Adam’s First Wife
Bree and I lie by the pool on rusty, avocado-green chaises, soaking up the sun. Piper’s in the water, drifting around on a raft, her Discman, protected in a Ziploc on her stomach, giving off tinny beats.
This is an unscheduled break. Shane and Mat told everyone they needed to “have a discussion” so everyone should take five.
That was five hours ago.
Bree is going over contracts facedown, using the missing rubber slats in her chaise as a reading window, and we’re talking idly about music. Favorite album, favorite song, favorite album cover, favorite live recording of a duet, favorite song to slow-dance to...
“Favorite song to regular-dance to?” I ask.
“Marvin. ‘Got to Give It Up.’ What’s yours?”
“Hmmm... ‘I Feel Love,’ Donna Summer. It’s got that one a.m. disco sound, with a little danger in it, you know? I’ve spent years practicing the synth bassline. It’s like a racing pulse.”
She mimics the baseline with her highlighter on her stack of papers, beating out the rapid dum-dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum. “Fast as a pulse while making love,” she says, low, so no one else can hear. “I’ve heard you playing it. That piano in the Rec Room is standing in for a person, Jackie. Poor thing, getting worked over night after night.”
I laugh. “‘Heart of Glass’ by Blondie would be a close second...”
We discuss artists, artistic temperaments. The conversation comes around to Graham.
“You get this sort of smeared look around the eyes whenever anybody mentions him,” she says. “Like you’re intentionally wiping off any expression. Didn’t you like him?”
“I love how you put things. You should make that into a song. ‘The smeared look around your eyes...’”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“Am I?”
“You’ve done it before.”
A white cloud-bank like a puffy figure eight floats toward the sun. “When I first met him, I liked him very much. Everyone here treated him like a god. But he was just a man. I guess he had his selfish side, when he got frustrated about not being popular anymore.”
She says nothing in response and I lie quietly for a minute, listening to Piper’s splashes and metallic beats from the pool, the kids calling happily to each other, far off. “No. I didn’t like him.”
“Thank you. I know it wasn’t easy to say.”
If only it was that simple. No, I did not like my uncle.
For a minute I listen to Bree’s highlighter squeaking confidently across her pages.
“Bree?” I say.
“Hmmm?”
“How do you and James do it? Keep your marriage healthy while you’re traveling, or obsessed with a new project, and working night and day with other musicians?”
“James is a saint. You’ll see when he visits. There’s nobody to touch him.”
“So you’ve never been tempted?”
“I’m human.” Squeak, squeak. Squeak. “But I don’t buy into that tortured artist bit. I mean, the torture is real, but it’s not an excuse for bad behavior.”
“But so many people can’t handle it. Even enormously gifted ones. Did you ever consider walking away?”
She stops marking up her pages. “Not in a long time. I guess I’m one of the lucky ones. It hasn’t sunk me, not yet.”
I think of Willa, how she never had any interest in singing professionally. How much was because of her discomfort with crowds, and how much was because she’d seen how ugly the business was, how it had swallowed up her father?
And yet the business had managed to sink her anyway, through him. I’m grateful for the songs she left in Graham’s notebook, a treasure, a miracle—no matter why she put them there. I know Bree’ll do them justice on the album. I just wish I had a recording of Willa singing them.
“It’s a loss, though,” I say softly. “When someone gifted decides to keep their talent to themselves.”
“A loss for who? Maybe they get plenty of joy from it, all alone.”
“No, it’s useless!” Shane moans to Mat. Their “discussion,” which started as a private talk down in the studio, then moved up to the garden, has spilled around the house, onto the front porch. And it keeps getting louder.
“It’s lousy, Mat. I wish we could start from scratch.”
I can’t make out what gentle Mat answers, but it’s got to be something reassuring because Shane snaps at him. “Then you need to have your ears checked, Mat!”
The fight surprises me. Shane’s seemed so confident about the work until now. Full of praise for how my and Willa’s songs came out, and on the rest, so sure that he was merely a conduit of decisions that the great Graham Kingston had already dictated from the beyond. That he was just shading in a few blank spots in the notebook. Like a lowly tech doing art restoration on a masterpiece.
But he keeps changing his mind on the “pivot attitude,” whatever that is. He’s wrestling with how the album should end, if the second half should be big and happy or stripped-down and tender. It’s hard to get a sense of what the problem is. He says different things on different days.
