Her husband opened his arms. He called, “Europa,” in a voice of comradely welcome.
“That makes you Zeus,” said Kath boldly. She wanted right then to have a man like this kiss her. A man she hardly knew, and cared nothing about. And he did kiss her, he waggled his cool tongue inside her mouth.
“Imagine a continent named after a cow,” he said. His wife stood close in front of them, breathing gratefully after the exertion of her swim. She was so close that Kath was afraid of being grazed by her long dark nipples or her mop of black pubic hair.
Somebody had got a fire going, and those who had been in the water were out now, wrapped up in blankets or towels, or crouched behind logs struggling into their clothes.
And there was music playing. The people who lived next door to Monica had a dock and a boathouse. A record player had been brought down, and people were starting to dance. On the dock and with more difficulty on the sand. Even along the top of a log somebody would do a dance step or two, before stumbling and falling or jumping off. Women who had got dressed again, or never got undressed, women who were feeling too restless to stay in one place-as Kath was-went walking along the edge of the water (nobody was swimming anymore, swimming was utterly past and forgotten) and they walked in a different way because of the music. Swaying rather self-consciously, jokingly, then more insolently, like beautiful women in a movie.
Miss Campo was still sitting in the same place, smiling.
The girl Kath and Sonje called Debbie Reynolds was sitting in the sand with her back against a log, crying. She smiled at Kath, she said, “Don’t think I’m sad.”
Her husband was a college football player who now ran a body-repair shop. When he came into the library to pick up his wife he always looked like a proper football player, faintly disgusted with the rest of the world. But now he knelt beside her and played with her hair.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s the way it always takes her. Isn’t it, honey?”
“Yes it is,” she said.
Kath found Sonje wandering around the fire circle, doling out marshmallows. Some people were able to fit them on sticks and toast them; others tossed them back and forth and lost them in the sand.
“Debbie Reynolds is crying,” Kath said. “But it’s all right. She’s happy.”
They began to laugh, and hugged each other, squashing the bag of marshmallows between them.
“Oh I will miss you,” Sonje said. “Oh, I will miss our friendship.”
“Yes. Yes,” Kath said. Each of them took a cold marshmallow and ate it, laughing and looking at each other, full of sweet and forlorn feeling.
“This do in remembrance of me,” Kath said. “You are my realest truest friend.”
“You are mine,” said Sonje. “Realest truest. Cottar says he wants to sleep with Amy tonight.”
“Don’t let him,” said Kath. “Don’t let him if it makes you feel awful.”
“Oh, it isn’t a question of let,” Sonje said valiantly. She called out, “Who wants some chili? Cottar’s dishing out the chili over there. Chili? Chili?”
Cottar had brought the kettle of chili down the steps and set it in the sand.
“Mind the kettle,” he kept saying in a fatherly voice. “Mind the kettle, it’s hot.”
He squatted to serve people, clad only in a towel that was flapping open. Amy was beside him, giving out bowls. Kath cupped her hands in front of Cottar. “Please Your Grace,” she said. “I am not worthy of a bowl.”
Cottar sprang up, letting go of the ladle, and placed his hands on her head.
“Bless you, my child, the last shall be first.” He kissed her bent neck.
“Ahh,” said Amy, as if she was getting or giving this kiss herself.
Kath raised her head and looked past Cottar.
“I’d love to wear that kind of lipstick,” she said.
Amy said, “Come along.” She set down the bowls and took Kath lightly by the waist and propelled her to the steps.
“Up here,” she said. “We’ll do the whole job on you.”
In the tiny bathroom behind Cottar and Sonje’s bedroom Amy spread out little jars and tubes and pencils. She had nowhere to spread them but on the toilet seat. Kath had to sit on the rim of the bathtub, her face almost brushing Amy’s stomach. Amy smoothed a liquid over her cheeks and rubbed a paste into her eyelids. Then she brushed on a powder. She brushed and glossed Kath’s eyebrows and put three separate coats of mascara on her lashes. She outlined and painted her lips and blotted them and painted them again. She held Kath’s face up in her hands and tilted it towards the light.
Someone knocked on the door and then shook it.
“Hang on,” Amy called out. Then, “What’s the matter with you, can’t you go and take a leak behind a log?”
She wouldn’t let Kath look in the mirror until it was all done.
“And don’t smile,” she said. “It spoils the effect.”
Kath let her mouth droop, stared sullenly at her reflection. Her lips were like fleshy petals, lily petals. Amy pulled her away. “I didn’t mean like that,” she said. “Better not look at yourself at all, don’t try to look any way, you’ll look fine.
“Hold on to your precious bladder, we’re getting out,” she shouted at the new person or maybe the same person pounding on the door. She scooped her supplies into their bag and shoved it under the bathtub. She said to Kath, “Come on, beautiful.”
On the dock Amy and Kath danced, laughing and challenging each other. Men tried to get in between them, but for a while they managed not to let this happen. Then they gave up, they were separated, making faces of dismay and flapping their arms like grounded birds as they found themselves blocked off, each of them pulled away into the orbit of a partner.
Kath danced with a man she did not remember seeing before during the whole evening. He seemed to be around Cottar’s age. He was tall, with a thickened, softened waistline, a mat of dull curly hair, and a spoiled, bruised look around the eyes.
“I may fall off,” Kath said. “I’m dizzy. I may fall overboard.”
He said, “I’ll catch you.”
“I’m dizzy but I’m not drunk,” she said.
He smiled, and she thought, That’s what drunk people always say.
“Really,” she said, and it was true because she had not finished even one bottle of beer, or touched the punch.
“Unless I got it through my skin,” she said. “Osmosis.”
He didn’t answer, but pulled her close then released her, holding her eyes.
The sex Kath had with Kent was eager and strenuous, but at the same time reticent. They had not seduced each other but more or less stumbled into intimacy, or what they believed to be intimacy, and stayed there. If there is only to be the one partner in your life nothing has to be made special-it already is so. They had looked at each other naked, but at those times they had not except by chance looked into each other’s eyes.
That was what Kath was doing now, all the time, with her unknown partner. They advanced and retreated and circled and dodged, putting on a show for each other, and looking into each other’s eyes. Their eyes declared that this show was nothing, nothing compared to the raw tussle they could manage when they chose.
Yet it was all a joke. As soon as they touched they let go again. Close up, they opened their mouths and teased their tongues across their lips and at once drew back, pretending languor.
Kath was wearing a short-sleeved brushed-wool sweater, convenient for nursing because it had a low V neck and was buttoned down the front.
The next time they came close her partner raised his arm as if to protect himself and moved the back of his hand, his bare wrist, and forearm across her stiff breasts under their electric wool. That made them stagger, they almost broke their dance. But continued-Kath weak and faltering.
She heard her name being called.
Mrs. Mayberry. Mrs. Mayberry.