“Can’t anyone stop these people doing this?”
“No. There’s a pretty good protest group, but the problem is a lot of people think the drilling benefits the town. Creates jobs, brings business to the stores, that kind of deal. And that’s bullshit. Often as not the companies ship in their own cheap labor and all the town gets is a whole lot of problems.”
“Is this going on in Montana too?”
“Not yet. But it won’t be long.”
They didn’t talk much after that. They headed north and west along I-90, while Steve Earle sang sorrowful songs on the stereo and a pale sun slid down ahead of them into its own coalbed of cloud. Ty said the weather looked set to change. Abbie had never seen him so heavy and forlorn. He switched on the headlights and she reached out and stroked the back of his neck.
“Two more days,” he said. “And then you’ll be gone.”
A first few drops of rain spattered the windshield.
“I’ll be back,” she said.
It rained all of Friday and most of Saturday, and only a stalwart, slickered few—Abbie inevitably among them—ventured out on the last rides. Of the guests who didn’t, the hardiest still plodded in their Gore-Tex down to the creek to cast a fly or hiked up the sodden trails through the woods, but mostly people simply sat around and read or played long games of Monopoly and Scrabble in the ranch-house lounge.
While Abbie went riding or hung around the stables “helping” Ty, Josh hung with the Delstock kids. This mainly involved lolling in one of their cabins (usually Lane and Ryan Delroy’s because their parents didn’t get uptight about the mess), listening to music and having sprawling, sardonic discussions on topics that segued surreally from world peace to thrash metal to nose rings and nail polish. Specifically, Josh lolled as often and as close as he could to Katie Bradstock. Which was what he was doing right now.
Over the course of the past twelve days, he had stirred himself up into a fever of yearning. There wasn’t a moment of the day when his head wasn’t full of her. She hummed and jangled through every nerve and vein of his body. The sight, the smell, even the thought of her gave him a strange, hollowing ache. He was an open walking wound from head to toe. A walking wound with a constant hard-on. So constant he worried it might be doing him damage.
Part of the problem was that he’d been waiting too long for something like this to happen. At school it seemed like every other kid his age (and younger) was getting laid, except him. He knew he was nobody’s idea of a pinup but since last fall when he’d gotten rid of his glasses and started wearing contacts and shed a few pounds and gotten a little cooler with his clothes, he didn’t think he looked so nerdy. And, thank God, he didn’t get too many zits—though, come to think of it, that didn’t seem to stop guys like Kevin Simpson, a complete duh-brain in tenth grade, from getting laid.
Of course, Josh wasn’t so dumb as to believe all the stories that jerks like Kevin put out. A lot of kids pretended they’d done it when they hadn’t. Whatever. This thing with Katie was doing his head in. The vacation was about to end and they still hadn’t even kissed. He was pretty sure she wanted things to happen as much as he did. And a couple of times it almost had. Like the other night at his dad’s birthday party, when they were dancing together and Ty’s band started playing a slow number and she locked her arms around the back of his neck and smiled at him in a way that made him go all fluttery inside. And then Lane and Abbie came butting in and ruined things by dancing with them.
That was the real problem. They were all such a gang and always did everything together. Which was really cool and a lot of fun. But the downside was that there was hardly ever a moment when it was just he and Katie, just the two of them alone, when they might get to switch from being just friends into something more exciting. They had laughed and teased and talked and chased each other around and even tickled each other. But that was where it had gotten stuck. Like a scratched record. And neither of them seemed to know which button to press to move it on.
It was Saturday afternoon and all six brothers and sisters—including Abbie, back from the stables with straw in her hair—were sprawled on the shunted-together beds of Lane and Ryan’s cabin. They were listening to the new Radiohead album, which Ryan said was “ultimate.” Josh secretly felt that if he heard it one more time he might have to go out and hang himself. The room smelled of stale socks and cigarette smoke, which they did their best to eliminate by keeping the back windows open and releasing periodic blasts of Lane’s Calvin Klein body spray for which they had promised to reimburse her, though probably wouldn’t. Will Bradstock said it made the place smell like a Turkish brothel and seemed disappointed when nobody bothered to ask how he might know. They were all either too bored or too wasted from the night before when they’d snuck up behind the pool changing rooms and smoked the weed Ryan had stolen from his father’s stash.
