by Wendy Webb
I reached over and put my hand on his. “I’m sorry. It sounds like you have personal experience with this.”
He threaded his fingers through mine. Electricity shot through me, energizing and calming me at the same time. It was like I could feel my blood pressure dropping and my heart racing simultaneously. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt so much.
He looked at me and shook his head, and I could almost see his painful memories shake out of it. “Too much.” He loosened his fingers, wrapped them around his coffee mug, and took a sip.
I toyed with telling him about what Alice had said to me, and about how she had appeared in my dreams, but decided against it. It sounded too out there, too strange to bring up to a man I barely knew. And I didn’t relish telling the story that went along with it. Memories swirling through my mind were one thing. Making them palpable by saying them out loud was something I didn’t want to deal with just then.
He broke the spell of my thoughts. “What are you up to today?”
“No plans. I thought about renting a kayak. But it sounds like a lot of work right now. The wet suit. The paddling.”
“I feel you. There’s something about this place that brings out the inner need to chill. I’ve got nothing going on today and was thinking about hitting the beach on the island. Sand, sun, water, a good book. Come along?”
Twenty minutes later, after a grueling battle trying to tug my bathing suit onto a body that hadn’t seen it in a good three years, throwing on a cover-up, and packing a tote with a change of clothes, a hairbrush, a towel, and a paperback—not The Illustrated Man—we were driving down to the ferry dock in Dominic’s fancy sedan. We pulled onto the ferry, Dominic turned off the car and hit the parking brake, and we climbed the rickety metal stairs to the upper deck. There, we stood at the railing and watched Wharton disappear from view.
After we got to the island, we pulled off the boat and cruised through town, past the stores and cafés where people were congregating for the day. We passed the small marina, where an older man was washing his boat, his dog supervising the effort, and headed onto the road toward the beach. Vacation homes—some grand houses, others small cabins—dotted the landscape here and there, and a wide expanse of grassland sat between the road where we were driving and the lake. The sky was deeply blue, not a cloud to be seen, and the sun shone down gently. I leaned my head back and exhaled.
Dominic pulled off the road and into the parking lot for the beach, and we headed down the long, winding wooden staircase to the lakeshore, choosing a spot adjacent to a stand of huge pines. It seemed an odd disconnect, pine trees next to a sandy beach, but then again, nothing was ordinary here in this enchanted place.
Settling onto our big beach towels in the warm sand, I cringed slightly at the idea of taking off my cover-up and revealing the reality of me in my bathing suit to this handsome man. But I forgot all about my modesty as Dominic peeled off his shirt.
I knew his shoulders and chest were broad, but somehow, without a shirt on, they seemed enormous. His arms and chest were heavily muscled. His stomach, rock hard. That would have been jaw-dropping enough, but the tattoos took my breath away.
Every inch of his arms and torso was covered. Strange, ancient symbols and hieroglyphs ran down one arm. On his other arm, a woman intertwined with a snake, along with a wolf and a lion, who reclined side by side. A hodgepodge of faces and animals—was that a turtle?—symbols and words and ancient-looking weapons decorated his chest and stomach. I stared, openmouthed. I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t look away. It was just like the book.
Dominic turned to get something out of his tote, revealing his back. What I saw made me gasp aloud.
In the middle of his back was the image of some sort of beetle, its two enormous wings outstretched, reaching all the way up to his shoulder blades and meeting at the base of his neck, where they seemed to be holding up the sun. The wings were decorated with an intricate, colorful pattern of shapes—deep reds, blues, greens, and purples—that made them look like ancient Egyptian art, or a stained-glass window in a church.
Along the full length of his spine, symbols from world religions were superimposed over the beetle. A crucifix, a star of David, the star and crescent, the ahimsa hand, the nine-pointed star, the yin and yang, and other strange and exotic-looking symbols I didn’t recognize.
He turned back around and caught me staring. The look on my face brought a smile to his.
“I thought it would be best just to get it over with,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “It tends to be a little . . . jarring . . . to people seeing it for the first time.”
