Эд Макбейн - Love, Dad

“My shrink. He thinks I’m immature, and a little bit crazy besides.”

Suddenly, without realizing he was about to do it, he kissed her. The kiss was brief, it took her as much by surprise as it did him. She looked into his face.

“What was that for?” she asked.

“I’m sorry, forgive me.”

“No, that’s all right.”

“Really, I’m sorry.”

She turned away from him and looked out over the sea. They were silent for several moments. Then she said, “Do you do this all the time?”

“No. As a matter of fact...” He shook his head.

“Yes, what?”

“Never.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m sorry. Really. I am.”

“Never, huh? How long have you been married?”

“Eighteen years.”

“And never been tempted.”

“Tempted, yes.”

“You sound like Jesus in the wilderness.”

“Not quite.”

“Sorely tempted, but never compromised. Until tonight. Must be my ripe young bod, huh?”

“Joanna... I’m sorry. I mean it. Would you like to...?”

“Stop being so sorry. It was kind of nice, as a matter of fact. Sort of. Would I like to what?”

“Go back up to the house.”

“No. Why? Would you?”

“Not particularly.”

“Neither would I.” She looked out over the sea again. “I thought you were a jerk, you know. When you said you liked my top. A middle-aged jerk talking euphemistically about my breasts. Well, I do have good breasts, I suppose,” she said, and glanced idly down at them. “How’d we get on my breasts, anyway? Maybe we’d better go inside.”

“If you like.”

“Because I hate rushing things, and I get the feeling we’re rushing at a headlong pace.” She shook her head. “I barely said goodbye to Harrison thirty seconds ago. Are you happily married?”

“Yes.”

“Then why’d you kiss me?”

“I guess I wanted to.”

“Do you still want to.”

“Yes.”

“Then kiss me,” she said.

He kissed her. The kiss was longer this time. Their lips lingered. When she drew away from him at last, she said, “But that’s enough. I’ve got to be out of my mind. Wait’ll Mandelbaum hears this, he’ll take a fit.”

“Why do you have to tell him?”

“It’s costing me fifty dollars an hour, I suppose I ought to tell him, don’t you? I mean instead of just lying on his couch and looking up at the ceiling. Though he does have a marvelous ceiling. One of those old tin things with curlicues all over it. I can just see Monday. Hey, guess what, doctor? I broke off with Harrison and ten minutes later I was kissing a married stranger on the beach. I’ve got to be crazy.”

He looked at her, studying her face, his eyes accustomed to the semidarkness now, seeing again the freckles he had noticed in the bedroom upstairs, a light dusting on the bridge of her nose and on only one cheek, the high cheekbones and generous mouth—

“Does it meet with your approval?” she asked.

“Yes, it does.”

“Nose and all?”

“Especially the nose,” he said, and smiled.

“Oh, sure. I hate my nose. You don’t know how many times I’ve thought of getting it bobbed.”

“Don’t.”

“Just here,” she said, and brought her hand up, exerting the smallest amount of pressure with her forefinger, lifting the tip.

“You’re beautiful just the way you are,” he said.

“Well... thank you,” she said, and dropped her hand into her lap again, and looked away shyly.

“Very beautiful,” he whispered.

“Thank you.” She hesitated and then said, “I find you very attractive, too. But that’s just me, I guess. I mean, the older-man thing. And married, of course,” she said, and rolled her eyes.

“I guess you’ve discussed all this with...”

“Oh, sure.”

“What does he think?”

“He thinks my liaisons, his word, are quote dangerous unquote. Do you know you’re staring at me?”

“Yes.”

“Must be the gorgeous nose.”

“Must be.”

“If you didn’t have a wife inside there... you do have a wife inside there, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Worse luck, I thought you might have left her home for the weekend. What does she look like?”

“Blond, green eyes, good figure.”

“Oh, yes. Pretty.”

“If I didn’t have a wife inside there...” he prompted.

“I’d disgrace myself in the eyes of God and Mandelbaum,” she said, and hesitated. “Do you work in the city?”

“Sometimes.”

“How often do you come in? God,” she said, “I sound like an advertising executive on the make!”

“Once a week, sometimes more often.”

“Would you like to call me? I’m in the book, J. Berkowitz on East Sixty-fifth.”

“Would you like me to call you?”

“Yes.”

He looked at her.

“Call me,” she said.

The rain had tapered off, and they stood outside the tent — Judd and Lissie — looking out over the festival site and the myriad small fires that had been started on the sodden ground, glowing against the blackness of the night like blazing galaxies in a distant sky. From where they stood, the ground sloped gently away and they could see across the entire site, could hear the gentle strumming of guitars, the sound of floating laughter, and behind them the patter of leaves dripping raindrops on the forest floor.

“I’ll never forget this as long as I live,” Judd said.

“Neither will I,” Lissie said.

“Want to take a walk down there?”

“Sure.”

He lifted the flap of the tent and said, “We’re going for a walk, anybody want to come?”

“I’m totaled,” Suzie said.

“How about you, Rusty?”

“She’s already asleep.”

“Okay, see you later,” Judd said.

They went down the slope and onto the muddier ground. They were both barefoot, their jeans rolled to their shins. Lissie was wearing a B.U. sweatshirt Suzie had loaned her; Judd had changed from his T-shirt to a plaid flannel shirt as protection against the cool night air.

“Watch out for broken glass,” he said.

They walked through the camp, stopping here and there to talk with other kids, all of them still excited from the day’s events, all of them eager to trade stories about what for them had been the most thrilling experience in their lives. Scarcely any of them mentioned the performers: the performers were only secondary to this event. Judd and Lissie sat with kids they didn’t know, and shared their pot, and warmed themselves by the fires of strangers made friends through a common bond.

They could not have fully explained the bond if they’d tried. It had something to do with being young and being here where they were able to express themselves without restraint. It wasn’t just being able to smoke pot in the open without fear of arrest or imprisonment, it wasn’t just seeing all these hundreds of thousands of other kids who looked the way they did, and dressed the way they did, and talked the way they did, all together in one place, stretching from horizon to horizon, some of them acres away from the stage where they could not have seen or even heard the performers clearly despite the amplifiers that had blared from eighty-foot-high scaffolds, it wasn’t any of that separately, but all of it together. They had got it together at last, they had come from everywhere to do this thing, to be this thing. They were the event, a conglomerate entity with a single voice. Us.

As they wandered back leisurely toward the slope upon which the tent was pitched, Judd said, “ ‘A little touch of Harry in the night.’ ” He saw the puzzled look on her face, and said, “Do you know it?”