stop.”
“And you?” She meant to ask if he were that ideal, and unobtainable.
“Oh, naturally, I’m still going after a few ideals too, although I ought to know better by now. Otherwise I’d stop writing music, stop writing shows. I’d give up looking for the perfectly appropriate melody, the most wonderful new modulation, the ideal form for a song.”
She wondered if what he was saying explained why he always seemed to be looking just to one side of her, or any object he observed: as though he were looking for the music inside it. It was thrilling to think that besides being so handsome, so desirable, he was also an artist. Would he one day write something for her? A song? A show?
So she led them into a conversation about theater and the music world he moved in—the people, the names, the entrepreneurs, directors, writers. Jonathan smiled indulgently as though he’d been waiting for this, but he did allow himself to talk about it. Doing so, he revealed another side of his personality; he was sincere and comic at the same time, blasé but intensely opinionated, yet never critical of anyone. His main targets of abuse seemed to be the various systems he’d gotten involved with—publishing houses, recording labels, conglomerate producers. He told her that he preferred live cabaret performances of his songs best of all—or intimate stage productions in small theaters. It was all getting out of hand now, his career expanding too quickly, onto Broadway stages and who knew, films too. Of course, he understood that was a natural progression, given the need for good material in all media. And he did like the challenge of a big stage, a large orchestra and cast. So long as he could still return to his origins, to small theaters, whenever he wanted to.
He said he was merely being realistic. But Stevie thought he was finer than that—in touch with himself and his wants and needs, overmodest, mature, filled with integrity.
Then he looked at his watch and said it was time for him to go.
It was barely eleven o’clock.
“I still have work to catch up on,” he apologized. “Thanks for a lovely dinner.”
She’d somehow expected he would stay longer, make it easier for her. What could she do all night by herself, after all this stimulation? She’d go mad.
“Come by for that bookshelf checking,” he reminded her.
She almost said yes, she would, right now. But he had work to do. She mustn’t get in the way of his composing. That would be the worst thing she could do.
“Tomorrow afternoon?” she asked.
“Anytime.”
“Good night,” she said, brightened by this.
And was rewarded. He said good night, and quickly leaned forward to kiss her cheek. She sensed it coming and turned her head, taking the kiss on her lips, as one of his hands touched her left ear with the merest brush of a finger. A softness of lips, a tiny caress, and nearness. Then he was gone.