Wolf Point (9 page)

Outside, the grass that grew up to the concrete foundation was slick and wet. He needed to walk only a few feet for an unobstructed view down the hill to the big oak where he had parked the Rover, and where, as he would have guessed, it was no longer parked. From the tire tracks in the mud, he could see where it had been backed up and turned around toward the blacktop. On the road itself, the muddy tire tracks started thick and then faded in the direction of Alexandria Bay. When he remembered that he had left the car keys in his pants pocket, he reached for his wallet, which, of course, wasn’t there either.
He closed his eyes and lowered his head and waited in the rain for the first rush of anger and frustration to pass. The sky was a mass of fat clouds moving slowly out to the sea. In daylight, the isolation and the beauty of the area were evident. In front of him, the single road that twisted along the bottom of the hill bracketed by green expanses of trees was the only sign of commerce. Behind him, the row of empty cabins and the river.

He wiped rain away from his eyes and went around to the back of the cabin, where he found a boulder against a tree and sat with his arms crossed and his knees up, huddled into himself, watching the river, which seemed to be moving rapidly, or at least that was the illusion it gave looking down on it from his height, at his angle. Water smacked the rocks on the shore as white streaks of foam appeared and disappeared all the way across to the Canadian side, only a few miles distant. Scattered across the river were scores of tiny islands interwoven with narrow waterways. T watched the river roll past in the rain for a minute or two, then rose to his feet without premeditation, as if some invisible puppeteer decided to work his strings. He started back for the bedroom, where Jenny was most likely still sleeping. He was soaked. And cold. He could almost feel the warmth of her sleeping body snuggled under covers.

He found her, however, already awake. She lay on her side just as he had left her, only now her eyes were open. They followed him as he walked down the hall.

“You’re all wet,” she said.

T stood in the doorway dripping water. “Lester took the Rover and my wallet. He’s gone.”

“Probably went to town to get food,” she said. “He took the whole wallet?”

“Took the keys and wallet out of my pants, while we were sleeping.”

“He’s so paranoid,” she said. “He probably just wanted to make sure we didn’t go anyplace without him.”

“You think he’s coming back?”

Jenny smiled as if his misperceptions were too cute for words. She stretched her feet under the covers. “Trust me,” she said. “He’ll be back.”

T watched her for a moment while she stared back at him in amusement. She looked cozy buried under the covers, only her head peeking out above the quilt. He considered asking her how she could be so sure Lester would be back, but decided against it. Instead, he went into the bathroom and peeled off his wet clothes.

“How’d you get so wet?” she called to him.

“Sitting on a rock watching the river.”

“That’s so romantic.”

He sat down on the john and struggled out of his pants. “Where’d Lester think we’d go without a car?”

“Lester’s weird,” she said. “Who knows?”

“Any idea why he’d take my photography equipment out of the Rover and bring it in here?”

She was silent a moment, and he imagined her in the next room curled up comfortably inside her little cocoon, the way her eyes might be gazing intently at nothing as she gathered her thoughts. He was surprised at how vividly her image had
lodged itself in his mind, especially her eyes, which he felt he still had not been able to read accurately, and so the image of them, green and gazing at something intently, was a kind of puzzle, an unanswered question.

She called back, “Who knows why he does the things he does?”

T said, “I was hoping you might.” He hung his wet clothes over the shower curtain rod, dried himself off with a towel Jenny had left on the sink, and then wrapped it around him and went to the master bedroom for his suitcase and the pajamas he remembered packing, the ones that looked like an upscale prison uniform—silk, with diagonal black and white stripes. Maura had given them to him as a birthday present several years ago. They had been the only ones he could find clean.

When he appeared before Jenny in the doorway, she said, “Oh my God, oh my God,” and buried her head under the quilt. The bed rocked as she laughed.

T said, “I wasn’t expecting to be seen by anyone,” and got under the covers with her.

She turned over and looked out at him from an opening in the quilt. Her face was red. “Oh my God,” she said. “You’re so cute.”

“Thank you,” he said. “That’s exactly how I want to be seen by a young woman, as cute.”

