The colors of that night, the night she’s tried so hard not to think about, are black shot through with red. The red of Lulu’s lips. The red of the plastic cups they were drinking from. The deep, pulsing red of her own heart, hidden inside her but bursting with each stolen kiss.
The clubhouse is packed and steamy now, and the square dance is drawing to an end. Jack stands close to her as they scan the crowd. Mr. Herman is at the mic. He and Katie’s mother dated for a couple of summers when they were around Katie’s age; now they barely acknowledge each other. An off-center cowlick makes him look like an overgrown child. John and Charlie Gregory move their heads toward each other, and Charlie goes over to the bar area, waving to get Tommy’s attention.
“Laaaadies and gentlemen,” Mr. Herman cries out. “Step right up for the prizes! Prizes galore! Come on, people.”
The room hushes except for the banging of the screen doors on their loosened hinges. Where has Lulu disappeared to, with her righteous indignation? After she cursed at Katie, she ran off, and Katie hasn’t been able to track her down. She is nowhere to be seen in the crowded room. There is David, by the counter, almost ten years old and gawky, drinking a milkshake. Behind the counter Tommy and his girlfriend, Alexi, are running around, every move a balletic dance of fast food service.
Mr. Herman doles out prizes for best twirl, do-si-do, curtsy turn, pass-through, and pull-by. And there she is now, Lulu—just as he is finishing up, she enters through the back door. Her hair pulled off her face into a tower of curls. She has reapplied the red lipstick.
Jack squeezes Katie’s hand, and a surge of adrenaline shoots through her. When she looks across the room again, Lulu is staring in their direction. She doesn’t need to say anything for Katie to understand what she is thinking. Her eyes are flinty and unblinking. Rosy cheeks and those bright lips.
Lulu says something to Katie’s father, and he leans his body in toward her, trying to catch her words. The skin on his forehead gleams like chrome. He stares at her lips, moving silently, a slash of red on her face. Then he reaches out and wipes his thumb over the corner of her mouth. Once, twice, pulling her lips apart; there is a flash of white teeth.
No one else is paying any attention, but Katie can’t move her eyes away. Surrounded by cheering and laughing, by the rising voices of people fueled by too many sweet drinks and too much beer, Lulu and her father appear to be in a room all by themselves. Lulu takes a step back, and the noises swell again. Katie’s father accepts a beer from Charlie and drains it in one long series of gulps, his Adam’s apple jerking up and down. When he is done, he wipes a sleeve over his mouth. He has the look of a man caught in a desert.
Though Lulu has turned away, it feels as if she’s looking squarely at Katie, daring her in some way—but daring her to do what, she does not know. And then she is gone again.
How long does Katie keep searching for Lulu that night—was it long enough? The heat presses down like one blanket too many. Out on the diving board, a body radiates a vaguely steely light as it rises and falls through the air. There is a short shriek, and the person jumps in the water with a splash. It’s not Lulu. There are people on the float and by the docks, but Katie can’t tell if she is among them or not. Someone has put on “Who’s That Lady” by the Isley Brothers. “Look, yeah, but don’t touch,” an off-key male voice sings from the bar area.
“A swim might be kinda fun?” Jack asks Katie uncertainly.
She shuts her eyes, and sparkles streak over her inner lids. Getting cold and wet seems like the last thing on earth they should be doing right then.
Jack presses close to her. “Listen, come on,” he says so quietly she has to strain to make out his words. “Let’s get out of here, okay?” His fingers curl around hers, and he pulls her over toward the bike rack.
And Lulu—should Katie just forget her? Maybe Brad is with her now; maybe they are back inside, dancing together. He is too old for her, but it would be exciting to have a college kid pay attention to you. Maybe she is behind them on the deck, trying to persuade someone to give her more free booze. Or she might be in the boathouse, bumming a cigarette.
“Grab a bike,” Jack says, rattling them loose from the rack. “We’ll bring them back later.”
