Anne Korkeakivi - An Unexpected Guest

“Why? You like her yourself?” Kevin had pushed the sugar bowl and a carton of milk in her direction. He’d grinned at her and shoveled a spoonful of cornflakes into his mouth, leaving tiny flakes of cereal on his upper lip. She and Kevin had grown up side by side, just five months separating their birth dates. Until they were fifteen, she’d been taller than he. She could remember the first Thanksgiving they’d spent together when he’d shown signs of whiskers. It hadn’t been that long ago. “Kind of sea level up top, isn’t she?”

“Don’t you think it’s time you got your own place, Kevin?” Uncle Pat had said, whacking her cousin on the head. Her uncle had peered into the cereal box, crumpled it up, and thrown it in the garbage. “Help yourself to toast, Clare. Looks like your aunt made a loaf’s worth this morning.”

Clare had dutifully begun chewing on a piece of toast, dry, without jelly.

“Personally, I don’t fancy the heifers,” Niall had replied, eyeing her up and down as though she were some sort of livestock. “But Clare’s too rich for my blood, cousin. I could never have myself a woman like that.”

Kevin had pushed his empty bowl away. “You never know, Niall.” He’d pronounced the name like it was a long Egyptian river. “Those Harvard girls have been known to go slumming. And all American girls are suckers for a foreign accent.”

Clare had finished her toast, the last bits gripping her windpipe, and stood up. “Have a great day, everyone.”

“And a lovely day to you, too, Clare,” Niall had said, as though they’d just run into each other at the drugstore. As though she were a girl he’d been trying to pick up in a coffee shop. As though she could have been any nice-looking girl, anywhere.

But now they were alone together again, and he slithered in next to her where she was sitting on the porch soaking in the evening smells of grass and old-fashioned roses and rhododendron, a cool glass of ice tea at her feet, a copy of Pablo Neruda’s recently published Para nacer he nacido idle on one knee, and slid a hand onto her warm thigh. He removed the book from its perch, placing it on the ground next to her drink, and picked up her hand. He turned it over and over again. He separated one finger out and ran it down his cheek and neck, over his chest.

“You’re different from other girls in America,” he said.

“I am?” Was she supposed to run her finger down over his body now? No longer manipulated by him, her finger seemed powerless to move on its own. She left it where he’d left it, on his collarbone, pressing against his white skin.

“You don’t squeal. They’re like baby pigs in the slaughterhouse, some of the girls here, the way they will be squealing all the time.”

The image of a girl, screaming with pleasure beneath the weight of Niall’s dense white body appeared before her eyes. But he was talking about how so many of the girls she knew, especially before she arrived at Radcliffe, responded to any new information. High-pitched. Loudly. She didn’t like it either. She’d never been able to bring herself to follow suit.

“Did you grow up on a farm, Niall?”

“Why are you asking?”

“You seem to think a lot about livestock. Heifers. Piglets.”

He laughed. “Come on. We’ll have something for the thirst.”

“There’s beer in the fridge.” She poked her feet into espadrilles. He was already over the stone wall and waiting by her little Ford Fiesta.

“No, not that.”

She drove in the dusk until they saw a cavernous liquor store, cars tethered around the front of it like nurslings around the teats of a sow. But she wasn’t like a squealing piglet any more than she was like a cow. She was different. She felt his compliment settle over her shoulders, around her nape, like a silken mantle that elevated her from all the others. He liked her impassivity. He liked her reserve and quiet. He liked all the things that were supposed to be stumbling blocks for her.

“Maybe you shouldn’t let her spend all that time alone up in her room, drawing,” Granny Fennelly had remarked to her parents when she was still in high school. “Get her to sign up for the school musical or something.” And her father and mother had guffawed at the very thought of Clare performing in public. But Niall wasn’t laughing at her.

“This will be the one,” Niall said, tipping his head towards the package store before she could pass it. “Have you any money on you?”

Neither the thin cotton tank top nor the Indian wrap skirt she’d been wearing had pockets. She hadn’t thought to fetch her wallet before climbing into the car. That meant she wouldn’t have ID to buy the liquor either. She was legal, but only just; no one would sell alcohol to her without first checking. Niall would have to go in. No one would think to card him.

She shuffled through the hair clips and sunglasses on the dashboard, coming up with a few coins. “I—”

“Keep the engine runnin’.”

There was a song on the radio she recognized from hearing it on the quad, and she tried to sing along as she waited, for distraction. But she didn’t know the words, other than “Celll-e-brate,” and she couldn’t sing well anyway and was scared he’d hear her. Another song followed on its heels, which she also recognized but didn’t know the words to either, other than something about “the border of Mexico.” All memories of another world, the one on campus.

Before the song could end, he had slipped back into the car. She shifted into gear and pulled out of the parking lot. He waited a few blocks before removing the half-pint of Jameson from his shirt front. He took a plug and put the top back on without offering her a sip. Instead, he settled into his seat and studied her profile.

“If you don’t have your wallet on you, you don’t have your driving permit on you, now, do you?” She shook her head, and he clicked his tongue. “Isn’t that illegal in the States, driving without your permit on your person?”

They drove another block in silence.

He screwed up his mouth, made a little popping sound. “That’s how people get caught, Clare. They don’t pay attention to the wee things. They get tripped up on something ejeet.”

“If I’d known what you wanted, I could have told you. Uncle Pat has Irish whiskey back at the house.” Her words came out so soft that she herself could barely hear them.

He heard her, though. He clicked his tongue again. “Can’t stroke my own uncle.”

He studied her a moment longer, then nodded, as though he’d made up his mind about something. She felt his hand take hold of her thigh. Heat spread through her leg, into her groin, through her abdomen, and she had to focus her energies on not pressing down on the accelerator pedal. Or letting it go altogether.

“But you’re all right,” he said. “Why don’t we go to the left up there? To the forest.”

His hand gripped her thigh. The liquor store had been a test. And she had passed it. He’d taken a risk for her because he’d wanted to know whether he could trust her. Heat rushed through her arms down to her fingers, up her neck into her cheeks, burning away the swelter of the evening. She put on her turn signal and rotated the steering wheel.

“Lovely quiet here,” he said.

He snapped off the car radio, even before she cut the engine. The evening was silent in the state park, so silent she imagined she could hear the trees breathing. She dropped her eyes down on his bare forearms. For the first time, she noticed that his pale skin was freckled.

“Voilà,” the assistant said, as though she’d just finished explaining something to a child. “J’ai fait un bon conditioning aussi.” She wrapped a towel around Clare’s shoulders and, with a solicitous gesture, gestured towards Marco’s hairdressing station.