I grin. “That should be Santana.”
We watch him play for a bit, close enough to see his face clearly in the afternoon sun. His eyes are closed, and his face is scrunched up in concentration. It’s like he’s channeling a force from another planet to create the sounds that are coming from his strings.
And then, suddenly, whatever possesses him seems to get hold of the drummer, too, who goes into a long, complicated drum solo. The drummer looks young, with shaggy, light hair that’s flying all over the place. He kind of looks like me, actually. I would give anything to switch places with him right now.
“Wow,” I say. “They really are amazing.”
“Yes?” Cora asks.
I nod. “This is all improvised. They’re just bouncing off each other.”
“What do you mean? They’re not just playing a song they wrote before?”
“No, ma’am. They’re just listening to each other and making it up on the spot.”
“Wow,” Cora says, and I can tell she’s genuinely impressed.
“They’re fantastic.” We take advantage of our unbelievably close viewpoint for a little bit longer before someone with a staff T-shirt finally comes over and asks us what we’re doing there. We are in the artist area, after all.
“Just on our way to the medical tents,” Cora says, quickly pointing to her badge and then turning away before we get questioned further. I follow her.
She abruptly stops and I almost bump into her. She turns around and looks at me, a decisive gleam in her eyes. “The thing back there,” she says. “The reason I was upset is . . . I actually want to be a doctor.” She says it emphatically and then waits, as if for some sort of reaction from me.
“Okay . . . ,” I say slowly. “That’s great,” I add, hoping it’s the right thing to say. I don’t see how it couldn’t be. It genuinely is pretty great, and I’m sure she’d be good at it, doing something she so clearly loves.
But Cora just laughs bitterly. “Yeah. Pretty great. Unless you’re anyone in the medical profession. Or my dad. Or Ned.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you see that helicopter guy’s face when I said I was a doctor? He was thinking, ‘A woman doctor?’ You just don’t see that around here so much. . . .”
I pause for a second. “Yeah, but in the end, he believed you, didn’t he?”
“I guess. . . .” She looks down at her apron.
“Honestly, he was probably more thinking, ‘She’s too young to be a doctor. . . .’”
“That could be true,” Cora admits, looking a little embarrassed.
I think back to the encounter. “But you know what? If he was thinking what you said, screw him,” I say emphatically. “We live in the age of Gloria Steinem. You can be anything you want to be!”
Cora laughs. “You know Gloria Steinem?”
“Sure,” I say, but leave it there. I don’t need to continue and tell her that it’s because there were a couple of months when Amanda would bring her up at least once a conversation.
I touch her arm. “That’s what the music is saying, Cora,” I say in all seriousness. “You can be anything you want to be. Anything at all.”
We pause and listen to the guitar sing. It’s clear as day to me; I hope she can hear it too. I think by the smile creeping across her face that she can.
chapter 39
Cora
At some point, someone hands us each a wrapped sandwich, telling us it’s what the military has dropped off. It’s been a long time since we ate, unless you count the handful of peanuts I saw Michael sneak at the hotel bar.
The sandwich is bologna on two pieces of white bread, with just a dab of mustard. Michael claims it’s one of the best meals he’s ever had. I’m starting to suspect he might be feeling that way about everything he’s eaten here, no matter what random thing it’s been. I wonder if the sound track has anything to do with it. Or the fact that he is half starved most of the time.
The girl who gives us the sandwiches tells us there’s some drinkable water on one side of the lake, and Michael suggests we go to it.
The girl says to look for the sign, and I laugh when I finally see it.
NO
SOAPING
SHITTING
PISSING
SWIMMING
ETC.
IN THE
DRINKING
WATER
(OR YOU MITE
COME DOWN
WITH THE SHITS)
TRY FURTHER
——>
“Lovely poem,” Michael says as he walks to the edge of the water and scoops some up with his hands.
“Very poignant,” I agree, and follow suit.
After he’s gotten his fill, I watch him go back to the sign and read it again thoughtfully.
“Come on,” he says mysteriously as he goes in the direction of the sign’s arrow.
We follow a dense tree line and then turn the corner where I know the lake expands out.
Only I’ve never seen the lake like this before, filled with splashing, writhing, bathing, laughing flesh. There are naked men, women, and children scattered in all parts of the water, washing off mud from their bodies and hair. There’s even a familiar-looking redheaded guy who is scrubbing a sheep. He passes his soap off to a father and son once he’s done.
“I think I could use a bath, actually,” I hear Michael say.
When I turn to him, he has already taken off his shirt and is unbuttoning his pants.
“Oh!” I exclaim, more breathlessly than I should, considering I work in a hospital. I turn away. Within moments, he’s in my sight line again, running into the lake, just miles of pale flesh stretched across his lanky body. This time, I can’t help but peek.
When he’s a few feet in, he immerses his whole body, head too, eventually coming back up with a grin.
“Come on, Cora!” he yells back to me. “It’s amazing in here.”
A beautiful naked girl hands him something and he nods in appreciation. She swims away and I squint at him before realizing she’s given him a bar of soap. He is now scrubbing himself vigorously with it.
