The Lake, the River & the Other Lake Read online

  But instead she said, “You know what a pearl necklace is?”

  “Sure.” He remembered a film in science in the seventh grade—how the grain of sand gets in the oyster and irritates it.

  “No, I mean a pearl necklace.”

  Oh. Now he saw. He told her he thought he did know. He’d read enough Penthouse Forums to know what she was talking about.

  She moved closer now, abandoning her lookout. “You ever do it?”

  He didn’t want to answer this. He hadn’t done it, but he wasn’t about to let her make fun of him.

  “You need some boobage to do it. Not a ton—not as much as you’d think—but some. The rest is just the girl squeezing it together.” She demonstrated over her shirt, squeezing her chest together with her hands flat, and he squinted in the bad light, transfixed. He couldn’t see any cleavage through the shirt, of course, but he didn’t need to. He got the idea just fine. He wasn’t sure if she was just talking about it or making some sort of offer, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to stay in the Dumpster.

  “There’s nothing here,” he said, heaving himself up and swinging his legs over the top. Just as he was clear of the Dumpster, a sheriff’s car pulled into the parking lot, slowly, passing through on patrol, so they got back on their bikes and continued meandering through the village.

  Eventually, they wound up at her family’s condo and they lay on the floor and watched a video about two practically naked teenagers alone on an island together. Mark had seen it before and it was really more of a chick flick anyway and so he tried to put the moves on her. Courtney had her top off and her bra off and was lying on the floor in just her boy shorts, right in front of him, absently touching her tits. At first, maybe massaging where the bra had rubbed, then just out-and-out, plain ol’ playing with her tits. Her doing it was fine, apparently, but every time he tried to slide closer and kiss her or reach out to help, she’d swat him away and say, Qu-it! or D-on’t! or Not now! or You’re breathing on me! or I’m bored!

  When he sat up and clicked off the remote, the room suddenly turning that dark shade that made him think of the river, he asked her what he was doing wrong. She just clucked, annoyed, grabbed the remote and turned the TV back on, saying, “You are such a child. So predictable.” Like she was Mrs. Mature. Like she’d done a couple tours in Vietnam or something.

  They were totally unsupervised there. He didn’t understand why she was pushing him away when she’d grab him in other places, get all naughty with him almost in public. Shit, she hadn’t minded the museum dust and those hard seats at the movies the night she took him in there and gave him a BJ during Pearl Harbor.

  But he didn’t want to really piss her off so he lay back with a heavy sigh and watched Brooke Shields getting her cherry popped in the sand. After it was over, Courtney hooked her bra back on and stood, pulling her top on and squinting at the clock. “Hmm,” she said. “Guess my folks are staying on the boat.”

  It was pretty late. He’d planned on probably beating his parents home tonight—his dad usually took his time when it came to pork—but now he wondered if he’d have to give them some lame mumbly story tomorrow. They didn’t have a curfew for him this summer—they just seemed glad to see he was out being social—but they did sometimes ask where he was and what he was doing.

  To his surprise, Courtney knelt down and kissed him, sweet as a whisper, and breathed in his ear, “Let’s go back to your place.”

  She left her bike and rode back double on his. The night felt cool against his skin when they got up speed down the small hills, and her hands, lying across his ribs, felt even better. At the one flashing red, where they had to stop, she slid her hand down and squeezed his junk and he almost leapt off the bike, laughing.

  They got off at his road, Edgewater, where the dirt started, and he ditched his bike in the weeds so they could walk in and scout out the situation. If his parents were home, they’d have to turn around. They walked along, past the septic guy’s dumpy little house, everything dead ahead silhouetted by the deep gray where the sky opened up over Lake Michigan. When they got as close as his dad’s dumb sign, he could see the dark hulk of the Denali. They were home. The lights were all off. They were asleep, probably exhausted and a little buzzed and bloated on all-you-can-eat pork, but screwing in his bedroom, just across the hall from them, seemed like pushing it.

  Courtney squeezed his hand, hard, like she wanted to go in anyway, but he pulled her back and they started back up the dark road, toward his bike, still holding hands. It seemed oddly datelike suddenly: just to be holding hands.

