Ten Days in the Hills

by Jane Smiley

  “Oh, yes.”

  She heard the moment of unzipping. He said, “Can you see it?”

  “I wish there was a full moon.”

  “We do need a shaft of light. You could go get a flashlight.”

  “I like that. That would be funny, to lie out here with me shining a flashlight on your cock.”

  “Just like summer camp.”

  “That’s what you did at summer camp?”

  “Y-e-e-s-s-s-s. In college we graduated to lighting farts, but we weren’t allowed to have matches in summer camp, so we contented ourselves with beaming each other’s dicks and talking about how to make them bigger.”

  “And how was that going to happen? Is it out?”

  “It’s out. We mostly agreed that plenty of hand time was the key, though one kid said that he had seen his dad with weights hanging off it once in the bathroom, and another had heard that if you wrapped it around a broomstick or some other kind of pole or stick and held it that way for a few minutes every day, let’s say more than ten but less than twenty, it could double in size.”

  “I want to see it. Is it hard?”

  “No, not yet. Thinking about thirteen-year-old boys at summer camp in the Sierras doesn’t make me hard.”

  “What does?”

  “That’s a personal question.”

  “It is, isn’t it? Do you have a porn collection?”

  “How do you define porn collection?”

  “Whatever it is you think of as porn. It might be just photographs of extremely high spike heels without feet in them. I knew a guy in college who had a collection of those.”

  He said, intriguingly, “That seems to me like an old-man sort of porn collection.”

  “My human-sexuality professor said that eighty-four percent of American men have some sort of porn collection or other, so probably that would include you.”

  “For some reason, this conversation isn’t helping me get hard.”

  Isabel turned carefully and hoisted herself on her elbow. There was a faint paleness to the hand he had holding his cock, and in a way that was enough for her—all she had to see was that surface paleness moving and she could sense the rest. She could also see his face. His face, she had to say, had the same Pavlovian effect on her as his phallus. Although he was not handsome in the strictest sense, although by this time of the night his beard was a little heavy, although his hair was thinning and he was getting just a shade jowly, his face was so familiar and so reliably kind and intent upon her, and in fact so revealing of his sadnesses, his self-doubts, and his low aspirations, that she did what she always did when she looked at him, she relaxed and opened toward him and felt the imminence of giving him what he wanted. It had not been that way with Leo. Almost from the beginning, Leo had aroused her urge to resist and to withhold. It had been an invigorating urge, and she had enjoyed it almost to the end, until she realized how exhausting it was. She said, “I was thinking how the very sight of your cock gives me a feeling in my vagina. It’s an aroused feeling—I mean, electric in a sense. Obviously, the nerve endings are waking up and making a connection to my, ah, clitoris, which I can also feel swelling a bit, but there’s another sensation, too.”

  He said, “Go on.”

  “It’s kind of an opening up, as if the space had been filled but now the walls are separating in anticipation.” She lowered and deepened her voice. “I don’t know why that would be. You would think that the walls were swelling and getting juicy and engorged with blood—”

  He groaned. She felt herself smile.

  “—but it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like some kind of expansion. Are you hard yet?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Really hard?”

  “Mmmm. Pulsing.”

  “Can I touch it?”

  “Please do.”

  “My fingers are cold.”

  “I don’t mind that. My dick is hot.”

  She laughed, then reached over toward him. He took her hand in his and guided it toward his member, which was, indeed, quite hard. After a moment, she took her hand away and then grabbed his lounge chair with both her hands and pulled hers toward him. Its metal legs scraped on the concrete. He turned on his back, and she thought she could see his cock pale against the pool in the background, sticking up. She wiped her right hand on one of her towels and then carefully encompassed his erection. He groaned. “Oooh,” she said, knowing that it was important to be impressed and to show it. She said, “It is hot.”

  “And your hand is cold. I like that. It’s refreshing.”

  “May I stroke it?”

  “I wish you would.”

