Late in the Season (6 page)

The biography sat in his lap with a weight that was in itself a reproach. But he didn’t even open it. He was thinking about Fiammetta in Florence, and how her music would be more youthful, more truthful now.

At first she thought she was in the berth of a large ocean liner, sailing in the middle of the Mediterranean. The sky, through the gauzy curtains on three sides, was an intense, cloudless blue. Even with the curtains closed, the room was so bright she had to close her eyes again.

When she opened them she knew where she was—the guest bedroom of the lovers’ house. She remembered last night, and how she’d arrived here, but she didn’t recall anything of what had happened after her arrival; she had been so relieved, so suddenly exhausted. She vaguely remembered that one lover was away in Europe, and that the other had been surprised, reserved, helpful yet distant from her, however cordial.

She wondered if he were up yet. She had to get up. She couldn’t just lie here. Not with that sky, that sun! She had to get up, whether he was awake or not.

The corduroys she’d worn last night were on the table next to the bed, along with a gutted candle in a dish.

What a nice room this was. The curtains, once pulled, revealed the rich wine-colored carpeting, a half wall of closets in rosewood, built in with shelves, stereo equipment, a color television, even a little pull-out desk or vanity with its own telephone. The other door led to a bathroom—sleek, contemporary in its fixtures and accessories, very no-nonsense in brown and beige, complementing the decor of the bedroom. And outside—well, with the curtains opened all around, the bedroom seemed to float on a little wooden deck, in the middle of a wood—a hidden little cove, a private place for sitting, sunning, even for making love in the afternoon.

She pulled on her T-shirt and the corduroys and stepped out onto the deck. The sun was hot, so strong it had burnt the rain off the leaves, dried off the decking. Under the bushes the dark wet ground steamed as though in a tropical jungle. She realized this was the direction of her family’s house, which she could just make out through the foliage. Were there other little hidden terraces like this one? she wondered. She thought she had seen the entire house last summer at the lovers’ party. Wouldn’t this be a lovely spot to sun in.

Back in the bedroom, she left a glass door open to air out the room. Then she found her sneakers and sweatshirt and peeked out into the corridor. It was empty: one door at the end open a few inches; that must be the lovers’ bedroom. He must be awake.

But there was no one in the kitchen, or dining room—an area surrounded on two sides with glass, a raised skylight overhead, garden on one side, the ocean view on the other—nor was there anyone in the large central room where they’d sat and talked last night. The place seemed far larger than she remembered.

She found her slicker still hanging in the little bathroom off the foyer. Next to the fireplace, her denims were hung, dry. She changed into them, then went around opening up curtains and doors to air out the slightly dense, nutty odor of the dead fireplace. Outside the living area was a three-quarters surrounding deck that dropped a level to a lower, larger deck, from which in turn, paths led to the beach. Even the white sand looked hot and dry.

Back inside, she crept down the hallway to the last door and opened it a few inches more.

Jonathan was still sleeping. His room was steaming hot. He’d pulled off most of his bedclothes already. He was rolled over on one side, away from her, the sheets twisted around his body. She whispered his name, hoping he would be awake enough to hear. No reaction. She tried again, a bit louder, trying to thank him and to tell him she was going now.

He was sound asleep. Well, she couldn’t remain here all day waiting for him to wake up. She’d come back and thank him later.

The room was too hot. Like the one she’d slept in, it faced east, though more southerly. It too had its private deck, but this one opened onto the ocean. She slid open the glass door, hoping it wouldn’t make noise. It didn’t. Then she slid open the door opposite. That was better, cooler. He’d sleep more comfortably now.

She closed the bedroom door, exactly as she had found it, and left the house. With its doors open, its curtains flapping in the wind, it reminded her somehow of a house in a Fellini movie she’d once seen.

Almost back at her family’s house, she had an idea—she would change into cooler clothing and make Jona-than some coffee. He didn’t usually sleep late, she re-called. He’d been awake yesterday morning before her, already composing on the oceanside deck, when she’d wandered out. And in previous summers, the lovers were ordinarily up early: on their deck, on the beach, going into the little village for groceries, the mail, a morning newspaper.

