Deep Blue I was in the big mall on the edge of town when I first saw the girl. I needed some dandruff shampoo and disposable razors, and while it would have been easier to go to the supermarket nearer the apartment, there's something about the atmosphere of a huge, three-level shopping mall that I can't seem to stay away from. Maybe I'm drawn to the diversity of the place: it isn't just one store, so I have to step out a little to find what I want; the stores have a certain similarity, too, all fake plastic wood and chrome. It's comforting that I know what to expect; it's sort of like a home away from home, and there's also a wider variety of people in a mall, and they're all there for different reasons. In a supermarket, people are wandering around with filling their carts with food. And most of them are in a hurry to leave so that their frozen French-cut green beans won't thaw out. So I like this mall. It's a huge chrome and brick building that reminds me vaguely of pictures I saw once of a major government installation where they make hydrogen bombs. The mall is in three levels, with catwalks over the center atrium that connect the two sides, and staircases and elevators and escalators spaced periodically along the way. A hundred and twenty stores, everything but a supermarket, though there's one of those at a far corner of the parking lot. It was a Friday afternoon in springtime, and the place was crowded with teenagers and their parents, though the two seemed polarized, with adults banding together as if their reasons for being in the mall were more serious, somehow more commercial than the reason the kids were there. As I worked my way through the maze of wide hallways to the big Superdrug, I wondered how many of the people were actually buying and how many were just looking. The kids were doing their kid thing mostly, cruising singles and groups rebounding off each other, all of them dressed as if this were the cultural event of a season. At the drugstore the clerk in the front was playing with a pricing gun, trying to get stickers on hundreds of packs of cigarettes piled in racks behind the counter, so her back was to me: I wanted to ask her where to find the shampoo, but she had to turn around and ring up a steam iron for an old woman, so I didn't bother her. The store is laid out in rows that run at an angle to the front, and I worked my way up and down the aisles, stopping to look at the coffee makers and grinders. The pharmacist in the back of the store behind his window was busy doing something while a young couple dressed in matching jogging suits were having a discussion in front of a display of condoms at the counter. The pharmacist was listening to them as they stood there; I could tell from the way his back and shoulders moved, and the way his head turned slightly back and forth as he tried to get his ear positioned to catch the nuances of their speech. Near the back of the store there's another exit and a checkout counter about twenty feet from the shelves with the health and personal hygeine products, only the doors were closed and a cardboard sign on one read "Check Out at Front." I was looking at the different dandruff preparations, trying to decide if there was really anything different in them, reading the lists of ingredients and trying to determine whether the popular brands had more of the active ingredients than the cheaper ones. Most of them seemed to have coal tar in some form. I found one that had a "Sale" sticker, and a small rack of discount flyers from the store down at the end of the row that advertised the brand two-for-one. I got two bottles of the large size and headed down to the razors and shaving cream. There was a girl just across an open area from me in the makeup section. She was kneeled down in front of a display of bath powders, holding a box up to her face and sniffing at it. I stood there watching her out of the corner of my eye and rummaging through the cellophane packs of disposable razors. She stood up and moved across to the big wall display of lipsticks. I got a package of razors and went around the end of the row of shelves to the other side where I could face toward the back wall and the liptsticks, and I watched her instead of looking at the bath soaps in front of me. She was dressed in black tights and a loose tunic top that came down just below her hips. The top was black with silver threads running through the material. It was some shiny stuff that looked like silk. She was medium height, maybe five-seven, and slender, with short blonde hair cut in a pageboy style. As I watched her she looked over her shoulder at me, then at the young couple at the pharmacy counter, where they had