Hob Broun - Odditorium

“I’m a thirty-two B. How about you?”

“I take an A cup myself, but I still say we’re even.”

This seemed to satisfy DaVita and she lay back on the blanket brushing hair out of her face, a fine web of sweat along her collarbone.

“Can you see the kids? Are they okay?”

“I guess so.”

Tildy stretched out on her stomach. Hot as it was, there were goose bumps all up and down her legs. She shifted from side to side, digging herself a hollow in the sand. The itch of the blanket was not unpleasant. After a while she felt her flesh soften, her muscles relax. The sun was directly overhead and the still air seemed to hum with its clean yellow fire.

“I love the heat.” DaVita sat up and began to anoint herself with olive oil from a glass jar. “Mmm, that’s good,” massaging her breasts, scissoring her fingers on shiny, tumid nipples. “I hope I’m not making you uptight. When I’m close to the ocean like this with the sun on me I feel like the first woman on earth.”

Tildy ducked her head and said nothing.

“Don’t you want some of this? You’ll get an evil burn without it. I’ve never seen skin so white.”

Tildy felt cool glass against her hand. “Not yet. Not just yet.”

“Demon heat.”

DaVita’s squelching hands moved in wider and wider circles as she opened her legs and Tildy became aware of layered fragrances, the slightly rancid oil, something sharp and gaseous released from DaVita’s body. She pressed her eyes harder into the crook of her arm and there were blinking yellow dots in the blackness behind them. This is ridiculous, Tildy told herself. You want to look, she wants you to look. So go ahead and look.

DaVita had three fingers of one hand jammed up into herself, the other hand softly pivoting at the top of her hairless seam. Tildy was not aroused by what she saw, not physically; but DaVita bit down on her lip, Tildy looked into a face that was a fixed animal mask of something resembling pain, and was moved. Moved by a raw tenderness. This frantic, despairing woman inches away with every nerve exposed. It was touching and sweetly sad and almost like looking at herself.

“Oooh, I’m coming, coming.”

And quickly Tildy pushed DaVita’s hand aside and replaced it with her own. Her fingers were numb, a set of tools; she felt everything with her eyes.

Heaving, DaVita flipped onto her side and hugged her knees. “Thank you,” she whispered.

The wrong thing to say. Those two words of gratitude, and the deadly confusion behind them, pushed outside the magic circle, destroyed illusion like a long knife slicing through the center of a movie screen.

Tildy whispered back, “I’m going to swim,” and zipped off with sand spraying out behind her.

Motionless, Gina and her brother watched the sea. Tildy’s hand on her tiny shoulder, soft as putty, didn’t startle; Gina remained straight and still, not looking up at the woman whose name she did not know.

“Is it time for lunch?”

“Later for that. Would you like to go in the water with me? I’ll hold you tight so you won’t go under.”

“We’re not allowed,” Robbie said. “You go in. We’ll be your lifeguards.”

Tildy waded out, arms floating on the easy swell, and rinsed her mouth with stinging salt water. She bowed herself backward, dunking her face and bringing it back out to the sun, then swam out beyond the breakers with short, hitched strokes, her eyes burning, the water a slow-motion tongue on her body. She dove under the choppy surface and frog-kicked along until her lungs were ready to split, broke the surface sputtering, gasping for breath, and looked back.

The figures on the beach were small and stick-like, discernible only because of the white background. They could just as easily be clumps of driftwood. A wavelet smacked her in the back of the head. She turned and swam on, stirring up bubbles with her chopping arms. Cold began to penetrate her tightened skin. Tildy’s head swiveled out of the water to inhale on every other stroke now, and it was as if she’d entered a different atmosphere where the oxygen was thinner. She was clenching her teeth, squeezing shut her eyes as she battled the thick water, and her whole faced ached with the tension. She tried to relax and slow her pace, to glide easily and relieve the stiffness in her legs. Smaller movements, no wasted effort. But her arms felt limp and heavy and her entire body throbbed with the cold. It was time to turn back.

Heading for shore with renewed energy, Tildy pulled up after a few minutes to check her progress and found she wasn’t any closer. Only the power station loomed larger, interlocking cubes of white concrete. Could she, in the confusion of fatigue, have been swimming parallel to the beach? Or drifting on some lateral current with a pull stronger than her own? No wonder they called it the crawl; Treading water, she sighted her course and plunged forward, counting to a hundred before she raised her head again. From the look of it, she wasn’t getting anywhere. Fear traveled like an electric current down the length of her shivering body and there was a smell of iodine on the wind.

She waved her arms and yelled, hoping DaVita would hear her. But panic was fatal; that was how people drowned, clawing wildly and hopelessly at the water, flailing away in one spot until they exhausted themselves and disappeared. She reminded herself of the natural buoyancy of salt water. If she surrendered to it totally, would it cup her like a hand and carry her to safety? She flipped onto her back, buying time, staying afloat by virtue of scissoring legs while her arms rested, trailing along at her sides. The sound of the water rushing by was like a lullaby and the sun was warm on her breasts that jutted into the air like two volcanic islands. The pain in her shoulders lightened and a dreamy torpor spread over her. It felt so good to rest, to snooze in the bobbing rhythm of the waves. A rolling liquid cradle.

Then came the moment when Tildy gave in to it, stopped moving altogether and dropped below. She fought her way back up coughing and gagging, and stared in dismay at the silent, smooth expanse of beach that was still so far away. Steady, steady. But she could sense her body hardening with cold and fear. Darkness awaited her if she lost another second.

She swam ten strokes and rested; another ten strokes, another rest. Easy now, go easy. Push down through the water, don’t slap at it. Ten strokes and rest. Ten strokes and rest. Treading water was now as hard as swimming through it, but the pain abated just enough each time, only to begin again on the very first stroke. She did not look up, certain that knowledge of the distance yet to cover would defeat her. Every tendon and muscle, every flap of tissue, was in flames. She swallowed water, groaned aloud with each rotation of her arms. Now she could manage only five strokes before a rest, five pitiful, paddling strokes with limbs that would soon be useless. Her ears pounded, her nose ran and her heart thundered like an overloaded motor about to shake itself apart.

Her foot scraped across a rock and she went limp, submerged, gripped the bottom with her toes, lurched and stumbled forward till she fell, retching, trembling, and ground the bits of rock and broken shell against her skin. Land.

Tildy lay there for a very long time with the surf washing peacefully over her, no longer the enemy. Her knees gave way each time she tried to stand and so it was on all fours that she scrabbled up the beach, calling for DaVita but drawing no answer.

Painfully and slowly she dressed. The foot that had scraped the rock was bleeding, the nail of its second toe torn partway off. She wrapped it in a napkin from her pocket before easing into shoes and hobbling over the dunes.

No particular surprise in finding the car gone. Nothing to do but get on the road and start walking. With any luck she’d catch a couple of rides and be in Gibsonton before dark. That made her think of Christo. Of Silvio. Now DaVita. And emphatically she told herself: I’ve got to stop picking up strangers.