  She held it lightly and moved her hand up and down the shaft. On the upstroke, she closed her hand around it, but on the downstroke, she opened her fingers and made more of a tickle. Up, down. He groaned and his stomach tensed, and then, suddenly, her stomach tensed, too, in response. Her human-sexuality professor had termed this “synchronization”—the effect of hormones, probably oxytocin, he thought, beginning to regulate the two of them simultaneously. This had its origins in the mother-infant bond and the “open loop” connection between the mammal child, who is only partially formed at birth and has to be nurtured in a certain way to achieve the proper brain structure and hormone production, and the mammal mother, who is in turn regulated by the child’s behaviors to seek a state of balance and relaxation that can only occur if the child is satisfied. Ideally, of course, the well-regulated infant-mother connection would predispose a mammal entering his or her reproductive years to seek a similar state of regulation in order to promote optimum reproductive outcomes, but of course so much could go wrong. “Aaaaahhh,” said Stoney, and Isabel suddenly wanted to fuck him. Here was another pleasant aspect of familiarity. Even as she realized that she wanted to fuck him, she knew that she could—he had been receptive for so long that it was automatic that she would push her chair back and stand up, then shake off her blankets and towels, and take down her jeans and underpants. He had always welcomed her, and now she felt welcomed. She lifted her right leg and sat down slowly, positioning herself and lowering herself carefully so as not to cause him any discomfort.

  “Aah,” he said again, and she could not help saying the same thing, “Aah,” because of synchronization. But then she put her hands over her mouth and his, remembering where they were and the likelihood of their cries’ rising, magnified by the shape of the canyon, toward the house. At least her father’s windows and Delphine’s were on the other side. Her mother, of course, was sequestered in the wine cellar, protected from every sound. Even so, she said, “Shhh! The very walls have ears!” He nodded and lifted his hips, and she felt him come more deeply into her, right into that place that had seemed to be opening up, and now was. She positioned her knees on the lounge chair, which wasn’t easy, because it was so narrow. Its metal frame seemed like it had to dig into one of her knees or the other, or else she had to put one knee on the slats, which was more comfortable, and one foot on the ground, which was awkward. “You okay?” said Stoney as she shifted around.

  “Do you think the chair might break?”

  “No, but maybe we could slither down onto the blankets without actually coming apart.”

  “Let’s try it.” Now they were whispering.

  It was harder than it seemed it was going to be. He lifted himself by grasping the frame of the chair, then shifted them to his left, her right. She tried to balance using her left foot first, then her right, but it was difficult to decide how much strength to apply—if she stood up too much, they would come apart, and if she didn’t stand up enough, he would be unable to lift her. She saw him staring at her as they tried to move carefully, and then, all of a sudden, the chair tilted and slipped out from under them, and they were flopped in the towels. They laughed. He said, “Still together. That’s pretty good.”

  “Are you all right? I’m amazed you’re still hard.”

  “Well, I banged my ass a little, but I love being connected t
o you—”

  And then, when their voices subsided, Isabel heard something. Her foot was caught awkwardly under Stoney’s leg, but she ignored it and put a suppressing hand on his chest. She whispered, “What’s that?” They both fell silent, and for a moment all she could hear was the liquid sound of the pool, the distant whoosh of the 405, and a bird sound, and then Stoney said, “I believe it’s Charlie.”

  Isabel leaned forward, lowered her whisper even more, right into Stoney’s neck, and said, “Oh, shit, where is he?”

  In a normal tone of voice, Stoney said, “He’s right behind you.”

  Isabel sat up and turned around, removing her foot from beneath Stoney’s leg, but not otherwise changing her position. There he was, staring at them, standing by the pool. He said, “Hey, guys.”

  “Hey, Charlie.”

  “Who’s that with you, Isabel?”

  Stoney said, “Just Stoney.”

  “You got him pinned, Isabel?”

  “Kind of,” said Isabel. She could feel that Stoney’s erection had subsided entirely. Now it slipped out of her. But she didn’t move.

