Kem Nunn - Tapping the Source

This business of keeping the two things separate was, of course, no easy task. Michelle knew about the time he spent with Hound, and even after she quit asking him about it, he knew that his not telling her pissed her off. And Hound Adams, for his part, could see that Ike was keeping Michelle out of it as well. When the subject came up between them, as it did from time to time, Ike would always make some excuse, and Hound would just shrug it off and say, “Later,” and Ike would double up on his determination to keep the two things apart. He found at times, however, that he was haunted by a particular image—Preston Marsh seated at a campfire, saying how it was that with some things you either wanted them a certain way, or you didn’t want them at all. And by the time he realized just how crazy and impossible and unworkable it all was, it was over. Too bad he hadn’t taken the hints along the way.

Like this one morning. It was late and hot and the sheets were wet with their sweat. They’d been making love for a long time. And while he was fucking her he started playing with this fantasy, that they were doing it for the camera, that the Jacobs brothers were standing in line. He was repulsed by it and excited by it at the same time. He wanted to fuck her so it hurt. He slid out of her and got her up on her knees so he could fuck her from behind, but somehow that wasn’t quite enough. There was a square of sunlight on her back and the small of her back was slick with sweat, his own as well as hers. He slipped out of her once more. He started working his fingers around in her cunt, then back into her asshole, getting it wet. She started to pull away from him for a moment, to turn, but he held her tightly, pulling her back and then going into her, slowly, painfully at first because it hurt him a little bit too, but he could see that it was hurting her more and that was what he wanted. He fucked her harder, pushing himself as deep as he could until he came and fell against her, panting like a madman, his heart slamming against her back. Then he was off of her, and standing outside on the wooden porch, letting the sun and wind dry his legs and chest. He was naked in the bright light, squinting, hearing the traffic on the highway and beyond that the distant pounding of the surf and all he could think about was that something was wrong. He had never had to fantasize like that before, not with her. The moment itself had always been enough. Now he stared into the dead grass, the oil-spattered machinery of the well, trying to think about it, to clear his head. But it was hard to think, what with that sunlight too bright in the yard and his head wound up tight as a clutch spring after two coked-out days and no sleep. And then Michelle had suddenly appeared on the porch beside him, wrapped in a beach towel, and he could see that she had been crying. She wasn’t saying anything, just staring at him out of those green eyes gone glassy and red-rimmed. The sunlight caught on the tracks of tears moving across her cheeks and on the tips of her two front teeth peeking at him from beneath her upper lip. And it was like she was waiting for him to offer some explanation, to explain something that he did not understand himself, at least not in this damn heat with the sunlight gone crazy in the yard, pinstriping everything with neon beads, from the grass and trees right up to Michelle’s face, which would not stop staring at him, and asking, until at last he reached out to knock it away, hard, so his open palm rang from the blow. And then he was down on his knees, uncertain of how he got there, pushing his face into the beach towel that circled her waist and crying like a baby while she smoothed his hair.

And then it ended: all the shucking and jiving, the fancy footwork. It ended on a Thursday; he would not forget that, the same week in which Preston had returned to Huntington Beach.

He’d gotten up early to surf a small mushy swell out of the west. Hound Adams had not been in the water. Ike surfed for about an hour, then left for home. He liked waking Michelle in the mornings. He liked the way she looked, all sleepy and warm with the morning light coming through the rippling glass. He liked the way she smiled, still half-asleep, when he slipped beneath the covers to let her warm him with her body. Later they would walk down to the coffee shop for breakfast.

He hung his wet suit off the balcony and slipped into jeans and a T-shirt, then walked down the hallway to her room and tried the door. Normally it was unlocked. Thursday morning, however, was different. He heard voices, bare feet on the wooden floor. He was certain that something had gone wrong, and it was becoming difficult to draw a deep breath in the cramped corridor. The first thing he noticed when she opened the door was the strong scent of grass. The first thing he saw was one of Hound Adams’s Mexican shirts draped over one end of the couch. He could not see her bed, but he didn’t have to; he could see her face. She looked slightly flushed, he thought, and very beautiful. Her hair appeared mussed and there was a damp strand curled against her skin near the corner of her mouth. He turned without speaking and walked away. The door closed behind him.

And that was it—the end of everything that had been special between them. He couldn’t sit still. He couldn’t stay in his room. He did not have the desert to walk in, as he had the day his sister had run. He finally put a cold and slimy wet suit on and went back to the beach. The swell, if anything, had gotten worse and he spent the better part of the day scratching for rides in the mushy surf, cursing the waves and anyone reasonably close to his own size who got close enough to crowd him. It was the first time he had ever yelled at anyone in the water. A true local at last.

By late afternoon he was tired and chilled to the point of sickness. He found some guy he knew from the dawn patrol and got him to buy a sixer of Old English 800, the most rotgut stuff he could think of. Then he spent what was left of the afternoon in his room drinking. He waited. He watched the sun go down beyond the buildings that blocked his view of the sea. He waited for the sound of her footsteps in the hall, but they did not come. She should have been home from work by now. Maybe she had not gone. Perhaps she was still with Hound Adams, at his house. Perhaps they were making movies right now.

He was set upon by a nearly uncontrollable compulsion to go there, to find her. All sorts of wanton and perverse acts took shape in his mind. And yet how could he blame her? How could he judge her now when he had been the one who had ruined it? The parties, the movies. He had told himself there was a reason. Was there? Or was it his own selfishness? He should have taken Michelle and run, as far away from Hound Adams as possible, should have given up the charade of looking for his sister, the charade that had become nothing more than a mask for his own lust. Shit, he had stayed because he liked it. The girls, the movies, it was all some sort of crazy ego trip and now he had paid the price. Why was he such a goddamn fuckup? What was wrong with him? Everything had been a lie, his whole stay here. He could see that now. He had simply run away. He had endured the old woman’s hateful stare, the silence of the desert, as long as possible and then he had run. It was just that his sister’s disappearance, the kid’s story, had given him some reason, the necessary push, to do what anyone else with more guts would have done long before. He was twisted in some way, had to be. It was his mother’s blood. He had found a good thing here and a bad thing and he had gone after the bad. Maybe the old woman had called it after all. Maybe he was the one who had been wrong at the ranch—all that stuff about responsibility and guilt. Shit. He had left because he didn’t want to stay without Ellen; responsibility and guilt had nothing to do with it. Maybe the old woman had been right about all of them, his mother a common whore, his sister no better, and him a goddamn degenerate—the whole bad line of them winding down to him. He’d come to Huntington Beach and he’d found a way to get high, to get laid, to make money without working for it. And he’d gotten off on it. But of course he wanted it all; he wanted Michelle, too. And now he was whining and sniveling because it was all going wrong. Jesus. Crying just like the fucking punk he knew in his heart he was.