David Handler - The Blood Red Indian Summer

Mitch started the engine and steered them out of the Auto Mall in quiet, air-conditioned comfort. The truck drove like a luxury sedan. He couldn’t imagine taking it to the town dump with a load of brush.

“My dad will do anything to make a sale,” June informed him. “He has no scruples, no conscience and no patience with me. He thinks I’m soft.”

“And what do you think?”

“That I like to fix up old sailboats. I think I can make a living at it if I move someplace where people sail all year round.”

“Someplace that also happens to be far from your dad?”

“Well, yeah. That, too.”

Mitch took the on-ramp to Route 9 and punched the accelerator. The truck was so powerful that he was cruising the highway at eighty before he realized it. A far cry from his Studey, which started to shake, rattle and roll if he tried to push it past fifty-five. He eased off the gas and said, “What happened, June?”

“Something truly horrible,” June confessed miserably. “Callie… stays over with me a lot, okay? That’s one thing my dad’s cool about. He doesn’t mind her spending the night. Sometimes, she stays until morning. Sometimes, she goes home after I fall asleep and paints for hours. A few nights ago we had the place to ourselves for the evening. Dad and Bonita were at the club with some friends getting drunk. I picked up a pizza. We smoked a joint, watched some totally lame movie and-”

“Wait, which totally lame movie?”

“Uh, Pineapple Express with Seth Rogen and James Franco.”

“You’re telling me you were stoned and yet you still didn’t find it funny?”

“Not really. Why does that even matter?”

“It doesn’t. You’re just in my wheelhouse is all. Go on…”

“We started, you know, getting busy on the sofa. Then went up to my room and made love. I dozed off after that. I don’t know how many hours later it was when Callie woke me up to make love again. She was totally on fire. And pretty soon I was, too. It had never, ever been like that with us before. We’d always been real gentle and loving. This was just wild. And it was all over so fast that, well, it didn’t hit me until it was too late.”

“What didn’t, June?”

“That she felt all wrong, smelled all wrong. I turned on the bedside light and it was Bonita who was naked in bed with me, her big blue eyes gleaming…” He shot a guilty look at Mitch. “Has anything like that ever happened to you?”

“You mean waking up inside of the wrong woman? No, I’ve been Jewish my whole life. Not to mention a very light sleeper. You’re telling me you honestly couldn’t tell the difference between the two of them?”

June let out a distraught sigh. “Maybe I did know. Maybe I was just beyond the point of caring. It’s not something I want to think about too much. But I can’t sugarcoat it, Mitch. I had freaky sex with my stepmother. I-I jumped out of bed, totally wigged out. Bonita was, like, ‘Chill out, hon, we’re cool.’ She was real drunk. And unbelievably horny. Told me my dad hasn’t been able to get it up for months. Not since they took away his Hummer franchise.”

“So there is a connection.”

“Bonita thanked me, Mitch. She said she can’t step out on him because people would find out. It’s awful hard to hide an affair in Dorset.”

“It’s impossible,” said Mitch, whose own relationship with Des had become hot news all over town before either of them knew what hit them.

“Next morning I couldn’t look my dad in the eye. Or Bonita. And for damned sure not Callie, who is such a genuine, sensitive person. She’ll never understand. I figure our relationship’s toast if she finds out. I moved out of my room and onto the Calliope that day so I wouldn’t be right down the hall from Bonita. Callie had a late class that night. Didn’t come over. I locked the Calliope down good and tight and went to bed early. I thought I’d be safe out there. I was wrong. At three o’clock in the morning Bonita’s out on deck pounding on the hatch cover and calling out my name. I let her in so she wouldn’t wake up my dad. Right away she was all over me again. I stopped her. I said that what happened last night was never, ever going to happen again. Bonita is… gorgeous. And she can be real persuasive. I totally wanted her again even though I knew it was wrong. I wanted her so bad that I went nuts and shoved her the hell off me. She cracked her head on the corner of a bookcase. Then she started screaming at me so loud she woke up my dad. Lights came on all over the house. She ran back inside and intercepted him. Made up some lame story about hitting her head in the kitchen. Told him she’d been awake because she was afraid there’d be a drive-by shooting next door. Just a bunch of paranoid, racist crap. But he totally bought it because he’s wired that way.” June broke off, swallowing. “This can’t go on, Mitch. Any day now the crazy bitch will lose it and tell him what really happened. I humiliated her. You don’t do that to Bonita. And she’ll mess up my thing with Callie for sure. I totally love that girl. I want to spend the rest of my life with her. But we’ve got to get out of this place right away or it’ll destroy us. Destroy Bonita, too.”

“Destroy her how?”

“My dad will beat the crap out of her. He used to beat up my mom. That’s why she left him.”

“I thought Bonita split them apart.”

“Everyone does. But my mom told me their marriage was over long before Bonita came along-because of his temper. He has no control over himself, Mitch. Like father, like son.”

Mitch kept his eyes on the road. “You’re not your father, June.”

“Yeah, I am,” he said bitterly. “Deep down inside I’m no good. I want to do what’s right. Go far, far away with Callie. I just don’t know if it’ll ever be the same between us after this. People who love each other don’t keep secrets. But what am I supposed to tell her-that my stepmother sort of raped me and that I sort of went along with it because she’s a real bunny in the sack?”

“Yeah, I don’t think I’d phrase it quite that way.”

“Mitch, you’ve been married. You know women better than I do. Will you give me an honest answer if I ask you something?”

“I’ll certainly try.”

“What would you do right now if you were me?”

“So what would you do?”

“Me? I’d grab Callie and sail the hell out of that nuthouse as fast as the wind would take me.”

“But that’s running away, doughboy.”

“You bet your sweet tuchos it is.”

The sky over Long Island Sound was bathed in a pinkish glow as they walked Big Sister’s narrow beach together at sunset. The air was still insanely warm for late October. According to the Weather Channel’s ace storm tracker, Jim Cantore, a storm front would bring thunderstorms tomorrow night along with much colder temperatures. For now, it felt like August as they strolled along barefoot in shorts and T-shirts, sipping Bass Ales and holding hands. Mitch relished these precious moments with his lady love. And he never took them-or her-for granted.

There was a decommissioned lighthouse out on Big Sister, the second tallest in New England. Forty or so acres of woods. And four houses besides Mitch’s antique post-and-beam caretaker’s cottage-all of them belonging to the Peck family. It was the Pecks who’d founded Dorset back in the 1600s. A rickety wooden causeway connected the private island to the mainland at the Peck’s Point Nature Preserve.

“So is that what you told June to do?” Des asked him.

“No, I’d never tell some young guy to quit the family business and take off. Who am I to tell him that? Although it’s pretty clear that he does need to get out from under his father’s-”