  Charlie coughed, then pushed his hair up, what there was of it. He said, “Hey, I was so frustrated. I’ve got this pillbox—you know, with a little compartment for each day, except they aren’t labeled by the day—and I opened up the last compartment, because I was going to fill the whole thing up again for the next week, and the last compartment was already filled, but not with the right stuff. There’re supposed to be seven pills in each compartment, and I take all seven at once, but there were only four pills in that compartment, and I couldn’t for the life of me remember what happened to the other three or what I’m supposed to do with these four. I thought I took everything this week, and now it turns out that I didn’t, so I just got so annoyed with myself that I decided to come out and have a look at the stars—”

  “That seems like a good idea,” said Stoney in a muffled voice. Isabel was of two minds about whether to lift herself off him—with Charlie behind her, she imagined her ass glinting right in his face—or continue to sit there, but she could feel Stoney shifting uncomfortably against the hard pavement of the pool deck. Finally, she lifted herself up a little, and he pulled out from under her and sat up. He kissed her quickly on the cheek, but they remained between the chairs, sitting on the pile of blankets and towels.

  “So, anyway, I heard something over here and thought it might be an animal, like a bobcat, though you guys were making a lot of noise for a bobcat. Bobcats are pretty stealthy. Maybe you didn’t realize that. Or I thought maybe it was the wind. The weather report said it was going to switch around to the east overnight. I had no idea you—”

  Isabel shifted her position so that she was facing her father’s friend. She liked to think that she had been discreet with her ass. She pulled a corner of one of the blankets over her lap. She said, “We were just screwing around.”

  “I gathered that—”

  “I mean screwing around in the more general sense. Having fun.”

  “Oh.” And then his expression changed, and Isabel realized that he knew she was lying, because he had been watching for more than a moment. He cleared his throat, and then Stoney cleared his throat.

  Charlie said, “You know, the key to getting these pills off the ground for the general public, which is what I want to do, is figuring out a system that keeps old guys on a schedule. I mean, not only do I have the seven pills I was worried about tonight, but there’s fourteen other ones. They’re in another box, and that one I loaded up yesterday. This week, I didn’t have any problem with that one, but this white box thing they sell you now is for the birds. Yeah, you load them in there, and, yeah, you set your watch so that you’ll take them when you’re supposed to, but it still doesn’t add up. I’m an old guy. I’m forgetful. Other guys say the same. I bet three weeks out of four, or maybe at least two weeks out of five, I’ve got some left at the end of the week.”

  Stoney cleared his throat again, and hoisted himself up onto the deck chair, surreptitiously taking a towel with him and covering himself with it. Beneath the towel, Isabel could see him make a few subtle shifts that indicated he was adjusting his clothes. Isabel felt that her main problem was that she didn’t have any underwear or pants on and that her underwear and pants were between herself and Charlie, out of arm’s reach at this point. She said, “You’re taking twenty-one pills every day? What is it you’re taking again?”

  “Well, of course there’s the Lipitor and the aspirin and the Niaspan. And I got this stuff I imported from the Far East that beat the prostate problem I had. I can’t remember what that’s called. And then there’s a bunch of vitamins. E is the main one—”

  “You beat prostate cancer with a pill?” said Stoney.

  “Well, it was a high PSA, technically. We never—Mind if I sit down?”

  “Of course not,” said Isabel. This seemed to be the price they were going to pay to keep Charlie on their side. He pulled up another deck chair. As he did so, he kicked her clothes out of the way, apparently without realizing what they were.

