The Creek - Part Three
Amy's college applications were in, she had a car, and was dating a guy who was bound for Yale. Her final months at home should have been filled with fun. But Josh bored her, and while she wasn't opposed to sleeping with him, she didn't really want to, either. On many evenings, they'd go park and fool around in the car, and she'd ask him to drop her off far from home. Amy liked the time alone. On one of those long walks, she heard jazz music coming from Duane's house and she became intrigued with the young widower once again.
By the time school ended -- graduation was a bore, she despised ceremony, she despised big parties, and loved her hatred of these things -- she looked forward to these walks more than her sessions with Josh. The feeling of sexual frustration, the smell of herself after being with him, the dirtiness of her clothes and the tiredness of her body -- these things somehow added up to a desperate closeness to life, whatever that meant, a sensation of absolutely, undeniably existing in the world. She would stand in the empty street and hear the distant rushing water and feel completely alive.
One humid night in July, mashing in the back seat with Josh, she suddenly felt so overheated, so suffocated, that she thought she might have a panic attack. She pushed him away, gulping air through the open window. "What?!" he said, "What!" But it was nothing, she told him, she'd felt a little lightheaded, maybe they could call it a night and --
"Fine," he said, violently climbing into the front seat. His unbuttoned shirt flapped around him and his belt buckle clanked against the steering wheel.
"Look," she said, "I didn't mean--"
"You don't even know what you mean anymore." He started the car and threw it into gear, leaving her in the back. She buckled up and let the air flow over her face, and marveled at how un-angry she was with him, how much she sympathized. Nothing seemed very important just now, except the night and the air. He drove too fast, rocketing toward her house in a fever, and at last pulled over more than a mile from home.
"Here, why don't you get out here," he spat, and got out of the car, his pants still undone and sagging around his hips. He came around and opened her door.
He had meant to insult, to humiliate. But this was perfect -- this was what she wanted. To be left far away, and to return at her leisure. She got out, tried to kiss him goodnight, in gratitude and apology. He drew back.
"I'm tired of you pretending."
"I'm not pretending," she said, with genuine surprise.
His response was a shake of the head. "You just have no fucking idea what you're like," he said.
This gave her pause. Didn't she? Didn't she know? The round-faced girl with the horsey legs? The idea that this was not what she was like -- that Josh was right, there was something she didn't know -- gave her a momentary, vain frisson. And then he had thrown up his hands, hiked up his pants, and driven off into the night.
She wended her way through the labyrinth of town, passing through neighborhoods she knew only from the window of a car, feeling the day's heat rising up off of the road and through the soles of her flip-flops.
Her step quickened as the blocks disappeared behind her, as if she were late for something, as if someone were waiting for her. It was only when she arrived before Duane Haight's house that she realized: it was this she had been hurrying toward. He was there as usual, in front of his canvas, under the bizarre glow of a daylight-corrected lamp, its strange full-spectrum glare wrong in its rightness, like a daffodil coming up through a crack in a parking lot. She stood there on the sidewalk, the neighborhood sleeping around her, and closed her eyes listened to the music coming through the window. And when she opened them, Duane Haight was gone.
No -- not gone. At the open door, watching her from behind the screen. It gave her a start, and then, suddenly self-conscious, she giggled.
Duane Haight didn't smile, but he raised his arm and pushed open the door. After a moment, Amy walked toward it.
She was on the front stoop before she realized what was going to happen, what had been going to happen. There was not much time to savor the moment. She stepped inside, the door swung shut behind her, and he took her into his arms. They kissed. His face was rough and smelled like solvent. His mouth tasted of what she suspected was whiskey. Then he stepped back and regarded her with those dark, sunken eyes.
Was she supposed to say something? Apparently not. He reached out with both hands, hooked his fingers under her tank top, and pulled it up over her head. He did the same with her shorts, tugging them past her hips as deftly as she did herself, every night when she undressed for bed. He guided her to the couch, and she flopped into its musty, sunken depths.
"I'm not a virgin," she said and was instantly embarrassed.
"Good." She had never heard his voice so close, so clearly before. It seemed broken, a weary croak. He took off his robe and the shorts underneath and settled down onto her like a heavy fog.
What, she thought, a surprise! It was like a gift she had made for herself one time, had wrapped up and hidden and forgotten about, all so that she could have the pleasure of finding it now. She watched a cracked and cobwebbed high corner of the room as the strange man's hands and mouth traveled over her, and she supposed she would have to call him something, she would have to call him by name. She tried it out, mouthing the words without speaking, decided to keep it to herself.
After sex they lay on the couch semi-entwined, in silence, drawing and releasing deep breaths. No one on earth would suspect she was here. Eventually he heaved himself up off her and went off somewhere to dispose of the condom, and she realized that she could see right out onto the street through the screen door, the street her father drove down on the way to work every morning. Anyone could look in and see her there, if they stopped and squinted into the murk. But no one would.
He came back, sat down, regarded her with a puzzled frown. She liked his casual nakedness, it was new to her. She did not yet feel the need to cover herself, though she knew she would.
"I've seen you every night," he said.
"I thought you didn't notice."
He ran his hand up her leg and pressed his thumb to her. "How old are you?"
"Eighteen."
"What's your name?"
That gave her a jolt. She squeezed her legs together and his hand withdrew. "Amy."
"Do you have a boyfriend?"
"Yes."
He nodded, as if he already knew this. "Keep him."
She leveled him a serious look. "Why?"
"Because I'm no good for a boyfriend. But you can come whenever you want." His eyes bored into her. "I want you to."
"Okay."
They looked at one another for a few minutes more, and then he got up, put on his robe, and went back to his painting, in the next room. She lay there for a few minutes more, wondering what he wanted of her, before she realized they were finished. She dressed and left without saying goodbye.
