The Girl of the Lake Read online

  “We sit,” said Tessa, unraveling herself from the huge towel. She laid it on the ground, then boldly unraveled Robert and laid his towel alongside hers. They sat close and immediately she took off her top, not even worthy of a comment, just a person getting ready to sunbathe.

  “You have children,” she asked, no question mark. She placed the bikini top neatly on her flip-flops.

  “No, sadly.”

  “Your boyfriend, he is beautiful.”

  “Just my friend,” he said.

  The girl didn’t get the carefully modulated irony that anyone back home would have picked up easily. She said, “His eyes are so.”

  “I was married,” he said. “My wife passed away. Several years ago now.”

  “She passed away where?”

  “She died.”

  “No!”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “Tell me her name.”

  “Julia.”

  Tears came to Tessa’s eyes, deep tears, true feeling. She cried silently for Julia. Then she was done. The sea was deepest blue at this hour, the sun blazing over them, a breeze swirling, fragrance of rough pines.

  “Life goes on,” Robert said.

  “Phillipe adore you,” Tessa said.

  “Friends,” said Robert.

  “Like you and me,” Tessa said seriously.

  “Maybe not just like that,” Robert said, then wished he hadn’t. She smoothed her skin. Her breasts were naked and tanned and it didn’t matter that millions of people had gazed upon them.

  She said, “You are sweet to me.” She lay back in the bright sun, wriggled to get comfortable.

  Robert thought through several complicated sentences about movies, about geopolitics, about the distribution of wealth, couldn’t find anything to actually say. At length he came up with: “You are very sweet, too. Not at all the Princesa.”

  “Oh, terrible she!” She took his hand as if in fright, squeezed his fingers.

  “But beautifully acted.”

  “I am so happy you came swim. I was so, so sad. No one around but all the old ladies, but now I shall not have been a bore. Now I will have something to remember!”

  “No, I think it’s I who will remember,” he said, gaining an elbow to look at her. Her eyes were closed in the sun and she was so long and brown and he drank her in, her perfect peaceful face capable of such cruelty onscreen, the dips over her clavicles, the almost square angles of her shoulders, streaks of her aunt’s sunscreen on her chest, her small breasts brown in the sun, nipples brown and tight and famous and frankly sexual.

  He hadn’t much poetry in him: “You are the most delicate sweet equation.”

  “And what is that?”

  “A math problem.”

  “Mathematics! No. I am more of a problem than that! Mathematics can be solve!”

  He tried again, the thought he’d had earlier: “Every part of you could be famous alone—your hands.” She squeezed his fingers at that. “Your ankles.” She kicked. “Your belly.” She sucked it in. Such that her tiny bikini bottom gaped between hip bones and pubis, perfect sine wave beneath a taut horizon. Oh, to slip a single finger down in among those shadows! She opened her eyes, saw him on his elbow staring, rose on her own elbow, putting them face-to-face.

  “All the little parts of you,” he said. “They all add up.”

  “There we have the mathematics again,” she said. “Men and their obsession with the parts.”

  “You’re the sweetest young whole person. And I’m just an old lab rat.”

  She leaned closer, inspecting his face, that radiant, camera-beloved intelligence in her eyes, the kindness. She said, “You are no older than Harrison Ford.”

  “I’m younger than he! I’m younger by far!”

  “But something reminds me.”

  “You were in that movie with him.”

  She put on a very convincing American accent: “I played his daughter, Elizabeth Bowen. Willful, a little wild, dead in the end.” Then back to her own: “Not too many lines, so I get away with it.”

  “Anyway, you were magical in it, riding that horse.”

  “I’m a lover of horses,” she said. “Also the hot sun. Harrison Ford, not so much.”

  She was so close. Impulsively he kissed her cheek, her temple, her ear, quick succession. She didn’t protest, didn’t move away, so he didn’t have to act as if it were a joke but kissed her neck, her chin, kissed at the side of her mouth. She seemed both willing and unwilling at once. He kissed her forehead (coconut, lemon, that sweet tiny pimple), kissed her chin (watermelon, saltwater, salami), kissed her coarse eyebrows, her surprised little nose, kissed her eyes one at a time as she closed them again, kissed her open but unresponsive mouth, kissed that watermelon chin, kissed those clavicles, kissed her breasts, her belly, might have tripped all the way over the line, but she squirmed away at the precise moment.