Some of the bikes are neatly filed side by side, wheels freshly pumped with air, children’s stickers adorning the handlebars; others are disintegrating, leaning against the spokes of the rack, pedals dislodged, seats askew. She hesitates before yanking one out. The pull she feels toward Jack is thrilling, elemental, and she can’t let it go even though she knows she should. She sits down on the bike, and the rims kiss the hard-packed earth as the air hisses out of slits in the rubber. Casting the bike to one side, she grabs another and bounces up and down lightly on the seat. Jack and Katie share a glance and grin at each other.
It is then that she makes her decision: good to go. She could choose to stay at the lake so that whenever Lulu decides to stop being angry, Katie will be there. But she feels so free in the humid night air, flushed with excitement and infused with a lingering, mellow energy. She decides to take what she wants and pushes Lulu from her mind. Is that when everything really starts to go wrong?
The woods echo with the thump of their wheels bouncing off sudden dips in the earth. Riding through the night air is exhilarating. Everything seems at once dreamy and intense, as though there is more of everything, an abundance awaiting her: more love, more textures, more heat, more sensation.
The Dolans’ house sits at the top of an incline on the far side of the lake. In the light from the garage, Jack’s body on the whippet-thin bike casts long shadows that melt into her as she draws close. He reaches up above the door and fishes a key from the ledge. The house is one of the oldest in the area, immortalized in a black-and-white 1880s photograph hanging in the clubhouse. As with most of the houses in the club, Katie has seen it hundreds of times from the outside but has never been inside. Once they enter, they are thieves, uninvited guests, intruders—what Jack and Katie are doing alone in this closed-up house is forbidden, nerve racking. The outside light clicks off, and the darkness is so dense that for a second she can see nothing at all: no furniture, no windows, no Jack. It takes her a while to trace the windows with her eyes, the night sky outside a slightly different shade of black.
“What happens if we get caught?” she whispers.
“They’re gone already. Back to Connecticut. I’m the only one who knows where the key is.” He takes her hand again, and this time his skin is cooler, more papery, and she grasps it a little tighter, brings her body close until her hip touches his. They stand together until their breathing slows and their eyes adjust. Then he tugs on her hand slightly, and she follows him up the curving wooden stairs.
He stops on the landing at the top of the stairs, and she bumps into him. The trees outside the window are silhouetted against faraway stars. Their upper bodies touch, Katie’s breasts tucked under his rib cage and her head reaching the crook of his neck. She could lay her head on his chest easily, and they would fit together perfectly, her cheekbone in the hollow above his collarbone, but instead she holds her head up and looks, as he does, out the window. There is something tense and beautiful in this holding apart and touching at the same time.
Katie breaks the spell first by looking up at him. His face is angled and earnest, and she sees that he will always have a boyish quality to him. The slight curve of his shoulders seems to come from some invisible weight he carries, and she thinks, I don’t know him at all; he’s full of secrets.
The curtains in the guest room are drawn over a single window, and a narrow bed in the corner is made up with a white terry-cloth bedspread. Jack goes over to the bed, and, crossing his arms and hooking his forefingers under the hem, he lifts his shirt right over his head and drops it on the floor. Katie does the same. Her fear has evaporated, and she feels only the thrill of what is to come. Jack kicks off his sneakers, unzips his jeans, and draws one leg out and then the other, stomping
softly until the pants release his luminous feet. She unbuttons the waistband on her shorts and shimmies them over her hips. He stands in his underwear and she in her bra and panties. She unhooks her bra and plucks it from her breasts.
They are barely breathing. They slip out of their underpants and lie on the bed facing each other. Katie reaches out to touch him, and his muscles tighten under her fingers. She looks down at his chest and the bone-sculpted whiteness of his hips. Her breath catches. It is like the releasing of a coil: she swells with desire as though her body is doubling in size.
Jack’s chest is impossibly smooth. When her fingers trail lower over his belly button and touch the soft hairs flat against his stomach, he shudders. The entire world opens up to her. Their fingers find the warmth between each other’s legs, and the lean muscles in their thighs come alive.
