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Benton, Pennsylvania
THE CAMPSITES OCCUPIED a sun-dappled point jutting into the lake in Ricketts Glen State Park. Chipmunks darted from the underbrush beneath stands of maple, hemlock and mountain laurel. Zan fished a bag of peanuts out of her pack and threw them a few. They snatched their prizes and scurried off to sit on a log, nibbling.
“Honey, look at the chipmunks. Aren’t they cute?”
Rainer grabbed the sleeping bags out of the trunk and threw them into the tent. “Yes, cute,” he said, barely glancing at them. His distraction was an inauspicious beginning to a weekend meant for him to build a friendship with Mel.
The fight with Pellus still bothers him. Why does he think I can’t see it?
Mel, Emmett, and Lucy arrived a few minutes later, to Zan’s great relief. She’d met their friends from the university at parties, but she didn’t know them well. She worried about whether they would like Rainer, then got annoyed with herself for worrying.
After Mel extricated Lucy from her car seat, she set her down and introduced her to Rainer. The little girl clamped onto her mother’s leg and stared up at him with saucer eyes.
“She’s not usually shy,” Emmett said.
“How’s my little sweet pea?” Zan said to Lucy, to coax her away from her mother’s leg. Lucy reached for her. Zan lifted her up and whirled her around. “That’s my girl. Don’t you want to say hello?”
Lucy hid her face against Zan’s chest, then peeked out at Rainer from under her curly hair.
“Hello, Lucy, a pleasure to meet you.” Rainer spoke in a gentle voice and smiled, but Lucy hid her face again. When Zan put her back on the ground, she resumed staring. Rainer crouched some distance away and tilted his head. He amped up his radiant smile.
“Would you shake my hand, Lucy? It would make me so happy.”
She tottered halfway toward him then looked back at Zan, who picked her up again. Still in a crouch, Rainer held his hand up toward Lucy. She grasped his finger and smiled. He made a show of it.
“Yes, yes, so wonderful to meet you, Miss Lucy.”
“Mission accomplished,” Mel said, then spread her arms. “Awesome spot, isn’t it? I reserved all six sites on the point. Nice and private.”
“That’s quite a tent you’ve got there,” Emmett said. “What is that, an anteroom?”
“Well, we were going to bring my smaller tent,” Zan said. “But then we realized that Rainer wouldn’t fit.”
“Ha! You need a Rainer-sized tent,” Mel said. “You’re already set up. How did you manage that? When did you get here?”
“About a half hour ago,” Zan said.
“How the hell did you get here so fast?”
Zan didn’t want to tell Mel that Rainer was playing Formula One on the highway. “I guess we just got lucky with traffic,” she said. Rainer glanced at her, smirking.
Don’t twist your sexy lips at me, you lunatic.
Another car arrived with Sarah, Victor, and their ten-year-old son Brooks. Sarah was a colleague of Emmett’s in the English Department at Temple University. Introductions were made and they all shook hands and commented on the beautiful day. The boy stared at Rainer like he was a circus freak.
The last family arrived about twenty minutes later. Brian was another English professor, accompanied by his wife Caroline and their five-year-old daughter, Emily. Lucy was excited to see Emily and they ran off together to poke around under rocks. After introductions were made, Mel put Emmett and Rainer to work arranging the picnic tables in one of the sites closest to the lake—the one with the best fire pit—to serve as her kitchen.
“Home away from home,” she said.
Though it was late afternoon, they hiked off to see a few of many waterfalls in the Glens Natural Area, the campsite’s main attraction. Rainer had been looking forward to this trip. Of late, he found less and less time to spend in nature.
To be in this lovely place with Zan will restore me before I must take up my onerous duty.
Dewdrop chirps of birds played in the humid air as they strolled a narrow path through the trees, a reddish brown line across a forest floor lush with bright green ferns. There were few people, the reason Mel scheduled the trip right after the Fourth of July. As Rainer walked beside Zan, he took a giant lungful of air.
“Ah, smell that,” he said. “Fresh, damp air. Soil, wood, and leaves. There are few smells better.”
“I’d have to say you’re right, honey,” Zan said. He leaned to kiss her.