Problem number one was that there was no coffee in her kitchen. Her mother must have packed it away and carried it into the city. And she did so want coffee. Only one solution: she would go into the village and buy a can. Inside her family’s house, she went around opening windows and doors to the bright hot day. How different it looked after last night’s terrors. How tiny and shoddy and crowded with old beach furniture, after the lovers’ house. How shy the little fireplace seemed; how inadequate the hurricane lamp on the table; how sad the deck of playing cards still spread out in mid-game next to the paperback mystery. The whole place looked apologetic; as though it had failed her and knew it. “Dear old place,” she said aloud, forgiving it, reminding herself that after all, it was her parents’ house, and how much could she really expect from it?

“’Bye,” she said, when she left to head toward the village, as though someone were in the house to answer. After only a few steps, she stopped. Wait a minute. The lovers must have coffee in their house. She’d make it there.

Their house still seemed empty, although it was cooler now. She found coffee all right—more of it than she knew what to do with. Plastic containers of coffee were stacked up in the corner of a counter, each type carefully marked in felt tip ink: Mocha Java, French Blend, African Koola, Colombian, Brazilian. Problem number two was that all of them were whole coffee beans and had to be ground to be used. She located the grinder, plugged it into a wall socket, and prayed she wasn’t doing something wrong. It worked. Fine. Now for a coffeepot. She was in and out of cabinets before she noticed—on the counter, naturally, where she’d passed it a dozen times—the large Chemex drip coffeemaker. Now to select a blend. Several of them sounded fine, but as she was used to already canned blends, she wasn’t certain which was which. How about the French Blend? That sounded like a morning coffee to her, with its intimations of repasts at café tables surrounded by trees pinkly in bloom, and accompanied by a little tray of brioches and jams. She ground the coffee, boiled the water, poured the blend into the filter, added the water, wishing something here had instructions, so she could know if she were doing it right.

It was easy to guess men worked in this kitchen; it was so technical, so up-to-date with its hanging graduated copper bowls, its various measuring cups lined up, its stacks of plastic containers, its blenders, juicers, toasters, and broilers. A little army of knives of all shapes and sizes greeted her with military cleanliness in one corner. At the opposite end of the counter were a more frolicsome grouping of utensils—potato parers and slotted spoons, and a variety of wooden, steel, and plastic implements only half of which she’d ever seen before. All of them in order, all of them visible. It reminded her of her father’s workshop at home.

The coffee turned out scrumptiously good when she tasted it. Perhaps there was something to taking this much trouble over it.

She thought she heard mumbling, and looked down the hall toward his bedroom. Through the doorspace, she could see the sheets moving. He must finally be waking up.

She poured a second cupful, found a sugar bowl and matching creamer, spoons, and a lovely brown lacquered tray to hold it all. Wouldn’t he be surprised? Carrying it to the bedroom, she felt like the butler to a great financier in his summer palazzo on Lake Locarno. She wished she had today’s newspaper to set on the tray.

“Good morning, sir!” she greeted him, entering the room and looking around for a place to set down the tray near his bed. “And it is a beautiful day, too, after last night’s storm!” Her words trailed away.

Jonathan was half sitting up in bed, against the pillows, the sheets down to his ankles. His skin was honey tan against the pale blue sheets, amazingly solid against their crinkled fine flatness. One of his arms was thrown up over his rumpled curly brown hair. His mouth was half open, his lower teeth and his tongue visible. His eyes were only half-opened too.

Stevie stopped still, looking, or rather letting her eyes look, take photographs for her mind; otherwise she felt utterly blank, utterly filled up at the same time by what she was seeing, so that she couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but look. Look at how his dark fine body hair encircled each tiny cinnamon-colored nipple of his well-defined chest, then sloped in together to meet in a single line inches below on a little ridge of bone—his sternum—from there to slide and furrow and cascade over muscled ripples down to the flat plain of his paler lower groin, where the line of hair spread again, bushing thickly around his genitals—his half-erect penis, tilted up toward his navel—as the dark hair spread again, under his scrotum to softly cover the tops of his thighs, and to finally, eventually, disappear into his tanned calves.