All except Josh. He was neither bored nor wasted. He was too busy thinking about his right thigh which for the last ten blissful minutes had been pressed against Katie. She was lying curled on her side with her back to him, raised on one elbow, her gorgeous butt nestled into him and a bare shoulder leaning gently against his chest. She was reading an old copy of People magazine that was propped against Ryan who had fallen asleep across Abbie. Or maybe she was just pretending to read it because she hadn’t yet turned a page.
Katie was wearing that sexy little yellow crop top and a denim miniskirt cut low around her hips to reveal six inches of tanned flesh. Sometimes, when she wiggled, you could also see the top of her panties, which were pink and lacy. Josh was pretending to read the magazine over her shoulder while in fact peering furtively down his nose into the gaping neck of her top where he could see her right breast bulge a little as it got cupped by her bra (which was also pink but seemed to be made of satin rather than lace). Her nearness, the pressure of her butt against his thigh, the sweet, warm, animal smell of her had given him a mega-boner, which, with a discreetly placed right hand, he was managing to flatten to his stomach.
The place where his thigh touched her butt was getting hot. She could have moved away but she hadn’t. There was no way she could be unaware of it. She was probably enjoying it as much as he was. Man, he thought. Maybe this was the moment. The moment to show her how he really felt.
His heart began to pound. He hoped to God she couldn’t hear or feel it. Go on, he told himself. It’s the guy who has to make the first move. She’s probably been waiting for it, dying for you to let her know how much you want her. And there was an obvious and simple way that would leave her no room for doubt. He took a long, deep breath and slowly slid the restraining hand from his stomach so that his hard-on pronged against her.
Katie Bradstock jumped as if she’d been jabbed by a cattle prod. She lifted a clear six inches from the bed.
“Josh!” she yelped. “Jesus!”
Everybody was staring at him. He felt his face starting to burn.
“What?” he said, trying for a tone of innocent shock and failing.
“What’s the matter?” Abbie said, for all of them.
Katie was scrambling away across the bed, on her hands and knees over the tangle of startled bodies.
“Nothing,” she said. “I just gotta go somewhere.” She was off the bed now and hurrying to the door and a few seconds later she was gone. There followed a long and bemused silence. Everyone was awake and alert now and looking at each other for some clue as to what had happened. Josh tried to look mystified, while his brain scrolled furiously for some half-plausible excuse.
Bugs, he thought.
“Maybe she got bitten.”
He got to his knees, stupidly forgetting about his erection which was wilting fast but still tenting his shorts. He instantly and no doubt comically adopted a weird hunched posture to hide it, while he pretended to hunt for bugs among the rumpled bedclothes. On the stereo Radiohead were coming to a suicidal crescendo. Abbie and Lane were already on their way out of the door in pursuit of Katie. Wi
ll and Ryan just sat there staring at him.
“What was that about?” Will said.
“No idea. I think she got stung or something . . .”
Ryan’s eyes flicked languidly to Josh’s crotch then back to his eyes, a slow grin sliding in.
“Yeah, right,” he said. “I wonder what by.”
Ben swung the last of the bags into the back of the rented truck and shut the tailgate. They had an earlier flight to catch than all the others who were checking out that morning and everyone had trooped down across the lawn to the parking area behind the stables to see them off. The ritual fond farewells were in full swing. Abbie and Katie and Lane, all close to tears, were hugging and kissing and making one another promise to call and e-mail. Their brothers were doing the more reserved and awkward male version of the same thing, calling each other bro and man and dude and sharing elaborate handshakes and slaps on the back.