The waterfalls did not disappoint, especially Harrison Wright Falls, the last on that stretch of trail. Water from a fast-moving stream fanned out at the site of a forty-foot ledge built from layered gray rock covered with deep green moss and pale lichen. The water fell in a glistening veil over a shallow natural cave to form a pool at the base of the ledge that rippled outward to gather in a stream once again and continue southward. The lowering sun cut through the trees in bands, creating flashes of silver and white on the water and streaks of glowing green on the mossy ledge. They stopped to admire it. The children splashed about at the edge of the pool.
Rainer picked his way along the slippery rocks to the curtain of falling water. He leaned back, wetting his hair and his shirt then raising his arms to smooth off the excess. When he looked up, every woman there was staring at him except Zan, who played in the shallows with Lucy.
“Come out here, Zan,” Rainer said. “The water is cold, but it feels wonderful.”
“I want to go, Auntie Zan!” Lucy said.
“Me, too,” Brooks said.
“I don’t know about that,” Sarah said.
“See what you did, Rainer?” Mel scowled. “Is it bad? Is it slippery to walk over there?”
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Yes, it is quite slippery. Let us help.” Rainer gestured to Zan, who joined him under the water. With the two of them at one end and Emmett and Victor at the other, navigating the rocks wasn’t difficult. The children were fascinated by the little room created by the curtain of water. While Rainer and Zan held onto them, Lucy and Emily kept sticking their faces in and out while Emmett shouted, “There you are! Wait, where did you go?” causing the girls to giggle.
The sun had warmed the shallow pool at the base of the falls to a tolerable temperature, so they all took a dip. Rainer circled Zan in his arms, softly kissing water droplets off her face. She grinned and danced away from him, stepping lightly along the rocks to the veil of water. Rainer watched her.
Mmmmm, I want those legs wrapped around me.
Caroline’s voice nudged him from his reverie. No doubt she didn’t think he could hear her from where she stood at the side of the pool with Mel.
“Check out the way he’s looking at her,” she said. “My, oh my.”
“Yeah. Rainer’s an intense guy,” Mel replied.
“He’s unbelievably gorgeous, but I think that would scare me.”
“I know what you mean. It doesn’t scare Zan, though. She eats it up.”
Raising his hand to his mouth to hide his smile, Rainer decided he’d better stop lighting his eyes with lust. When the group headed back to the campsites, he stopped Zan after they had walked fifty feet or so.
“My love, let them go. Let’s stay here for a while.”
Zan’s eyes grew big. She caught Mel’s attention, waving.
“Hey, Mel! We’re going to hike to the top of the falls. I know you can’t go up there with the kids, so we’ll meet you back at the campsite.”
Mel didn’t reply. Zan and Rainer went back up the trail to ascend the jumble of rocks.
Zan paused on the rocky trail to look off the way Mel and the others had gone. “Are they out of sight?” she asked. Rainer nodded.
Without a word, they made their way through the golden light back to the base of the falls. They walked along the rocks to the curtain of water and entered the shallow cave behind it. Rainer wrapped Zan in his arms and kissed her.
“Mmmmm, I was desperate to hold you,” he whispered.
“Do things to me,” Zan murmured. They peeled off their clothing. The exertion of the recent scramble up the rocks and the heat of their need left their skin burning, creating a delicious contrast between hot and cold as their limbs moved back and forth through the thin veil of water. Their movements caused fragments of light to shoot through and land, trembling, on the walls.
When they were unclothed, Rainer held Zan tight against him as he kissed her, her legs wrapped around his waist. His mouth pursued hers with gentle insistence, a kiss so inviting she wanted to fold herself into him and never leave. She felt him in that place between her legs, made quivering and sensitive by the quiet strength of his kiss.
“Oh, my love, you feel so good, so good.” He ran his hands down her back to squeeze her more firmly against him for a moment, before turning to hold her up to the cascade, like an offering. The water ran down her neck and followed the contour of her breast to fall off her nipple in a thick rivulet. Rainer covered her nipple with his mouth, gently sucking. He drank from her, his eyes closed, his hands spread flat against her. Zan moaned, overwhelmed by the gushing water, the heat of their skin meeting the cold, the soft feel of Rainer’s mouth on her breast. He moved to her lips as he turned toward the rear of the cave.