  Looking out across the sea she said, “It’s sad you have no wife. And sad you have no child. He’d be a dolphin like you. A beautiful swimmer and a dolphin. If only you were young for me.”

  “If I were younger, you wouldn’t look at me twice,” Robert said.

  “I am not looking at you now,” she said.

  “You are very beautiful, dear girl.”

  She said something in what might have been Latin, then translated: “The beautiful is the radiance of the true.”

  The breeze picked up nicely. The gay couple had turned face-to-face, talking, too far away to hear anything or see what they were up to. Tessa’s breasts, honestly. They’d been in the movie and here they were in life. He tried not to see them separate from the woman, tried to see the radiance of the true. Semblance of restraint, he nibbled at her sun-hot shoulder. She didn’t seem displeased, didn’t seem anything, so he put a hand on her belly, kissed her neck. This made her sigh. Passion or irritation, he couldn’t tell. He was terribly aroused. He felt the vast brevity of time, wished he could quote some Latin back to her, but he was only a computer geek and a widower from Rochester. He kissed her arm. She gazed up at the sky. He leaned and kissed her chin again, kissed her mouth. No response at all, like kissing a sleeping beauty. He thought of Phillipe, a fleeting thought of Julia, then the insistent image of the cruel Princesa. He leaned further, kissed the slight cloth of her bikini bottoms.

  Tessa opened her eyes, gazed at him at length. “You all pink,” she said.

  He did feel hot. And under her gaze he grew hotter, all the blood in his body rushing into his face, also into his bathing suit, so it seemed. She seemed to be reading his face, deciphering the lines of his face, solving the problem of him. This was serious work, not to be interrupted.

  She said, “I am only twenty-four, Robert.”

  “I know.”

  “So. Why you doing this?”

  “Because. I don’t know. Because, as I said, you are very beautiful.”

  “Others are very beautiful, too. But you do not kiss them.”

  “Others are not true.”

  She put on that perfect American accent: “Is this what’s done in Rochester, New York?”

  “No. No, no. Nothing like this. You don’t like it?”

  “I like it a little.” She smiled slowly, pure radiance.

  He wriggled down and kissed her long thighs, which she did not let fall open, nor yet clamp closed.

  “Perhaps if you had a daughter you would not,” she said.

  He kissed her knees. “I just like kissing you. And I like you. I can’t seem to help myself. I like you quite a little.” He started in kissing her calves.

  “Only a little,” she said, a question.

  “I mean a lot,” he said.

  “You make no sense,” she said.

  He kissed the tops of her feet, kissed her toes, kissed his way back up, kissed her thighs again.

  “You going all perfectly red,” she said. “Your neck. So burned.”

  She rolled away from him, pushed his face away from her, sat up.

  He
sat up, too.

  She placed her fingers barely on his chest, withdrew them, examined the white spots left behind. She said, “Burning up, you. Burning to death. Shall we go up into the pretty trees?”

  “I want to give you something to remember,” he said, breathless.

  “Oh, from you I have plenty to remember already,” she said. She stood quickly, gathered her things, started barefoot toward the trees over the rough rocks and fossils, coarse gravels all loose and sharp. Her legs were so long! She minced and stumbled, waved and flung her long arms for balance, precious. Robert scrambled to his feet, grabbed his hotel towel, slipped into his flip-flops losing time, but because of the footwear caught up to her quickly, reached for her quickly—he had more kisses to bestow, that’s all—reached and slipped on a loose stone and only snagged the string of her bikini, not what he meant. The very casual knot untied itself easily and the tiny bit of cloth slung sideways as she spun, her mouth flying open.

  “Señor,” she said, adjusting the bikini in no hurry, adjusting it in such a way that she was utterly exposed (what a shot this would make in a movie!), then repositioned the cloth, tied the strings as carelessly as ever, looser than ever, hurried away from him, fleet and agile. He did feel himself going pink—he was pink with excitement, with misjudgment, with loneliness. He rushed after her, his flip-flops ungainly on the rocks, she exclaiming over jabs to her feet as she escaped him.