He and Mat move around to the back of the house, so I can’t make out their words, only yelling.
“This sounds serious,” I say from under the damp white Bree Lang Magical Sistery Tour T-shirt shielding my face from the sun.
Bree chuckles, undisturbed, and continues squeaking away with her highlighter. “Shane’d better get it together or he’ll lose his chance.”
“Chance with the album? It’s that terrible?”
“The album’s genius. I mean the other chance.”
“Bree. Please. He’s barely out of his twenties.”
“Well. Forget it. Forget I said anything, a thousand apologies. I didn’t know about the ironclad rule that someone who’s thirty-five can’t date someone thirty-one.”
“I’m thirty-seven.”
“Got it. Practically on Social Security, aren’t you? James is four-and-a-half years younger than me, you know, and I’ve never heard him complaining.”
“You’re different. You’re Bree Lang.”
For a few minutes the only sound is wind and the tinny beat through Piper’s earphones. When I think the subject’s closed, Bree says casually, “I had the same conversation with Shane a couple of days ago.”
“Jesus, Bree!”
“The age thing didn’t come up. I just said I could tell he had an itch for you.”
“I hate that expression.”
She makes me wait.
She’ll make me beg. Sometimes people need a nudge. Or a shove.
“Okay. Tell me what he said.”
“He said you were gorgeous, of course. His words—down to the of course part. Exact words. He said you were just his type. But that you’d made it clear you had zero interest beyond friendship. In case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I know. You have too much to do here. How’s the packing going, by the way?”
Mat and Shane have circled to the front of the house again.
“We should just junk it,” Shane says. “I’m sorry I got you all roped into this mess.”
“You’re breaking my heart. Have some faith, bro...”
“Is the album going to be junked?” I whisper. Starting from scratch is not an option, not if Shane wants Bree on the record. She can only stay for three more weeks.
She laughs at my worried tone and flips a page. “No cause for alarm. Your boy’s just having a regulation freak-out. We’re right at the murky middle. Five tracks laid down, five to go. So I figure he’s right on schedule.”
“Please stop calling him my boy. He sounds really worried. He keeps quoting the Bible and Winston Churchill. This morning I heard him tell Mat that he’d been ‘weighed in the balance and found wanting,’ and he ‘thought he was up to the task but he’d failed miserably, alas.’”
“Like I said, your standard freak-out.”
“Shane saying alas is standard? It was kind of disturbing.”
“It means the work’s going beautifully. Too beautifully.”
“Huh,” I say, doubtful.
The rubber straps of Bree’s chair bounce as she flips over, and I remove the wet T-shirt from my face to look at her. She faces the sky, gesturing with her pink highlighter, as she explains in a whisper, “It’s like this. He loves it so much he’s afraid to finish.”
I think for a minute. “You’re saying he’s stalling?”
“She’s got it now.” Bree stretches, her bare arms, shining with coconut oil, intertwined above her head. She’s got one of Angela’s old royal-blue kilims twisted in a turban, covering her hair.
“Then you think the album’s going to be good? It’s coming together?”
Bree looks at me sideways. “Awfully curious for someone who’s insisted for weeks that she has less than zero interest in it. Or in the person producing it.”
She’s got me, and I say, knowing how lame it sounds, “I just don’t want the summer to be a waste, that’s all.”
“It won’t be.”
But Mat and Shane are really getting into it now. They’ve come near us again, apparently unconcerned about everyone listening.
“Brother, you’ve got to get a grip,” Mat says. “Better yet, get your ears tested.” For good-natured Mat, this is the height of rudeness.
“We tried, buddy. We tried and we failed.” Shane’s grandiose summing-up of months of work, and a lifetime of fantasizing about his dream project, would be funny if he didn’t sound so pitiful.
“What’s with the we?” Mat says.
“Okay, I! I’ve blown it! I’m stuck!”
“Go for a swim, buddy. Run down to the beach. You need to cool off.”
Bree groans. “This is getting ti-yer-some.”
“He respects your opinion,” I whisper. “If you convince him the work’s good, maybe he’ll see reason.”
“I have a better idea. A little dose of just the right medicine for what ails him. Pretty boy!” she bellows up at Shane on the porch. “Mat! Pipes! All of you fools! Get over here!”
