Authors: Frank Baldwin
Once or twice a summer I’d hit the mother lode. I’d be horsing around with a buddy out on the raft and we’d look in and see
her rise from her towel, walk to the diving board, dive gracefully into the cold lake, and start our way. As she moved smoothly
through the water, her gorgeous face breaking the surface closer and closer with each breast stroke, even I — the smart-ass
atheist — felt a bit of the divine spirit in the air. My buddy and I would lie down (on our stomachs, of course) and watch
her through half-closed eyes, pretending to be jolted awake by the dip of the raft as she pulled herself up the short wooden
ladder, dripping wet, her nipples hard as tacks through that black top. She’d smile beautifully at us and then, just as innocently
as you like, tug casually at her suit bottom where it had bunched up under her sweet ass. Then she’d sit down, just inches
away, squeeze the water from her blond hair, and ease onto her back, one golden leg straight out, the other knee pointed up
at her grateful creator.
Gott in Himmel
, as the German Lutherans used to say on bingo night, when Divine Providence delivered them the winning number. A half hour
later she’d still be there, on her stomach now maybe, and we’d still be there, too, stealing looks up her legs, our hard-ons
pressed into the raft, wondering idly what it’s like to die of sunburn, because there sure wasn’t a chance in hell that we
could even turn over, let alone stand up, while Melissa Clay lay wet and perfect beside us.
One Saturday a month the teenagers were allowed a dance in the Boathouse. Man, the charge those nights used to give me. If
the Mets go to the Series this year, and the Series goes seven games, and on the morning of the seventh game our firm’s senior
partner, Abe Stein, hands me two primo tickets and his granddaughter and warns me not to bring her home a virgin, then I might
feel again the rush that would hit me as I walked down the quiet lake road, a kid of fourteen, to the Boathouse on the night
of a dance. And not because I had any dance moves to try out or any real prospect at action, even. No, simply because I knew
that Melissa Clay would be there and that she would come, as she always did, in a T-shirt and no bra.
I’m not saying she was a loose girl. Not at all. She was a sweet, healthy missionary kid who everybody loved — the pious adults,
especially, because she never missed a Sunday service and always stopped to smile and talk when she passed them on the path.
I’d bet all I have that she left for college in the States that fall with her cherry. She was a free spirit, that’s all, and
so innocent that if she didn’t feel like putting on a bra under her tie-dyed T-shirt, well, she didn’t and that was that.
No one made anything of it.
Except us horny teens. We were a raw bunch. Across the pond, my American cousins were getting drunk at thirteen, high at fourteen,
and into girls — literally — a year later. Over in Tokyo, meanwhile, we were still learning grammar and algebra, of all things,
instead of backseat moves and self-defense, and making it through to graduation without ever catching a whiff of a joint.
Sex? It was a rumor, and a distant one.
That last dance of the summer, in her last summer at the lake, Melissa Clay looked as good as a girl can look. Dancing barefoot
on the wooden planks of the Boathouse, the strobe light freezing her in magic pose after magic pose, she had me at the breaking
point even before Tim Crockett asked her for a dance — or rather, took her hand and coolly pulled her out onto the floor,
because Tim didn’t have to
ask
any girl. He was nineteen, in college, drank beer, smoked cigarettes, bought his clothes in the States, and, the word was,
“knew what to do with it,” whatever that meant.
In the corner, all of us kids started elbowing one another, and, sure enough, Tim wasted no time putting his hands right on
her. Put them on her hips as they danced, and sweet Melissa smiled and moved in close, turning innocently in his hands even,
letting him drink in her taut ass, then moving away just as his hands slipped down to it. Seconds later he was in close again,
and when this time he started his hands up her belly, she let them climb up to within a couple of inches of her carefree breasts
and then, still smiling, took his wrists in her hands and moved them back down, then danced off a few steps and came back
to him, taking
his
surprised hands in
hers
now and placing them on her belt, smiling like an angel as he lifted them, lifted them, lifted them to the very base of her
perfect pair before she laughed, pulled them down, and danced away again.