the pharmacist telling them something, and then she looked quickly back at me. I thought she smiled just a little before she opened the small bag hanging from her left shoulder and dropped something inside. I was certain that I'd seen the flash of a plastic blister pack as she released it. She looked at a couple of other colors on the chart and headed to the front checkout. She had to pass by me to get there, and I hesitated, then got a three-pack of deodorant soap and followed her. The young couple were ahead of me, and I stood and listened to the girl ask the clerk for a package of cigarettes; she handed a pack of gum across the counter to be rung up, and I watched her hand go into her bag and bring out a five, watched her get her change and leave. The two people in front of me paid for a magazine and a box of condoms. I paid for my things and smiled at the clerk while she watched me write a check for nine dollars and sixty-two cents. I left and retraced myself back towards where I'd entered the mall, through Jamieson's, one of the key stores with outside access, looking at the people. The cast of characters was the same, only different. At center court a clown was beginning an act for a group of children, shaping bright balloons into animal shapes. The kids were laughing and pointing while their parents stood around watching storefronts and each other. I slowed down for a minute and watched the clown, and just as I started to move again, there was a tug at the sleeve of my windbreaker. I turned halfway, a bit too fast, and she was there beside me, the girl from the drugstore. "Wow, you're jumpy. I'm the criminal," she said. "Sorry. I thought you were mugging me or something." "Well, I just wanted to stop and thank you for not busting me in the store. You could have." "I'm not into conflict," I said. "And I figure you'll get caught eventually anyway." She was about seventeen, maybe eighteen, with a light tan that didn't quite cover the freckles on the bridge of her nose. She just looked at me. "Well, I guess I'll worry about it when it happens. Anyway, thanks." "Don't mention it." "I'm Jennifer," she said, and held out her hand. Her nails were short and polished a bright red. I shifted the bag of stuff to my left hand and took hers. It was cool and dry, though somehow I had expected it to be damp and warm and nervous. "Bill Griner. Nice to meet you." I started to go, but she held my hand. "Hey, are you leaving?" "No. Yes. I was going to my car." She still had my hand, and she noticed it and let it go. "I was wondering if you could give me a ride. I hitched a ride here with a friend, but she took off an hour or so ago." The children were laughing in the background, but I didn't look to see why. "I don't live far," she said. "Yeah, I'll drive the getaway car." "That's funny. I live out in Westwood Hills." "Right on my way," I said. We walked out through Jamieson's, and the girl stopped a couple of times to look at things--costume jewelry and a sale table of sandals. At the car she said, "A ragtop. Cool." I let her in and she settled into the seat and started playing with the controls on the stereo. "So where do you live, exactly?" I asked her once we were out on Headrick Street, the main artery into the suburbs. "Parkwood Lane. It's only two blocks off Westwood. You take a left off Headrick and then the second left. It's the third house on the left." Her house was in one of the nicest subdivisions in town, where the houses are mostly new and run to a lot of nice brick and nouveau-Southern columns like something out of Gone With the Wind. Mostly people from the high-tech industries in the area and from the big university live there. The subdivision has a park with a lake and tame geese and ducks and a playground for kids. At her house I pulled up to the curb in front and she got out and leaned back in. "Maybe I'll see you around somewhere again, Griner," she said. "Yeah, I'll keep an eye out for you the next time I'm in the mall." I wanted to get away from her, as if I were guilty by association. "I spend a lot of time there. We can do some window shopping." "You really don't take it seriously, do you?" I asked. I mean, do you do this often?" "You sound like my father. No, I don't. I mean shoplifting. I just wanted to see if I could do it, you know?" "I understand, I guess." I didn't tell her, I'd done it. Every kid has at one time or another. "Well, I guess I'd better get inside," she said. She looked up at the sky, then back at the folded top of the car. "You'd better put that up. It's going to rain." "Thanks for pointing that out." I got out to put the top up just as a few drops of rain started to come down. A BMW drove past and turned into