Burnt Offerings (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) (14 page)

He half-turned to her. “That’s what I’ve been thinking lately.”

She made the pause long enough to seem contrite. “I’m sorry, darling. I got involved as usual.” Her head touched his shoulder. “Be patient with me. You know what I’m like with a new toy.” She caught a view of the house behind them, distant but still massive, with the floodlights fanning upward and washing the gray shingles white.

“I don’t know what you’re doing,” he said, still staring at the water. “Christ, it’s a rented house, it’s two months . . .”

“Don’t remind me.” He had said it casually, with no particular emotion, but there was resentment under the long pauses, she felt, and her closeness seemed discomforting to him. She wrapped her arm around his, tighter, and there was no response. “Is that what’s behind all the heavy thoughts? The fact that I’ve been spending a lot of time with the house, not enough with you?”

“There are no heavy thoughts, Marian.”

“Sure about that?”

“Sure.” It was his drop-it tone, and he punctuated it with a little pressure around her arm, like a reassuring pat. He moved away from her, walking along the edge of the pool and looking at the water as though something had been lost in it and might suddenly reappear, luminous in the darkness. He stopped. “It’s a while since I’ve been down here,” he said.

“I know.” It was that too, then; still. The scene of the imaginary crime. An inflection could trigger it all over again. She walked up to him. “Silly, isn’t it? I mean, how many people
dream
of having their own pool?”

“And how many people . . . ?” he thought about adding, but dropped it and said, “Filter’s going,” instead.

“Yes,” Marian said.

“How’d you manage that?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. Pushed a button, turned a knob, and gave it one hell of a kick. Sheer coincidence.” She waited for some kind of skeptical reaction; when it didn’t come she continued, more confidently: “I also polished the chrome, plucked the weeds and scrubbed the concrete.” She sniffed loudly. “Smell it? The lemon oil?” At least he was smiling. “It’s lovely now. We really ought to think about floodlights or something. Like that pool in Bermuda. Remember?” She wrapped her arms around him again, swaying. “Perfumed nights. Water lapping sensuously in the dark. Hot stuff, all of it.” Her hands had slipped under the robe, touching his stomach; she rested her face against his back. “Benjie?” she said. “A deal? You don’t lock me out and I won’t lock you out. No secrets, no dark thoughts. That’s for mushrooms. What is it, baby? Just once more.”

She could feel him take a deep breath, under her hands, and then feel the sound of his voice against her face. “I wanted to come down here,” he said, “just to see if I could.”

“And?”

“I could, it turns out. That’s some kind of progress, isn’t it?”

“I thought there’d been more. I thought we’d forgotten all about it.”

“We tried. Sometimes . . . sometimes I get this feeling there’s a small button somewhere on me. Red, if I want to elaborate it. And on this button there’s a label . . . ‘Self-destruct.’ And it’s got to be on the bottom of my feet or on my rump, or someplace where it gets used a hell of a lot.”

“I haven’t found it,” she said. Her hands slid under the top of his suit. “And I know all about the bottom of your feet.” She squeezed a bit of flesh and said, “You’re getting flabby,” which made him turn with a nice, deflated smile. “That’s all I’m worried about.”

He put his arms around her and pulled her closer. “And you’re getting grayer by the day.”

“That’s middle age for you.”

“Poor Marian, poor little hausfrau – ”

“Don’t make fun.” She buried her face against his neck. How much grayer? She hadn’t looked today.

He shook his head sympathetically and she could feel the muscles in his neck tighten. “You really stuck yourself with something of a kook. A loser.”

“You’re not a loser. As for being a kook, well, that makes two of us.”

“That it does,” he said.

“It
is
better though, isn’t it, Benjie – kook to kook, if that’s all that’s available? Better than moody walks in the dark?”

He drew back from her, looked directly at her, and said, “It’s better. When it’s available.”

“It’s always available.” She snapped the elastic on his suit. “Your suit’s on. Why not jump in something wet?” He looked at the pool. “It’s just water. Honest.”

He let her push the robe off his shoulders.

“Go on, Ben. It’ll be lovely.”

He turned and she held the robe while he pulled his arms out of it and went to the edge of the pool. He was pinching his nose nervously. She watched him hesitate, draw in a mouthful of air, hesitate again, and finally plunge in, hitting the dark water as hard as he could. “That’s it,” she said, relieved, “that’s it.”