“Oh! Coffee,” she heard him say, and she looked back up his length from the tangled sheets to his face again. “You made coffee. How nice,” he said. He smiled sleepily at Stevie, and gestured toward her.

She felt as though she were about to freeze to death. No, that wasn’t precisely right. Her arms and legs felt prickled, as though with a sudden rash, as though the nerve endings had all short-circuited at once, declaring a neural emergency. It was worse, different in her lower torso; her stomach seemed to be burning, yet at the same time to be involuntarily contracting and expanding so quickly, so forcefully she thought she was about to urinate.

“You can put the tray down here,” he was saying, “on the bed.” He reached up for it, took the tray out of her hands, and set it down on the sheets.

The freezing, burning, and other sensations in her body seemed to meet and flow together, gushing, and Stevie thought, Oh, my God, now I’ve done it.

“Sit down,” he said. She went to a nearby armchair, and was about to sit, satisfied at least that her legs were working. But he motioned her over to the edge of the bed. “Isn’t this cup for you? Or do I get both?”

She sat on the edge of the bed, facing away from him. That wouldn’t do. She looked down to check if her shorts were soaked—and was surprised that they weren’t. What could it have been? She still felt odd, still felt that prickling sensation in her lower torso, still felt blankness, even panic. It was something of a relief that she didn’t have to be embarrassed over incontinence too. She turned to face him.

“I really need this,” he sighed. Then, after a few sips, “You sleep well?”

She didn’t answer: she was too busy staring at him again, sweeping once more from his ankles to his face. He suddenly realized something was wrong.

“Jesus! How stupid of me,” he said, and reached down to cover himself with the sheet. “Sorry. Guess I wasn’t thinking too clearly.”

“That’s all right,” she managed to say in a small, deceptively calm voice. “You don’t have to,” she added, then lied, “I’m used to it.” She had to stop her hand from reaching up and uncovering his body. Looking at it had somehow set off all these reactions in herself, she knew, and while it was definitely strange and uncomfortable, she didn’t want it to end: not yet. “You don’t have to cover up in front of me.”

“Well?” He hesitated. “If you say so.” Still, he didn’t uncover himself. He wasn’t really convinced. She felt she had to say something else, in defense.

“I do have a boyfriend, you know,” she said, and was now amazed by how blasé she could be. “And this isn’t nineteen fifty-three, is it?”

“I suppose not,” he said, but looked puzzled, and she wondered what in the world had prompted her to choose that year.

“I’m never sure anymore what is allowed and what isn’t with younger people,” he replied.

She turned away from him and stared into the depths of the coffee mug. No relief there: the coffee, with cream, was precisely the color of his abdomen. She sighed.

“You didn’t have to go to all the bother of making coffee,” he said. “I do appreciate it, however.”

“I got up early.”

Her voice continued to lie blithely past her emotions, and little by little, she began to believe she could even make small talk with him, sitting here, on the edge of his bed, with him so close, his body so present, and she would get away with it—fool him and herself.

But could she ever reveal what she was really thinking to him? Or to anyone? How she’d seen Bill Tierney naked a dozen times, ditto her brother, and even a few other men; and although they were all certainly as attractive as any girl could desire, she’d never felt like this. Would Jonathan understand that? What was it, anyway, about him that had done it? Was it his position on the bed as she had come in the room, lying so thoughtlessly, so luxuriously among the tangle of sheets and the plump pillows? Was it the color of his skin—so honey brown—against the ice blue of the bedclothes? His sleepy vulnerability? Whatever it was, it had given her a brand-new experience, set off a chain reaction of little explosions that had culminated in her vagina—she had to admit it now—that no man or boy, even her crushes, even her rock star idols hadn’t come near before.