I felt her shudder. Her body sparkled with beads of sweat. "God!
Kiss me. Kiss me easy."
It was very soft and warm. For a moment I felt the strangeness clear a
tiny space for us, like stepping into a dense fog and watching it swirl
away around your feet. I felt her cool breasts brush my chest,
laughter.
smelled the rich natural perfume of her damp hair. She was Casey,
just Casey. Slightly nuts but that was all.
I still lay inside her.
Like the dead, it would take only a little imagination to get me to
rise again.
I broke the kiss and gently lifted her away.
"No more?"
"I think we've educated old Liz Cotton."
I stood up and pulled on my clothes. She sat still a moment fingering
a blade of grass, the picture of healthy life amid all those twisted
shapes of tombstones. Suddenly I heard the crickets and the frogs
again. They'd been there all along, but I was elsewhere.
She got dressed. The last thing she put on was her pullover blouse.
She tugged it on over her head and then thought of something. While it
was still around her neck she kissed the palm of her hand and pressed
it to the headstone of Elizabeth Cotton.
We walked back through the cemetery to the church. Neither of us
spoke. I glanced at the padlock on the door and shook my head.
"You know why I was so mad before? Back at your house. You know why I
hit you?"
"The windows. The broken windows. I don't blame you."
"No. Just partly that."
"What else?"
I pointed to the padlock.
"Look at that. It's ridiculous. A Yale lock wouldn't keep out a
determined ten-year-old."
"So?"
"So I know. Remember I told you there was one other brush with the
law?"
"Yes?"
The blue eyes glittered at me.
"Breaking and entering. I was fourteen years old. It was no big
thing. A lot of scare tactics at the police station, that was all. And
bad times with my mom and dad for a while."
"A lock like this?"
"God, no! You wouldn't want a lock lit than ashed. That's what I
mean. No, this was a house over on Maple. Properly closed for the
winter. I went through a window on the ground floor. Wandered around
awhile. Somebody saw my flashlight through the living-room window."
"But why? What were you doing? Stealing?"
"Good thing I wasn't, or I wouldn't have gotten off with just a
warning. No matter how many cops my dad knew. No, that was the weird
part. I didn't go there to steal.
"When they got there- the cops, I mean- I'd just been sitting in the
living room, in this big old easy chair, wondering what the people were
like. And smoking a cigarette. I'd almost forgotten that. I guess I
did steal something. The cigarette. From a tired old pack on the
kitchen table."
We walked to the car and I thought about it. I hadn't thought about it
for years And I'm not sure I'd ever asked myself exactly what the
point had been.
"I don't know why. It was exciting. I liked it. Hiked invading their
privacy. I looked through all the drawers upstairs, but they were
mostly empty. There were some clothes in the closet. I looked through
them. I didn't know the people at all, but being in the house gave me
the feeling that I did. I liked that. That's why I was sitting in
that chair. Just thinking about them. I could almost hear their
voices.
"I have this fantasy. I'm in the city, Portland maybe. Whatever. And
I see this girl on the street. She's very attractive, so I follow her.
I follow her for days, get to know everything she does and everywhere
she goes. But she never sees me. I get to know her completely without
her ever knowing me. And then when I think I've got her completely
down cold, I go away and never come back. Like leaving a lover. She
never even knows I was there."
v oy g u r I s m.
"Sure. I get to be with her, know her, even care about her a little,
but I never have to do anything . I'm completely .. . aloof. At the
same time I'm completely committed to her, obsessive even. It's all I
do for days. You see?"
"I think so"
fora while, k get it out of my mind. The whole experience was so
clear to me, as though it had only happened days ago. And it was
strange, because I could remember want/ngto get caught in there. That
was why the flashlight was on. I'd had it trained right on the window,
for no good reason at all except that I must have known somebody would
see it and wonder. I'd wanted somebody to know. I think I was even
aware of it at the time, without understanding why I'd want to risk
that, why I felt that way.
I thought I knew now what the fantasy was about. It was a kind of
declaration to myself as to where things stood with me. The reserve.
The need for emotional safety. Yet as early as six years ago, I'd
broken into a stranger's house and thrown a flashlight beam on the
living room window. Even that far back I must have known what my
little reserve was worth.
We were quiet going back to Dead River. I didn't take her home. Even
at four in the morning it would be quite a scene there. A rock through
a neighbor's window would be nearly impossible to forgive. And Casey
wouldn't want forgiveness anyway.
We went to my apartment instead.
We climbed the stairs yawning. And Casey turned back to me and
murmured, "Sounds like fun."
"What does?"
I knew what she meant. It made me cold inside. But I went through the
motions anyway.
"Breaking and entering."
I said nothing. I opened the door for her. She stepped inside and
faced me. The smile was sleepy but the eyes were filled with broken
light. I didn't even bother to argue the point. I knew where it would
lead us. It was where we'd been going, anyway, all along.
"I want to do it."
The tendrils of fog had followed us from the graveyard. They slid
around my throat again like soft wet claws, caressing me, turning my
spit to acid.
"And I know just the place for it too. The perfect place."
"You do?"
She looked at me. For the first time, her smile mocked me a little.
"Don't you?"
"Look, it has to be the Crouch place."
"Why?"
"Because it does."
The hamburgers at Harmon's were lousy. The refrigerated, prepackaged
kind you stick in a microwave. But we ate them. Casey looked terrific
in a tiny blue halter and cream-colored shorts. The makeup was subtle
and carefully done. To me it was obvious there was seduction going
on.
"Because the Crouch place is isolated, dummy. I have no intention of
getting caught like our cat burglar over here." She nodded at me and
Kim smiled.
"Nobody's going to come by. Nobody's going to see us go in or come out
again, and nobody's going to pay any unexpected calls. It's
perfect."
"She's right," said Steve. "It's the safest place around. But I
dunno, Case. Where's the big thrill?"