He grins at me and yells out again. “Come on!”
“I can shower at home, Michael,” I yell back.
“Yes. You can,” he says simply, and then holds out the bar of soap in offering.
I stare at him and the smiling faces all around him. Of course I can shower at home. But when else will I ever have the opportunity to bathe in the middle of Filippini Pond with fifty other people my age all smiling and swaying to the live music that’s blasting from behind us?
I get an idea and scan the area behind me, quickly finding what I’m looking for. I walk over to a shirtless guy wearing countless love beads around his neck.
“Could you spare a hit?” I ask, pointing to the glass pipe in his hand.
“Of course,” he replies, and generously offers it to me.
Suddenly, I feel a little shy. “Um, could you show me how?” I may know the vernacular, especially after the past few days of hanging around in my tent, but I have never actually done this before. He smiles, but not really in a patronizing way. Taking his lighter, he puts a flame to one end of the pipe, then shows me how I have to hold my finger down on a small hole while I inhale. “Hold your breath for a few seconds before you exhale,” he instructs.
I do as he says. It burns my throat as the smoke fills up my mouth, and I cough it all back out almost immediately. He tells me to try one more time. “Breathe in a little slower,” he advises.
It stings a little less this time and I do manage to hold my breath for a few seconds before I let the smoke out. “Thank you,” I say with a small cough and a smile. I give the pipe back to him and make my way to the edge of the lake again.
And then, before I can talk my
self out of it, I strip down to my bra and panties and jump in.
chapter 40
Michael
Is it possible to find a corner of a lake? That’s where Cora and I seem to be. I suppose that there must still be people around us, but when I reach over to touch her neck and pull her close, it’s like a magic trick. They all disappear. When we kiss again, there is nothing but me, her, and the water reflecting a cloudy sky and a sinking sun.
Soulful guitar riffs drift in, as if timed to all the raw emotion I’m feeling, like a movie sound track. At one point, Cora asks me who’s playing, and I tell her it’s Canned Heat at last.
“At last,” she repeats with a smile. “I can’t wait to see exactly how big your eyes get once Jimi is finally onstage.”
Just the thought of that fills me with so much electric anticipation that I have to lean over and kiss her again. This time I let my hand drift over to her bare back. The combination of her skin and the water is intoxicating, like layered softness.
I think I might burst from how much I want her, and I reluctantly pull myself away a little in case she can actually feel my desire. I don’t know how she would feel about it, and I’m not ready to break the magic of the moment yet. Even for the sake of my own horniness.
I take a breath and look around, trying to bring some of the other people surrounding us into focus to calm myself down. A few feet behind us, there are two guys in a rowboat singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” in a round. Farther away, near the shoreline, my sight line is filled with bushels of pubic hair, skimming the surface of the water like water lilies. I see a cornucopia of tan lines, nipples of all sizes and colors, even a couple of interesting tattoos that are obviously not meant for strangers’ eyes. This isn’t helping much in terms of calming me down.
I suppose all those people can see me, too.
And yet, no one is watching.
Screw it. There’s no point in not turning my attention back to Cora and just letting whatever happens happen.
It begins to rain again, gently at first and then a bit harder. All around us, the water plops as it’s hit with itself, the line between lake and sky becoming hazy. It’s like being in a bath and a shower at the same time. Cora laughs, holding her hand out to catch some raindrops and then letting them fall through her fingers into the water. Plop.
A piece of her hair has come undone from its braid and it trails behind her in the lake, like a silky eel.
I reach over and lift it, watching the wet, dark strands make patterns on my palm.
“It’s so beautiful,” I say. Then I look right at her and drink her in: her deep brown eyes and small nose; her wide lips; the slope of her shoulders, which only draws my eye downward to take in the rest of her curves, which she has, unfortunately, kept shrouded beneath the water. The red Hog Farm fabric is still around her wrist, sodden and trailing in the water like a red flag, a claim.
“You are so beautiful,” I say, a little choked up at how true it is. Especially here, surrounded by water and music. I think that this has to be the most romantic moment of my life. Also the most erotic.
She stares back at me for an instant and I’m sure she feels the same.
Until she starts to giggle uncontrollably.
I’m startled, but I decide to laugh awkwardly with her.
“I’m sorry,” she says through her laughs. “I don’t know why, but this whole thing is hilarious, right?”
Um . . . no. Not the word I would use, but I just nod.
She lifts up her hand again and looks at it. “I’m getting all pruney. Time to go back to the concert, right?”
She doesn’t even let me reply before she starts swimming away.
“Wait,” I call out weakly.
But she doesn’t and I have no choice but to swim after her, wondering what I said wrong.
chapter 41
Cora
I’m not a virgin. There. I said it.
I don’t want to hear that I’m beautiful. I really don’t. That’s how the mess with Ned started.
It wasn’t a mess at first. It was lovely and full of a raw intensity I’d never experienced before, finally a physical manifestation of the swirl of emotions I felt for him from the start. It made me feel new and grown-up, like I’d crossed a threshold.
