These thoughts endanger Cliff’s resolve to remain friends with her, and more dangerous yet is his contemplation of her physical presence. Frizzy blond hair framing a gamin’s face; braless breasts, her nipples on full display through the thin fabric of her t-shirt; she’s his type, all right. He understands that part of what’s at play here is base, that whenever he’s at a loss or anxious about something or just plain bored, he relies on women to sublimate the feeling.
Marley glances up, catching him staring. “Hey! You all right?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Why?”
“You were looking weird is all.” She closes the laptop. “You want anything?”
“No,” he says, a reflex answer, but thinks about the things he wants. They’re all momentary gratifications. Sex; surcease; to stop thinking about it. He suspects that the real curse of getting older is a certain wisdom, the tendency to reflect on your life and observe the haphazard path you’ve made, and then he decides that what he wants above all is to want something so badly that he stops second-guessing himself for a while. Just go after it and damn the consequences…though in reality, that’s only another form of surcease.
“What do you want?” he asks.
She tips her head to one side, as if to see him more clearly. “I don’t think I’m getting the whole picture here. Did something happen last night? You know, something more than what you told me? Because you’re not acting like yourself.”
“I’ll tell you later.” He shifts onto his side. “So what do you want? What would make you happy?”
She sets the laptop on the floor and comes over to the bed and makes a shooing gesture. “Scoot over. If this is going to be a deep conversation, I want to lie down.”
He’s slow to move, but she pushes onto the bed beside him and he’s forced to accommodate her. She plumps the pillow, squirms about, and, once she’s settled facing him, arms shielding her breasts, hands together by her cheek, she says, “I used to want to be a singer. I was in love with Tori Amos, and I was going to be like her. Different, but one of those chicks who plays piano and writes her own songs. But I didn’t want it badly enough, so I just bummed around with music, gigged with a few bands and like that. One of my boyfriends was a bartender. He taught me the trade, and I started working bar jobs. It was easy work, I met some nice guys, some not so nice. I was coasting, you know. Trying to figure it out. Now I think, I’m pretty sure, I want to be a vet. Not the kind who prescribes pills for sick cats and treats old ladies’ poodles for gout. I’d like to work out in the country. Over in DuBarry, maybe, or down south in Broward. Cattle country. That would make me content, I think. So I’m saving up for veterinary college.” She grins, fine squint lines deepening at the corners of her eyes. “Someday they’ll be saying stuff like, ‘Reckon we better call ol’ Doc Marley.’”
He’s shamed, because this is all new information; he’s known her for three years and never before asked about her life. He recalls her singing about the house and being struck by her strong, sweet voice, how she bent notes that started out flat into a strange countrified inflection. He doesn’t know what to say.
“You look perplexed,” she says. “You thought I was just an aging beach bunny, is that it?”
“That’s not it.”
“I suppose I am, technically, an aging beach bunny. But I’m making a graceful transition.”
A silence, during which he hears cars pass. The beach is extraordinarily quiet, all the spring breakers sleeping in, waiting out the rain. He remembers a morning like this when he was eleven, he and some friends rode their bikes down past the strip of motels between Silver Beach and Main, hoping to see girls gone wild, and seeing instead spent condoms floating in the swimming pools like dead marine creatures, a lone girl crying on the sidewalk, crushed beer cans, the beach littered with party trash and burst jellyfish and crusts of dirty foam, all the residue of joyful debauch. It never changes. The gray light lends the furnishings, the walls, a frail density and a pointillist aspect—it seems the room is turning into the ghost of itself, becoming a worn, faded engraving.
“Why do you always act scared around me, Cliffie?” Marley asks. “Even when we were together, you acted scared. I know the age thing bothers you, but that’s no reason to be scared.”
“It’s complicated,” he says.
“And you don’t want to talk about it, right? Guys really suck!”
“No, I’ll talk about it if you want.”
She looks at him expectantly, face partly concealed by dirty blond strings of hair.
“It’s partly the age thing,” he says. “I’m fifty-four and you’re twenty-nine.”
“Close,” she says. “Thirty.”
“All right. Thirty. Turning a year on the calendar doesn’t change the fact it’s a significant difference. But mostly it’s this…blankness I feel inside myself. It’s like I’m empty, and growing emptier. That’s what I’m scared of.”
“Well, I don’t pretend to know much,” Marley says. “I could be wrong, but sounds to me like you’re lonely.”
Could it be that simple? He’s tempted to accept her explanation, but he’s reluctant to accept what that may bring. Rain begins to fall more heavily, screening them away from the world with gray slanting lines.
“What do you see in me?” he asks. “I mean, what makes someone like you interested in a fifty-something used car salesman with a bad back. I don’t get it.”
“Wow. Once you start them up, some guys are worse than women. Out comes the rotten self-image and everything else.” She glances up to the ceiling, as if gathering information written there. “I’ll tell you, but don’t interrupt, okay?”
“Okay.”
“We’re friends. We’ve been friends for going on four years, and I like to think we’re good friends. I can count on you in an emergency, and you can count on me. True?”
He nods.
“You make my head quiet,” she says. “Not last night, not when I’m in party mode. But most of the time, that’s how I feel around you. You steady me. You treat me as an equal. With guys my age or close, I can tell what’s foremost on their mind, and it’s always a battle to win their respect. Like with Tucker. That may explain why I’ve got this thing for older men. They don’t just see tits and a pussy, they see all of me. I’m speaking generally, of course. I get lots of horny old goats hitting on me, but they’re desperate. You’re not desperate. You don’t have a need to get over on me.”
“That might change,” he says.
She puts a finger to his lips, shushing him. “Everything changes, everybody’s kinky for something. Some guy shows up at my door with a muskrat, a coil of rope, and three pounds of lard, that’s where I draw the line. But normal, everyday kinks…They’re cool.” She shrugs. “So it changes? So you’re fifty-four with a bad back? So I’m kinky for older men? So what? And in case you’re going to tell me you don’t want to be a father figure, don’t worry. When I’m around you, I’m always wet. Some times more than others, but it’s pretty much constant. I don’t think of you as my dad.” She blows air through her pursed lips, as if wearied by this unburdening. “Fucking is just something I do with guys, Cliff. It doesn’t require holy water and a papal dispensation. It’s not that huge a deal.”