  She spoke up once they were clear of the house. “Make you a deal. Get me the pearl necklace—not to keep, just to borrow till Friday.”

  Behind her, he saw a light on upstairs at the neighbor’s and thought he saw the girl—Cammy was it?—working at the computer. It seemed late for this—it wasn’t like she had schoolwork or anything. Some other time, he might be sort of curious, maybe even move in for a closer look, sneak up on their yard, but no way tonight, with his head about to burst with whatever the hell Courtney was up to now. “What’s Friday?” he asked, and the words almost made him tired.

  “You’ll see. Anyway, I’ll swap you—pearl necklace for pearl necklace.”

  He had to stop walking. He stood there, trying to make her out in the dark. He couldn’t see her face, just a light glow that was her blond hair, but it sounded, at least, like a better deal than climbing into the Dumpster.

  “You wouldn’t lose it or hurt it, right?”

  She snorted. “Yeah, I’m going to shove it up my ass, Mark. I’m going to toss it in the lake.”

  He had to think about this. Maybe it was possible. He was trying to remember what day it was his mom went to that book club . . . Wednesdays? “Maybe I could get it some afternoon, when she’s out of the house. Let me see.”

  “No, no, no.” Courtney moved up close to him and draped her arms around his waist, palming his ass. “You need to do it tonight. While they’re in the room.”

  “Jesus, Courtney. Why do you have to make it so—”

  She was rubbing against him, growling a little. “’Cause it’s fun. God!”

  He looked back down the road at the lifeless house. It was like a crypt down there. No sign of life. He reminded himself the way they both got when they overate. A good heavy meal in them, they slept like alien pod people.

  “It’s fu-un!” She nuzzled his neck, almost whining. “And later . . . I’m going to make it really fun for you . . .”

  Courtney waited in the road. He went around to the back deck, where the sensor light wouldn’t come on, and let himself in through the sliding patio door. The hall light was on and he shut it off and stood at the edge of the living room, maybe thirty feet from the bedroom door, quietly saying, “Mom? Mom?” There wasn’t any answer so he stepped lightly to the bedroom and put his ear to the door. He heard the air conditioner humming and his mom’s white-noise machine, set on waves, which never made any sense to him. It was fine downstate in the winter, but couldn’t she just open the window and hear Lake Michigan? And she could certainly turn off the AC, too. It got down to the sixties up here at night.

  He took a deep breath and tried to let it out slowly, the way he’d once been instructed to do in some dumb theater class his counselor made him take. It didn’t help much.

  This was so idiotic. He told himself it wasn’t like he was risking going to jail. And as far as he knew, his dad didn’t own a gun. But still, what if he got caught? How could he ever explain that to his parents? Especially the part about the reward Courtney was dangling in his face. He’d never be able to look them in the eye again.

  It suddenly struck him that even with the hall light off, he might create a silhouette in the doorway, and so he dropped down to his knees before slowly twisting the handle and easing the door open. Now he could hear them breathing, even over the canned air and waves. Sliding on the carpet, he worked his way over to his mom’s dresser and reached up
and lowered the jewelry box to the floor. It was obvious which necklace was the pearls. He lifted the box back up over his head to the dresser and then attempted to jam them in his pocket. But the way he was squatting made it difficult and so, to leave his hands free, he ended up sticking the pearls in his mouth.

  As he crawled along, he expected to be busted any second, and the pearls almost dropped from his mouth when he realized he’d slid one hand along his dad’s moist jockey shorts, abandoned right on the floor—a sign his normally totally anal-retentive dad, Mr. Organized, had overdone it that evening with the booze. But then he was out of the room, free and clear. As soon as he got away from the deck, he spit the pearls into his hand and began swabbing them dry with the edge of his sweatshirt. The idea of putting them in Courtney’s hands still sticky with his spit was just not acceptable.

  “Any problem?” she asked as she took them and put them around her neck, as casually as if he’d just borrowed them from her. When he told her there’d been no problem, he thought she actually looked disappointed.

