Late in the Season (11 page)

Jonathan stepped inside again, and Stevie leaned back in her chaise longue and looked up. Another splendid, sunny, hot day. Really beautiful. Jonathan had been right about that too. There didn’t appear to be a hint of a cloud. How long could it last?

He was outside again. In addition to his faded forest green gym shorts, he had thrown a pale blue and white checkered shirt over his shoulders, without buttoning it. Its short sleeves were rolled up almost to his shoulders. He swept a pair of sunglasses off the deck table, and walked out to the beach.

She stood up, and waved, but didn’t call out to him. He evidently didn’t see her, but headed away, to the surf.

She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t let another day pass without at least saying hello to him. Not after that night.

She pulled on her shorts over her bikini, tied a kerchief around her head, and followed him onto the beach.

He was far ahead, ankle-deep in the surf, looking out to sea, then walking with his head down again. He might still be composing in his head.

Feeling foolish, Stevie dawdled farther and farther behind, thinking she might just sit down somewhere, look at the ocean, and wait until he passed her on his way back to the house.

She’d just settled herself on a dry-looking sand cliff, cut out of the beach by the tide, when she saw him leave the water’s edge and trudge up to a wooden stairway that she knew led to the harbor area and little village.

She would follow. Meeting there would seem even more natural than on the beach, far more coincidental.

As she came out of the surrounding foliage onto the harbor, she saw that he had walked past the village, around the rim of the harbor and onto a jutting pier, where he sat down and lighted up a cigarette.

It was late afternoon, on a Friday, yet the place seemed as quiet as it had all week. Only a few yachts remained bobbing slightly at tether in the little harbor, two lovely sleek sailboats, their sails gathered up around their masts like bundles of laundry, and a few smaller boats. In July, Stevie knew the harbor was noisy and crowded, filled with boats and people. Now the only activity was on a flatbed barge for shipping large deliveries that was moored to one side; the two workers on it sat out of the sun under a striped, faded awning, drinking beer, their feet straight out, their big, brown boots making them look like clumsy giants, awkward and out of place in this resort of bare feet and fragile summer shoes.

The rest of the harbor village seemed equally still. The two stores for food and liquor were open. The grocery store looked empty. Stevie could see the checkout girl through the plate glass window, reading a magazine on the counter. In front of the liquor store, the owner’s wife was sitting out on a little deck, tanning, her sunglasses pushed off her wide, red face, her feet straight out, as though she’d been immobilized by the heat. The two little restaurants hadn’t yet opened for the weekend. Stevie supposed they would wait until just before dinnertime. The boutique where she’d bought her slacks and blouse was closed, however: its sale sign removed, its shades down and windows shuttered as though for a hurricane. A handwritten sign tacked onto one shutter thanked its customers and gave the date next spring when the store would reopen.

Stevie decided she might go pick up a few more groceries, then wander out to the pier where Jonathan sat. Or she would…

The telephone booth at the harbor attracted her eye. It sat right there in the middle of the dock, near the ferry loading area. She suddenly felt an awful need to talk to someone.

“Please charge this to my home number,” she said to the local operator and waited. It was Friday, after four o’clock in the afternoon. Would Rose Heywood have already left? Or would she still be on campus? It was the first weekend of the semester. A glorious one.

“Hello!” she said. She’d gotten the faculty office building operator and asked for Rose.

“So do whatever you think best,” Stevie heard Rose Heywood saying. Then, in a different, impatient, more official voice into the receiver, “Yes? What is it?”

“It’s Stevie,” she said, feeling as though she had interrupted Rose in something important. “Stevie Locke.”

“Is that you, Stevie? Wherever are you?”

“Not at school.”

“I know that, dear. Wait a minute, Stevie.” She half covered the receiver and could be heard talking to someone else. Back again. “How tiresome some of these girls are. As for you, dear, I’m devastated. Where on earth are you?”

“Sea Mist.”

“Where?”