He surfaced at the other end, a dim, sputtering head, and two white shoulders. He pushed himself forward and swam back, cutting through the water almost soundlessly. Marian met him at the edge as he lifted himself out, throwing his right leg over the side.

“Better, right?” she said.

“Better.” He was shivering, breathing hard.

She crouched beside him and wiped his face with the robe.

“It’s warm,” he said, “soft.” He lay back, pillowing himself on the robe. Marian ran her finger down his chest, drawing letters lightly.

“And simple, wasn’t it, after all?”

He was still drawing deep breaths, his chest rising and falling rapidly. He said, “No.”

She lay on her side, beside him, with her face on his wet shoulder. They were silent a while and then Marian mentioned the apartment and the piano and the bowling balls on the ceiling, and wouldn’t it be funny, and appropriate, to look back at the house and find the Supervisor perched in one of the windows, and did Ben really miss any of it, and of course he didn’t. What was there to miss? What, when you came down to it, had they left behind that was worth missing, measured against what they’d found here? And whatever they said sounded intimate and secret in the silence, and true, with nothing but that enormous sky over them. She could feel him loosening, and herself as well, and it was like those first dips in the bay for him, refreshing and therapeutic. So therapeutic that his hand started wandering over her body, under her shirt, and he swung his right leg over her.

“None of that stuff now,” she said.

He said, “Why not?”

“Because we’re relaxing.”

He kept his hand where it was, with an occasional foray under the bra which she didn’t resist immediately.

“Don’t you miss it occasionally?” he asked.

“Let you know when I do, okay?” She slapped his hand and sat up, shaking her hair loose and then smoothing it back against her temples. “God, that water looks good,” she said.

“Why don’t you try it?”

“I don’t have my suit.”

He raised himself on one elbow and played with the back of her hair. “Go bare-assed,” he whispered loudly.

“Ben!” She looked at the house as though it might have overheard him.

“Why not? There’s no one to see.”

“I couldn’t.”

“It’s a great feeling.”

She thought about it briefly, inclining her head like a scale. “It’s late,” she said, rejecting the idea. “We really ought to be getting back.”

“Getting back to what? Christ, I really am competing with a house.” He sat up and scrutinized her. “You’re a prude at heart. That’s something I never knew before.”

“I’m not a prude.”

“Then go bare-assed.”

She sighed, relenting a little.

“What if I go first?” Without waiting for a reply, he reached down and pulled his trunks off. The pavement was cool under him, and smooth and even, which didn’t seem to strike him as odd. “That make it easier for you?”

“This is awfully adolescent,” she said, just on the edge of a protective giggle.

“Well,” Ben said, “consider the source.” He reached for her shirt and started to undo the buttons. Marian offered no resistance, but she found herself stealing self-conscious looks at the house and the two windows at the very end with their soft red glow. Her shirt was open. She looked down, said, “Oh, why not?” finally decisive, and slipped out of it; then stood up and took off the shoes and jeans, turning her back to the house while she undid her bra.

“Everything,” Ben ordered when she hesitated. “Drawers too.”

“Will it aid in the therapy?”

“It’ll aid a lot.”

She shivered when she got them off and leaped into the pool clumsily. Ben grimaced and shook his head, feeling the slap of the water against his own stomach. When she surfaced undamaged he called, “Okay?”

“Fine,” she called back breathlessly. He dove in.

She was gliding toward him. “Sometimes,” she said, raising her face out of the water, “you manage a good idea or two.”

“Feel liberated?”

“Very.”

She turned gracefully and began to swim the length of the pool, feeling the water, just nicely cool, between her legs. Ben swam beside her, turned with her under the diving board, and then quickened his stroke, fading in front of her. Marian swam facing the house, barely stirring the water. He was waiting in the center of the pool, the water just below his chest. He bent when she reached him and leaned back, letting her body slide against his, and then wrapping his arms around her.

“All we need,” he said, “is something lush on the soundtrack.”

She relaxed against him. “Wonderful, isn’t it?” she said, a little winded; “not having to dodge bodies or contend with transistors? No beefy types kicking sand in your face and winning me. Ever think we’d live in such luxury?”

“I never gave it much thought,” Ben replied.

“Why would they give it up, I wonder – the Allardyces?”

Ben made a sound of distaste at the mention of the name. He had put them very effectively out of mind.