  “Come on,” she said, and led him by the hand.

  He asked where they were going and she didn’t answer. She just said, “I told you what I’d do.” That didn’t really tell him where she’d do it, but he kept his mouth shut, afraid to say anything that would piss her off and screw up the deal.

  They left his bike back in the ditch and she led him by the hand all the way back to the marina. He thought they were heading to her boat, but that couldn’t be, because she’d said her folks were sleeping on it tonight. She led him down another gangplank, to a section not too far from The Courtney, where there were a lot of empty slips. It was sort of dark, despite all the old-timey fake gas lamps, but still not the place you’d want to expose yourself. Certainly not the place for any kind of complicated physical positioning. And what if someone just walked up the gangplank? It was basically like doing it on a sidewalk—if she in fact was still planning to do it. He supposed by now that the moment was gone, they were on to something new, but she said, “Right here,” and lay down on the gangplank. She moved real efficiently, whipping off her shirt and stuffing it under her head as a pillow. She unsnapped her bra and reached for him, palming his crotch, pulling him down and stuffing her tongue in his mouth. It was this efficient move—this no-nonsense, businesslike rolling up of her sleeves, more than any other part of it, that made him instantly hard. More than the kissing and the grabbing and her tits right there. It was the drop-of-a-hat feeling. That’s what was making him almost dizzy, afraid he’d lose his balance, roll right off the gangplank and end up splashing around in the water, alerting the whole marina.

  She had him unbuckled now and was stroking him and then she stopped and squeezed her tits together. His eyes were adjusting now and he could see the whole thing. It almost looked painful how much she was squeezing them together. “Come on,” she said. “Climb on.”

  It seemed like there could be a lot better ways to do this, ways that wouldn’t be so high-pressure or uncomfortable—wasn’t the wooden dock digging into her back? It certainly wasn’t feeling good on his knees. And then when he tried to go where she was pulling him, tried to straddle her chest, he found that his jeans needed to come down farther, that they were pinning his legs together.

  “Hold on,” he said. “Sorry! Just—”

  She made that exasperated sound she made sometimes and he hopped up and, staying low in case anyone was out on the deck of their boat and his untanned ass reflected the moonlight, he squatted beside her, tugging his pants down. Then he got back on her and was trying to do it, kept stroking away, but it was not at all like he’d imagined. For one thing, he couldn’t look at her now. He felt so dumb and awkward and she wasn’t smiling. She had a watch on and it kept bumping into his thigh where she was cupping her tits. And she kept chanting “Come on . . . come on . . . come on,” only it didn’t sound like it did in pornos, it sounded more like Mrs. Sanderson, the crossing guard out in front of his old elementary school. Or like an auctioneer with a barnload of merchandise to unload. And then he saw the necklace—his mom’s pearls—right there in the target zone and that really threw him off. He stopped and asked about it—didn’t she want to take them off?

  “They’re not paste,” she said. “They’re real. They’ll wash off. They come from the ocean, for Christ’s sake . . .”

  Even so, soiling his mom’s pearl necklace like that . . . It just felt wrong. He kept thinking about it, wondered if it was maybe borderline incest. And then it was clear it just wasn’t happening. He wasn’t limp but raw and bloated-feeling, like it wasn’t his dick anymore but something he’d borrowed and wasn’t completely familiar with the operating instructions.

  Finally, she ended it. With no fanfare or debate. She just raised up and he fell back, off her. “You’re taking too long,” she said, hooking her bra closed. “Maybe next time.”

  He didn’t say anything, but he felt a sort of relief. The only thing he didn’t like was the look she gave him as they walked back down the gangplank. Like he was a kid, foolish, like he’d disappointed her, like she was getting bored, like some other guy could have done it fine.

  But, God, she was beautiful.

  He tried to catalogue it in his head, how he would think of it: I’ve sort of done the pearl necklace thing with Courtney Banes. That seemed pretty good, considering.