“On eastern Long Island. At my parents’ summer house. I’m here all alone. Thinking.”

“Oh, dear!”

Stevie had to laugh. Just hearing Rose made her feel better, less lonely.

“Are you ever coming back to us?”

“That’s just it; I don’t know.”

“Take the semester off, then,” Rose said. “Take your lovely boyfriend and go skiing in the Alps or off on an ocean cruise.”

“I’m thinking about him too,” Stevie said.

“I see!”

She didn’t know how much she could tell Rose. She used to tell her everything last year. But then last year there wasn’t that much to tell, was there?

“Rose, I’m in love. Or infatuated. Or something. With someone else. His name is Jonathan Lash. He’s a composer.”

“You little beast. You ought to have told me that right away, instead of all this shilly-shallying about thinking. Is he handsome?”

“He’s scrumptious,” Stevie said, relaxed, and realizing that of course she could tell Rose everything. Rose was…well, she was Rose, wasn’t she?

She began a description of Jonathan that soon had Rose cooing on the other end. When she mentioned the extreme whiteness of his groin against the caramel color everywhere else, Rose interrupted.

“How much of him have you seen?”

“All. One morning.”

“One morning, yet!” Rose mocked. Then, “Well, it sounds too wonderful for words. And I don’t blame you a bit for not coming back to stupid old Smith, with an Adonis like that naked around you. In fact I’m quite envious and disturbed that you called. I’m surrounded by work and schedules, while you’re off being some maiden in a bagnio.”

“Hardly. Rose…” Stevie was aware her voice had expressed the uncertainty she really felt.

“What’s the problem with him, dear?”

“No problem.”

“There’s always a problem in love, Stevie; otherwise it would soon become boring. What’s yours? Is he a quadriplegic amputee?”

“No! Aren’t you awful. You are jealous.”

“I admitted it. Come on, puss. What is it? If the sex is terrific, it can’t matter that much.”

“Well…we haven’t actually made love yet,” she said, wondering how that would sound.

“Playing coy, aren’t you?”

“Sort of. He’s older than I,” Stevie blurted out. “About twice my age.”

“Heavens! Perhaps he can’t make love after all! Darling, believe me, mid-thirties is hardly the age for geriatric impotence.”

“His age is fine. I’m certain that’s part of his attractiveness to me. The way he’s aged, matured. It seems so…well, so authentic.”

“Well, then? Don’t tell me he’s married. That’s it! He’s married. Leading you on?”

“Not really. Sort of. His lover is in London.”

“Does she know about you?”

“I don’t think so. Not yet, at least,” Stevie hedged, then finally let it out: “Rose, his lover is a he, not a she.”

Silence on the other end, then: “You are in a fix, aren’t you?”

“Do you really think so, Rose?”

“Well, darling, there might be extenuating circumstances you haven’t told me yet.”

“Realistically, Rose!” Stevie was firm now. “No bullshit or anything.”

“All right, Stevie, no bullshit. You might make love together. You might make love a dozen times, a thousand times. You might live together for years, have children and all. And I would still tell you to get away from there and come back to school. We could rig up some sort of excuse for illness for the first week of term.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Are there extenuating circumstances?” Rose asked.

“Of course there are. He’s alone out here. And I’m in love with him.”

“Darling, it would be easy for you to be excused. I’ll bear witness for your being ill.”

“I’m really deranged, then?”

“You don’t sound bad. It sounds quite pleasant, in fact.” Rose tempered her previous words.

“I’m not coming back. I’m going to keep on seeing him.”

“Despite what I said?”

“Despite it!”

“Well! Good for you, Stevie. Don’t let me stop you. I’m all in favor. I’ve always been like the Red Queen anyway, as you know. I like to think of three impossible things before breakfast every day. Have fun. Don’t suffer. Unless, of course,” she added quickly, “you want to. Then luxuriate in it.”

“Did you ever have an affair with a gay man?”