Their mothers meanwhile were again going through that other annual ritual of promising to visit with one another. Ben heard Sarah say that this year they would definitely be visiting the Delroys in Florida. Maybe they could all escape the grandparents and meet up for Thanksgiving? And go skiing somewhere in February? None of this, of course, would ever happen and they all secretly knew it. The mutual pretense simply made everybody feel better about parting.
It was a ritual in which, for reasons Ben didn’t fully understand, the men never seemed to take part. Perhaps they were just too cynical. Instead, he and Tom Bradstock and Delroy were standing by the truck, looking on indulgently and discussing more manly and important matters, like check-in security procedure and how many air miles they had each clocked up. Tom had now started telling them about a sniffer dog that had taken a shine to him at Chicago O’Hare and headed straight for him every time he stepped into the baggage hall.
“I try to explain to the handlers that we’re just good friends, but they don’t believe me and haul me off to the booth for another search.”
Ben listened just enough to be able to laugh in the right places. He was watching Josh and again feeling sorry for him. The boy had missed dinner the previous evening, claiming he wasn’t feeling well. He hadn’t even shown up for the usual end-of-vacation party in the bar afterward. All his earlier joy seemed to have ebbed away. Sarah said something had obviously gone wrong between him and Katie. And looking at the two of them now, studiously avoiding each other, Ben figured she must be right. On top of that, Abbie had been in tears before breakfast, having just said good-bye to Ty. Men and women, Ben sighed to himself. Lord help us all.
Then he saw Eve. He had looked out for her at breakfast, but she hadn’t shown up and he had resigned himself to leaving without saying good-bye. It was probably better that way. But here she was, beautiful as ever in her riding clothes, walking down across the lawn. The morning ride was about to leave, the horses all saddled up in line outside the stables, some of the guests already mounting up. And for a moment Ben thought that was where she must be going. But then she gave a little wave and headed down toward the parking area. She looked at him and they exchanged a smile but she went to join the women.
Tom Bradstock had finished his story and had gone across to talk with one of the riders. Delroy was staring at Eve.
“What I’d give to be Adam,” he said quietly.
It took Ben a couple of beats to understand what he meant.
“Oh, right. Yeah. She’s nice.”
“Nice? Ben, you are so . . . measured. I can think of a dozen things I’d call her before nice.”
Two nights earlier, Ben had plucked up the courage to accompany Delroy on his nightly stroll into the woods. Whether pot was stronger nowadays or it had simply been too long since he last tried it, Ben didn’t know, but after just a few puffs his head started telescoping into itself, and he staggered in a clammy nausea back to his cabin and lay on the bed for what seemed like hours, convinced he was going to die. The humiliation was galling enough, but worse still was Delroy’s apparent assumption that they had graduated to more intimate terms. Measured? How the hell would he know? They didn’t even know each other. Ben looked at his watch.
“Well,” he said. “I think it’s time we were going.”
As he walked over toward the women he heard Sarah ask Eve if she ever came to New York.
“As a matter of fact, I’m coming in September, for a friend’s exhibition.”
“Hey, well, we should get together,” Sarah said.
“I’d like that.”
“Maybe we could go see a show. Do you like musicals?”
“Love them.”
While they swapped numbers, Ben rounded up the kids and everyone said their final good-byes. When Eve touched her cool cheek against his, he felt a twist of melancholy in his chest. She said how much she had enjoyed meeting them all. Not him, he noted, them all. Lori was still in bed, she said, but had asked her to say good-bye. The Coopers climbed into the truck and Ben turned the key.
“You make sure to call us,” Sarah said to Eve.
“I promise.”
She never would, of course. As they pulled away down the drive, the kids calling and leaning out of their windows to wave, Ben lifted his eyes to the mirror and took what he was sure would be his last look at her.
NINE
It was match point and, as usual, Sarah’s father was going to win. Nobody would be surprised. Even the lizards sunbathing along the court’s perimeter looked on with a kind of weary fatalism. However, that George Davenport could still, at the age of sixty-eight, annihilate his son-in-law in two straight sets clearly gave him more pleasure than he could disguise. In his trim white shorts and polo shirt, his silver hair sleek and only the faintest glisten of sweat on his tanned brow, he bounced the ball and prepared to serve. At the other end, in his sodden gray T-shirt and floral boardshorts that he wore in childish defiance of Westchester court etiquette, Benjamin stood braced like a prisoner before a firing squad.
