Matthew Stokoe - Empty Mile

Marla nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

The air in the forest was so humid it seemed to push back at me and the buzzing of cicadas made my head swim. What we were doing was crazy but I couldn’t stop myself. The heat and the insect noise and the throb of sexual desire had combined within me to a kind of fever that made me want to race through the trees, to be wherever it was we were going, to be inside Marla right then, that second.

The place Bill led us to wasn’t far into the forest, but it was well screened and it was unlikely any nature-loving hiker would stumble across us. Behind a large boulder on which some delinquent teenager had splashed red paint there was a shallow dish-shaped hollow that was shielded around three-quarters of its circumference by a wall of trees and shrubs. As we entered it I was aware we were probably only a few minutes away from the place Marla and I had first made love.

Marla avoided looking at Bill or me. We had brought our things from the lake and she rolled out a towel in the center of the hollow. Bill sat a few feet away. I did my best to pretend he wasn’t there.

When Marla had finished with the towel she stood beside it, her arms straight at her sides as though she had no desire to make any further movement. I realized that she was scared.

Bill watched us like nothing else existed. His hand was between his legs, squeezing his crotch.

“Do you want us to, like, just start?”

Bill nodded. “Yes, please. And take all your clothes off.”

I stepped close to Marla and held her. For a moment she didn’t respond, then she lifted her head and looked at me sadly and whispered, “This shouldn’t have been our first time.”

I kissed her. And with that kiss I tried to pull us into a dark cocoon that would hide us from the man who sat watching. For a moment it worked, for a moment we were lost in each other. But then his voice came again.

“Take her clothes off.”

I knew, even as I began undoing her bikini top, that I should stop this, that she was uncomfortable, unhappy, that the honorable thing to do would be to just give Bill his money back and tell him we’d changed our minds. But I didn’t. I couldn’t let go of this opportunity. I wanted sex, there was no doubt about that, but what drove me more to peel away Marla’s swimsuit was a raging emotional greed, the need to be close enough to her again to begin fixing the piece of my past that belonged to her.

We got down to it, there in that warm hollow that like a lens seemed to capture the heat and concentrate it about us. When I entered her, despite being watched, despite the tawdry circumstances of the act, I felt an immediate and overpowering sense of relief. She had let me close to her. And if she could do that then surely there could be no further barrier to becoming a couple again. In Marla, too, I sensed a relaxation of spirit, as though she had wanted to clear this hurdle every bit as much as I.

This letting-go of hers, though, didn’t last long. At some point she shifted under me and I saw that she was looking over my shoulder at Bill. I turned my head. He was standing, pants around his ankles, masturbating as he watched us. It didn’t surprise me. In fact I had assumed he’d do exactly that, but it seemed to disgust Marla and she went stiff and kept her eyes closed until we were finished.

Bill left as soon as it was over, just buttoned his pants and walked quickly away. I thought about yelling after him to look out for bears, but I didn’t. Marla and I sat there silent and naked and watched him go. When he was out of sight I turned to her and forced a laugh.

“Well…”

I wanted her to laugh too, but she did not.

We got dressed and made our way back through the forest holding hands and not saying anything.

In the parking lot Bill Prentice was waiting beside his SUV. He waved for me to come over. Marla let go of my hand and went to wait by the pickup. Bill had the lease papers for the warehouse ready for me to sign-one year with the option to renew for two more, a reasonable yearly fee, three months up front, the rest in monthly installments. I signed them against the metal of the car’s hood and prayed that this venture with Stan would not turn out to be too disastrous.

Istayed the rest of the weekend at Marla’s place and by the end of it she had agreed to a permanent relationship again. Even though our exhibition in the forest had played a role in this reconnection Marla seemed haunted by the episode.

“Sometimes, I can’t believe what we’re capable of. The things we do… it seems like we’re programmed to destroy ourselves.”

“Forget about it. It was a crazy afternoon, that’s all. We’ve got to leave the past behind us.”

Marla looked at me skeptically. “I really don’t think you’re made that way, Johnny. But what choice do we have? You want to be with me and I can’t live without you. We’ll have to go through it until it all falls apart again.”

“It’s not going to fall apart. There’s nothing to say we can’t have a great life together.”

She smiled sadly. “We’ll see.”

About eleven o’clock on Monday morning I got home to find Stan in the kitchen sitting at the table eating a large bowl of cereal and reading a comic book.

“How come you’re not at work?”

“’Cause Dad wants to take us somewhere. He said it was a big surprise. I called Bill, it’s okay.”

“What sort of surprise?”

“I don’t know, Johnny, that’s why it’s a surprise.” Stan pushed the cereal box toward me. “Have some breakfast. Nutrition’s important. And guess what? Bill’s leaving the key to the warehouse with the girls at the counter. Can we go check it out after?”

“Sure, you bet.”

“Awesome!”

Stan got up and stared shunting around the room like a train, chanting, “Business-man, business-man, businessman…”

Half an hour later my father came home. He was carrying a flat package wrapped in brown paper. We followed him into the living room and watched as he tore open the wrapping and lifted out a framed black-and-white photograph about two feet long. He set it on the back of the couch so that it leaned against the wall.

Stan bent forward and examined it. “Is it around here?”

“Yes, not far.”

It was an aerial photo of forested land. The dark line of a river curved in from the right of the frame and made a pronounced bulge around what looked to be some sort of rock spur. Trees lined both sides of it. In the upper half of the photo they were unbroken, but below the river there was a patch of cleared land. On the bottom right-hand corner of the picture a serial number was imprinted and the image itself looked slightly grainy, as though it had been blown up from a smaller print.

“Did you go up in a plane and take it, Dad?”

My father laughed. “Not me, Stan.”

“Are you going to put it on the wall?” Stan sounded dubious.

“I was planning to.”

“You should have gotten something with colors.”

“This is a special picture. What do you notice about it?”

Stan squinted hard at it, then stepped back and blinked his eyes rapidly. “Whew, that made me dizzy. It’s just a river, Dad. Is it the Swallow River?”

“Well done. See anything else?”

“Yikes, you’re going to make my head spin round. I can’t see anything. Ask Johnny.”

“It’s just trees and a river to me too.”

My father smiled and looked at the photo and shook his head as though he couldn’t believe his luck.

“Come on. We’re going for a drive.”

We left the house and got into my father’s car. As we rolled out of the driveway Stan put on a pair of mirrored aviator shades and tied a patterned silk handkerchief around his neck.