“Yes. But it was a bit easier then. He didn’t know he was. Only found out later.”

“Jonathan and Dan have been lovers since before we took the summer house. But it’s not impossible, is it? Admit that, Rose?”

“Darling, if I were eighteen and footloose and attractive as you are, I’d certainly give it a try.”

“Really? No bullshit.”

“Really.”

That seemed like the true, honest Rose Heywood. So Stevie decided to change the subject. “Will you come to see me in Manhattan some weekend?”

“Of course I will. I will miss driving down there with you, though. The new crop of girls here seems more naïve than ever before. They must be recruited from remote places in hidden away valleys on the wrong side of large mountains. And your class, well, I gave them up en masse last year. Except for you, of course.”

“And look at me.”

“Don’t be too harsh on yourself. If you’re even considering having an affair with a beautiful, already married homosexual male twice your age, I’d say you’re miles ahead of these poor chickadees at school. Maybe you oughtn’t to come back, after all. Perhaps you ought to get a job or something. Try the real world for a while.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking. But doing what?”

“I don’t know. Why not make up a list. Make up three lists. One of what you’d most like to do. Another for what you’d settle for, if you can’t do the first. And a third of what you’ll probably end up with, without a college diploma.”

A seaplane buzzed overhead. When Stevie turned her head to watch it, it curved in a wide arc, descending into the Great South Bay, preparing to land. She could just make out Jonathan’s distant figure, standing up and waving to someone inside. Then he walked over to where its passengers would disembark.

Damn. It looked like he had company. She ought to have stopped him on the beach.

“Will you make those lists, Stevie?”

“I will, Rose. I think it’s a terrific idea. Will you call me when you’re planning to come to the city?”

“Not for a few weeks.”

“We’ll lunch at Schrafft’s,” Stevie said. “We’ll both wear little hats with veils, and eat cucumber sandwiches.”

“If we can still find a Schrafft’s,” Rose said. “They’re probably all Taco Ricos by now. Stevie?”

“Yes.”

“Promise me you’ll do something foolish.”

“Thanks for being no bullshit, Rose. I promise.” She’d barely hung up the phone when Stevie spotted Jonathan coming toward her alongside the harbor’s edge. On either side of him were two little boys with flight bags slung over their shoulders. They each held one of his hands, and were talking animatedly. Jonathan had taken off his shirt, and it was pushed through the strap of another, larger canvas bag he carried over his shoulder. As they approached, she saw him in a new light—as a possible husband and father—a role unthinkable until that moment. She got shivers up her spine at the thought. All three of them stopped and turned slightly away from her. One little boy pointed to the seaplane, taking off now, gliding away on the water. Jonathan’s profile was lovely; the way his chest sloped and drew in and sloped again drew her eyes; his thighs in their worn shorts; his beard curling in the sunlight. And he could be a husband and a father!

They turned, and saw her.

“Hi!” she said, a picture of spontaneity.

“Hey! Look who’s here,” Jonathan said, and smiled. He was clearly pleased to see her. “Stevie Locke. These are two of my best friends. Artie. And Ken.”

The children wore short pants, sandals, and T-shirts with comic book characters stenciled on them. They didn’t look like Jonathan: neither did they really look alike. They shook hands with her politely, however, looked at her with that typically childlike mixture of curiosity and disdain, then moved slowly away.

“Shopping?” Jonathan asked.

“On the phone. The one at the house is already shut off for the winter.”

“You could use ours.”

“Thanks. I wasn’t thinking.”

“And you still haven’t come to check our bookshelves.”

“I was going to. Mind if I walk along with you?”

The boys had already moved on along the boardwalk, and were talking to the sheepdog with the red handkerchief tied around its neck that Stevie had seen waiting at the dock the day of her arrival. When the dog bored them, they began a walking race along the main boardwalk, using a certain yellow fireplug they’d spotted ahead as their destination. Evidently they knew the direction of his house.