They are alone together in this infinite moment. She can’t get enough of him, of his warm skin. She squeezes her eyes shut and touches him everywhere.
When the phone rings, they freeze, their bodies—softened, primed—becoming as rigid as wooden slats. The phone trills again and again.
It must be downstairs in the kitchen, because even though the ringing is shrill, it sounds far away, as though removed by the expanse of a dulling ocean. It exists in another universe, and it takes six, eight, ten rings for it to penetrate their reality, for them to realize that their time is over and they have to get up and leave. That sound draws them away from their bodies and puts them back into their heads: They are naked on a stranger’s bed. They are not supposed to be there, and they are definitely not supposed to be doing this. Someone is on to them, and whatever they have started is over before it has even begun. (She will, from then on, forever despise the ringing of phones, startling each time, her heart quickening painfully.)
The ride back to the clubhouse is their long, silent goodbye to each other. With every invisible bump in the road, Katie’s body jangles its way back to earth. Even though she has never wanted anything as badly as she wants to be with Jack in the Dolans’ bed, doing anything and everything, she isn’t yet in despair. She thinks to herself, The night’s not over yet. It’s not over!
14
Jack screeches to a halt. Close behind him, Katie does the same. Her breath comes hard and fast from the pace they kept up getting back. It is almost one o’clock in the morning. Someone has moved the Falcon from the back of the lot, and it is parked near the bike rack, wet towels hanging over the bucket seat. The top is down, as it almost always is, the back seat operating as a sort of roving supply truck. There are two paddles in the front seat, a pair of pink flip-flops, and a single leather dock shoe. A cardboard box with tools in it. A packet of Charlie’s Pall Malls.
“Hey,” David says from the other side of the Falcon. This startles Katie so badly that she drops her bike, and its rusty metal kickstand cuts her shin. Blood trickles along the inside of her ankle. Most of the younger children have probably been hauled off to bed, but her brother is standing there, holding a flashlight.
“Wanna see what I found? Look under here!” he says, shining the beam of his light toward the car.
“Shouldn’t you be home by now, Davey?” Katie catches the blood with two fingers and wipes it off, then licks her fingers clean.
“It’s a baby rabbit!”
She and Jack kneel down and peer under the back wheels of the car, where David is now prone, his head partially under the rear bumper. There is a tiny shivering heap on the gravel that could be almost anything, except that the shivering means it’s alive.
“He’s scared, poor little thing,” she says.
“I want to keep it,” David says. “But it wants to be left alone.”
“Once we’re gone, it’ll make a run for the woods,” Jack says.
Katie gets up and dusts off her knees. “Where are Mum and Dad?”
David clicks the light on and off, on and off. “Dunno,” he says, “but don’t worry; it’s okay. I’m going back now.” He pulls his bike from the rack, attaches his flashlight to the handlebars, and rides off into the darkness with a wave.
The lights in the bar are blazing, and a throng crowds around the counter, keeping Tommy and Alexi busy. Katie’s flustered about the call, wondering whether it was a mistake to let it spook them. Was it her father calling, or her mother, wondering where she was? But they don’t care who she is with or what she’s up to. They have barely said a word about Jack all summer. How would anyone have known to try calling them at the Dolans’, anyway? Was it just random—a total accident that catapulted them out of their moment? If they had let the phone ring into the night, would everything or anything be different?
A few boys are playing pool inside. One of the dads is sitting by the counter playing a chaotic game of Go Fish with Tommy, his belly pressed against the scuffed wood. Kendrick and Brad come crashing in, their laughter puncturing the other noises. Brad is shouting and gesticulating wildly. He goes over to the counter and slides open the gate so he can get behind it. His T-shirt is darkened with sweat or maybe lake water. As he bends over the industrial-size blender, his expression is intensely concentrated, as though he is trying to thread a needle. Brownish hair with a hint of orange sticks up from his forehead. A swelling red mark runs along one cheekbone.
“Dude,” Jack says. “Raccoon come at you in the forest or what?”