They obey. Bree’s chef, Martin, comes out from the kitchen. Even the kids swim over.
When everyone’s assembled in front of our lawn chairs, Mat and Shane pointedly standing at either end, Piper still dripping from the pool, Bree orders, “Pack a bag and be ready in an hour.”
No big deal. This is what it means to be Bree Lang. One phone call and she can whisk people into the air on a friend’s private ten-seater Cessna, leaving the earth’s petty arguments and frustrations six thousand feet below. By the time we start our descent, Shane and Mat have hugged and Shane has told everyone he’s sorry for acting like an ass. When we’re backstage getting bracelets around our wrists, he apologizes to me directly.
“I’m sorry about my little...outburst. You took a risk for me, opening up the place. I guess the pressure got to me.”
“It’s okay. Bree says it’d be abnormal if you didn’t have a freak-out. She says it means the work’s going well.”
“I’m still sorry.”
“Apology accepted. So, have you been to this show before? I tried to get tickets for the Great Woods Center in Mansfield last summer but it was sold out. I really wanted to see Patty Griffin.” Lesbo-Palooza, some idiot had chortled to his buddy, passing the nearly all-female ticket-buying line. We’d booed him.
“Actually, this’ll be my third. I saw it in Pasadena last year and Irvine two summers ago.”
“I’m impressed.”
Lilith Fair: named for the legendary first, wanton wife of Adam in Jewish folklore. Conceived because Sarah McLachlan was sick of Lollapalooza’s macho vibe, of hearing that festivals could have only one token female act, that radio stations couldn’t possibly play songs by women back-to-back. I can’t believe Bree initially turned down a guest appearance because she was committed to our little project.
Bree leads us into a VIP tent, and I can see her transform into performance mode. She’s still herself, talking to people warmly, extricating herself, signing autographs with a smile, extricating herself.
But there’s a shield up, a desire to keep moving that I’ve never seen in her, during our long, lazy talks in the field. It must keep her sane, keep her feeling in control, like herself, doing this all the time. It must keep her from feeling that all of these people who want something from her are picking away at what makes her Bree.
“I saw Bree giving you quite the talking-to on the plane,” I murmur to Shane, as we watch her in action, giving an impromptu interview to some reporter.
“The upshot is she said I was acting like a damn fool. Which I have been. Don’t argue—you know I have.”
“Who was arguing?”
“She said one more thing. That this would remind me why I started the project in the first place. Not this this...” He indicates the VIP tent. “That this.” Meaning the real concertgoers outside the tent.
We look at this. Thousands of people, dancing, lolling on blankets, strolling, or crowding the stages.
A jumpy woman across the tent makes a beeline for Bree the second she finishes with the reporter. Her press pass says Hailey Allen, Rolling Stone.
“Look,” I say to Shane. “Our friend from the many voice mails.”
We eavesdrop. “I understand that you canceled your summer performances to work on the Graham Kingston tribute album. Care to comment?”
“Write that this album is important,” she says, with a wink at me. “And that it has some surprises on it. Shane and Jackie here can fill you in on the rest. If they want to.” She slips away.
“Wait, you’re Jacqueline Pierce, the new owner of the Sandcastle?” the reporter says, flipping to a new page in her notebook as if we’ve already agreed to an interview. “I’ve tried reaching you a bunch of times through your attorney.”
“Oh, really? I’m sorry. This summer’s been pretty hectic.”
“And Mr. Ingram, this is your baby, of course. Nice to meet you both, finally.”
I’m happy to see that they clearly haven’t spoken before.
“What kind of release date are you looking at?” she asks Shane.
“Most likely June 2000,” he says. He throws her a few bones about the recording process, shaping the album. Not giving away too much. Just enough to make her feel like she’s getting a scoop. Like Bree, he’s good at this, in control. It’s attractive, seeing him in work mode. What did Bree say by the pool? Gorgeous, of course.
The reporter swivels to me. “Ms. Pierce, just fact-checking a few things...”
I tense, but say, “Oh, sure.” Just a few answers, I can do that. I owe it to Shane, to the group. Piper and Mat and the rest—this album could be a huge career moment for them.
“So, you were Graham Kingston’s niece on your mother’s side, and you’ve inherited the property and his catalog. Have I got that right?”
“Yes.”
“So you’re the only one involved with the project who’s actually a family member. That must be meaningful.”