No matador ever worked a bull as well. Or left one in worse shape. When the song set ended and Tim, trying hard to keep his
college cool, stood in close and whispered a question to her, she laughed and shook her head sweetly. Ten minutes later we
could see Tim sitting alone at the end of the dock, slugging back a can of beer that he was using, I’m sure, to ice himself
down with between sips.
We kids were about at our limit, too, and when ten o’clock came and the social chairman strolled in, switched on the lights,
locked the stereo cabinet, and announced that the dance was over, we huddled in a pack on the lake road, calling good-bye
to Melissa Clay as she disappeared around the bend with Beth and Shana, her laughing “bye!” still in our ears and the thought
of those sweet breasts still in our heads as we synchronized our watches, nodded that we’d all follow through on it, and then
raced home to our respective cabins to whack off, in unison, at precisely 10:17.
Damn. It all comes back like a movie. And then to see her again last week — unbelievable. I’d met Pardo at the Howling Wolf
for a quick Sunday night drink and was walking home up Amsterdam, passing one of the tiny, one-woman Benetton shops that dot
the avenues and stay open each night until ten. I glanced in the window and stopped dead. I walked to the glass. Twelve years,
but I knew her instantly. Knew those quick, blue eyes. That angel’s face, the long, blond hair swept back now with a hairband.
It was Melissa Clay.
I reached for the door but then checked myself. I watched her as she talked to a customer, standing as only a woman can, one
small foot pointing in front of her and the other off to the side. Her legs were still thin and fine, but now they led up
to a woman’s ass. I saw her customer laugh and turn with her bags toward the door, and I ducked quickly into a doorway before
Melissa’s eyes could follow her and see me through the glass. I stayed in the doorway as the customer walked to the curb,
waved down a taxi, climbed in, and sped away. I stayed another thirty seconds and then, not risking a last look in the window,
started slowly up Amsterdam again, my mind already working a week ahead.
I had another prospect, true. Debbie Collins, a sassy dance major I’d known up at school and had run in to again at an alumni
mixer two weeks back. She’d been a hot little number on the Hill and had lost nothing in the four years since, and I’d lain
awake just the night before working out a plan of attack. As I turned onto Eighty-second Street, though, and made for home,
I knew that Debbie Collins would have to wait. She was a treat, yes, but this city was full of treats. It held only one Melissa
Clay.
And now it’s time. I turn onto Amsterdam at 9:55. She will be closing up in minutes. I stop in front of the bookstore next
door, pretending to look at the same five fiction titles that have sat in the window all year. I take a breath.
She won’t recognize me, probably, but when I say my name, it will land deep. Ours was a small community, and the ties strong
and lasting. The Clays, I knew, had retired to a small Baptist town in the South years ago, so Melissa would have been cut
off from the country where she was raised.
Through the glass I see her in the back, folding blouses at a small counter. She wears a sparse white dress, the impossibly
thin straps just visible under her open red sweater. I walk inside and she looks up at the sound of the bell.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi. I need scarves,” I say, walking to a rack of them, “and I’ve got no eye for them. Can you help?”
“Sure.” She smiles and comes from behind the counter. Her dress comes just to her knees, and her legs are bare —
bare
— underneath. She wears a thin anklet and clogs. “You must have done a good deed today — we’re having a sale.”
She steps into the light, and I see her full for the first time. She’s all I’d hoped. Beautiful, still, but working at it
now. Aerobics, probably, and eye cream, and even so, just months, maybe weeks from the start of the long, gentle slide.
“Melissa? Melissa Clay?”
She looks into my face, startled. Smiling still, but caught between her store manner, her natural friendliness, and the reserve
this city gives every woman.
“Yes. Do I?…”
“Japan. The American School. I’m Jake Teller.”
“My God.”
She puts her soft, white hand quickly on my shoulder. I see the ring.
“I was Shana’s year,” I say.
She steps back and laughs, quiet and friendly, the kind you don’t hear often in this city.
“This is New York,” she says. “It had to happen, right? I can’t believe it. Teller… the lake, too, right?” I nod. “You weren’t
church?”
“IBM. They let a few of us heathens in, remember?”
She laughs. “I remember. We envied you — you could swim on Sundays. Jake Teller. You were…”
“Fourteen when you were eighteen.”
