Annie nodded, her mouth breaking into a slow grin. “Sure. You just put your lips together, and flow—”
And drawing Helen close, she kissed her again.
When they got to Herring Cove Beach the party was in high gear, the rickety old boathouse shaking dangerously as music throbbed inside and the party spilled out onto the sand, hundreds of bodies thrashing and moving ecstatically.
“Now I know why the bar was empty,” Annie shouted.
“It’s been going on since this morning,” Martha yelled back. “I’m surprised they haven’t gotten busted.”
“They will if they stay out on the beach like that.” Annie handed the boy at the door a ten-dollar bill. He glanced at her and did a double take.
“Yo, Annie Harmony! Great time inside—”
He stamped her palm with a little smiling Goofy face in purple ink.
“What, no change?” Annie looked down at the zippered cash bag that sat in the lap of the huge bodybuilder helping guard the door. “Ten dollars so I can get sand in my drink?”
“Ten bucks, ten bucks,” he yelled, his head nodding up and down. “Chem free, smart drinks at the other door, no drinking inside—”
“Oh, yeah, right—”
“Enough, Annie!” Martha and Helen pulled her through the door.
She felt like she was inside a fireworks display, all explosive sound and color and motion. The boathouse was the only structure on this stretch of the protected seashore, a place curiously ignored by the local constabulary, most of the time. You could drink or cruise or engage in just about any carnal pastime you wanted there. Its piers had been bored by sea worms and salt, the roof was missing most of its shingles, the whole thing flooded whenever it stormed. There were ragged holes in walls and ceiling. Annie’s sneaker got stuck in the gap between two floorboards. When she bent to yank it out, she could see through the hole to where black water lapped at the rocks and pilings below. She straightened and found herself alone on a patch of empty floor. The DJ had shoved a new song into the sound system, and everyone seemed to have rushed to the far wall. She could just make out Helen and Martha dancing a few yards away. Of Virgie and Lyla she saw nothing; they had stalked off as soon as they got here, whispering and casting baleful stares in Annie’s direction.
Forget them, she thought. It was easy enough. The music was so loud it drove any-thing like a coherent thought from her brain, so fast it was like the steady rumble of an aircraft taking off, a mad stuttering sound that sent her blood hammering so hard her vision blurred. Everywhere she looked she saw people dancing, such a mass of indistinguishable bodies that it was like watching footage of bizarre underwater creatures, all waving tentacles and gasping mouths and teeth. Nearly all the boys and men were shirtless, a number of them completely naked except for plastic water bottles taped to a thigh or forearm. A lot of the women were naked too, their breasts flashing white in the steamy air. And of course she saw people humping, too. Not just in pairs, but in threes and fours and fives and serpentine lines too long to count, although there was something oddly sexless about their motion: it was like they were just another part of the machine, tins vast human engine thundering through the old boathouse like a juggernaut.
It was too much to hope that she’d be able to hold out against it. Within minutes she was moving too, and if she’d worried about being recognized she soon forgot—hers was just another shining face, another pair of arms and legs flickering in the blinding strobe lights. She let the river of light flow across her closed eyelids, a spectral wash of purple and black. When she opened her eyes a moment later she saw a strange tableau against the far wall, frozen in the brilliant glare of the strobes.
It was Virgie and Lyla and several other women and young men. They stood together, not moving, not even engaging in the incessant nervous gestures of drinking and mopping sweat that, as far as Annie could see, was the closest anyone here came to actually standing still.
This crowd was standing still. They were utterly motionless, and they were staring at Annie. In the center of the little group was one figure that really stood out—quite literally, since he or she was head and shoulders taller than the rest. Annie slowed her dancing to a sort of halfhearted swaying, staring boldly at the others, daring them to keep looking at her.
They did. Virgie and Lyla stood by the figure in the middle, their faces stern and watchful. The others formed a half circle around them. Most of the women were young, their bodies taut and muscular as Lyla’s; though one was much older, with greying hair pulled into a coil on the nape of her neck. Boys and girls alike, they all had tattoos. Like a brand, grinning crescents on cheeks and shoulders and swelling biceps.
Hah! real Moonies, thought Annie. She tried to keep her gaze fearless and disdainful, tried to keep moving. But those watchful eyes made her shudder. Like the multiple eyes of some patient spider, the way they just kept staring, like they had all the time in the world to wait for her to tire and weaken. And the frenzied crowd roiling about her only made it worse—she could scream and thrash all she wanted out here, and they’d only think she was having a good time. And for sure nobody was going to call the cops.
She glanced around uneasily, looking for Helen. Probably went out onto the beach to cool off. Annie turned back to her motionless sentries.
They hadn’t stirred. They were still in their silent half circle, staring. It was the one in the center that made Annie’s blood freeze. Tall, almost seven feet tall, with broad naked shoulders rippling with muscle. Yet it had breasts, too, small swelling breasts each tipped with a dark nipple. It had a narrow waist and hips, shadowed so that Annie couldn’t tell what it wore, or even if it was a girl or a guy. It had no body hair at all that she could see; nothing except for a pair of breasts more suited to a thirteen-year-old girl, and beautiful long auburn hair. A wingless watchful angel struck down from its pediment. A fallen seraphim.
A black angel.
Annie swallowed. So what the fucking hell is she—or he, or it—doing here, and why is it watching me?
As if in answer to her thoughts, the tall figure looked away. Lyla and the others turned as well, as though they were all bound to it by invisible cords. Before they could look back and see her, Annie darted to where a bank of speakers rose above the dance floor.
“Whoa, Nellie.” She caught her breath and leaned backward, until she was hidden between the speakers. From there she could watch them without being seen; from here they looked like just another group of partygoers.
So maybe that’s all it is, she thought, a little desperately. Just some of Angie’s girls from Brown, and their friend the Incredible Miss Hulk.
Then, in the darkness, someone begin to sing.
A frail, quavering, voice—an old man’s, or a woman’s?—impossible to tell; but hearing it Annie shivered.