In the summer, the Seaside Heights boardwalk was a world all its own. Kit was drawn to it and repelled by it at the same time. The shadowy beach and black ocean were eerie and mysterious in stark contrast to the activity on the boardwalk. The lights were garish, the calls of the kids working the concessions grating. They had promised Rennie a night at Seaside to celebrate the last day of summer school. She brought her two girlfriends with her. Laurie and Chris were turning Rennie into a giggly teenager. It was good to see her laughing and happy.
It had been a week since her interview in Atlanta, and Kit had told no one about her plans. It relieved her now to watch Rennie, to see how well she was doing. She didn’t need Kit. She would be fine without her.
Rennie had been cold to Cole for a couple of weeks after she learned about the baby, but now she was talking to him again, acting as if she’d never been angry with him in the first place. Probably it wasn’t anger she’d been feeling as much as confusion, Kit thought. Rennie hadn’t been sure how to act toward him, so she’d chosen not to act at all.
They separated from the girls by the frozen custard stand in the middle of the boardwalk. “We’ll meet back here at ten,” said Janni.
The girls groaned.
“Okay. Ten-thirty.”
The adults headed south, the girls north. Cole looked back at them over his shoulder.
“You worried?” Kit asked him.
He looked embarrassed. “A little.”
“She can take care of herself.” She knew he was down tonight. His surgery that afternoon on a hydrocephalic fetus had been a disaster. That was the word he used, and she hadn’t pressed him for details. It was obvious he didn’t want to talk about it.
“You are neurotic, Perelle,” Janni said. “What is the worst possible thing that could happen to Rennie? Tonight, I mean.”
He smiled. “Well, I was a teenager myself on this boardwalk once upon a time, cruising around, looking for girls—like those three—to pick up. My friends and I would see who’d be first to get a girl under the boardwalk.”
“Rennie’s unlikely to go under the boardwalk with anyone, no matter how he sweet-talks her,” said Kit.
They were nearing the rides at the south end of the boardwalk and rock music blared from the concessions surrounding them on all sides. It was an incredible cacophony, and they had to yell to hear each other. People were packed together, eating thin-crusted pizza and frozen custard.
“God, I’d forgotten how tacky this place is,” said Cole.
Jay nodded. “It’s great, isn’t it?”
“Jay and Maris and I used to come here a few nights a week during the summer,” Janni said to Kit. “But Cole almost never came with us because Estelle was afraid her hair would frizz in the night air.”
Cole managed a laugh at that.
“It still smells exactly the same now as it did when I was a kid.” Maris took in a long breath. “Wood and onions and cigars and salt spray.”
They were at the Flume, a massive conglomeration of fiberglass slides filled with rushing water.
“Let’s ride it!” Kit said, suddenly excited. “Come on.” She tugged at Maris’s arm.
“Oh no,” said Maris. “I long ago outgrew the desire for these torture chambers.”
“Uh, I’m going to pass too, Kit,” Janni said as a car of screaming girls plunged from a remarkable height into a pool of water. “I’d lose my dinner.”
She felt the disappointment show in her face. She wanted to do this. She wanted to scream and laugh without having to think through every response before she made it.
“Come on, Kit.” Jay took her hand and grabbed Cole by the arm. “We men with nerves of steel will go with you.”
She sat sandwiched between them in the hollowed-out log. Cole put his arms around her and her breasts rested on his hands. It was wonderfully unavoidable. She leaned into his chest and pulled Jay snugly against her.
She screamed the second they took off. She gave her lungs free rein, and it felt as though they’d had bad air trapped inside them for weeks. She felt Cole’s laughter in her ear more than she heard it. At every turn, cool water poured over them like a baptism, and when they finally got off she felt completely rejuvenated.
The five of them stopped to buy pizza and birch beer and stood in a huddle, swooning over the tastes. She felt so close to them. How was she going to leave?
They began slowly walking north and soon the beach was next to them again, as black and obscure as the ocean behind it.