“I’m not really a family member.” Why am I so quick to insist on this, to quibble? I’m throwing blood in the water for the journalist.
“Oh? I thought—”
“I mean, not a close one. But, yes. It’s meaningful.”
She nods, her eyes warm with understanding and compassion. But her pen never stops moving.
“How are you liking what you’ve heard so far?”
“I... What I’ve heard so far is brilliant. They’ve all been working so hard, really pouring themselves into it. This is a rare break, this show today.”
“I’m sure...” She scribbles, checks her notes. I begin to relax. Observing Bree and Shane has given me some crash media training. It’s not so hard. Give them something, anything, steer the questions where you want them to go. And, in a pinch, just lie.
“So, do you think the deceased relatives would approve of what you’re doing?”
Her big brown eyes are impossible to read.
It’s okay. Be like Bree, with an invisible shield...
“I think they’d approve,” I say. “I’m trying to do what they would’ve wanted.”
“Though your uncle was fastidious, quite controlling about his work, correct?”
“Yes. The group here has been true to his style. It’s respectful, a loving tribute.” I look at Shane and he nods, comes close, gives me a secret, reassuring hand-squeeze.
“Great, great... So, I understand that you lived at the Sandcastle in...” She flips through her notebook. “1979. Right before your uncle’s death.”
“Yes.”
“I’m so sorry. It’s quite a valuable property now, and I understand it’s going on the market, that you’re listing it with a real estate agent up there?”
“I—That’s correct.”
“So, the studio will likely be demolished soon. How do you think your uncle would’ve felt about that?”
“Not great, of course. But it’s a difficult situation.”
“Yes, his death was such a tragedy,” she says. “Such a loss.”
“It was.”
Scribble scribble. Way more scribbles than the words It was would require.
I feel queasy. The tent’s unbearably crowded with bodies, smelling of sweat and ambition. Hailey Allen’s concerned look feels inescapable. Endless.
She fiddles with her earring, casual: “And of course, your cousin’s death, a few years later. Such a tragedy.”
She wants me to sob. To give her something I don’t want to give, to spice up her article with my tears about the tragic Kingston branch of my family.
I won’t show her how much her questions hurt. Won’t give her the satisfaction of explaining that the Kingstons weren’t simply tragic. That there was so much beauty there, before.
We’re trying to save a tiny bit of it. Aren’t we? But now I’m not sure. Maybe she’s going to convince everyone that the album is in poor taste. I don’t know what I can say that will end the interview so I can get fresh air, get away from that scribbling pen and notebook.
“Look, Ms. Allen,” Shane says. “I’ve got another quote for you. Can you write this down? Ready?”
“Shoot.”
“Here you go—‘Everyone on the project is beyond grateful and humbled that Ms. Pierce has generously welcomed us into the studio for the summer.’ And you can call her publicist, Melva Peachtree, to set another interview time with her. But right now, we really don’t want to miss the show because Bree’s going on soon. You understand that, I’m sure.”
“Of course. Ms. Peachtree’s number?” she asks me.
“617-555-4646,” I say.
Shane and I shake her hand goodbye, all smiles, and bolt outside.
“Thank you,” I say. “Melva Peachtree?”
“My first-grade teacher. What’s the phone number you gave her?”
“My burrito take-out place in Boston.”
He hoots in delight. “You were great. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. But you’ll have to do press and stuff to promote the album next year, right? I don’t want to piss her off.”
“Believe me, it’ll make them want more. I’ll keep the beast fed. Want to get out of here?”
“Yeah.”
We work our way to the side of the main stage, and then, edging and slithering around bodies, to the front. Until we’re only a few people back from the stage. Bree is coming on soon, but we’ve lost the others.
“Better?” he shouts.
“Yes!”
I can breathe here, packed in with tens of thousands, more than in that tent of thirty. Someone passes me a joint and I take a couple of drags, pass it to Shane, who refrains.
“Bree said this was medicine for what ails you,” I shout. “Is it working?”
“So far!” he shouts back.
I’m thinking about the other teachers at school. How they think I’m so removed, so antisocial. Paul and I never joined them for happy hour karaoke, though they asked all the time; they think we’re stiffs. They imagine I’m home with a cup of chamomile tea, a classical record playing, Toby a still, furry spiral on my lap. When I’m dancing with strangers.
