The Jetty

by Jay Brandon

  – where else could you find peanuts and fresh fruit – Kathy looked again at the blackboard on which the day’s specials were written. They ordered grilled fish and seafood salad. They talked a little about their college days, reminiscing about their meeting in microeconomics class.

  “I can’t believe we’re here,” he said, casting around awkwardly for a new topic of conversation.

  But Kathy’s expression was that same look he had so often seen in economics class, that serious and slightly troubled expression. The second floor of the Seafood and Spaghetti Works was a narrow ring around the central staircase. Customers got good looks at each other as they circled the ring to be seated, then went to the salad bar and back.

  Michael studied them all like supply and demand curves. “Will we keep coming back here, Kathy?” he mused. He wanted to add, “forever,” but he had promised, he was treading on dangerous shoals as it was, so he just reached across the table and took her hand. She turned her eyes down, but her hand held his.

  When their food came she attacked her grilled snapper with gusto. They ordered a more-expensive-than-usual white wine and she inhaled hers. Suddenly everything seemed enhanced here beside the ocean. Every sense. Every appetite. Kathy always experienced a seaside feeling of ravenous hunger. She had once thought it was from swimming, but it came on her even if she just spent the day lying on the beach.

  “Let’s not go back to the cottage yet,” Kathy said. Dinner was over and they were back in the car. The day had still been hot when they’d arrived at the restaurant, but it was dark now; the breeze was faintly cool. It turned Kathy’s hair into wild curls.

  “We’re on island time, now,” Kathy said, reciting the phrase like a mantra. It was true, Michael reflected. He realized that Kathy hadn’t once mentioned her job, its deadlines and responsibilities. Here on the island she seemed to forget her other life. She was also free of her schedules and responsibilities. On island time they were moving at a different pace, a pace which was sluggish compared with the pace of the outside world.

  Michael drove the few blocks to the old beach near the jetty and parked. Kathy took off her shoes and tossed them in the back seat and walked off briskly toward the jetty. Michael looked around warily. There were still a few people on the shore, but they were quiet and spread out. Michael and Kathy felt apart from the rest of the world as they walked to the water’s edge, letting the receding tide flirt with their ankles. He was now facing the old jetty. They walked up onto its first rough surface, like climbing stairs in a giant’s crumbling house. The jetty was composed of huge concrete blocks tumbled together, parts of it looking more as if they were dropped haphazardly rather than constructed. But it had been built in the 1930’s and endured through a dozen hurricanes. Standing on it, they had a long view of the ocean, the whitecaps highlighting its restless depths. It seemed as if they could see to a far horizon. Michael was standing beside and slightly behind Kathy. Strands of her hair just touched his face as it blew back. He could see her chest rise as she breathed in the sea air. Her eyes closed. She raised her chin to the spray.

  “I love you,” he said. He spoke the words softly, so softly that Kathy could have ignored them if she had wanted. But she did not ignore his words. She put her arms around him, as if embracing both Michael and his sentiments. He was submerged in the depth of his feeling for her. He longed to merge with her, to enter her thoughts and her skin.

  Suddenly she jumped back down to the sand and was running away from him, running back toward the house. “Kathy,” he called out, “the car!” He looked down at his feet. “Our shoes!” he protested. She did not answer, instead simply ran, ran with her hands upraised, turning dizzying circles as she ran, running past the pier, off the beach and onto the dunes, running with such abandon and speed that he could scarcely keep her in sight, until he finally caught up with her at the cottage.

  At the side of the cottage beside the bedroom there was a clothesline

  where Michael had hung his towels and wet bathing suit. His Hawaiian shirt and still-wet towel and swim suit waved ever-so-lazily in the evening breeze alongside Kathy’s white bathing suit still stained with brownish blood stains. Weird, Michael thought. Why not just throw the thing away? In front of him, Kathy ran along the line of clothes, her hands brushing them like a celebrity touching her admiring public. Then, suddenly, she stopped, turned to face him, and began to unbutton the buttons on the front of her sundress.