“Hold on to the rock,” he said. He lowered his hands to her hips and brought her down, rubbing against her, seeking with his body. The steel smooth tip of his cock stroked her cleft, cold water mixing with the intense heat created by his touch. Zan’s hips shuddered.
“I need you,” she said. Rainer leaned back to enter her. He slid in as Zan pushed against the rock and moved her hips to feel him there, his hardness massaging her. The heat grew inside her. Rainer reached deeper, his head thrown back, his eyes closed. Zan’s cries came in time with him as she rolled her hips forward and back. She watched his face as they moved together, rhythmically, ecstatically.
You are so beautiful.
When Zan climaxed she lost her grip on the rock and brought her arms to her head as her body convulsed. Rainer held her against him and let himself go with a long, low growl. They grew still, listening to the rushing water. After a while, he kissed her and cradled her, running his lips along her face.
“To love you like this, here in this place, it is like stopping time,” he said.
I don’t even know what that means, but god, how I love you.
When Rainer and Zan got back to camp, Victor was arranging wood for a fire. The other adults were sitting in camp chairs drinking wine, while the children crouched by the lake’s edge in the fading light trying to catch minnows from the shallows with a small net. Mel glared at them as they walked up. Zan looked at Rainer.
Uh oh. Obviously, Mel is pissed at us.
“Well, here they are, the wanderers,” Mel said. “I guess we should start thinking about dinner, but we need to head to the pump to fill up our water containers first,” Mel drained her wine and stood up.
“You two, help me with the water.” She went over to a picnic table, grabbed three containers and shoved them at Rainer. He took them, obviously perplexed. Mel walked off in the direction of the pump, followed first by Zan, then by Rainer. When they had moved some distance away, Mel wheeled on them.
“What the hell is the matter with you two?”
Zan did her best to look contrite but Rainer seemed surprised.
“Why are you angry?” he asked.
“Why am I angry? Give me a fucking break. Are you going to try to tell me that you didn’t go back to that waterfall and screw each other’s brains out?”
“So?”
Jesus, Rainer, please shut up.
“So? So?” Mel said, sputtering with indignation. “This is not that kind of gathering. We didn’t come out here to fornicate under waterfalls. There are children here.”
“The children had no idea what we were doing.”
“That is beside the point,” Mel said, her voice creeping louder. “I’m pretty sure the grown-ups knew what you were doing, and even if they didn’t, I’m mortified. I bring you along on this family camping trip and you act like delinquent teenagers. Honestly, Zan, what has gotten into you? You know better.”
Rainer tipped his head back and looked down at Mel, his lips in a hard line.
I know what that look means. He thinks she’s way out of bounds.
“And what if someone had seen you?” Mel said. “A ranger. You would have been thrown out of the park.”
“You’re right, Mel, you’re right,” Zan said. “I’m sorry. Our behavior was completely inappropriate. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Rainer shook his head and blinked at her.
“I feel like a jackass,” Zan continued. “And don’t worry, we’ll be on our best behavior for the rest of the weekend.” She caught Rainer’s eye and jerked her head toward Mel.
“Yes, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry if you thought our behavior was inappropriate.”
Oh no. The classic non-apology apology. This is a fucking disaster.
Mel’s eyes became slits. She looked at Rainer for what seemed like a long time. Finally, she smiled at Zan.
“I’m glad you understand. I shouldn’t let it ruin our weekend. Let’s just forget about it.”
They walked off toward the pump to get the water.
By nightfall, Mel’s dinner was taking shape. She’d brought a cast-iron Dutch oven to cook a spicy vegetarian stew with seitan. She planned to roast potatoes and vegetables on the open fire, with steaks for the meat eaters, which was everyone but Rainer. He thanked Mel for being so considerate and offered to chop all of the vegetables for her, but she curtly turned him down. Zan could not believe the trip that was supposed to end with a Mel-Rainer friendship had gone so wrong.
I need to talk to her about this.
Zan got her chance when Brian bemoaned their lack of beer.
“Wine is nice, but we’re going to be sitting around a campfire, eating steak. Doesn’t that just cry out for beer?” he asked.
“I agree,” Rainer said. “For steak, we should go find a nice Rauchbier.”