“They’ve been very good to us,” Marian said in protest. “Where are they, do you think?”

“I never gave that much thought,” Ben replied.

He raised her to a standing position and moved back a bit, passing his hands over her shoulders and then down to her breasts. She watched him without moving, part of her enjoying the sensation and the novelty of being naked beside him in the pool, another part self-conscious and very much aware of the house behind them.

“Seems like an awfully long time between visits,” he said quietly. “I’ve missed them.”

He pressed closer. Her hair was flat and straight, her eyes larger and bluer, even in the dim light. He gave her a long, quiet look, very close now, and kissed her. She felt him moving against her, and as the touch became more pleasurable and seductive, the uneasiness welled up inside her. When he tried to kiss her again, her arms stiffened against his chest.

“None of that stuff now,” she whispered.

“Who’s to see?”

Her eyes narrowed a bit, playing suspicious. “There wasn’t any kind of ulterior motive in all this, was there?”

“Like what?” he asked innocently. He bent low, bringing the water up to their necks. “Just a little harmless water sport, something to get the circulation going.”

“My circulation’s fine.”

“It’s mine that I’m worried about.”

She wriggled free and swam a few sidestrokes away from him, while he called, “Hey!” and “Come on, babe, why ruin the mood?”

“What one of us needs, I suspect, is a nice cold shower. Great for the circulation.” She slapped water in his direction and backed away toward the polished rails.

Ben turned his face and held his hands out against the spray. “Tell you a little secret,” he said; “one of us has been taking nice cold showers. Lots of them lately.”

“Poor baby.” She scooped one last handful at him and pulled herself up out of the pool while he lunged and caught at the water. He called her back in and she said, “Not on your life.” She scraped the water off her shoulders and arms and began to wring out her hair, leaning sideways, with her back to the house. Ben wound his arms around the rails, which were firm, and if he was aware of anything unusual, the game Marian seemed to be playing halted any comment.

“You were the one with romantic ideas,” he reminded her. “Bermuda?”

“That,” she said, gesturing toward the middle of the pool, “is not what we did in Bermuda.”

“A chaste kiss,” Ben said; “What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s not the kiss that stirred me; it’s the underwater liberty.”

“Christ, you sound like a schoolgirl. We’re married, remember?”

She picked up his robe and asked, “Can I use this to dry?”

He climbed out while she rubbed herself. She was bending, drying her legs. Ben came closer, the water rolling down his body, and pulled her up gently by the elbow.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “I’m not saying it’s got to be fireworks after nine years, but – at least a vestige of excitement. Hell, we’ve got a year or two before the climacteric.”

She let him brush the wet strands of hair away from her face and pass his thumbs over her eyebrows.

“I keep trying to figure out what it is that’s made me so repulsive all of a sudden.”

“You’re not repulsive,” she said, “you’re incredibly sexy.” She gave him a quick kiss on the mouth, and to Ben it was like a pacifier plugging an infant.

“Do you mean that, Marian?”

“I mean it.”

“And the – what do we call it? The distance . . . ?”

She lowered her eyes to the robe bundled in her hand. “If I’ve been out of it a little . . . I’m sorry.” She looked up again and smiled. “Change of water maybe, change of clime.”

“Any chance of getting a little more reassurance than that?” His hands were moving against her back, and Marian responded by nodding at the terrycloth robe.

“Let me finish drying,” she said. “I’m all goosebumps.”

“Sure it’s the cold?”

“Positive.”

His hands continued to caress her back. “Ben honey,” she started to protest, “this is hardly the place – ”

“You name it then. Where
is
the place?” She raised her eyes and sighed. Ben’s voice became very soft and pleading. “A little reassurance, Marian . . . ?” His arms tightened around her and his lips brushed her neck and then opened on her mouth. Marian drew in her breath sharply and turned her face away from him. “You’re impossible,” she said, trying to make it sound light and teasing, and giving his back a weak hammering with one fist.

“Just a little,” he said again. His mouth was on her ear. She tilted her head and brought her shoulder up against the side of her face.

“Behave,” she said, with that same uneasy lightness, and what did he have to do to make her take him seriously, to realize that he did need her, did need the reassurance?

He started to guide her off the concrete ledge and onto the grass, where it was soft and darker. He could feel her stiffen and a tightness creep into her voice. “Ben, please,” she said, “I really don’t want to.”

“Why not?”