Эд Макбейн - Last Summer

“So was I.”

“That was cool,” Sandy said. “What Annabelle did.”

“Mmm.”

“But he should have known better than to drink so much.”

“I guess so,” I said.

“Okay, we’ll meet you out at the point in ten minutes or so, okay?”

“Yes,” I said, “fine.”

“It’s very hot,” Sandy said, and hung up.

“Where are you going?” my mother asked.

“Out to the point.”

“The water’s supposed to be rough today,” she said. “Be careful.”

“We’re always careful,” I said.

“Ha-ha,” my mother said.

My father came out of the bedroom in his bathrobe. “Good morning, son,” he said.

“Will you be using the boat today?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Ellie?” he said, turning to my mother.

“We promised the Cordons,” my mother said, “but what do you think? The water’s supposed to be rough today.”

“There aren’t any warnings up, are there?”

“No, but the water’s supposed to be rough.”

“Well, let’s give it a try. We promised the Conlons.”

“All right,” my mother said.

“Sorry, son,” my father said.

“That’s okay,” I said. “So that’s where we’ll be, out at the point.”

“Be careful,” my mother said again, and I left the house.

The beach was suffocatingly hot and thronged with people. This was Sunday and the normal weekday crowd should have been doubled or at most trebled, but the incredible heat had driven the entire world to the shore, and people sprawled now on every available inch of sand, hoping for a vagrant breeze. There was no wind at all, but the ocean was rough nonetheless, with huge waves rolling in and breaking furiously against the shore. The sky was a yellowish white, not a trace of blue anywhere, not a single cloud breaking the glaring oval that stretched like wet skin over ocean and beach. It was difficult to breathe. The sun seemed to be everywhere and nowhere, the air shimmered with diffused light. I remembered that I’d left my sunglasses back at the house, but the sand was too hot to make a return trip even thinkable. By the time I reached David’s house, I was exhausted. He was waiting for me on the sundeck.

“Hot, huh, Poo?” he said.

I nodded.

“How’d you like that Annabelle?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“He shouldn’t have got so drunk. You ready to go?”

“Yeah,” I said, “let’s go.”

We started walking up the beach. It was hard hot work. We were silent for a long time.

“It doesn’t seem real,” I said at last.

“What doesn’t?”

“Last night. Annabelle.”

“It wasn’t real,” David said, and laughed. “The computer dreamed it up.”

“I just hope he didn’t get in any trouble.”

“What do you mean?”

“With the police or anything?”

“Oh, I’m sure he didn’t,” David said.

“How do you know?”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Yeah, that’s just it,” I said.

“He shouldn’t have drunk so much,” David said. “There they are.”

They had spread a blanket near the water’s edge; they both looked up as we approached, but only Sandy waved.

“Damn it, I forgot the umbrella,” David said.

“Oh, great.”

“Why didn’t you remind me?”

“Where’s the umbrella?” Sandy said immediately.

“He forgot it,” I said.

“We’ll roast. It’s like the Sahara out here.”

“Let’s get in the water.”

“I’m for that.”

“Not me,” Rhoda said.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” she said, but she did not smile.

“It’s not as rough as it looks,” Sandy said. “Once you get past the breakers...”

“No, not me,” Rhoda said.

“Okay,” Sandy said, and without another word got up and went into the water. David followed her. I sat on the blanket beside Rhoda. Her face was all squinched up against the glare, and her eyes were red and puffy from the crying she’d done the night before. There were blankets and umbrellas everywhere around us, transistor radios going, girls spreading suntan oil on their bellies and legs, kids throwing balls, kids filling pails and dumping them to make sand cakes, guys doing headstands, couples necking.

“I’ve never seen it this crowded,” I said.

“It’s the day,” Rhoda said. “It’s so hot.”

“It’s like Coney Island, for Christ’s sake.”

Rhoda nodded. Sandy and David plunged through a rolling breaker, disappeared from sight, surfaced some five feet beyond and began swimming toward the deeper water. I watched them. The light glaring from the water was intense. I shielded my eyes with one hand, and then was suddenly aware that Rhoda was staring at me. I turned to look at her. Her face was still closed tight against the sun.

“I’m sorry about last night,” I said.

She nodded, but did not answer.

“Rhoda, I’m sorry. I’m really very sorry.”

“Peter,” she said, “why did you get him drunk?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I asked you to stop...”

“I know you did.”

“... I begged you to stop.”

“I can’t explain it, I really can’t.”

“Peter,” she said, “do you know that I love you?”

“I... I guess I know it,” I said. I was suddenly frightened. All at once, I wanted to get off that blanket and shove my way through the teeming noisy humanity everywhere around us, and splash into the water to where Sandy and David were swimming. I did not want to hear anything else Rhoda had to say. I had the feeling that whatever else she said from this point on would be painful, more painful than the nightmare had been, more painful than the headache, more painful than throwing up in the toilet. I wanted her to stop at once, to leave things exactly where they stood, accept my apology graciously, and merely shut the hell up.

Tilting her head to one side, squinting at me, she began pounding me with words instead, her mouth in constant motion, the metal bands bunking accompanying semaphore as they intermittently caught sunlight. A bead of perspiration slid from my armpit to my ribs, trailed across my chest and ran down over my abdomen. Rhoda’s voice rose and fell, and with it the sounds of the beach, reverberating on the air, muffled, indistinct. There was laughter in counterpoint, sporadic laughter that seemed continuous even though it came from separate sources at different times. The ocean roared, but seemed curiously overwhelmed by the hovering buzz and the laughter and Rhoda’s insistent voice. I felt suddenly apart, as though I had been paralyzed in mid-motion and then gilded with sunshine while everyone around me continued to move and breathe and sweat and make noise. Rhoda’s lips were still in action, her bands blinking. I sat still and silent on the blanket at the water’s edge, a stunned nucleus at the center of incessant turmoil.

She had lain awake all night frying to understand my behavior, she said. She loved me so much, she said, and that was why she couldn’t understand. I had been so gentle in the forest that day, so sweet and loving and gentle, and yet last night I seemed to join the others in their malicious conspiracy to intoxicate Aníbal. What was it between the three of us, what was the secret that seemed to generate such unanimous enthusiasm for the unerringly wrong idea? It had been wrong to go out with Aníbal to begin with, she should never have allowed us to talk her into it, but when the three of us got together that way, we made all the right things seem shameful and square. Oh, Peter, she said, I don’t want to be square, I want so much to understand you, but what can I think when you deliberately conspire to get a poor man drunk? Did you do it for fun, did you enjoy watching him make a fool of himself, the way you watched those poor unfortunate perverts that day (Lower your voice, I warned) on Violet’s island, why did you do it, Peter? Peter, was it square to find something appealing in Aníbal Gomez, to want to hear him out even when he went on and on about his grandfather, so terribly square to want to grant him the respect of listening? (I don’t need this, Rhoda, I thought, I don’t need you for a conscience!)