“Do kids actually do it under the boardwalk?” she asked.
“Oh yes,” said Janni.
“Come on, Kit.” Cole took her arm. “You need a tour of the Underwood Motel.”
He steered her toward the ramp that led to the beach. They took off their sandals when they reached the sand and made an abrupt about-face to walk under the boardwalk. It was dark and eerie. Thousands of footsteps thundered above them, and the wood muffled the music from the concessions.
“Did you really have your way with girlfriends down here?” Kit peered into the darkness and saw a few couples here and there.
“Numerous times, although I like to think it was their way as well as mine. I had a system. First we’d eat some pizza. Then we’d play pinball for about fifteen minutes—that was before the video games took over—and if it was a new girlfriend I’d try to win her something. I had a friend from Watchung who worked the wheel at one of the concessions so it wasn’t hard to win a big teddy bear or something.”
“You were a devil.”
He peeled a big splinter from one of the boards and leaned against a pole, playing with the sliver of wood. “Then I’d bring her down here and take off my shirt to put under her head so she didn’t get sand in her hair and then whatever happened, happened.”
“And all we had in Seattle were the backseats of cars,” she said.
He looked good in the patchy light that lit his eyes and hair, and she thought of kissing him. It haunted her that they had created a child together without kissing. Just one kiss now. One retroactive kiss before she left.
“Well.” He dropped the splinter of wood and reached for her hand. “We’d better get going or we’ll never catch up to the others. We’d have a hard time convincing them of our innocence.”
They walked on the beach just outside the boardwalk. She pressed her palm into his.
“You’re feeling sexier these days, aren’t you,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.
“What do you mean?” She was surprised.
“You seem more like your old self this week. More confident. I guess getting back with Orrin helped. You look good, and you’re back in your non-maternity jeans . . .”
“One size larger than I used to wear.”
“. . . and there’s something of the provocateur in you.”
“There is? Are you provoked?” Brave, Kit. It was easy to be brave when you had one foot out the door.
She could feel his shrug more than see it. “A little. I figure it’s Orrin you’re directing it at and I’m just picking up the residuals.”
He had it so wrong. She felt nothing for Orrin, though he’d certainly been good to her since his return from New York. He apologized for his coolness to her in the hospital. It brought back memories of when his wife was sick, he said. She understood that and felt warmed that he shared it with her. He was lighter with her than he’d been previously, more open, telling her that he wanted to make love to her. She wasn’t supposed to have sex for another couple of weeks, she told him. She was relieved to have two more weeks of celibacy to help her in the transition from mother to lover.
But despite the deeper topics, there was still an emptiness in their relating that she couldn’t break through. Or perhaps she’d stopped trying. That was just as well. It would make leaving easier.
They’d reached the amusement rides at the north end of the boardwalk and turned toward the stairs. She held him back.
“Cole?”
He looked at her, eyebrows raised, waiting.
“I’m moving to Atlanta.”
“What?”
“I’ve accepted a position at the University Hospital there. I have an apartment. I leave in a month.”
“When did you . . .”
“I went to Atlanta when I said I was in Pennsylvania.”
He looked at her sharply, then looked away, out to the beach. He stared so long at one spot that she followed his eyes to see what was holding his attention, but there was nothing there.
“I guess our friendship wasn’t what I thought it was if you’d keep something like this from me.” He was hurt. She heard it in his voice. She felt tears well up in her own eyes.
“I was afraid you’d try to change my mind if I told you.”
“I still will,” he said. “Please don’t go, Kit.”
“I have to.”
“Why?”
She couldn’t tell him her reasons. He was too much a part of them.
“The winters are warmer there,” she said, wishing immediately she could take back the words. They were cruelly simplistic, an insult to their closeness.
He stared at her, the look on his face bruised and angry. “Fine,” he said, climbing the ramp to the boardwalk. “I hope you’re never cold again.”