the driveway of the house. "My parents are back. I'll see you later," she said. "Never can tell," I said, and drove off as she was running up the walk to the front door. My apartment isn't far from Westwood, and when I got there the rain was light but steady. The weather was starting to cool off a little, and I had to drive with the defroster on. In the apartment I checked the answering machine; the only message was from one of the secretaries in the office where I work, a reminder of a meeting on Monday. I put the soap and razors and one of the bottles of shampoo in a cabinet in the bathroom and the other bottle on the rack in the shower. In the kitchen I poured some tea from the jug I always keep in the refrigerator and went into the living room and turned on the television. There was nothing on, and I didn't want to go rent a movie, so I found a novel I'd been trying to get to and leaned back in a chair. I'd been reading for maybe ten minutes when my ex-wife called. "Where's the check?" was all she said. "I sent it three weeks ago; you'll get another one in a week or so." When we'd gotten divorced, the judge must have felt sorry for Leigh and awarded her a hundred dollars a month in alimony. She'd had a hangover and looked like hell in the judge's office. "Well, I don't. I mean, I haven't." She was drinking again; her voice was pitched lower than usual and her pronunciation wasn't as sharp as usual. The drinking was probably the reason we'd broken up, or at least that's the reason I've been giving myself since it happened. She filed for the divorce, but I'd probably have done it if she hadn't. "Christ, it's only a hundred dollars," she said. "Leigh. I sent the check. You've forgotten again, that's all." "You bastard. You're trying to put this off on me again. You're going to say I'm drinking too much. You're going to say I'm blacking out and losing my mind. You're a prick, Griner, a real prick." She wasn't hysterical, but if she kept drinking, by Sunday night she'd be calling every half-hour with some sort of complaint. "I'm hanging up now, Leigh. I'll send you some photocopies of the cancelled check." I hung up, and she was saying something, but I was past the point of caring. She was broke and needed to buy booze. I went into the spare bedroom I use for an office and rummaged in the check file and found it. I'd written it exactly three weeks before. The statement had come in a couple of days earlier, but I hadn't yet taken the time to reconcile the account. I'd get to it in a day or two. Back in the living room I turned off the answering machine and turned off the phone ringer. If she was that drunk so early in the weekend, Sunday was going to be rough. I read for a couple of hours and stopped to cook dinner. There wasn't much in the cabinets other than canned soup, so I called the pizza/movie place and ordered a small pepperoni and one of the top ten video hits of the week. "What would you like to see, sir?" the girl had said on the phone. "Whatever's in top place." When I hung up the phone I went back to my chair and waited with the novel, the story of a disillusioned young man who goes on a Huckleberry Finn journey through the punk-rock culture of Los Angeles and San Francisco, only to find that he really just wants to go to college like his parents wanted. But he gets sidetracked when he finds love with a porno actress and has to make a decision whether to stay with her and share her with the actors she works with or give her up, along with his new-found independence. I thought it was sort of overbearing as a story, but I figured I'd finish it anyway. I'd been reading for about a half an hour when a young guy with magenta hair sticking out from under a blue baseball cap showed up at the door. I wrote him a check and added a fifty- cent tip. "Hey, thanks. I can go to college," he said. "Art imitates life after all," I said. The boy looked at me funny and said something I couldn't quite hear, but it sounded like "Fuck you." I closed the door and put the movie on and started on the pizza. The movie was one of those about a one-man army going after a drug cartel in Central America. Halfway through I stopped it and sat there eating pizza out of the box in my lap and holding the novel in one hand. When the pizza was gone, I sat and listened to the rain outside. At ten o'clock I thought about turning on the news, but didn't. Instead I just went to bed and turned on the radio alarm on the nightstand to the classics station. I fell asleep, and when I woke up it was light outside and the clock read a little after six. I'd been having a dream and lay there trying to remember it, but all I could come up with was something about going fishing