We did it three times. The third time was the best. By then, we had figured out exactly how to move around in the car so that neither of us was being poked by the stick shift. And we were beginning to figure out how to move around each other, which areas of our bodies wanted most to be touched, the little things that made one or the other of us breathless.
And then two weeks later, it was all over.
To tell you the truth, I don’t really regret not being a virgin. Things are different on this side of the threshold, and I can’t ever go back, but I feel it’s where I’m meant to be now. I just regret the emptiness and ache that appeared when he left, and I can’t help but wonder whether I would have felt it so keenly if we hadn’t gone there. I’ll never know.
I finally emerge from the lake, and find my clothes magically exactly where I left them. My dad can grumble all he wants about the hippies, but they’re definitely not thieves. It’s stopped raining again, but my shorts, which are on top, are pretty sodden. I change into them quickly anyway and then my orange shirt, which turns into a burnt sienna as I drip all over it. But the candy striper apron I don’t put on. There’s too much of Ned in my head and heart at the moment, and I don’t need to wear a reminder, too. I fold it and carry it over my arm.
I turn around and wait for Michael, plastering a pleasant smile on my face, the kind that pretends that nothing weird just happened.
I see a shy, perplexed smile in return. Poor boy. It’s not his fault that he’s caught me at such a bewildering point in my life.
“Alas, no towels,” I say, and indicate my sopping wet clothes.
He nods and finds his clothes just a few feet from mine. He puts them on slowly, his back turned to me, so that I can see the drops of water that cling to his shoulders, a few of them magnifying the smattering of freckles on his back. And yes, I’m looking intently at his back so that I can’t focus on his bare ass.
He finally turns around as he puts his shirt back on, and looks at me silently.
“Should we go by the stage?” I cut through the quiet. “I feel like we haven’t seen much of the concert at all today.”
Michael doesn’t respond and I’m worried this isn’t patched up like it’s meant to be. So I take his hand and smile at him one more time. Then I walk ahead so that I can lead the way. And not have to look into those confused green eyes again just yet.
chapter 42
Michael
I’m a virgin. Fine. I said it. It’s awful.
And it gets even worse. Ready for it? I’ve been with Amanda for seven months at this point. That’s right, Miss “Free-Spirited” (her words, not mine) is an ice queen when it comes to sex. Seven months of staring at those perfect tits, almost always under some sort of frustrating piece of clothing, and she won’t let me get past second base. Okay, fine. Third once. But for her, not for me. Which, I admit, was still enjoyable but definitely NOT THE SAME.
In case you haven’t figured this out by now, Amanda isn’t the return-the-favor type when it comes to anything.
Sometimes I think I really don’t understand girls at all. Don’t they want to have sex too? It is enjoyable for them, right? Judging by what I’ve seen here in just the past two days, I have to go with a resounding yes.
Not that I told Cora she looked beautiful just as a way to get into her pants. My intentions were around ninety percent pure. I really thought she looked stunning in the water like that, so close to me.
And yet, clearly, so far away. The strand of her hair that came loose in the water is hanging down her back now, drying in the humid air, and I watch it b
ounce up and down as she walks with determination in front of me. Like she can’t even stand to look into my eyes.
Maybe I’ve disgusted her. Which, honestly, upsets me. I like her too much for that.
But still. I can’t help how I feel. They’re called urges for a reason.
Maybe when I finally find Evan, I will swallow my pride and get him to teach me the ways of being a pussy magnet. Some nameless, faceless girl will help me get the deed done before I get drafted and sent to ’Nam and possibly die a virgin. I realize, with a start, that this hypothetical girl really is anonymous. I don’t want to think of Amanda that way right now. Not after being in the water like that with Cora.
As we near the stage, there’s a lull in the music and we hear someone making announcements. He asks for a doctor by name and then chastises some of the kids who are hanging off the scaffolding that surrounds the stage. Then he announces, “The warning that I’ve received, you might take it with however many grains of salt you wish, that the brown acid that is circulating around is not specifically too good. It is suggested that you stay away from that.”
The warning brings back memories of this morning and—in lieu of panic—a smile to my face.
Silently, I praise that brown acid to high heaven. What a day I’ve already had, and I wouldn’t have experienced any of it without that tab. Specifically, not this girl’s hand in mine, which, despite the mixed signals, is what really matters here and now. Well, that and meeting Janis.
Besides, I’ve finally decided that I am not going to die from a bad trip. Not with a future doctor by my side.
chapter 43
Cora
The spot we find this time is on the hill that looks down onto the stage. After the announcements we just heard, I glance down at the scaffolding just below us and, sure enough, see people hanging off it. No doubt that’s a medical emergency waiting to happen.
I still feel a little bit floaty from the pot, and slightly anxious to go back to feeling normal. I should’ve known better, really, since I like being in control of things, myself most of all. Taking a hit probably wasn’t the brightest idea. I cross my arms tightly and squeeze my own sides, as if that will somehow contain my drifting thoughts.
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