“Oh, stop,” she popped her head out from under the covers and rested her cheek on his shoulder. “You’re so sensitive,” she said. “You’re like a sad little boy.”

A small rush of anger came over T at being called a little boy. He closed his eyes and waited for it to subside. “So you feel absolutely certain Lester is coming back?”

“Absolutely,” she said, and cuddled up closer to him under the blankets. “I promise, I know the guy: he’s scared to death you and me are going to hook up and leave him on his own. Really, I know him.” She wiggled closer to him and pushed a quilt-covered knee up over his thigh.

T saw himself for a moment as he might look to someone perched in the corner of the room, near the ceiling, or from a cinematic view, a camera angle: an older man in silk pajamas, the look in his eyes world-weary, a little cynical, with a young woman crawling over him.

Jenny said, “I never woke up in bed with a guy when I didn’t, you know, the night before.” She kissed him playfully on the chin.

“Obviously,” T said, “you’ve never been married. What about Lester?”

“What about him?”

“When you lived with him for a year.”

“Lester told you I lived with him for a year?” She slid down and rested her head on his stomach. “I didn’t live with Lester. Well, I guess I did, technically—but it wasn’t like, you know, living with him.”

“It was…?”

“We shared a house for a year, when I started at UTC. I got a place in town, and then I rented a room to Lester, who my
family’s known like since forever. So, I guess he lived with me for a year, but it was, you know: he had his room, I had mine.”

“You weren’t lovers? This is your freshman year in college we’re talking about? You’re seventeen, eighteen?”

Jenny nodded. “Lester was older. Twenty-three, I think. And he was just all this bullshit about being an actor. He was going to take a few acting classes and then go off to LA and be a star, or some such stupid shit.”

“And you?” T asked. He turned so he could see her face better. The liner under her eyes had smeared into dark smudges. Her bare shoulders showed above the quilt. He reached down to stroke the thick clusters of hair cascading along her neck. She closed her eyes and leaned into his touch. “What did you want to study?” he asked. “And what happened? What happened with college?”

“Accounting,” she said. “I wanted to be a CPA.”

“Like Uncle Chuck?”

“Uncle Chuck has his own firm and promised to set me up soon as I graduated.”

“So?” T said. “What happened?”

She hesitated, as if considering her words. Then she said, “It’s a long story, and—” She was silent a moment longer. “I need to get to know you a little better.” She shook her head, as if pushing a line of thought out of mind. “I made it a few weeks into my sophomore year,” she continued, “and then I had to quit.”

“But you were back in school now. Before—”

“I had just started again. I was just getting going on my classes.”

“And the four years in between…? You’ve been…?”

“Stripping. Making money as an exotic dancer, a.k.a. stripper—but given I spend about two minutes taking my clothes off and the rest of the night walking around naked, stripper’s not really—”

“Is that what you didn’t want to tell me?”

“That I was a stripper? I’m not ashamed of that.” She pulled his arm under her cheek and snuggled against it. “I made enough money to buy my mother’s house, pay off a truckload of bills, and still have what I needed to cover college. And this is all showing it off and lap dances, nothing else.”

“Stripping,” T said. “You—”

“It’s all acting,” she interrupted. “The better actor you are, the more money you make. It’s a paid exhibitionist. You dance around and stick your butt in guys’ faces so they can imagine they’re fucking you. It’s acting. It’s all fantasy.”

“I’m sure,” T said. “And is that what you’re doing now?” He pushed her away and propped his head on his hand so that he was on his side, looking at her. “What are you doing, Jenny? This is— This is kind of silly, isn’t it?”

“You think I’m silly?” She pulled the quilt to her breast, covering herself.

“I think this is silly,” he said, “and, honestly, insulting to me. No?”

She seemed perplexed. She gestured with her shoulders, as if to say she had no idea what he was talking about.

“Look,” he said, “just tell me what’s going on. What is it really between you and Lester? What is it that you hope—”

“I told you,” she said, her face reddening. “What am I supposed to do if you won’t believe me?”

“The biker story?”

“It’s not a story.”

“Okay,” T said. “Okay. How much did Lester steal?”

“Forty fucking thousand dollars,” she said. She paused dramatically and then repeated herself. “He stole forty, thousand, dollars.”