with my grandfather. It's funny, because my grandfather died when I was fifteen, and I don't remember even being alone with him, much less ever going fishing with him. In fact, I doubt that he ever went fishing in his life. * * * * * I was sitting by the pool later in the day, reading a newspaper and watching a teenage boy and girl from the apartment complex swimming laps under a clear sky. I was noticing that whenever they got out and the water calmed that I could see the reflection of a single white cloud in the water, but mostly I just watched the kids swim. The girl was fourteen or fifteen and wearing a bathing cap and a t-back racing suit, while the boy was a year or two older, muscular and wearing a tight Spandex suit that rode low on his waist and high on his hips. Their swimsuits were both a bright red; the color contrasted starkly to the blue of the water and the bright white of the cement walk beside the pool. Their strokes were precise, and they paced themselves side-by-side, their movements as fluid as the water and as well timed as if this were a ballet which they had rehearsed often. I tried to concentrate on the paper, but I was fascinated by them, the way their tanned bodies moved together and how they made their turns at the ends of the pool like trained dolphins. They looked enough alike to be brother and sister, but when they stopped to climb out of the water, the boy took a towel from one of the chaise lounges and began drying the girl's back, then he kissed her on the neck. The girl took off her cap, and her blonde hair fell down over his face, and he stayed there kissing her; the towel fell, and the boy's hand searched out her breast. I folded the paper and got up and went back to the apartment. I was wondering how the girl could all that hair under the tight bathing cap. Inside I took off my shirt and trousers and went to the bedroom and fell asleep. When I woke up it was full dark. * * * * * On Sunday I spent the morning with the paper and coffee, then went to lunch at a delicatessan in the shopping mall. Walking through the nearly empty building, I tried to notice if the place had changed in one weekend, but the only difference was the lack of people. At the deli the after-church crowd were just beginning to trickle in, still dressed in their Sunday clothes, the children uncomfortable in suits and starchy dresses, and the teenagers seeming out of place and disoriented. I ate at a booth in the back, had a turkey bagel and iced tea, with a small plastic bowl of cole slaw on the side. A man carrying a Bible stopped me at the checkout stand. I was waiting in line behind a stout woman in a designer dress and mink stole; her credit card wouldn't actuate the automatic authorization machine. "I'll have to call it in," said the young girl behind the counter, and she picked up a phone from beneath the counter and started dialing. "I'll be with you in a minute," she said to me. "This is embarassing," said the woman. "I almost never carry cash." "Happens all the time," said the girl, who reached down and rapped the cutoff on the phone twice before she started redialing. "I'm Harlan Stovers," the man said to me. He offered his free right hand. I tried to act offended by the intrusion, but the attempt failed, even though I think I managed a decent hesitation before shaking hands. "Bill Griner," I said. "Do I know you?" "Seems we've met somewhere, but I don't know for sure." Stovers looked like a linebacker I'd gone to college with, an average student who had graduated and gone on to four or five mediocre years with a professional team before being permanently sidelined by a shoulder injury. I was trying to remember the football player's name, but Stovers was still talking. "Our church, Liberty Baptist, you know it?" "I think I've driven by once or twice," I said. Stovers still had me by the hand, and I pulled away gently. "Yeah, nice new building down on Northside Drive. Just paid out nearly a million for the new education building--" "I'm sorry," I said, "but you were saying something about the church?" "Yes, I get carried away about that new sanctuary. Anyway, we've got this program, 'The Adult Samaritans,' and we've each of us dedicated ourselves to inviting ten strangers to services." "I'm sorry, I'm a Unitarian," I told him. The girl at the register had given up on the phone and was writing on the woman's credit card receipt. "One of those off-breeds, huh?" said Stovers. "Well, we got us a fine church fellowship over at Liberty, and we'd like you to come by some Sunday." He reached into his coat pocket and brought out an envelope and handed it to me. "That's really nice, but I always work on Sundays." I reached into my trouser