"I don't see anything wrong with that," Junie said. "It's natural to want to live graciously." She had got that term out of _Better Homes and Gardens_, one of the magazines she and Bill subscribed to.
"Well, I told you I was a bum," Ragle grunted, and dropped the subject.
The ground had become hilly, and they had to climb. Here, the houses had larger lawns, terraces of flowers; fat imposing mansions, the homes of the well-to-do. The streets were irregular. Thick groves of trees appeared. And above them they could see the woods itself, beyond the final street, Olympus Drive.
"I wouldn't mind living up here," Junie said. Better, she thought, than those one-story tract houses with no foundations. That lose their roofs on the first windy day. That if you leave the hose running all night the water fills up the garage.
Among the clouds in the sky a rapidly moving glittery dot shot by and was gone. Moments later she and Ragle heard the faint, almost absurdly remote roar.
"A jet," she said.
Scowling upward, Ragle shaded his eyes and peered at the sky, not walking but standing in the middle of the sidewalk with his feet planted apart.
"You think it's perhaps a Russian jet?" she asked mischievously.
Ragle said, "I wish I knew what went on up there."
"You mean what God is doing?"
"No," he said. "Not God at all. I mean that stuff that floats by every now and then."
Junie said, "Vic was talking last night about groping around for the light cord in the bathroom; you remember?"
"Yes," he said, as they trudged on uphill once more.
"I got to thinking. That never happened to me."
"Good," Ragle said.
"Except I did remember one thing like that. One day I was out on the sidewalk, sweeping. I heard the phone ring inside the house. This was about a year ago. Anyhow, I had been expecting a real important call." It had been from a young man whom she had known in school, but she did not include that detail. "Well, I dropped the broom and I ran in. You know, we have two steps up to the porch?"
"Yes," he said, paying attention to her.
"I ran up. And I ran up three. I mean, I thought there was one more. No, I didn't _think_ there was in so many words. I didn't mentally say, I have to climb three steps...."
"You mean you stepped up three steps without thinking."
"Yes," she said.
"Did you fall?"
"No," she said. "It's not like when there's three and you think there's only two. That's when you fall on your face and break off a tooth. When there's two and you think there's three -- it's real weird. You try to step up once more. And your foot comes down -- bang! Not hard, just -- well, as if it tried to stick itself into something that isn't there." She became silent. Always, when she tried to explain anything theoretical, she got bogged down.
"Ummm," Ragle said.
"That's what Vic meant, isn't it?"
"Ummm," Ragle said again, and she let the subject drop. He did not seem in the mood to discuss it.
Beside him in the warm sunlight Junie Black stretched out with her arms at her sides, on her back, her eyes shut. She had brought a blanket along with her, a striped blue and white towel-like wrapper on which she lay. Her swimsuit, a blackwool two-piece affair, reminded him of days gone by, cars with rumble seats, football games, Glenn Miller's orchestra. The funny heavy old fabric and wooden portable radios that they had lugged to the beach... Coca-Cola bottles stuck in the sand, girls with long blond hair, lying stomach-down, leaning on their elbows like girls in "I was a ninety-eight pound scarecrow" ads.
He contemplated her until she opened her eyes. She had ditched her glasses, as she always did with him. "Hi," she said.
Ragle said, "You're a very attractive-looking woman, June."
"Thank you," she said, smiling up at him. And then she shut her eyes once more.
Attractive, he thought, albeit immature. Not dumb so much as sheer retarded. Dwelling back in high school days... Across the grass a bunch of small kids scampered, shrieking and pummeling one another. In the pool itself, youths splashed about, girls and boys wet and mixed together so that all of them appeared about the same. Except that when the girls crawled out onto the tile deck, they had on two-piece suits. And the boys had only trunks.
Off by the gravel road, an ice cream vendor roamed about pushing his white-enamel truck. The tiny bells rang, inviting the kids.
Bells again, Ragle thought. Maybe the clue was that I was going to wander up here with June Black -- _Junie_, as her corrupt taste persuades her to call herself.
Could I fall in love with a little trollopy, giggly ex-high school girl who's married to an eager-beaver type, and who still prefers a banana split with all the trimmings to a good wine or a good whiskey or even a good dark beer?
The great mind, he thought, bends when it nears this kind of fellow creature. Meeting and mating of opposites. Yin and yang. The old Doctor Faust sees the peasant girl sweeping off the front walk, and there go his books, his knowledge, his philosophies...
In the beginning, he reflected, was the word.
Or, in the beginning was the _deed_. If you were Faust.
Watch this, he said to himself. Bending over the apparently sleeping girl, he said, "'Im Anfang war die Tat.'"
"Go to hell," she murmured.
"Do you know what that means?"
"No."
"Do you care?"
Rousing herself, she opened her eyes and said, "You know the only language I ever took was two years of Spanish in high school. So don't rub it in." Crossly, she flopped over on her side, away from him.
"That was poetry," he said. "I was trying to make love to you."
Rolling back, she stared at him.
"Do you want me to?" he said.
"Let me think about it," she said. "No," she said, "it would never work out. Bill or Margo would catch on, and then there'd be a lot of grief, and maybe you'd get bounced out of your contest."
"All the world loves a lover," he said, and bending over her he took hold of her by the throat and kissed her on the mouth. Her mouth was dry, small, and it moved to escape him; he had to grab her neck with his hands.
"Help," she said faintly.
"I love you," he told her.
She stared at him wildly, her pupils hot and dark, as if she thought -- god knew what she thought. Probably nothing. It was as if he had clutched hold of a little thin-armed crazed animal. It had alert sense and fast reflexes -- under him it struggled, and its nails dug into his arms -- but it did not reason or plan or look ahead. If he let go of it, it would bound away a few yards, smooth its pelt, and then forget. Lose its fear, calm down. And not remember that anything had happened.
I'll bet, he thought, she's astonished every first of the month when the paper boy comes to collect. What paper? What paper boy? What two-fifty?
"You want to get us thrown out of the park?" she said, close to his ear. Her face, uncooperative and wrinkled, glowered directly beneath his.
A couple of people, walking by, had glanced back to grin. The mind of a virgin, he thought. There was something touching about her... the capacity to forget made her innocent all over again, each time. No matter how deeply she got involved with men, he conjectured, she probably remained psychically untouched. Still as she had been. Sweater and saddle-shoes. Even when she got to be thirty, thirty-five, forty. Her hair-style would alter through the years; she would use more make-up, probably diet. But otherwise, eternal.