“I always defer to Germans when it comes to beer, so you should come with me on a run. We’ll take my car. I have an empty cooler in the back.”
“I’ll go with you,” Emmett said. “I want to try out my German-language skills.”
“Auf wiedersehen,” Mel said. “But if you keep speaking Deutsche after you get back, Zan and I will start talking almost entirely in initials.”
“Yep. Because the FBI’s JTF needs to get with the DEA before the HBC gives all our money to the ATF,” Zan said.
“Please, no,” Emmett said, laughing as they walked off towards Brian’s car.
When they had gone, Sarah, Caroline, and Victor decided to take all the kids to the bathhouse so Mel could prepare dinner in peace. Zan stayed with Mel.
“You’re still pissed at Rainer, aren’t you?” she asked.
“He gave me a non-apology apology.”
“I know, in its most egregious form, too. I’ll talk to him. He wasn’t listening to either of us. I could tell from the look on his face. I mean, at first I think he really didn’t understand, but then he thought you were criticizing me and he got his stubborn look.”
“He sure did. But what do you mean he didn’t understand? He’s a grown man.”
Zan shrugged. “Rainer has an extremely permissive attitude towards sex,” she said. “I think it’s good for me. Healthy. I’ve never heard one judgmental word come out of his mouth about anything that anyone might want to do as long as it’s consensual, so I don’t think he understands how uncomfortable our behavior made you. But I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him I know where you’re coming from. He’d never want to upset you.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Are you going to give him the evil eye tonight?”
“No, but you warn him that my nonna is Calabrian, so I know from evil eye.”
Zan chuckled and let it drop. She built up the fire to make it hot enough for the Dutch oven and put some hot dogs on the grate for the kids. By the time they got back from the bathhouse, the hot dogs were ready. The kids were eating when Rainer, Emmett, and Brian came back with the beer.
“Did you get your Rauchbier?” asked Caroline.
“Ah, no. Limited selection,” Rainer said.
“We should have warned you about the beer choices out here in the sticks,” Victor said.
“Yet another reason I choose to live in the city.”
Beers were handed out all around. When the stew was ready, Mel ladled it out. It was a big hit.
“Delicious,” Sarah said. “How did you make a vegetarian stew so rich?”
“Cashew paste and avocados.”
“You’re cooking is so creative, Mel,” Rainer said. “You should open a restaurant.”
“Thank you, Rainer.”
Zan sighed into her mug of seltzer.
She’s mellowing.
After dinner, the kids ran around. Brooks tried to get away from the little girls before he gave up and chased them, leading to delighted squeals in an extremely high register. As much as Zan liked Lucy, she was glad when the girls finally went to bed. Brooks stayed up but went into his tent to play his handheld video game. They didn’t hear another peep out of him.
The adults sat around the campfire drinking beer. Emmett, Sarah, and Brian talked about the university. Evidently, Emmett had been trying to get a seminar in the poet Wallace Stevens on the roster for the spring semester with little success.
“They told me the students won’t go for it, that the only poetry classes that get any interest these days are broad survey classes,” Emmett said. “I told them survey classes are meant as an introduction, not the sum total of a student’s education in poetry, but what can I say? The market is the market.”
“Stevens can be difficult,” Sarah said. “He’s thematically complex, which might scare some kids off.”
“Most of his poems are short. Perhaps that fact could balance the complexity and work in your favor,” Rainer said. Emmett and Sarah looked at him in surprise.
“You know Wallace Stevens?” Emmett asked.
“Yes. Sunday Morning is one of my favorite poems.”
“I had no idea you had an interest in poetry,” Emmett said.
“You could say I was obsessed some years ago, but it faded. I tried to write some poetry, but my themes were so grim all I did was depress myself.”
“I have a similar problem,” Brian said, chuckling. “So, why is Sunday Morning a favorite?”
“I grew fascinated by Stevens’ idea that people shouldn’t look beyond sensuous life for fulfillment or meaning or be frightened by nature’s impermanence. That ‘Death is the mother of beauty,’ as he put it.”
“Good lord, Rainer. You weren’t kidding about grim themes,” Mel said.
“Well, do you agree?” Sarah asked. “Is death the mother of beauty?”