pocket for my billfold. "I'm just off for lunch now, you see." "Shame to have to work on the Lord's day." Stovers had the envelope held out like an offering plate. "You take this and come see us just any old time." A woman came up and stood beside Stovers. "See, this is my wife, Janie. Janie, this is Mr. Gemmer. Mr. Gemmer, Janie." Janie smiled, but she seemed as uncomfortable as I was. "I'm very nice to meet both of you, but I've really got to be going." I put a ten-dollar bill on the counter and the girl took it and looked at me. "I need your check, sir," she said. I reached into my coat pocket and felt for the check, then saw it on the carpeted floor at Stovers' feet. Stovers reached down and retrieved it and handed it to me, and I put it in the girl's outstretched hand. "Thank you, sir," she said, and began punching buttons on the register. Stovers reached out and took my hand and placed the envelope in the palm and pressed the fingers closed, crumpling the paper. "You need to come see us," Stovers said. The girl was holding out my change, and when she counted it back I shoved it into my trouser pocket without looking. I handed the envelope back to Stovers, who stared at the envelope as if it were somehow dirty. "I don't think so," I said, and turned to walk away. "But we need to fill the new sanctuary," I heard behind me. At the apartment I checked the answering machine, but found that it was still turned off from the day before. I poured a glass of tea and went into the living room, took off my shoes and stretched out on the couch. I heard the answering machine click on, and my own voice amplified: "This is Bill Griner. I'm not in right now, but please leave a message after the beep, and I'll get back to you." The tape started spinning, then a beep, then Leigh's voice. "You shitheel, Griner. Please send my fucking check. I know you're there. Why are you treating me this way?" The machine clicked once more and then the tape was spinning again, and I made a mental note to get an unlisted number. I didn't remember that this one was already unlisted, or that as soon as Leigh wanted to get in touch with me she'd call my mother, who always wished that we'd get back together. "Young people have to work out their problems," Mom had said every time I'd talked to her during the divorce. I fell asleep with the tea glass in my hand resting on my chest. When the doorbell rang, I jumped, and the water left in the glass spilled over onto my shirt where it was tucked into the waistband of my trousers. "Shit." I stood and pulled the shirt out over my waistband. "I'll be right there," I said to the door. The bell rang again as I went into the kitchen for a paper towel, and I opened the door still wiping at the wet spot. "Looks like I caught you at a bad time. I can come back." The girl was dressed in denim shorts with little cuffs tacked up with chrome studs shaped like stars, and she wore a tube top of a stretchy fabric dyed to look like denim, with a man's white shirt over it tied loosely at her navel. She carried an oversized denim bag on a shoulder strap. "The girl from the mall," I said, trying to remember her name. Her hair was mostly concealed under a red bandana handkerchief that tied at the back of her neck. She had on oversized mirrored sunglasses that reflected me back on myself as silvery twins. "Jennifer," she said. "Can I come in? It's hot as hell out here." "Sure," I said, and stepped out of the way to let her in. "I was on the couch when the bell rang." "Did I wake you?" "I spilled my water." "I see." She stood in front of the door, looking around the room. "Nice place you have here." She reached up and pulled the sunglasses off and hung them by an earpiece from her tube top. The earpiece made the material press out from the front as if she were wearing some secret piece of jewelry between her breasts. "Mind if I sit down?" she said. "Sure, help yourself. Let me go change my shirt; I'll be right back." She sat in the recliner and pulled the handle to raise the footrest. "Comfortable," she said. In the bedroom I pulled off the damp shirt and threw it onto the bed. In a drawer I found a t-shirt my wife had bought, one with a gray cartoon hippo inside a red circle with a slash across it, like a "No Smoking" sign. I went into the bathroom adjoining the bedroom and dampened a comb and ran it through my hair. I paused for a moment to look at the crown of my head for signs of balding. My mother had told me that baldness runs in the family, though my memories of my father are of a man with a full, thick head of reddish brown hair. I wondered sometimes if he was Irish. When I got back to the living room, the girl was down on her knees going