The River at Night(22)
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The pool opened before us like a granite ice-cream scoop buried in the center of the stand of trees, a perfectly round hole three yards across and deep enough for Rory to cannonball, naked, from its slippery edges. All of us watched, stunned silent, as his compact bullet of a body displaced enough water to soak us through.
Pia went first, of course. She whipped off her T-shirt like a guy, grabbing the hem and pulling it over her head without regard for hair or makeup. Next came the hiking shoes. Stumbling this way and that, she kicked them off, barely untying the laces; then socks, belt-shorts-and-panties in one sweep; last, her bra—the center clasp of which she flipped open—then flung the thing from herself as though it had been burning her flesh. For a moment she reached her arms out skyward, as if acknowledging some sort of award, then, giggling but without an ounce of self-consciousness, she dropped her arms and began to pick her way along the mossy banks to the edge of the pool, grabbing at branches to steady herself.
Rory watched, bobbing and smiling from the center of the oasis.
Pia, naked. She was as beautiful as we had imagined her, the kind of athletic woman’s body that becomes nearly impossible after a certain age: toned arms; flat, nearly concave belly; not an ounce of back fat or bounce at the hips, instead just taut, curved muscle defining thighs and the backs of her legs. She found a toehold at the lip of the bowl and jumped, laughing, hair flying up and set ablaze by the vestiges of light, pale limbs flashing. In moments she popped out of the water and flipped her hair back, dog-paddling toward us.
“Come on, guys, get in here! It’s perfect!”
“It’s okay,” Rory said, watching us. He turned onto his back and began to float. “I have five sisters. I’m harmless.”
Rachel held her hands in tight fists, jammed into her hips. In her face I read disapproval, rage, maybe disappointment? She was another who surprised me sometimes . . . then she said, “Oh, what the fuck,” and began to unbutton her shirt.
11
As Rachel tried the slow-and-painful method of entry into the dark water, lowering herself in bit by bit, I heard the thump of shoes on rocks and several unzippings. Sandra stood shivering as she faced the forest, wearing only her high-waisted panties and a beige bra, her hair a shining black shroud.
“Hey, Loo,” I said, sipping wine from the plastic box. “Seriously, you don’t have to do this, you know.” I might have belched right then. “I’m not going to do it.”
Pia paddled over to us. “That’s just crap, Win. She should do this. You have to do this. It’s freaking paradise. It’s why we’re here.”
Sandra finished undressing, arranging her clothes in a neat pile. She turned, at first covering herself with her hands, but then let them drop. One full breast glowed in the moonlight, the nipple a dark halo; where the other had been, a pale pink scar crossed her chest. Another horizontal scar, from the cesarean she’d had with her son, Ethan, glowed faintly whitish in the moonlight just above her pubic bone. Though she was shorter and smaller than the rest of us, her body was full and soft, a stranger to diets or the gym. To me there was something wonderful about that. She stared straight ahead, as if obeying some far-off command, then calmly stepped into the water and disappeared with the smallest splash imaginable. In seconds she burst forth gasping and cursing.
Well, I had to go in now. Just as Rory had predicted, the moon had risen full and huge and shone down on us with papery blue light. The black water reflected it back in pieces.
“Hey, Rory?” I asked. “Do you think there are leeches in here?”
The women squealed until he answered, “No way! They’re only in still water. This is fed by the river. You’re fine.”
Rachel rubbed at the caked-on mud that still covered her neck and arms. Birds cooed and chittered above us, making sleepy night sounds. I dipped my hand in the cool, soft water, swirled it around, then started to take off my clothes. I turned away to do it, thought of everyone looking at my fat ass, then laughed out loud because I realized I didn’t care.
I’ve known several kinds of nakedness: moments of pride for whatever allure youth had granted my body, or—later—blushing mortification at my imperfections, but never the sort where I was outside in the Maine woods in early summer, with my friends and one strange man, at night, in a glacial pothole in a river . . . and I have to say it was a sensual-yet-easy nudity. There was the wild beauty of where we were, but we all looked how we looked and so what; the water so delicious you could have bottled and sold it as an elixir of health and happiness; the temperature on the shivery side but perfect to erase the shellac from a sweaty day of hiking in humid heat. I wondered, why did I ever doubt this trip would be the best thing I ever did?
“I want to hike the Appalachian Trail, maybe next year,” I heard Pia say to Rory as I came up from a rinse.
“Me too,” he said. “After I graduate, maybe. I hear it really changes you, being alone like that for months and months.”
Pia rested in the water at the rim of the pool near him, her small breasts half in, half out of the water. “But don’t you run into people on the trail, maybe end up hiking with them?”
He shrugged. Beads of water fell off his tight coils of hair, rolled down his beautiful shoulders as he launched himself from the perimeter of the bowl, a slow breast stroke, his leonine head high out of the water. “It happens. But unless you plan to do the trip with someone, you’re on your own.”