“To devote oneself to the religious notion of an afterlife is a waste of the beauty and purpose we can find in the world. Life follows death, just as death follows life. The two are equally impermanent, at least in terms of systems.” Rainer lowered his eyes. “Not individuals.” He looked lost for a moment before he raised his eyes to Sarah again. “We can find something like divinity in natural systems.”
“What about God?” Sarah said.
“How do you define God?” Rainer leaned his head back and spread his arms. “Look around us. We have a natural system here where all things join in an endless cycle of creation and destruction, everything necessary, everything expendable. This balance is beautiful to me.” He gazed at Zan. Pain flitted across his eyes.
“But I don’t know anymore. I’ve changed,” he said. “Now I can understand the desperate need for there to be something beyond death.” He rested his hand on Zan’s thigh. She squeezed it in return.
Mel is right. You’re strange, Rainer, but I don’t care.
An hour later, everyone had retired to the tents. Zan snuggled into Rainer’s arms as they lay on the air mattress, but when he rolled on top of her to nuzzle her neck, she stopped him.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Loving you.”
“Well, stop it. No hanky-panky allowed, so please don’t get me all revved up.”
“Seriously?” He sat up, so she did too. She could just make out his face in the dim light.
“Yes. Didn’t you hear me tell Mel we would be on our best behavior?”
“I thought you were referring to sex in the forest.”
“No sex in the tent either. Tents don’t exactly give you privacy of sound.”
“We’ll be quiet.”
“Good god, man, don’t be such a sex fiend. We can screw for hours straight when we get home.”
“Promise?”
“I guarantee it,” she said. “But right now, I want you to understand why Mel was angry. I figure you thought she was being unreasonable.”
“Yes. You do not deserve to be taken to task because Mel is uptight about sex.”
“But I agree with her. We shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why? Why should those in love not experience a beautiful communion? People need to shed this notion that sex is something self-indulgent. I’ve always found Americans to be especially prone to this fallacy.”
“Yeah, you’re right about that.” Zan pushed a piece of hair away from his eyes. “Don’t look at it that way. Look at it like this. Mel is our friend. Our actions made her uncomfortable, mostly because of the children. I should have known it would make her uncomfortable, and convention says she is right. We were inconsiderate.”
Rainer thought about it for a few moments. He grimaced. “She was considerate enough to make that delicious stew for me, but I didn’t even try to understand.” He touched Zan’s face. “I’m sorry, my love. You’re right.”
“That’s my sensitive soul,” she said, as she pulled him down to lie again beside her. “You should offer a sincere apology tomorrow.”
“I will, and I will behave myself, but we should come back here. Listen to the forest now, the animals and the insects. We are surrounded by life. We should come back here alone to lie on the moss and love each other in the dirt.”
“You’re the only person I know who gets turned on by insects and dirt,” Zan said. She burrowed closer.
Rainer disentangled himself from Zan’s limbs and kissed her softly when she stirred. He whispered to her to go back to sleep. She had said Mel was an early riser, so he got up to make coffee.
My idea of a peace offering.
By the time Mel emerged from her tent, Rainer was sitting at the picnic table grinding beans with a hand grinder.
“Good morning, Mel. Would you like some coffee? These beans are Sumatran. Smooth and rich.”
“Uh, thanks, Rainer. They smell wonderful.”
Rainer put the coffee in a French press and retrieved the boiling water from the camp stove. As he poured he watched Mel from the corner of his eye. She smiled at an eruption of bird chatter from a nearby copse. A good sign.
“I want to apologize for my behavior yesterday, and also for my insincere apology,” he said. “I am unused to being around children but that is no excuse for my unwillingness to listen. Zan spoke to me last night. She made it clear that what we did was rude and selfish.” He stopped pouring the water. “I’m sorry.” He took a step toward her to deliver his most persuasive smile. “Do you forgive me?”
“Well, Rainer, you’re kind of hard to resist.”
“You didn’t say whether you forgive me.”
“I forgive you.”
“Good!” He kissed her on the cheek and finished up with the coffee. When they both had mugs in hand they walked to the edge of the lake to watch the mist slowly curl along its surface.
“So lovely,” Rainer said. “Our own little paradise.”
“I think your paradise is still sleeping in the tent.”