It was then I realized my mouth was agape. I stammered out a couple of syllables. I couldn’t find any words.
He smiled even broader than before and let out a chuckle. “I get that a lot.”
Finally, I found my voice. “I have so many questions, but I don’t even know where to start. Your back—oh, Dominic, it’s like a work of art. It’s breathtaking. Can I look at it again?”
Dominic rolled onto his stomach and rested his chin on his forearms. I crossed my legs and leaned over to gaze more deeply at the design. The level of detail, the artistry of that beetle alone. The wings! I could hardly fathom it. I wanted to touch him, to run my fingers along those delicate lines, to trace the wings. But I barely knew this man. It seemed like too much of a violation to touch him like that. I wanted to respect this artwork on his body, revere it, not objectify it.
“Why a beetle?” I asked, finally.
He looked up at me and smiled a slow smile. “A lot of people have seen it on my back and commented on it. Not a lot have asked why. Thank you for asking.”
“Obviously it means a great deal to you, considering the real estate that illustration covers on your body.”
He chuckled. “You could say that. It’s a scarab. It was one of the most important religious and mystical symbols in ancient Egypt.”
I was right about the Egyptian connection.
“It symbolized a lot of things, one of them being the sun, which people worshipped.”
Hence the sun at the base of his neck.
“But more than that, the scarab was a symbol of transformation, resurrection, protection, and immortality. Reincarnation. Eternal life. People who wore scarab jewelry felt protected, knowing they were going to rise again.”
I didn’t know quite how to respond to that.
“They were also used in funerary art in ancient Egypt, so that the dead would be protected and transformed.”
A shiver of cold ran through me, even though we were sitting directly in the warm sun.
“Are you of Egyptian heritage?” I asked him. “Or just interested in the mythology and lore?”
He rolled over and sat up. “Well, African heritage for sure, but probably not Egyptian.” He grinned. “And yes to the interest in mythology and lore. But I’m most interested in the transformation part of it. That’s what’s important to me.”
“People turning their lives around, you mean? That kind of transformation?”
“You could say that.” He got to his feet. “I’m going to take a dip in this cold Lake Superior water. Join me?”
No more questions, then. I’d respect that. I knew all about deflecting prying questions.
He extended his hand, and when I took it, there it was again: the electricity shooting through me. He pulled me up to my feet and we walked down the beach together.
The warm, soft sand gave way to small stones at the water’s edge. That was what lined the lake bed here and elsewhere around Superior’s shores. The rocks were smooth, not uncomfortable to walk on in bare feet. Almost like cobblestone.
Dominic and I waded into the water, which was refreshingly chilly on this warm day, but not ice cold as it would be elsewhere around the lake. I scooped up a stone and held it out to him.
“We don’t have scarabs here, but we have these,” I said. “Some people believe it’s a way to take the lake’s spirit home wi
th them. For protection and good luck. Not so different from your scarab.”
I tossed it to him. He caught it and slid it into his pocket. “We can use all the good luck we can get.” And then he kicked back and floated on the water’s surface.
All at once, he wasn’t there anymore. I looked this way and that. Where did he go? I was scanning the lake’s surface when he popped up behind me and picked me up at the waist, flinging me into the air so I’d come splashing down into the water.
The moment I submerged, time seemed to stop. I opened my eyes in the crystal-clear water and saw the beautiful mosaic of stones on the lake bottom in grays, browns, blacks, whites, and ecrus. Some speckled, some solid colored.
Turning my head up, I saw Dominic’s wavy, shimmering image above the surface. The sound of the lake whispered in my ears. It was so peaceful, so calming, I wished I could grow gills and breathe underwater to stay there, just like that, forever. It was like being a baby in the womb, nearing the moment of birth, the new world hazy and wavy and just a moment away.
I came up for air, laughing. “No one has done that to me since I was a kid,” I said.
“I went under, so you had to go, too. That’s how it works.”