through the cassette tapes in their plastic storage cases arranged on the bottom of the wooden stereo rack. "You've got some old stuff here," she said when she saw me looking. "Good stuff, though," I said. "Want to hear something in particular?" "No, just seeing what you have." She stood up and walked back to the lounger. "I thought I'd drop by and see how you live," she said. She sat back in the chair and returned it to the reclined position. I sat on the sofa and leaned into the corner of the armrest, facing her. "How did you know where I lived?" "I looked you up in the phone book and you're unlisted. But you're in the business directory, so I called your office. There was somebody there who told me." "They gave you my address?" The girl's legs were tanned and muscular, but the tan wasn't the dark tan I've come to expect from so many young women; hers was more of a patina, just a light browning of the skin that prevented her skin from looking too pale. "They're not supposed to give out home addresses," I said. I began to wonder who could have been working at the office on a Saturday. "I'm very convincing. I told them you left a credit card in the restaurant where I work and that the only time I could return it was after I got off." She giggled; the freckles on her nose seemed to move individually instead of with the rest of her face. "Ingenious," I told her. "So to what do I owe this visit?" She smiled. "You know how the Chinese say when you save someone's life you have to take responsibility for them forever?" She pulled the sunglasses from the tube top and put them on, then let them slide down her nose until she was looking over the top of the frame. "Here I am," she said. I looked away from her, toward the kitchen, then back at her. "I'm too young to be your father, and too old to be your boyfriend. So what gives?" "I've been sitting around the house all week. I wanted to get out." She stretched her arms out and touched her knees and yawned. "Got anything to drink?" I stood up. "You can have a beer if you're legal. Otherwise it's Pepsi or iced tea. Are you?" "Soon, but Pepsi's good." I got a glass and ice and poured, then let the foam settle, then poured until the glass was full. I set the glass on a folded paper towel and took the drink in to her. "Thanks," she said. "It's not good for the complexion, but it's cold." "So you've gone to the trouble of finding me. What about you?" "Like life history, stuff like that?" "That's a start. I mean, you're here." "I'm Jennifer Weathers, and my father's a real estate tycoon. I live at 281 Parkwood Lane, but you knew that already. My mother joins clubs and we don't have a pool. What else?" "What do you do, other than hang out in shopping centers?" "I was in school, but I don't think I'm going back in the fall. Maybe I'll go someplace else." "You go to the university?" I had finally gotten fully awake, and I had this fleeting thought that I might ask this girl to go to dinner with me. I thought that she might enjoy an Italian place I'd been meaning to try; it's in a renovated warehouse in the oldest section of downtown. I'd helped them design their menus and the agency had given them a break on their advertising to help them get established and to try to keep them as customers. The owner had told all of the employees of the agency that they were welcome to ten percent discounts as long as he stayed in business. I'd been wanting to try the place, but I didn't for fear it would look like taking advantage. "No, Westwood High School. I got a little ahead taking summer courses, and I can graduate in December if I go back." "Why don't you, if it's only one semester?" "Graduating in winter? No way. I'd only have three weeks before I had to start college. This way I've got three months before September." The girl finished her drink and set the glass down on the carpeted floor, the paper towel underneath it. "So. Would you like another?" I said, and pointed to the glass. "No." She leaned forward and used the lever to raise the chair upright. "Look, if I'm bothering you I can go. But you seemed like a pretty good sort of guy, and I was just so bored this week, and--" "Don't worry about it. I've been needing some company. It was a rough week all around." I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. "Can I give you the guided tour? It isn't much." "No thanks. I had a friend who used to live here. All the two-bedrooms are alike." She stood up and stepped over to me. "You're too pale. Let's go out to your pool." "I've been out there today already. It's not my favorite place." "Come on. It's nice out there. You can watch me swim." "You brought a suit?" She held up her bag. "Always prepared. Where can I