“What’s funny?” Shane asks.
“I’m home drinking chamomile tea!” I say, laughing, but he can’t hear me.
Hot from dancing, I take off the jean jacket he loaned me and tie it around my waist.
“You’re a weird girl!” he shouts.
“I know.” I close my eyes.
Then Lhasa de Sela introduces Bree, who jumps right into two songs before stopping for a little patter.
“And I’d like a special guest to join me now,” Bree says. She sounds as relaxed as if she’s only talking to a single old friend across the lunch table. “A good friend of mine, a new friend. She’s flown here all the way from Boston to play for us... Where are you, lady?” She searches, finds me, locks on me like a radar gun.
“She’s not,” I say to Shane, backing away. “She wouldn’t.”
“She would. She is.”
Oh, sweet fancy Jesus... No, Bree.
I scowl at her, which only makes her go on more enthusiastically. “She thinks we hit thirty and nothing new happens. Hell, I’m fifty-four and something new happens to me every day. We don’t agree with her, do we?”
“No!!!”
“We can give her a good welcome, right?”
“Yes!!!”
“Ms. Jacqueline Pierce, accompanying me in her West Coast debut. She’s going to help me out with a little piano backing on an old favorite of hers by Donna Summer.” There’s a roar—for Donna, of course. Not for me.
Phew. At least she doesn’t expect me to sing. Twenty thousand strangers encourage me, probably convinced that this is all planned. I’m hoisted up to the proscenium by unseen strong, friendly hands, hauled up onstage by a roadie.
I shake my head at Bree, but I turn to face the crowd and wave. This, this right here, right now, is what Willa didn’t want. What she found so unappealing that she kept her gift of a voice to herself.
I sit, trill a few notes, then nod at Bree and start the bassline of “I Feel Love.” A racing pulse, like lovemaking. Bree’s gorgeous mezzo voice winds around it, finding lovely new highs and lows and sideways trips, detours. Her voice romps, then slows, then flies free again.
I glimpse Shane for a second before I lose his smile in the crowd and myself in the music.
I wish I could bottle this air, this atmosphere, and breathe it in when the world seems too cruel for me to get out of bed. I wish I could share it with my kids, so they could breathe it in, too.
As we finish, and sweat’s rolling down my temples from the hot lights, I close my eyes and think of Willa. This is for you, Wills. I know you hated crowds, but I sure wish you were alive so I could come home and tell you about it.
On the way home, everyone else sleeps, lulled by the plane’s buzz. I curl against the cold window, stare out at the fog. As exciting as it was, being onstage, it’s also a relief to be away from the packed-in bodies and applause, to return to our tranquil hideout in the woods. I wonder what it feels like to do this all the time. To go from strutting to dreaming, and back again. Over and over. Graham was bitter about what he called “the circus”—at least when it lost interest in him. Willa never wanted any part of it.
“May I?” Shane. He has two drinks, and hands me one as he sits in the aisle seat next to me. “Ginger ale spiked with honey. The perfect cocktail to protect your voice after a performance. It’s a little post-show ritual that I read Nina Simone swears by.”
“Thanks.” I take a sip. “It’s tasty. Of course, I didn’t sing. The reason we know that is I’m not scrubbing tomato stains out of my shirt right now.”
He laughs, then reaches high, his fingertips touching the cabin roof, and pivots his spine back and forth in a stretch. “Your voice isn’t so bad. I heard you in the studio, remember?”
“I do. Spy.”
“Guilty. But really. You were a good sport tonight. And you were beautiful up there.”
I circle my cup rim with my index finger, around and around. “Thank you.”
He starts to speak, pauses. “You are beautiful.”
I have no answer for this. I’m too drained to come up with a change of subject, too happy to shoot his compliment down with another joke, an eye roll. I turn to face him, rest my cheek on the seat cushion. You, too, I mouth.
It’s nearly two and we linger in the hall. Everyone else has gone to bed but we’ve been standing here for ages, dawdling.
“Well,” he says. “Remember the little people, now that you’re famous.”
“Of course I will. Shawn.”
He smiles, brushing at a nail hole in the wall where I’ve taken down a painting. “I’ve heard toothpaste works on these. White toothpaste. Not Crest.”
“I have putty.”
“Ah, good. Well. You’re probably exhausted.”
“Yeah. I’m going to crash.”