  “Kathy?” he said, breathless from the run.

  When she had her sundress unbuttoned to her waist, she reached out

  and unbuttoned his shirt.

  “Don’t be a sc-c-caredy cat,” she said, pulling her sundress over her

  head.

  She had her dress halfway off and she turned – inviting his help. Michael drew up close behind her and soon she stood with her back to him, naked save for her panties. Michael ran his hands down to her hips. In response, she reached back and held him there for a long minute, moving against him, turning her head to be kissed. Their lips met, then lingered for a long minute, two, three, until she turned back to face him and undid his jeans, removing them almost magically.

  She stepped out of her panties, took him by the hand, and led him up the steps and into the dark cottage, passing through the kitchen and into the darkened living room. He tried to resist when she continued onto the porch, but she prevailed, pushing him back onto one of the plastic chaises. The landscape was changing dramatically, as if it had been waiting for the summer crowds to leave in order to put on a show for Kathy and Michael alone.

  There was a full moon sulking behind clouds, creating a shadow invasion on the dunes around them. The white dunes sprang into vivid relief, as bright as day, hiding nothing. Then the cloud shadow covered them, creating a moonscape of mysterious hollows. The salt grass waved

  wildly, the shadows multiplying its blades. Michael’s unbuttoned shirt flapped open in the sudden breeze.

  Suddenly Kathy was atop him, sitting astride his legs. The night

  provided a backdrop for the paleness of her body.

  They kissed, the land around them going black and white and the wind rising. The sound of the waves grew louder, as if the waves themselves were growing.

  The world was alternately bright and dark between the moon and the clouds. This strange light show passed across Kathy’s face, off and on, first hiding and then illuminating her features. Each time Michael saw her, Kathy’s eyes shone with an almost frightening glow. He shuddered.

  She leaned slowly forward, running her hands from his pelvis up his stomach and chest, until he fell farther back, and she lay full length on top of him. He heard her giggle faintly before her lips brushed his, then moved down his face to his neck and shoulder. He felt her teeth.

  He ran his fingers up her back, then back down to cup her buttocks. Her flesh was so smooth, so firm. She bit him again and he flinched, gripping her more tightly. Kathy reared up, sitting back on his thighs once more. She slowly inched forward, guiding him. Her face seemed high above him, so much so that he couldn’t tell if her eyes were open. Then he saw a flash of green in the darkness and heard her laugh again.

  She moved slowly, teasing. He heard her inhale sharply as she settled. Michael reached up to her flat stomach, her breastbone; he touched her breasts. She seemed to have grown more voluptuous in the dimness. Kathy threw back her head, relishing him, then she fell forward. He rose to meet her. For a moment her mouth lay against his throat.

  They clung to each other, moved apart and rejoined. Michael was lost; he couldn’t have said where he was, only whom he was with. His hands moved slowly but constantly along her sides, her back, her legs, as he tried to gather her in.

  Kathy was clutching his back when she cried out, holding him so

  tightly that for a moment he couldn’t breathe.

  From the dark dunes less than fifty yards away, a motionless figure watched Michael and Kathy’s every move.

  They met durin
g Kathy’s first week of college. Kathy was the kind of girl Michael had always longed for, dreamed about. She was alluring in the high school cheerleader way, smiling, vivacious. In high school he had watched girls like her from afar, teenaged nymphs clustered around their lockers lined with pictures cut from magazines, giggling when the football players wandered by. Now in his college microeconomics class (he was a junior; she was a freshman), he saw Kathy, two chairs up from him on the next row over. She was the apotheosis of nymph, a symbol of all that had eluded him. He felt safe to study her profile, but then she turned suddenly and caught him staring. Rather than frown, she raised her eyebrows in an expression of mock fright and made a visible gulp as if to say, ‘Here we go, off on the whitewater rafting trip of economics.’ Michael almost laughed out loud.