She looks me over.
“Yes. You never left the Boathouse.”
I laugh. “That was me.”
“And you recognized me?”
“You stood out, Melissa. Still do.”
She smiles easily and touches my shoulder again.
“Thanks. Jake Teller — all grown up, and a charmer. I’ll tell Shana. She’s in North Carolina now.”
“Doing well?”
“Yes. Two kids.”
“Wow.” I shake my head. “Have you been back? To Japan?”
“Not once. You know us missionary kids: When we leave, it’s for good. You?”
“I was back last summer. And I made it to the lake.”
“Last summer! Jake, what is it like? The same families, still?”
“A lot of them. It’s… hey, do you want to… how about a drink? I’ll fill you in.”
She pauses just a fraction of a second, looks down, then back up at me.
“I’d love to.”
“When do you close?”
“Two minutes ago. Let me get my things.”
She walks to the back counter and takes her purse and a light coat from a chair. I help her into a sleeve.
“Well, thank you, Jake. Across the street is P. J. Clarke’s. Is that all right?”
“They’ll let us in? You’re wearing a ring and I’m not bald.”
“Is it like that?” She laughs. “I’ve never been.”
“We’ll be fine.”
She locks the door behind us, and we cross the street and step into P. J. Clarke’s, a dark, upscale singles bar, all mahogany
and mood music. I’ve seen a few last calls here. I walk her to a seat in the corner, where the bar meets the window and you
can see out into the street, see the shops and the walkers and, a block up, the green entrance to the park. A big ex-athlete
in a pressed white shirt slides two coasters in front of us and smiles.
“Absolut, straight,” I say.
“A sea breeze, please,” says Melissa. She laughs at the look I give her and touches my shoulder again. “Since college,” she
says.
“I thought even caffeine was a no-no. Do the folks know?”
“I broke it to them at the reception. What could they say?” She offers her left hand and I take it, raise it, and give her
ring a long look.
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you. It’s been a year.”
Our drinks come, I clink mine against hers, and we take our sips. Her sweater is only pulled round her, and I can see the
tops of her golden breasts.
“So, the lake,” she says. “Tell me it’s the same?”
“You didn’t hear?”
“What?” Her blue eyes crinkle with worry.
“The Boathouse.”
She puts her hand on my chest.
“No.”
“It’s coming down. This summer or next.”
“It can’t.”
“The prefecture wants to build a boardwalk. With shops.”
“How awful. They must be fighting it.”
“Trying to, but it doesn’t look good. It
is
their country.”
“But the Boathouse…”
Her soft eyes look down at the bar for a moment, and she sips from her drink. I motion with my eyes at her ring.
“Is he one of us?”
She shakes her head.
“A New Yorker, believe it or not.”
“Will you take…”
“Steve.”
“… Steve over? To see it?”
She pauses. “I don’t know. Someday…” She looks for words and I wait. “It’s… hard, you know?”
I nod.
“You belong, but you don’t,” I say. “Just like over here.”
“Yes.” She looks at me quickly, a little more in her eyes now. “It’s hard to explain to people, isn’t it? The community. The…”
“Innocence.”
“Yes.”
The bartender stands before us.
“One more?” I ask her. She pauses, then nods. “Should you call Steve?” I ask. She hesitates.
“It’s okay. Some nights I do inventory.”
Our drinks come; I raise mine, she raises hers and waits.
“To the Boathouse,” I say.
“Amen.” She looks at me and shakes her head. “Jake, you’ve been a shock. I haven’t thought of those days in…” She looks into
her glass and, maybe, back through the years. “Do you remember the dances?”
“You used to dance with Tim Crockett.”
She puts her drink on the bar and looks at me, amazed. Her hand goes to my shoulder again, this time with a little pressure.
“Tim Crockett… there was a randy one.”
“He kept moving his hands up your shirt, and you kept moving them down.”
“Yes, and I wasn’t…” She looks over, sees me blush, and laughs. “It’s true what they say about junior-high boys, isn’t it?”
“All of it,” I say.
I finish my drink and she does the same, struggling with the last long sip.
“Do you miss it?” I ask.
“When I think of it. They were special days.”