Darcey Steinke - Up Through the Water

Her strokes lengthened: She felt light in the sea, joined to the back and forth pull of the water. Coming together with strangers, dark empty bodies moving on a bed, why did she do it? She asked herself this afterward, in the mornings, sometimes even during, eyes over a muscular shoulder.

Emily swam away from jellyfish, clear floating flowers. She liked her limbs to ache, to nearly buckle with fatigue. She curved underwater, but before she could pull up, a current took her out a few yards. Below the surface she writhed, her hair floated and framed her face. Emily saw a grainy rush of green water, her legs kicked out, and her arms threw punches. John Berry would find out. She swallowed a little water, then came up choking. The sun beat on her hair. She calmed herself and swam on, thinking of the strokes and feeling a firmness inside her body as hard and real as stone.

Dusk. The air was smoky, shadowed with a charcoal pencil. Leaving the beach, she walked in her yellow bathing suit, towel around her head like a turban, up the island road. Dust billowed up from the asphalt in vaulting see-through clouds. Cars passed on their way to the ferry, loaded down with Styrofoam surfboards, mini-sailboats, and beach chairs strapped to the roofs. In worn thongs she found her way over the rocks on the side of the road.

Up ahead, John Berry's truck pulled out from Paolo's lot. She saw it like a child's matchbox car. She would sit beside him in his truck jacked up just enough to see both the soundside and the rolling waves of the beach. Emily might put her head on his lap so John Berry could stroke her hair like he did, his calloused fingertips moving over her face. Way down the beach road, beyond the gas station, beyond the campground, they would park, John Berry's headlights pointed out over the water showing a straight line of lively sea. They would swim together in the ocean, strokes like water ballet girls in perfect sync.

He was ranting the engine, driving fast. Emily focused on his face, his eyes bolting forward, his lips pressed. The truck slammed to a stop a few yards from her.

“I can't believe you!” he yelled.

“What—” she said, but before she could say more she saw the bottle sail from the window, arching up slightly before hitting the fence post near her. It splintered high like water; shards of glass cut her lip, cheek, and chin. Quick blood dripped from her jawbone. She was strangely aware of the sand stuck to the back of her calves and the icy ache at her temple. She saw the small orange sand flowers in microscopic detail at her feet and the sun over the beach sinking into the water. When she looked up, John Berry's truck was way down the island road, its back lights smoldering in a smoke trail that swung back like a gray snake.

His Walkman on, Eddie stood before the metal sink of steamy water. He was mesmerized by the waitresses running in and out of the hot kitchen. They sweated and bitched, picked up trays of Chicken Charles and Seafood Newburg. The backs of their blouses had a white line of wetness down to their skirts. He watched their bodies as they reached for corkscrews, bent for ice, and stole frosting from cakes with one finger. When no one was looking, he sang into the movable water spout. Grabbed it and sneered lyrics from the music. Eddie was letting the dishes soak, having a cigarette, listening to the messy guitar riff pulsating in his ear, and thinking about the fifteen-year-old island girl he'd met on the beach, the one with a body like a real woman.

“Quit the rock star stuff, and get on those soup bowls,” the cook said.

Eddie plunged the stacked bowls, crusted with clam chowder, into mountains of bubbles and warm water. This was the day he did the double shift, working from eleven when his mother left till late. “How does it look out there?” he asked the busboy, a skinny kid who ran headlong into the kitchen with the heavy trays. The busboy didn't answer right away; he set down a tray with a thud, then picked through it, looking for a leftover piece of fish or a fragment of cake. Eddie looked disapprovingly at him. The busboy was the only person with a job more disgusting than his own, and besides, Eddie only drank the wine that was left in bottles, carafes, or glasses. Even now he was light-headed, his feet not seeming to rest on the linoleum at all. “Two tables,” the busboy said finally, through a mouthful of pink shrimp.

“Thank God,” the cook said, and smirked suggestively toward Eddie. He knew that he was worth looking at with his honey-colored tan and hair lightened by the sun. On the beach older tourist women often watched him from under their straw hats. But it was the cook, between sautéing scallops and checking baked fish, who watched inconspicuously as Eddie sang into the water spout. He'd heard the cook liked young boys, and already Neal had suggested a beach ride in his car. He described it all for Eddie: on a blanket under a full moon, passing the champagne bottle back and forth, the calming swish of water around them.

The bubbles tickled Eddie's fingers. He thought how he and the island girl were meeting on Wednesday at Paolo's. She had brown hair, a little like the hair of the one waitress he liked. The waitress was a college girl, tan as wheat bread, who teased him, said he was a punk rocker, and in leaning to pick up an ashtray or a cream pitcher, sometimes pressed her chest to his. For a moment he pictured being with her on the beach under the stars. They'd sip beer and kiss wetly in the roar of the waves.

He dropped a plate.

Quickly taking up a broom, Neal said, “Get your mind off that waitress; she's got herself a college boyfriend.” As he swept up the scattered pieces, Eddie saw that he had on black eyeliner. Never on the beach, but sometimes at the island bar, Neal appeared in drag; gold false eyelashes, a silver tear pasted right below his left eye, and earrings that he said once belonged to his mother.

Eddie brushed the white ceramic pieces into the dustpan. He hadn't worked before, and already he could tell it would add a pleasant hang-dog quality to the personality of the summer. His mother had gotten him the job, and yesterday, when he'd come into the restaurant, he overheard her talking to herself while rolling dough into strips: “This one is John Berry,” a shortish, thick strip; “This is Daniel,” a slightly longer, bent piece; “And this is that tourist who was here last week from Georgia,” a thinnish strip like a hot dog.

The owner stumbled in to pick up the petty cash. A fly landed on his sweaty brow, and he picked up the swatter and went after a group of flies by the back door. He swung carelessly, did pirouettes, and finally tried to grab each waitress by the waist as she ran into the kitchen.

“Drunk again,” Eddie's waitress whispered in his ear. She shook her head.

Rejected by the girls, he reached for a fly in a spot of old ketchup high on the wall, leaped up, and swung, knocking down a stack of clean dishes.

“Fuck!” Eddie said, hearing the crash and taking off his headphones.

“What did you say?” the owner said.

Eddie was silent. The owner reeled, his belly spilling over his belted jeans. The busboy and Neal watched from their sections of the kitchen.

“What!” the owner screamed right in Eddie's face; his cigarette-liquor breath made Eddie wince.

“Fuck!” he said louder.

“That's probably what your mother is doing right now,” the owner said, grinning, spit catching in his beard. After a minute he got the rum for the cakes down from the shelf and left, bent over like a troll, through the back screen door.

Eddie pulled on his blue rubber gloves and put his hands in the warm water.

The cook came over and said, “He's just an old brute.”

“I know,” Eddie said, looking at the wall, concentrating as if some message might appear there in the dull paint.