“Me, too.” He stretches, circling his arms as if to demonstrate how tired he is, but it’s the gesture of an early-morning swimmer standing on a starting block, ready to race a thousand meters. Not someone about to dive into bed.
And neither of us moves.
“Well,” I say.
“Well. Fun night!” He reaches his arms around me, wide, a too-careful hug.
“Yeah!” I pat him on the back—’Night, bud!
One gesture, one word from either of us to acknowledge what we really want. That’s all it would take. A finger. A syllable. But we separate and go inside our rooms on opposite ends of the hall.
I scratch Toby, who’s asleep on the parlor floor, hoping some quality mystery-massage action from below is imminent.
I change into my souvenir Lilith Fair T-shirt. I pace.
The look Shane gave me in the field, as everyone else hugged and called out their good-nights and dispersed for bed. He looked at me that way again as we stalled and small-talked in the hall. I can’t stop seeing that look. Remembering it sends my thoughts to places I don’t want them to go. To his warm lips, his skin, his smell. His long arms and skillful, fast-moving fingers.
I press my hand to the rug by Toby’s right front paw but don’t feel anything. Shane must be sound asleep by now.
He’ll have come back to earth, and he’ll be relieved we didn’t do anything. I get in the daybed and flick out the light.
Sounds from the kitchen. Footsteps, then the suction-y thcks of the fridge door opening, closing, opening again. Someone getting a midnight snack. No, a two a.m. snack.
I know it’s him. For one thing, he’s the only one besides me who sleeps in the house. Everyone else wants a little space from the studio, or has kids, and has taken over cabins and yurts.
I know it’s him because the same adrenaline that’s keeping him up is keeping me up.
“Stop me, Tobes,” I whisper to my oblivious cat.
I slip out of the room, walk down the hall toward the kitchen light.
He’s got his back to me. The counter in front of him is covered in food—rye bread and ham and turkey and chips. He has a tub of rice pudding out, too. He’s struggling with a jar. He gives up on it, sets it down, and braces his arms on the edge of the sink, looking out at the field.
“Hungry?” I ask.
He turns, not hiding his happiness to find me here. “No.”
“Neither am I.”
I hop up on the counter near the window, across from him. “I’ve been meaning to tell you something. Toby sleeps curled up on the center of the floor in the parlor. He feels vibrations coming up from the studio in that spot, when anyone’s working down there. You disappointed him tonight.”
“Is he waiting in his spot right now?”
“Yeah. He’s optimistic.”
He laughs. “D’you think he likes what he’s felt so far?”
“If he hated it, he wouldn’t sleep there.”
“Our first review.”
I smile. “A good one.”
He walks to me and stands close, between my dangling legs. I tilt my head down to kiss him, sweet and quick. But it feels like a lie to kiss him that way. He clutches my shirt, wrapping the fabric around his wrists until it’s snug against my hips, and my legs wrap around him.
He lifts me off the counter, carries me out the kitchen door to the hall, heading for his room.
“Not in there,” I say into his neck.
He sets me down.
“Outside.” I tug him by the wrist. Through the front door, across the porch, down the steps to the field. He kicks his moccasins off as I lead him past the picnic table toward the trees.
“A cabin?” he says.
“No.”
I lead him by the hand down the narrow dirt path toward the hot springs. In the moonlight, the water looks like mercury. I take two towels off the pegs in the changing shelter.
“A soak,” he says. “That sounds good.” Trying to hide his disappointment.
“No. After.” Because we’re not stopping. Just past the springs there’s a small clearing in the trees. Someone has carried up lawn chair mats for lying on, dozing. Perfect for catching your breath and cooling down between soaks. Perfect for collapsing onto when you can’t stand the 106-degree water for another second, when you feel faint. Cold then hot then cold—the contrast makes you feel alive.
I spread the towels over a mat, pull him down after me, already sliding his shorts off. Then his boxers. He shuts his eyes as I touch him, run my thumb over the tender, wet skin. He rubs his face against my neck, burrowing in so close that when he breathes, my throat vibrates.