Brad ignores him. Katie wonders whether one of the boys told Lulu where they might be and whether she was the one who tried to call them. She bites her nails and looks around at the laughing people, searching for her friend’s face. When the blender starts, nothing can be heard above the grinding.
She nudges Jack. “Let’s go back outside,” she says. The noise is intrusive. Time keeps stretching out, thinning, and it feels as though an infinity has passed since they were listening to the square dance caller, watching as the prizes were handed out. When she thinks back to the Jack who’d been in the guest room with her, that memory is already fading.
“Huh?” Jack asks, screwing up his face. “Can’t hear you.”
“Okay. Lulu—I’m gonna go find her. All right? I’ll be back,” Katie yells.
Outside, a rusted tin can full of cigarette butts lies tipped over on the flagstones, leaving a trail of stained filters. A few people are on the Big Float, trying to rock it from side to side on its enormous oil barrels. The Adirondack chairs beneath the maple are empty. She looks through the picture window into the bar; her mother is at one of the low tables talking with Mr. Davidson, gesturing with her hands. Dad is at a table drawing something on a paper napkin.
No sounds come from the changing sheds, and she heads toward the boathouse. The air seems to hum as though the currents are rubbing each other like a bow on a string. Above her the sky appears purple, swelling, and the stars have mostly disappeared. From the woods the faint sound of rumbling emerges, but when she turns her head, it disappears.
Even with no lights on, Katie sees Lulu before Lulu sees her. A curtain of fog hangs over the lake, pulsing dimly in the intermittent moonlight, and it envelops Lulu almost completely, so Katie can only see a white block that she recognizes as a T-shirt. Her back toward Katie, Lulu is sitting on the dock that extends from the boathouse into the water.
Among the old canoes and kayaks, the strings from the sails suspended from the ceiling rafters hang down like lichen. Until Katie steps onto the wooden platform, Lulu doesn’t realize anyone is behind her. She whips around. “Who is it?”
“It’s me,” Katie says. “Where’ve you been? I’ve been looking for you.”
“Go away.”
“Did you just try to call me?”
“Leave me alone,” Lulu says in a voice so soft it makes the hair on Katie’s arms stand up.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, though she knows Lulu must be angry at her for the kiss, for disappearing. Her flip-flops are obscenely loud on the dock. Katie squints at her friend: she isn’t wearing the same clothes as before. Instead of the old pink T-shi
rt with the blue bubble letters on it, she has on a huge white one and a pair of boxer shorts. “Lulu? Everything okay? What have you been up to? I’m really sorry about earlier.”
Katie is afraid Lulu will ask where the hell she’s been, and in telling her about the Dolans’—as she thinks she must—she’ll ruin everything. But Lulu doesn’t answer her.
“Did you go swimming?” Katie tries again. The sky seems to press down on them. There is that strange rumble again, making itself felt on her skin.
Briefly Lulu raises her head, and a trace of lipstick is still smeared on her mouth. She sees Katie noticing and draws the back of her hand over her lips.
“We just went on a ride. A bike ride. It was no big deal,” Katie says.
Lulu’s T-shirt is cold under Katie’s fingers, damp around her shoulders. Her bones feel solid, but Lulu is shivering as she pulls away from her friend. “Christ, I really, really wanna go home,” Lulu says.
The slight chill of the early morning, tinged with a promise of fall, is mixed with an undercurrent of heat or electricity, something oppressive, and Katie shivers too. The sky seems to contract, sucking energy into itself, and then in an instant it is bloated, pressing down on them, and it lights up like the flash of a thousand bulbs, and there is the deafening sound of total silence as they are bathed in frozen light, and then the crack of thunder, a splitting open of the sky like a white wound.
And then chaos over by the clubhouse. A scream followed by another scream, shouting, splashes, the sound of someone falling onto wood, cursing, and high above the other sounds, a child crying. The swimmers head to shore like panicked rats. With the next lightning bolt comes the rain. So soft at first, just the faintest touch of raindrops on skin, and then a deluge. The noise of it drowns everything out. They are instantly soaked.
The Forgotten Hours Page 10