change?" "Bathroom down the hall," I said. * * * * * I waited at the pool for her. I'd poured myself a plastic cup of beer from one of the bottles in the refrigerator and brought a small cooler outside with three more bottles. The pool was empty of swimmers, and the water was clear and blue. I adjusted my sunglasses and leaned back on the chaise and looked up at the sky. The polarizing lenses made the blue water seem deeper, and I imagined for an instant that I could see the oval shape of the pool reflected in the sky. "Mind if I join you?" I heard, and my vision was obscured by the silhouette of the girl standing over me. "Pull up a chair." I closed my eyes and heard the scraping of metal against concrete. I sat up and pulled the sunglasses onto the top of my head. The girl was bent over laying one of my bath towels on the chair at my left; my eyes were at the level of her hips. Her bikini was white, and the bottom small, so that her hips swelled out under the thin strings that held it on. I leaned back and she turned and sat, then stretched out next to me. "The sun feels good," she said. I turned to look at her. The top of her swimsuit was tight over small breasts, and I could see the ghost of whiter skin above the cloth. "Yeah. I come out here and watch people swim sometimes." "Don't you swim?" "No. I learned when I was a kid, but I was never any good at it." "I took lessons at the Y when I was six. You know, the summer camp thing?" She pulled her sunglasses down from where they were propped up on her forehead and closed her eyes. "You got another beer, there, Griner?" "You're not legal, remember?" "You worried about corrupting me?" She sat up and swung her legs off the chair and took off her sunglasses and hung them from the top of her bikini. Then she smiled at me. I got a bottle from the cooler and twisted off the top for her. When I gave her the bottle she took it and pressed it to her cheek. When she pulled it away to take a small sip, the bottle had left a film of moisture on her skin. She lowered the bottle and held it in her lap. She licked her lips. "That's good. German?" "Dutch. I get a discount from the distributor." "I like that dark German beer that my father gets. It tastes strong, like coffee, almost." "Sometimes I get English ale, but I don't drink much. I end up giving it away most of the time." She laughed and sat back, then leaned forward and pulled the back of the lounge upright and took another sip. "My father's the beer drinker--he lives on the stuff. It's a wonder he doesn't weigh five hundred pounds." "My ex-wife drinks, but she's skinny as a rail. I don't think she eats." "She's got a problem?" "You might say that. I keep my phone turned off most of the time to get her off my back." "I tried to call you and got the machine. I thought you never came home." "You should have left a message." "I hate those things," she said. "I never know what to say, like I should rehearse or something." The girl and boy from earlier came outside and stretched out on chairs across the pool from us. The girl's hair was tied up in back, and she'd changed into a black bikini. They pulled their chairs close together and lay back with their eyes closed, and the girl's hand reached across to him and rested on his thigh. "How old do you think she is?" Jennifer asked. "Fifteen, maybe." "She's pretty." "I noticed." "He's kind of cute, too." "I hadn't noticed that," I said. "That's understandable." I'd changed into cutoffs and still had on my "No Hippos" t- shirt. Jennifer reached over and touched the thin white scar on my left thigh; her finger traced it through the thin hair on my upper leg to where the scar disappeared under the ragged cloth of my shorts. "What happened there?" she asked. "Bicycle accident when I was a kid. I landed on some garbage on the curb and a piece of a tin can cut me." "I've got a scar. Appendicitis, see?" Her finger touched and traced the slight indentation above her bikini. The scar was tanned and straight, and I wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't shown me. I also saw the fine hairs below her navel. I was imagining that if the wind were blowing, I could see them swaying like golden summer wheat in a field. "I had to get nearly twenty stitches," I said. "The doctor said it looked like a scalpel did it," I told her. Jennifer finished her beer and set it down on the concrete, then reached over and touched my thigh again. "I don't want to get too much sun. Let's go inside, okay?" She stood and pulled the towel across her shoulders like a shawl, then leaned down and picked up the empty bottle. "So what do you want to do?" I asked. "Listen to music, watch t.v. It's only six." "Nice watch." I reached