We stood there, waist deep, smiling at each other for a moment, that same electricity passing between us as forcefully as if we had been holding a power line. I could see by the look on his face that he was feeling it, too.
He moved closer to me and picked me up at the waist again, but instead of tossing me back into the water, he pulled me close, his enormous arms encircling me. I wrapped my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist as he walked farther out into the lake. It deepened with every step until he was up to his chest in water, and then he pushed off, sending us floating.
Our arms and legs intertwined in slow motion, the water giving us permission to touch each other in a way we—at least, I—felt unsure of doing on land. Somehow, it was okay out here to have my legs wrapped around this man, his arms around me, our bodies touching.
We floated out like that until we hit the famous barrier of icy-cold water just off this beach that separated the deep cold of the lake from the warm water of the shoreline. It was like a physical wall of chill well known to frequent swimmers there. We crossed it.
“Whoa! Damn!” Dominic cried out, dropping me into the water, our dreamlike floating spell broken.
I swam up to the surface and dissolved into sputtering, watery laughter as we both scrambled back to the warm side, him grumbling the whole time.
“What in the name of Poseidon was that?” he sputtered.
“Gitche Gumee, if you please,” I laughed. “He’s this lake’s great spirit, not Poseidon. Have a little respect.”
“Well, Gitche Gumee just opened up a can of whoop ass,” he said, as we waded back to shore. “That was like the arctic, right there. And I’m not a damn seal.” The look on his face, so affronted, so aghast as he scowled at the water, made me howl with laughter.
“It’s sort of a famous feature of this beach,” I said. “The invisible barrier.”
“Invisible barrier? So that’s how it is here? This is what you do? No warning? No signage: ‘Beware of the invisible cold-ass barrier!’”
I laughed even more as he ranted on.
“No warning! You take a man out into the water. An unsuspecting, innocent man. From California, by way of Georgia. Do you know what we have in Cali? The ocean. It’s cold, don’t get me wrong. But there ain’t no invisible barriers like that in the Pacific. Seals, yes. Walls of ice-cold water that just come out of nowhere, no.”
I bent over at the waist, laughing harder than I had in a long time.
“You’re swimming with an unsuspecting man who is going to freeze his nuts off after he hits an invisible barrier—and you know it’s coming! You’re just floating there, all serene and happy like a mermaid—la-la-la, isn’t this nice—knowing the whole time we’re bobbing toward an iceberg.”
I was trying to catch my breath. “I’m sorry,” I squeaked out, drying my eyes.
“Oh, I can see that, all right. I can see you’re very sorry.” By now he was laughing, too, his eyes dancing. “Sorry my ass. That’s how sorry you are.”
We waded out of the water and onto the sand, collapsing onto our towels. We lay on our sides, facing each other. I couldn’t stop laughing.
“And don’t get any ideas, either,” he went on. “I might have kissed you. In fact, I was planning on it. Not now. No, ma’am. Shrinkage is real! I’ll be lucky if my manhood ever comes back.”
I shook with the force of the laughter that was coursing through my body. I wiped my eyes. “I think that just added a decade to my life,” I said.
“My work is done, pretty woman,” he said, running a hand through my wet hair. “It stands to reason, if stress and sadness take it away, laughter can give it back.”
We fell silent as the air thickened between us. His body was so close to mine, close enough for me to feel the energy radiating off him. I wanted that kiss. I longed to slide closer and kiss his perfect mouth, feel what it was like to have his lips on mine. But I shook it off. I hadn’t dated anyone since my relationship broke up, and I was definitely out of practice. We weren’t in the water anymore, and a shyness overtook me.
I cleared my throat. “What do you want to do now?” I asked him.
“Not go back in the water, that’s for damn sure,” he said, squinting darkly out over the lake. “But I brought a book.”
I sat up. “Me, too!”
“Great minds,” he said, reaching into his tote.
Mine was a suspense thriller—I had felt weird about reading The Illustrated Man with the Illustrated Man, so I brought another. His was a true-crime novel. He leaned back on one elbow, crossed his ankles, and cracked his book as I struggled to get comfortable. He put an arm around me and pulled me into him.