  Luck put them together as lab partners, permitting Michael to show himself at his helpful best. He was a computer nerd when computer nerds were a rarity. He noticed immediately Kathy’s fear of the keyboard. “Computer good,” he said, doing his best Johnny Weismuller/Tarzan imitation. “Computer Jane’s friend.”

  “It’s Kathy, actually,” she had whispered, and the sound of her voice echoed in his memory and the vision of her half-smile was seared in his soul. In that moment, Michael’s life changed forever.

  He remembered reaching across to show her the “escape” key, his hand brushing hers. As the course progressed through the syllabus, Michael helped Kathy with homework problems, graphs, economic modeling. They became linked, joined by computer cable, but he realized it was a very tenuous link, one that probably wouldn’t survive the end of the semester, so one day, as she chanced to walk out of class alongside him,

  he was in agony. Should he a) speak to her about economics, b) maintain silence, leaving well enough alone, or c) be bold for once? A lifetime of reticence bound him, but time was of the essence. This might be his only chance – into the valley he rode – volley and thunder.

  “I have been working on a chemistry experiment,” he said. “I’ve

  been working on it. It’s, well . . . I thought you might like to see it.”

  Oh, she’d be pleased – she said – delighted. It was only fair after his enormous help in class. “Tomorrow?” he asked, and she nodded and said, “Sure.”

  Kathy belonged to Chi Omega sorority, the beautiful blondes, the Chio’s with their cute little outfits in gold and blue. In Michael’s experiment the next day, over two test tubes – each colorless – he sang the sorority song enthusiastically, if slightly off key, and then as the test tubes changed to blue and gold he switched to singing the school alma mater. How could any girl not be taken with such a display? He was so excited at the thought of it. Just to be alone with Kathy in the chemistry lab after hours (keys were given students for after–hour work). Just Kathy and him, alone, together.

  His preparations were extensive and fevered as he had set up his laboratory experiment in anticipation of her arrival. He worried as a classmate lingered over a late project, but Michael happily watched as the classmate successfully finished his project and left the lab. Quiet, empty, his own private laboratory. It was all going to be perfect.

  But when Kathy arrived, she was not alone. Instead, she showed up with her roommate and two varsity tennis players. The tennis players brought vodka and insisted on drinking it out of test tubes (they’d never been in a lab before), placing Michael in the awkward position of having to carefully wash the test tubes, thus coming across as the nerd he did not want to be. As he finished washing them, he began to panic. A prominent sign outside the laboratory announced: “Any student found with alcoholic beverages in the chem lab will be subject to immediate disciplinary measures!” What would his parents say when he was booted from his

  scholarship, even expelled from the university?

  He had little time to worry. Kathy brought him a drink, and he couldn’t really refuse, could he? The five of them proceeded to get drunk and play strip poker. Michael couldn’t remember a straight from a flush, and ended up in his underwear – Kathy’s roommate ended up on the professor’s desk, while Kathy danced half-naked on the laboratory tables, then made out with one of the tennis players. Michael watched Kathy with a mixture of fear and fascination. She was so beautiful, and so crazy. In the end he didn’t recall many specific details. A tennis player, Michael didn’t remember which one, sprayed the other one with a fire extinguisher, and in the ensuing melee the group fled the lab, but not without Kathy kissing him. She had kissed everyone by that time, but it didn’t matter, she had kissed him. And then they were gone, all of them, leaving Michael to clean up the mess – broken test tubes and vodka bottle, paper towels, fire extinguisher foam – in the silence of the laboratory. It took him until dawn to finish the job, and he had to hide in a stairwell to avoid a teaching assistant arriving the next morning for an early seminar.

