K neon came into my room and woke me with kisses down my neck. The springs in the bed sighed.
“I thought you said we shouldn’t do this,” I said, not exactly stopping her.
“I’m all alone,” she cooed. “I need someone. I don’t care who it is.” Her voice was playful, but I couldn’t tell how much of it was true. I guess anything you say is true. Jokes don’t hide anything.
“Can’t decide whether that sounds really free or really sad,” I said.
“Sad,” she said, breathing in my ear, “so sad. She won’t talk to me. If she won’t talk to me, the good times don’t come gushing. I wanna go out on a date right now.”
“This side of the world is closed until further notice.”
She took my hand and pulled me up out of the bed. We walked through the shadowy house. On the couch, I could hear Feral snoring underneath the amputated heads of the animals mounted on the walls. The wood paneling caused every sound and inference to be amplified. I thought I heard a noise in June’s room, but I hoped it was just the wind. There was no wind though.
Outside, we walked barefoot across the wet grass and the slimy leaves. She tried to hold my hand, but I wasn’t gonna go that far with it. I took it for two steps and nonchalantly released it. K is too smart to not notice, but she didn’t say anything.
She wanted to go out on the rowboat. I didn’t put up a fight. The stars were out, and there was a heavy mist on the lake. It seemed otherworldly, something that would only happen once in a person’s lifetime. It didn’t matter what the circumstances were.
The air was warm. The water was cool. A mist rose out of the lake and made a shroud for us at lake level. It hovered there around us, but we could still see the stars, magnificent and bright. We pushed out from the pier and paddled into the mist, vanishing from anyone looking from the house.
The bright moon reflected off K’s cat-frame glasses, making it look like she had the moon in both of her eyes. She looked smarter, more dangerous, with the glasses on. I liked that.
At the center of Tull lake, I stopped rowing. We drifted. K sat, with hands gripping both edges of the boat. Her mouth was open, and she was looking up at the stars.
“Which one’s do you know?” she asked.
“Oh, Jesus. None. The Big Dipper … the Little Dipper. I dunno. Orion, I guess. I know that.” I pointed, “That’s his belt.”
She began to name all the constellations. She knew each and every one of them.
“You know the story of Orion?”
“No.”
“There’s many. Myths. My favorite is that Orion, the hunter, fell in love with seven sisters. They were called the Pleiades: the beautiful daughters of Atlas and Pleione. Orion could have had any one of them, but he wanted all of them. So Atlas took his daughters and put them up into the sky.”
“Sounds rational.”
“To protect them from the irrational Orion, the seven sisters were hidden in a cluster of stars inside the belly of a bull, Taurus. You see it there?”
K pointed up. I could see it clearly. I nodded.
“It’s the death of Orion. Those girls. That bull. Orion went up into the heavens after them, and now he fights in the sky with his bronze club every night — mauled by Taurus, who tries to put out Orion’s eyes with his horns.”
“That’s where we’re at, yes.”
We drifted in a slow circle.
“Did June talk to you? About us.”
K laughed coldly. “She mentioned something. I didn’t believe it.”
“What?”
“She said she loves you,” K said, unbuttoning her shirt and pulling it over her head.
“Loves me… No shit?”
I felt good hearing that. K kicked off her cutoff jean shorts. She was in her bra and panties again. It never felt far away for her to be in that state of undress. She undressed as quick as a superhero can put on their costume.
“I don’t care. Go ahead, love each other,” K said. “I’m fine with that.”
She ran her hand up my thigh and pulled at the button on my pants.
“I’m all brain and pussy, there’s no blood for my heart.”
She sat down in the base of the boat and started undoing my belt. I told her, “Come on, knock it off.”
She looked up at me, grinning darkly. The moon reflected off of her glasses.
“Ten thousand dollars says you won’t make me stop as soon as I put you in my mouth.”
“Do you have ten thousand dollars?”
“Of course I have it,” she said, “Do you have it, poor boy?”
“Poor boy. Hilarious.” I pushed her away from my belt. “Be cool, K. I’m not gonna fuck around anymore on June. That’s over.”
There was a horrible sound from across the lake: the engine of the speed boat as it came to life. It was the worst sound I’d ever heard in my entire life. K Neon looked like she was in a slasher film wilderness and just heard a chainsaw.
The speedboat started to move away from the dock. We could see it in the moonlight, like a predator that was coming straight for us. We were sitting ducks. My heart slipped from its meaty cage and smacked its way down into the pit of my stomach.
“GO! GO! GO!” K frantically beat against my chest with the hammers of her fists.
I started to row, and she continued to pummel me. I snapped at her, “Calm the fuck down!”
The canary yellow cigarette boat started to rip around in the moonlight, but we were obscured in the fog — unseen in the mist. The boat began to pick up speed around the outside edge of the lake, as if it was using the entire body of water as a small track. I thought about the cars drag racing at Raceway Park as I watched in terror the speedboat pass by us some hundred and fifty feet away at high speed. The engine dug in, rumbled. I heard a voice from the boat scream out in glee. It was a man’s voice, hollering at the moon above, having fun, oblivious to our presence.
The first waves from the wake of the boat smacked into the side of our rowboat. We rocked diabolically.
K Neon said, “We’re gonna die out here.”
I tried to row, but the waves were coming from every direction. The throttle of the boat dropped to max at that point. I could hear the exhaust screaming out. Water sprayed into the moonlight. It was certain death. The speedboat opened up. The waves rose. One more lap around, and the boat started to move away from the outside edge of the lake. It cut across the open water of the center.
Well, not quite “open,” because we were there — occupying the bull’s-eye like a solid red dot.
The boat headed straight towards us. It was going to crush us completely. At the last second, it veered slightly away. Our rowboat flipped. I went into the water and swam one way. K swam the other way. She was like a bullet tearing through the water, but she was going the wrong way across the lake — away from our house. I called her name and got a mouthful of water.
As the sound of the speedboat got louder again, I had to worry about myself. I had to think about how to keep my body from getting cut up in the blades of the propeller. I had to think about keeping my skull from getting smashed in by the bow. Horror. Absolute horror.
K Neon could take care of herself, couldn’t she? She was a natural swimmer. I’d seen her in action, like a little goddamned Scandinavian mermaid. I gulped down more of that murky water, kicked my feet, and doggie paddled like an idiot through the moonlit water, while the waves whacked into me.
All the while the engine of the speedboat got closer. I felt hot death breathing onto the back of my neck. I took a deep breath of air and swam down as far as I could into the water. To this day, whether it really happened or not, I swear I felt the rush of the boat and the spinning of the propeller pass over my head.
I stayed down there and swam as hard as I could beneath the surface. It felt like Jaws was on my heels. When I came back up, I treaded water in the middle of the lake. The speedboat died. Its throttle lessened. I continued to bob in the dark water, as the yellow monster slid through the waves, back towards its own dock, unaware of the melee it’d caused.