down and touched the small jewelled watch on her left wrist. "A present from Daddy. He likes to buy me things." "You sound like you resent it." We were at the door and I opened it for her. She entered and I locked the door behind us. "He's only had a good business since I was eight or so. Ever since then he's tried to smother me." She pulled off the towel and folded it over one shoulder. "I really love him." "Have a seat and I'll find some music. Any requests?" "Whatever you like, I'm not picky." I went to the cabinet and took out a cassette of Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony" and put it into the player, then adjusted the volume when the first movement began. When I turned around, Jennifer was still standing by the recliner. "Have a seat, Griner." She motioned to the chair, and I walked past her and sat down. "My mother likes Beethoven," she said, and dropped the towel to the floor. She started to move around the room to the music, and when she turned away from me and turned off the lights, she seemed to glow from the sunlight coming through the off-white curtains over my picture window. I couldn't move; I sat there, tense, unable to take my eyes off the girl, but when she turned her back to me and reached back to untie her top, I rose halfway in the chair, but she turned holding the top over her breasts with her arm and brought the forefinger of her other hand to her lips and said, "Shhhh." She dropped her arm and the white fabric fell to the floor beside the brown towel on the blue carpeting; she stepped closer and untied one side of the bottom of the suit, and then the other, and the bottom fell. It looked like a white moth against a clear sky. She came over to me and knelt next to the chair and pushed down on the lever that makes the chair recline, and then my feet were up, and she stood and leaned over them and began working on the zipper of my cutoffs. I leaned forward when they were off and pulled her to me. She was on top of me then, and all I wanted to do was kiss her over her heart. "Let's go to the bedroom, Griner," she said. * * * * * "I guess I'd better go, Griner." The clock radio in the bedroom was tuned to a classics station, and the red numerals read 10:15. "I need to get home and get some sleep so I can go with Mom to the university in the morning." "Does she work there?" She lay on top of me with her head under my chin. "No. I'm going to register for the fall, and she's going with me. We'll do lunch and she'll want to go shopping for new school clothes." "You're good at shopping, but does she need to go with you to register?" I considered getting up, but I didn't want her to think I wanted her to leave. "I'm not legal, remember? Some kind of papers she has to sign about why I'm not finishing high school." I stroked her neck behind the ear, and she moved against me. "So how old are you, anyway?" "What do you think?" she said, and I imagined her grinning in the dark. "I'll be seventeen in September." "Now I've done it all," I said. "So I suppose now you'll scream rape and get pregnant." She sat up and straddled my stomach, and I looked up at her in the darkness. "Don't be silly. I'm not a kid." "Why did you do this? I just want to know," I said. "I liked you the other day. Isn't that a good enough reason? You were nice to me, and I don't meet many guys my age who know how to be nice." "That's it, then, I was nice." I wondered what kind of dream I was having, that I'd awaken alone in the darkness. "Griner, you aren't the only person in the world who gets lonely." "You have friends. Your parents." "Maybe I don't understand it either, but I just wanted to be with you, all right?" "Do you want to come back? I mean, is this a one-time thing, or do you want to be here again?" "Do you want me to? Do you, Griner?" I touched her face, then ran my hands down to her shoulders and down her arms to where her hands rested on the bed. "Yes. I don't want you to leave, not now, at least. But if I think about it too long I'll start rationalizing about how wrong this is." "What's wrong? If you were sixteen or seventeen people might raise hell, but they'd understand." "So you worked this all out in advance?" "Yes. Do you hate me for it?" "No. In fact, I'm flattered, but worried." "Don't worry. Don't ever worry." She got out of the bed and left the room. I followed her and watched her in the darkness of the living room as she got dressed. "I'll call you tomorrow night, okay?" she said at the door, and reached up to kiss me. She left, and I sat naked in the living room for a long time, until the curtains lightened with morning. I went back to the bedroom and lay down and thought about how empty the room felt without her.