The Complete Drive-In

2

Up in Jungle Home I tried to sleep, but no dice. I got out of bed and slipped on my blanket and left Bob and Crier sleeping and went out on the deck where a warm breeze was blowing.

I went on down and walked over to the camper and touched it. It was cool to my touch and I got a mild sexual charge out of it, which made me feel pretty damn silly. I thought about what Grace had said about fucking the ocean in case there was a shark in there that had swallowed a girl, and suddenly it made a lot of sense.

I went around to the end of the camper. The tailgate was down. My mouth filled with saliva. I knew then that I was going to at least look inside.

I looked.

She wasn’t there. There was just a basket of fruit. I guess my sexual charge had come from that or a horny spare tire.

Then I heard splashing. I think I had heard it before, but now it registered.

I walked around on the other side of the camper and looked out at the lake.

The moon was high and bright and it made the lake slick as a mirror. Not too far out in it, halfway submerged, was Grace. She was slapping her arms on the surface of the water. Playing.

I went down there, and when I was fifty feet from the water, I stopped and looked at her sleek, marble-white back sticking out of the water like a flooded Grecian statue.

She looked over her shoulder and smiled.

“Out for a walk, Jack?”

“Sort of.”

“Excited about tomorrow?”

“I guess.”

“You saved my life today.”

“That’s all right.”

“Of course it is. I got hot in the camper. Funny, Timothy’s down at the other end of the lake and here I am playing in the water at this end. I never made love to him, you know.”

“Did you want to?”

“I think I saw him as a brother.”

“You telling me this for a reason?”

“I don’t know.”

She turned and started to shore. She came out of the water like Venus being born. The moon hit the sheen of water on her breasts and made them bright as moons themselves. The little pink stripes on her skin looked like birthday ribbons.

“You’re going to go blind,” she said.

“I don’t make you go naked.”

“I didn’t make you come down here.”

I put my hands in front of me and clasped them together.

She came to me and kissed me lightly on the lips. Her breath smelled of fruit. She took hold of my arms, lifted them over her head and around her neck, said, “You’ll have to pull out, you know. I don’t have any birth control. And don’t make more of this than it is.”

I pulled her to me and kissed her. Our tongues made war.

She looked down. “Goodness, Jack. There’s something in your blanket.”

“You’ve already seen it. You weren’t much impressed.”

She took hold of the edges of the blanket and pulled it over my head, knocking my arms off of her. She threw the blanket down on the grass and took hold of me.

“My,” she said, “how the little fella’s grown.”