  Just at the edge of the wood—a deep, piney, fragrant, cool, inviting wood—the actress stopped to wait for him. She hugged herself seriously, safe in the moss and shade, a vision.

  Drinking her in, rushing forward, far too excited, Robert tripped on a stick and pitched bodily into a pile of craggy rocks, caught himself too late, hit his face, his shoulder. Tessa threw her hands to her mouth, gasped. Robert struggled to his feet, touched the blood welling on his forehead. The actress seemed terrified, shook with surprise, burst into tears.

  “Oh darling,” Robert said. “Princesa!”

  But she wasn’t crying, she was laughing, couldn’t seem to help it, laughed into her long hands girlishly, nothing malicious about it, only delight.

  He tried a self-deprecating grin, brushed at his scraped knees with scraped hands, meant to simply carry on, but his nose began to bleed, one drop, two, and then a gush. He pressed the corner of his towel into his face, reached up to her for a hand, stumbled again, dropped to his knees. “Princesa,” he called again.

  Tessa backed away lost in giggles, stumbled away, wrapped herself tightly in her towel as her aunt had wrapped her, slipped into her top, tied the strings expertly behind her, eyes alight with fascination at Robert’s predicament (he was struggling to stand), adjusted the cups upon her breasts precisely, ran a hand inside her bikini bottom to straighten it through the crotch where he’d misaligned it, gave a sudden shriek of laughter as once again he stumbled and dropped to his knees.

  Far at the other side of the rocks, he realized, the gay couple was watching them—they must have heard her strange shriek. One of them rose to get a better look.

  Robert pressed the towel to his face, realized how bloody it was, maybe funny, why not? He grinned despite himself, got to his feet, managed a few awkward steps. Tessa took off running down the upper path, sure on her feet. Robert staggered after her. She passed the gay couple with a burst of fresh giggles for their benefit.

  Robert made the path and ran after her. “Princesa,” he called.

  Tessa ran all the faster, gasping with mirth.

  The gay men watched bloody Robert speed past, their mouths open in perfectly double wonderment.

  THE INJURIES WEREN’T SERIOUS, but Maria acted the emergency medical technician, anyway. She berated the lifeguard and boatman, who shook themselves from their Tessa trances and searched together for the first-aid kit Maria had demanded. The actress stood with her aunt and uncle, still gulping breaths and crying with hilarity, couldn’t even get words out to explain.

  Maria tutted and patted at Robert’s scraped palms. “Children, she is,” she said. And, “Is not serious, nothing serious.” She had him tilt his head back and pinched his nose firmly. When she let go, it had stopped bleeding.

  Tessa’s uncle lectured her, and Robert could almost guess what he said: one didn’t embark on a walk and come back with bloodied men! The aunt took Tessa’s hands and gave Robert opprobrious glances, muttered to the girl. The uncle talked over the aunt, urgent advice, and from what little Robert understood they seemed to be saying that Tessa’s director would be unhappy with her—girl under contract and involved with such misadventure! Or, anyway, the director’s name kept being repeated: Almodóvar this, Almodóvar that. Tut!

  The lifeguard slouched over with the boat’s first-aid kit, a huge white briefcase of a thing with a red cross on it. He laid it on the dock but couldn’t open it, bashed it a few times with his big fist, nothing.

  The German man stumbled up from the beach. “I am physician,” he said. “Doctore.” He looked closely at Robert’s chin and nose, turned him this way and that. “Best tink ist schwim in the sea,” he said.

  The gay couple arrived, trotting. “He was chasing her!” one of them cried.

  “No, no,” Robert said.

  Tessa broke into a new gale of snorts and giggles.

  The gay couple was not to be deterred. The thin one said, “He chased her right by us!”

  And now the doctor went to attend to her, Tessa! She might, in fact, be hysterical, said his posture. Perhaps she’d been attacked, said his bustle. The male couple followed the German. Then Vedat, then the boat’s captain, even the lifeguard, all in a tight circle around Tessa, who couldn’t talk for laughing, fresh gales.