  “I tell you what, the treatment regimen they have for prostate cancer in this country is no picnic. What happened with me was really pretty fortuitous, though. I was down at the bank right after getting the results of my blood test, and right after the doctor was telling me what they were going to have to do, and, you know, they tell you all this stuff about how careful they’re going to be, and this surgeon has a great record and all, so I say to the teller of the bank that I’m a little down because I just got a bad diagnosis about my prostate, and he’s shaking his head, and the guy in the line next to me leans over and says, ‘You need to go up to the city and go to Chinatown and get some herbs from the Chinese herbologist.’ And he writes down an address for me right there in the bank. He said that the Chinese herbologist had cured not only his prostate problem, but also his sister’s Bell’s palsy, you know what that is? It’s when your face gets paralyzed and you can’t even blink. She had to close and open her eyelid with her finger! Imagine trying to remember to do that every few minutes. The herbologist cured that in a week, just with some tea, but the prostate thing took longer. So of course I’m skeptical, who wouldn’t be, but I decide to just go see the guy. I have to say, my wife thought I was crazy. Karen is by the book all the way, and that’s okay for her, but anyway, enough about that. So I went to this address, and there was the herbologist, Ji Yuan his name is, we do lots of business together now. He was about my age, and as soon as I walked in the door we hit it off, and he knew exactly why I had come. One look at me told him all he needed to know. That’s what he told me later. The first thing he did was get his cousin in to give me an acupuncture treatment, sort of to set me up for the herbs, and then he gave me the herbs. It wasn’t a tea—he had the pills from China, and there were a lot of them, and they were big. But when I was choking them down, I just kept thinking of the surgeon’s knife tickling me you-know-where. Oh, Karen was mad that I was putting off the biopsy, but I was right in the end, because the PSA dropped and hasn’t gone back up in three years. I went to the doctor after three months and he was floored at my improvement, and then again after six months and all that, the way you do, so Ji Yuan and I have some things going. By the time you kids are my age, medicine is going to be entirely different from the way it is now. That’s my considered opinion.”

  Isabel murmured, “Western medicine is very crude.” Charlie’s deck chair creaked as he shifted his position, and finally she said, “Do you mind if I put my pants on?”

  “Oh. No. Go ahead.”

  Just out of the corner of her eye, Isabel could see Stoney grin at this, but then he said, “So I guess you have the capital and your friend has the expertise.”

  “In a sense. I’m looking for investors. We have some interest, but it’s slow. Any new thing is slow.”

  “It is,” said Stoney, in a considered way that made Isabel want to laugh.

  Then the two men watche
d her as she stood up with a towel around her, stepped around Charlie, leaned down, picked up her clothes, and crept back to her chair, where she sat down with her clothes in her lap.

  Isabel said, “What did you come out to the coast for, anyway, Charlie?”

  “Just some sunshine. Weather’s been terrible in Jersey this winter. Not even snow, just wind and cold and overcast, day after day. If you’re living alone and you’re self-employed and you can’t just take off and go look for the sunshine, what can you do?”

  On the one hand, Isabel yearned for this old man to get up and go away, but on the other, she realized all of a sudden that he was, in addition to being pretty irritating, very lonely.

  He had been sitting upright on the deck chair, his forearms on his knees, leaning a little forward, giving her hope that he would get up and go back to his room, but now he turned and stretched out against the back of the chair, arranging his legs comfortably and putting his hands behind his head. She glanced at Stoney, who glanced at her. She sorted her underpants and jeans a bit, as if preparing to slip into them, as her ass was definitely getting cold, but, still, she felt just a little shy about standing up and putting her things on. “So,” said Charlie, “what do you think about this Paul guy? Your mom been seeing him for very long?”

  “I think since sometime before Christmas,” said Isabel. “I guess he had something to do with that kid she was filming the movie with.”

  “What movie’s that?”

  “She has a movie coming out with Denzel Washington this summer. It’s a thriller.”

  “Huh,” said Charlie, reflectively.

  “It’s got great buzz,” said Stoney. “Kind of The Sixth Sense meets Fort Apache—the Bronx with a touch of Kundun.”

  “What’s that?” said Charlie.

  “That was a movie about the Dalai Lama as a boy,” said Stoney.

  “So—I look at this guy and I can’t figure out what your mom sees in him,” mused Charlie. “I was watching him do his exercises this morning, and he can corkscrew around in a pretty amazing way, I admit that. But the beard is strange. It gives me the creeps to have it at the dinner table. He might at least trim it. Lots of guys do that.”