He tugs off my skirt, then my underwear. I lift my hips, helping him, lifting my shirt, and the cold middle-of-the-night air feels good on my breasts, the inside of my thighs. His mouth is attentive, kissing and sucking until I’m wet above and below, shivering whenever he allows space between his face and my body. It’s like going in and out of the pools. Hot then cold then hot again. His hand, below, is gentle, steady, exploring, and my pulse races faster than any two a.m. disco song. I push against his fingers and they speed up, separate. Not something everyone can do...easy for him, though...and for me. There’s a word for that...temerity...dentellity...no...whatever the word is, musicians always have it...
I take his wrist, stop him before I come. We roll to our sides, I hook my leg behind his, digging into the back of his thigh with my heel until he buries himself in me.
Contrast. Slow, fast. Hard, soft.
Yours. Mine.
The last thing I see before I have to close my eyes, before all thought ebbs away, is the curve of his shoulder against the purple sky.
After, we soak. The sun’s coming up behind us, but it’s still so early that the trees are more black than green. I’m sitting on his lap, my right arm extended in front of me, my right index finger dancing in the air.
“I can’t figure out—” he kisses my left shoulder blade “—if you’re casting a spell or conducting an invisible orchestra.”
“Neither. I’m tracing the tree line. See. Close one eye.”
He copies me, making an invisible zigzagging line over the treetops with the tip of his index finger.
“Isn’t it wild?” I ask. “In a month that line will be completely different. Some trees will grow a little faster than others. One might die because insects have gotten a little too comfortable, or maybe it’s struck by lightning. Some might bend slightly in another direction to reach the light.”
“Already thinking about fall?”
“No.” I don’t want to think about fall. I don’t even want to think about tomorrow. “Just about how much things can change when you’re not paying attention.”
“It’s true. You hated me a month ago.”
“Hate is a strong word.”
He laughs. “When did the tide turn? Because you had to’ve known I’ve been gone over you since that first day in the field.”
“Who said the tide has turned? What if I’m just using your body? Plus, you had all those singers onstage tonight to soften me up. Maybe they seduced me, not you.”
“Ouch.”
I turn to face him. “No. Your playing would’ve done it for me, too. I like it.” I nuzzle against him.
“And I’d like you, even if you didn’t play a thing last night.”
“So it was me, not just Sarah and Beth and Lhasa and Lucinda?”
“It was you.”
Judy and Joni and Joan and Joan. I gaze off into the trees behind him as if Willa’s out there, watching me, forever a teenager, envying me because I’ve had so many years to love. Except she was never envious.
I push the thought away and bring my attention back to this living person, who’s here with me now, warm and close.
“I think that may be the best show I’ve ever been to,” he says.
“Second-best for me.”
“What’s your number one?”
“Blondie. Is, was, always will be.”
“What show? I saw them in LA in ’85.”
“’79. Sonoma Fairgrounds.”
“Ah. Not too far from here.”
“Yeah.”
Shane squeezes my hand. “Do you remember what they opened with?”
“I remember the entire set list.”
“Go. And don’t think I won’t look it up on the internet.”
“‘Dreaming,’ ‘One Way or Another,’ ‘Hanging on the Telephone,’ ‘Look Good in Blue,’ ‘Youth Nabbed as Sniper,’ ‘Sunday Girl,’ ‘Heart of Glass,’ ‘Rip Her to Shreds,’ ‘In the Sun,’ encore of ‘Heart of Glass.’ Impressed?”
His answer is a kiss, slow and sliding, that turns into another hour of lovemaking, of bobbing and crying out in and along the edge of the hot water. Someone could come by and catch us; I don’t know if it’s six a.m. or eight. After, we kiss again, the steam making everything nearby a blur, until we both feel too woozy to stay in a minute longer.
“Prehistoric,” he says as we crawl out, too tired to finish the reference. But I know what he’s trying to say: we’re like two primordial creatures, crawling from the ooze. Nothing but instinct left.
Our wrung-out muscles tangled up, we lie in the clearing. Too spent even to lift a finger and trace more tree lines.
“Dexterity,” I manage, panting.
“What?” He tucks a strand of wet hair behind my ear.
It’s a few minutes before I can speak again. “I was trying to remember the word. Last night. The word for skills. With your hands.”
He laughs. “If you’re trying to remember words while making love, maybe the dexterity is lacking.”
“No. Not lacking at all. Not one little bit.”
“We need something to revive us,” he says.
“Two options. Coffee or beach?”
“Beach. Then coffee. Then bed.”
“Don’t you have to work today?”
“Change of plans. I’m giving everyone the day off.”