  Kathy never witnessed Michael’s chemistry experiment, and neither of them ever mentioned the party, though she did briefly date one of the tennis players. But she and Michael became friends, and in time, buddies. That’s all they ever were – buddies. Kathy confided in Michael, first about her semester grades, and later about other things – her childhood, her parents and younger sister, Gail. Kathy and Gail were especially close. They were only children and Kathy’s parents were divorced. It wasn’t long into their first semester that Gail came to visit. Kathy was the popular, cheerleader sister; Gail was more serious, more grounded. They went as a group to college parties, and Gail went to a day of classes. If Kathy made Michael feel like a buddy, Gail made him feel like family.

  While Kathy got her college degree, Michael spent two years on a scholarship getting an MBA. It turned out they finished college the same year after all.

  After college, Michael had helped ease Kathy’s transition to adulthood. He helped her find a pretty little house in the Houston Heights to rent, and helped her move in. When her dressing table proved too wide for the stairwell, Michael and three friends balanced it on the roof of the carport in order to fit it through a second-floor window. In the following days, he often sat in her living room drinking beer, watching movies; their talk then was of jobs and bosses rather than classes and professors. Michael heard about her boyfriends; the tennis player was no longer in the picture, but there were always boyfriends. It was a list vast and varied. The multi- media artist she knew through her job in a contemporary art museum. The insurance salesman she met at a museum cocktail party. The professional football player who was on the Oilers special team.

  Michael took the job he’d planned to take ever since he’d first learned such a position existed, when he was sixteen. He was an actuary. He took statistical probabilities, life expectancies, geographical anomalies, crime rates, and a hundred other factors, and turned them into coverage rates that insurance companies charged. The job paid well because to the great majority of people it was akin to alchemy. For the same reason, there was little in the way of office politics or job stress. No one could edge Michael out of his job because no one else could do it. He had found his niche. His life had gone just the way he planned it, but still it was missing the hoped- for part, the fun, unexpected, spontaneous part.

  About that time, Michael got a job promotion that required him relocating to the Maryland branch of his insurance firm employer. It would mean a significant increase in responsibility – and a significant increase in salary. When he told her about it she was excited. He deserved it, she said; he’d be fantastic. But all the while he was hoping she would talk him out of it. She didn’t. He took the job and spent the next two years traveling the eastern seaboard installing a computer software system to coordinate the firm’s actuarial predictions.

  He heard from her occasionally – by card or email. She was working

  for a museum, serving as curator for some events, but mostly doing fundraising. He was sure the job put her in contact with oil barons and real estate tycoons. He expected any time to receive an engagement announcement. But it never cam
e. Instead, he got a transfer back to Houston. When he called with the news, she seemed genuinely pleased – if somewhat distracted. Soon they reestablished contact and fell into much the same friendship as before. For Michael, this was even more awkward. Had nothing changed during those two years in Maryland?

  One late afternoon Michael and Kathy were sitting in her living room, sipping beers, doing nothing but waiting for someone she’d been dating – an investment banker named Reginald or Archibald or something. They chatted about Houston restaurants, current movies, their jobs. As minutes passed their talk grew more wide-ranging and uncomfortable, as if they were both covering for the missing investment banker, for the unspoken fact they both realized, which was that the banker had had time to completely circumnavigate the city. “He must have got a better offer,” she said. “Or stopped at a bar.”

  Maybe that was what made Kathy talk about her parents. Or maybe only Michael made the connection. Kathy was talking about her father’s reliability, which took the place of affection in her parents’ marriage.

  “When Dad was away on a business trip,” Kathy told him, “which was all the time, he wouldn’t call home every night. You know, this was when people thought long distance was a big deal. So Dad would call twice during the trip, always twice. Once when he first got there to let us know he’d gotten there okay, then once the day before he was going to come back. Never anything spontaneous. This one time I remember he was going to be gone for a week and he was calling to say he’d gotten to Tulsa all right – “

  “You were – ?” Michael asked.

  “I must have been about five.” Kathy looked about five while she told the story. Her face eased from its adult tightness and became open and