It was the Sunday of Labor Day weekend and the Coopers had driven that morning in sunlit gloom from Syosset to Bedford for the ritual lunch with Sarah’s parents. Quite how the custom had endured all these years, when everyone involved—with the possible exception of Sarah’s mother—so dreaded it, was a mystery almost as profound as her father’s insatiable joy at beating, for the umpteenth time, so lackluster an opponent. Perhaps simply to prolong Benjamin’s misery, he now served his first double fault of the match.
“Forty-fifteen!”
Lunch was waiting on the terrace that spread grandly from the south-facing side of the house and, sensing what passed for a climax to the match, Sarah, her mother, Abbie, and Josh had wandered down across the manicured grass, bearing lemonade and a dogged, if somewhat strained, cheeriness. The court, like all else material at the Davenport residence, was immaculate. Groomed twice weekly by one of several gardeners, its brick and gravel surround planted with rose and hibiscus and sculpted cushions of lavender, it was surfaced with the very latest sort of synthetic grass which played, according to Sarah’s father, even better than the real thing. That a man whose gifts to a grateful nation included several arcane varieties of hedge fund could so improve upon God’s work would have surprised no one, least of all Benjamin, who, flushed and grimly sweating, now prepared to face a second match point.
“Go, Dad!” Abbie called from the shade of the court-side arbor.
“Quiet, please,” her grandfather said. He wasn’t kidding.
He served and this time it was fast and low and in and Benjamin lunged fitfully to his right and just got the edge of his racket to it, but only to hoist the ball back over the net in a high and easy lob.
With enough time for a man’s life to spool in slow motion before him, his father-in-law watched the ball descend, his racket uncoiling like a cobra for the strike, and with a perfectly timed and blistering slam, dispatched the ball in one epic bounce between Benjamin’s feet, over the wire netting behind him and into the roses. With various degrees of irony, the four specta
tors cheered and applauded.
“Thank you, Ben!”
“Thank you, George.”
Sarah watched the two most important men in her life shake hands at the net then walk toward the gate, her father with a patronizing arm draped across his son-in-law’s sweaty shoulders.
“Life in the old dog yet, eh?”
“I’d say more than enough, George.”
“Poor Benjamin,” her mother sighed.
“So, Dad, what was the score?” Josh called, as if they didn’t all know.
“Listen, it’s called manners. You don’t beat the host, didn’t anyone tell you?”
“So how come you always lose to Grandpa at home too?” The men were off the court now and stood toweling themselves beside the slatted teak table in the arbor, while Sarah’s mother poured lemonade and answered Josh’s question.
“The reason, Josh, is that your father knows very well that there isn’t a man on God’s earth who likes to win more than your grandfather. It’s the cursed gene of the Davenports. Let’s hope you haven’t inherited it.”
“Don’t worry, Grandma,” Abbie said. “Dad’s loser genes will more than compensate.”
“Hey, please,” Benjamin said. “Everybody, feel free. Let’s just call it National Get Ben Day.”
He finished his lemonade and jogged off up to the house to shower and change. Sarah’s father, probably to indicate that he didn’t need to do either of those things, strolled with the rest of them back across the lawn, grilling Abbie about her newly announced intention of going to the University of Montana. Sarah was less supportive than Benjamin on the issue, but at this moment didn’t want to let Abbie down by siding with her father, who was predictably skeptical. Abbie was arguing her case well and Sarah decided to keep out of it and wandered ahead on her own. Josh was bringing up the rear with his grandmother, keeping her up to speed on how the Chicago Cubs were doing. On Friday he had received a letter from Katie Bradstock and had been all but euphoric ever since. He wouldn’t disclose what it said but whatever had gone wrong between them was now right.