“I make a pretty good backrest,” he said.
I turned around to grin at him. “Are you sure?”
“Lean on in.”
So I did. I stretched out and leaned my back into his chest. We sat there together, heads inches apart, each reading our own books, for the rest of the afternoon as the lake lap, lap, lapped into shore. Truth be told, I was enjoying being close to him more than the plot of the novel I was reading. The lake’s “invisible barrier” had broken one down between us.
Just the act of leaning against his vast chest made me feel safe and protected and ready for my own transformation I’d hoped to find in Wharton, as though he himself were the scarab.
CHAPTER TWELVE
As the afternoon wound down, Dominic and I gathered up our things and climbed back up the long and winding staircase to the parking lot. In the changing area, I peeled off my wet and sandy swimsuit, splashed some fresh water onto myself, and dried off before changing into the sundress and sandals I had stuffed into my tote earlier. I gave my hair a quick brush. Reasonably de-sanded and clean, I looked in the mirror—it would have to do.
Both Dominic and I emerged around the same time, me in my sundress, him in his shorts and black V-neck T-shirt.
“Well, look at you,” he said. “Just as quick as that, you’re ready for action.”
“What now?” I asked. “Back to LuAnn’s?”
“Hell no.” He smirked. “I’ve got one fine lady on my arm. It’s not time to go home just yet.”
I could feel the heat rising to my face. “I suppose the troops can carry on without us. But you realize we’ll be the talk of happy hour if we’re both not there.”
He laughed. “Then let’s give them something to talk about. How about heading over to Jimmy’s for an adult beverage and maybe an early dinner?”
That sounded perfect to me.
We hopped into the car, and he drove us back into town, his hand resting on my thigh. Was that appropriate? I wasn’t sure what to do with my own hands so I kept them folded in my lap until we pulled into Jimmy’s, the bar with the circus tent for a ceiling.<
br />
The sun was still high in the sky—it was only about five o’clock—but inside, the whole place was lit up by fairy lights wound around the wooden poles holding up the tent. I saw countless signs with various messages: “Well-behaved women rarely make history,” “Obey only the good laws,” and many others adorning the wooden walls that remained standing after the fire.
Candles of different sizes and shapes flickered on the tables. Everything except the tent was rustic, as though an island castaway had crafted it from materials at hand—the bar itself was wood, the barstools hewn from tree stumps, and the wide-planked, rather haphazard floor seemed to have been laid in a hurry without much attention to detail. It reminded me of the Lost Boys’ lair in Peter Pan. We might as well have been in the trunk of an enormous tree.
I looked around at the other patrons, some wearing swimsuits, others wearing hippie dresses, others wearing shorts and T-shirts. They could have been lost, too, looking for their Pan. Maybe I was one of them.
We found a table, and our server sidled up.
“What can I getcha to drink?” she said. “Just so you know, we’ve got a taco truck outside in the back parking lot right now, just about ready to open. So that’s what’s for dinner. The entertainment starts whenever they want to start. And we don’t take plastic. It’s all cash. But you two don’t look like plastic people, so I think we’ll be fine there.”
Dominic and I grinned at each other.
“Got any local beers?” he asked.
“Spotted Cow is on tap,” she said, jutting out her hip.
“That’ll do,” he said.
She turned to me. “Make it two,” I said.
Dominic raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t figure you for a beer drinker.”
“Hey, when in Rome.” I shrugged.
Our drinks arrived, and he held his glass aloft. “To a lovely day with a lovely lady,” he said, flashing that movie-star smile.
I clinked my glass with his, my face reddening. “Thank you,” I said. “I had a really good time. For the first time in a long time.”
“That’s what it’s all about, girl,” he said, his face growing serious for a moment. “Enjoying life. People get so caught up in themselves and their dramas, or they get ensnared in their own sorrows and tragedies, they forget to appreciate the beauty around them.”