“And for forty thousand dollars,” T said, “these people are going to kill him? And you?”

“What?” she said. “That’s not enough for you?” She pulled away and sat up, still holding the blankets to her breast. “Do you know how much forty thousand dollars is to regular people, T? Do you know how impossible it is for most people to put that much money together?”

T rolled onto his back and closed his eyes, then crossed his forearms over his eyes, as if he needed a few seconds of total blindness. In the momentary silence and darkness, he noticed that it had stopped raining. He heard a single bird calling somewhere close by, a high, chirping sound, and then the odd, cackling squeal, farther away, of a crow.

“T,” Jenny said, “these aren’t executives we’re talking about. These are tweakers. You know what tweakers are?
These are people totally fucked on crank. T?” she said. “Do you know what I’m talking about? Do you even know what crank is, T?”

“We used to call it speed,” he said, from under his arms, out of the darkness. “We used to take Blackbirds in college, to stay up all night.”

She laughed. “Yeah,” she said. “Something like that.”

T peeked out from under his arms. “So explain this to me.” He sat up. “First, I’m confused. In the car you told me Lester was an ex-lover. Now you’re telling me he was just a housemate.”

“Did I say that?”

“I think that’s what you said.”

“I think I said we weren’t ever
living together,
which is a sort of semimarried thing.” She waited a moment, as if she had just made a good point.

“So?”

“So, that doesn’t mean we didn’t get together for a little while when he was living there. That doesn’t mean we didn’t hook up.”

“Hook up,” T repeated. It was a term he had heard used before, but he had never been entirely clear on the meaning of it. “So you and Lester
hooked up
for a while.”

“Exactly.”

“And then, after that, he was gone; he was out of your life until—”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Didn’t say what?”

“That he was out of my life.”

“What then?” T said angrily, and immediately was taken aback by the look about Jenny’s eyes, which suggested fear right under the surface. “Look,” he added before she could respond, “Jenny.” He touched her knee. “I don’t want anything from you. I swear. I certainly don’t want to hurt you. I’m just… seeing how I might help. But I’m not going to be some kind of a sucker. You understand what I’m saying? I want to help—but I’m not playing the sucker.”

“You really believe that?” she said. The fear in her voice gave way to a hint of anger, and in that moment she seemed to shift shape as he watched, the curtain falling on one Jenny as another Jenny took the stage, this one older, much older, and not really asking a question at all. “You really believe you don’t want anything from me?” she said. When T didn’t answer, when he only stared at her, his eyes fastened on her eyes, she added, “Just, please don’t yell at me. I know I act tough, but please don’t yell at me.”

T said, “I apologize if I was yelling at you.”

“And then,” she said, “are you sure I’m the only one who needs help around here?”

“Me?” T said. “We’re talking about me now?”

“All right,” she said, and looked around as if she were thinking about getting out of bed and searching for her clothes. “You want to help?” she said, and then she was suddenly playful again. “Buy me some clothes!” she yelled. “Please, T!” She folded over like a suitcase closing, her arms thrown out like someone bowing in supplication. “Please,”
she pleaded. “Don’t make me put on those red leather tramp pants again. Please, please, please.”

“I’ll be happy to buy you some clothes,” T said, and he shifted his body under the covers so that his leg touched her thigh, he hoped reassuringly.

For a while, they were both silent. Jenny seemed completely relaxed with her legs stretched out and her torso lying flat on her thighs in a position only possible for someone very young and very lithe. She still held the quilt to the front of her body, but her back was exposed, and T admired the way her spine defined a gentle curve before it disappeared under the covers. In the space between her shoulder blades, a subtle downward slope of skin formed a triangle where the flesh darkened slightly. He touched her there, and then took her shoulders in his hands and massaged them gently. She responded like a cat being petted. She moaned with pleasure.

After a while she said, “How come you picked us up, T? Really. I’m trying to figure that out. If it wasn’t me— If it wasn’t sex—”

“I don’t know why I picked you up,” he said quickly, brushing off the question. “Tell me about Lester, though. Why are you so sure he’s coming back? Why aren’t you even a little worried that we might be abandoned out here?”