  “He was kissing on her!” the thicker gay man said.

  “She ran to get away!” said his partner.

  “No, no,” Robert repeated. But he was excluded from the knot around the girl, who only laughed.

  The doctor checked Tessa’s pupils, even as she tried to fend him off.

  Maria gave Robert a long look. She backed away from him, his only ally, and joined the group around Tessa.

  “Princesa,” Robert cried.

  “He calls me Princesa,” said Tessa deadpan, tears of joy in her eyes, and now everyone laughed, even as the doctor took her pulse.

  Robert could still feel the skin of her belly on his lips, the humid knit of her bikini on his tongue. He saw her riding that horse. He climbed down off the dock to the beach alone, rinsed the blood off his face and hands, the salt water stinging fiercely.

  “All gudt!” the doctor pronounced.

  Tessa kissed both of the man’s florid cheeks. “I swim,” she said merrily, hands to his face. “You come!”

  Great laughter from everyone, great relief: she was okay after all.

  And Tessa ran to the end of the dock and dove. The doctor quickly stripped out of his shirt and handed it to the lifeguard, trundled and dove behind her. Robert left his bloodied towel on the rocks, waded into the sea, dove in after them, his wounds stinging with the salt. It didn’t take him long to catch up—Tessa wasn’t swimming with her earlier vigor, and the German was a plodder full of champagne. Alongside, Robert slipped into his most powerful lifeguard sidestroke. Tessa seemed aware of him, doing a strong breaststroke, wouldn’t catch his eye, matched her speed to the doctor’s, clearly holding back for him, a man who swam like a windmill fallen on its side. Behind them, Robert saw the gay couple enter the water, begin their swim, those busybodies. The young parents climbed back into the hotel boat: unlike the doctor, they knew when to quit. Tessa Embrodar turned suddenly onto her back in the water, made a few strong strokes, then pulled up. The doctor stopped, too, and Robert, too, the little knot of them treading water.

  “All gudt?” said the doctor to the actress.

  “You swim like a dolphin,” Tessa told him passionately, ignoring Robert.

  The doctor didn’t understand the words, Robert saw, but Tessa’s look had been plain enough: she’d been bored b
y everyone on the little swimming adventure, but now thanks to the doctor she’d have something to remember. The German pinkened further and sputtered happily, feathered his way very close to the actress, grinned manly when she splashed at him, sighed when she touched his face (as if Robert weren’t there at all), and without so much as a look at her former swim buddy, the two of them took off stroking and kicking, turning their heads to breathe in tandem. Robert watched them pull away as he treaded water, heard the party boat coming up behind, his hands and face and knees on fire. He kicked anyway, kicked and stroked, gave it his best, easy to catch them up, easy to pass them by.

  Broadax, Inc.

  MY OLD CHAMP AND pal Frederick Duk Nuhkmongamong simply appeared at my office—first sign of trouble, no phone call. Marie allowed him past the reception desk because I guess he was so beautiful in that suit, so clearly belonged in the corporate suites, or maybe she recognized him from the photos framed in my otherwise empty bookshelves—I never asked. When I looked up from the telephone there he was, determined as always and self-possessed, but something else, too: diminished.

  I stared at him bluntly, kept snarling at one Ann Spray from Digital Carnage, or whatever it’s called, some half-assed proposal I was tearing limb from limb, showing off a little. But my friend did not crack his usual smile or make the usual word-mouthing fun of my business style.

  I hung up, thought a minute, jotted a note, only then looked to my friend. I said, “Ducky,” fond as I could make it there in my role as shark.

  He said, “Broadax.”

  We were the fellows who’d been roommates at Stanford—was it really twenty years? I said, “One-nine they want, out in Bethel.”

  He said, “One-nine in Bethel? Ha. They heard deep pockets.”

  “Why so grim?” They’d find license plates in my gut when they finally croaked me, whole propellers from ships, sure, but there’d be this lump as well, poisonous, lead-smelter slag: guilt. I felt a cramp. I felt myself sweating.

  He looked away from me, first time since he walked in the door, looked back, and out with it: “Jilly and I have split.”