  35

  AS HE APPROACHED HER FROM BEHIND, carrying the pitcher of iced coffee and two tall glasses, all he could see was her baseball cap. She had the lounge chair pointed away from the house, pulled out farther on the lawn to escape the looming shadow of the house. At the edge of the patio, he stopped and cleared his throat loudly, and then her head popped around the side of the chair and she squinted back at him. He asked if he was intruding. With a jerk of her head, she beckoned him closer. “How could you be intruding in your own yard? Give me a break.”

  As he drew closer, he could see over the lounge chair and felt relieved. She wasn’t in a bathing suit, just shorts and a T-shirt, with the sleeves rolled up, a book collapsed in her lap. He handed her a glass and set the pitcher down on a flat spot of ground where she could reach it. “I just wanted to give you some warning I was approaching.”

  “A good thing too. I was buck naked just a second ago. Thanks for the warning.”

  He tried not to show any reaction to this comment, but he knew at once that he had: her hand shot up and covered her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was just trying to be funny. I didn’t mean to offend you, Reverend.”

  He told her she hadn’t offended him, and truly, she hadn’t, just caught him off-guard. This was a girl, not a woman. An adolescent. And though she herself might very well be starting to think of herself in more adult ways—ways in which the prospect of nudity was a relevant factor—it was certainly not his place to think of her that way.

  He diverted the conversation. “Let me take this opportunity,” he said, pulling the other lounge chair closer and taking a seat, sidesaddle, “to launch into, for hopefully the last time in my life, my little speech explaining the use of the term Reverend.”

  She sat up. “Oh good! Should I take notes?”

  “Do. This is for a grade. When, you ask, should you use the term Reverend in conversation, as a form of address? Never. Just don’t. Especially with me, because I’m retired.”

  “But you’re still Reverend, right? That doesn’t go away just ’cause you retire, does it. Isn’t it like Doctor? Retired doctors, you still call the guy Doctor.”

  “No,” he said. “It’s not like Doctor. Or Captain or Sir. Used properly, it’s the Reverend. Which is less like Doctor and more like ‘nice.’ As in ‘the nice Gene Reecher.’ And ‘the nice Mrs. Hersha.’ And ‘the very, very nice Kimberly Lasco.’”

  “Thank you,” she said, raising her iced coffee in a toast. “Right back at you, your niceitude.”

  “And no, it doesn’t stop when you retire, because it’s not really a job description. Minister
is the position. The Reverend label stops when you stop being reverend, acting reverently. Like when someone you think is nice stops being so nice. You’ve known people like that in your short life, I’m sure.”

  “Hell,” she said. “I’m related to people like that.”

  She covered her mouth again, wide-eyed, and apologized for saying hell.

  “Saying hell’s not my concern. Creating hell is all I care about.”

  She was shaking her head, wistfully. “Man, I don’t know why you stopped doing this minister stuff, because you seem pretty good at it to me. The explaining and going into it and being deep like that.”

  “I suspect, Kimberly, I’ve only gotten really good at it in the last five minutes, talking to you.”

  “Shut up,” she said. He thought she might actually give him a little shove. “Now you’re just trying to be smooth. Don’t be smooth.”

  “I don’t know . . .” he said. “‘The Very Smooth Gene Reecher’—I might enjoy that for a while.”

  “If I don’t call you Reverend,” she said, “what do I call you?”

  Call me Gene, he wanted to tell her. Call me for dinner, call me sweetheart, call me down for breakfast. He shrugged. “Whatever you want. Reverend’s okay. I don’t care.” He realized he wasn’t drinking his iced coffee and he took a sip, feeling self-conscious now.

  “So how are things at the fudge shop? Selling like hotcakes?” He regretted it the second it came out: hotcakes. What an old-fogey thing to say.

  “Better than hotcakes,” she said. “It’s selling like fudge during the invasion of the Fudgies. That ought to be the saying, really, not the hotcakes thing. I swear, if I suggested to Mrs. Hersha that we start selling hotcakes, just even a trial batch, she’d laugh me out of the store.”

  That made him chuckle. “I imagine it’s kind of a fun place, though. You probably have a lot of young co-workers to pal around with. Do you get to use that big wooden paddle and smear the fudge out on the marble table? That’s always fun to watch.”