The Forgotten Hours(29)
No one else is paying any attention, but Katie can’t move her eyes away. Surrounded by cheering and laughing, by the rising voices of people fueled by too many sweet drinks and too much beer, Lulu and her father appear to be in a room all by themselves. Lulu takes a step back, and the noises swell again. Katie’s father accepts a beer from Charlie and drains it in one long series of gulps, his Adam’s apple jerking up and down. When he is done, he wipes a sleeve over his mouth. He has the look of a man caught in a desert.
Though Lulu has turned away, it feels as if she’s looking squarely at Katie, daring her in some way—but daring her to do what, she does not know. And then she is gone again.
How long does Katie keep searching for Lulu that night—was it long enough? The heat presses down like one blanket too many. Out on the diving board, a body radiates a vaguely steely light as it rises and falls through the air. There is a short shriek, and the person jumps in the water with a splash. It’s not Lulu. There are people on the float and by the docks, but Katie can’t tell if she is among them or not. Someone has put on “Who’s That Lady” by the Isley Brothers. “Look, yeah, but don’t touch,” an off-key male voice sings from the bar area.
“A swim might be kinda fun?” Jack asks Katie uncertainly.
She shuts her eyes, and sparkles streak over her inner lids. Getting cold and wet seems like the last thing on earth they should be doing right then.
Jack presses close to her. “Listen, come on,” he says so quietly she has to strain to make out his words. “Let’s get out of here, okay?” His fingers curl around hers, and he pulls her over toward the bike rack.
And Lulu—should Katie just forget her? Maybe Brad is with her now; maybe they are back inside, dancing together. He is too old for her, but it would be exciting to have a college kid pay attention to you. Maybe she is behind them on the deck, trying to persuade someone to give her more free booze. Or she might be in the boathouse, bumming a cigarette.
“Grab a bike,” Jack says, rattling them loose from the rack. “We’ll bring them back later.”
Some of the bikes are neatly filed side by side, wheels freshly pumped with air, children’s stickers adorning the handlebars; others are disintegrating, leaning against the spokes of the rack, pedals dislodged, seats askew. She hesitates before yanking one out. The pull she feels toward Jack is thrilling, elemental, and she can’t let it go even though she knows she should. She sits down on the bike, and the rims kiss the hard-packed earth as the air hisses out of slits in the rubber. Casting the bike to one side, she grabs another and bounces up and down lightly on the seat. Jack and Katie share a glance and grin at each other.
It is then that she makes her decision: good to go. She could choose to stay at the lake so that whenever Lulu decides to stop being angry, Katie will be there. But she feels so free in the humid night air, flushed with excitement and infused with a lingering, mellow energy. She decides to take what she wants and pushes Lulu from her mind. Is that when everything really starts to go wrong?
The woods echo with the thump of their wheels bouncing off sudden dips in the earth. Riding through the night air is exhilarating. Everything seems at once dreamy and intense, as though there is more of everything, an abundance awaiting her: more love, more textures, more heat, more sensation.
The Dolans’ house sits at the top of an incline on the far side of the lake. In the light from the garage, Jack’s body on the whippet-thin bike casts long shadows that melt into her as she draws close. He reaches up above the door and fishes a key from the ledge. The house is one of the oldest in the area, immortalized in a black-and-white 1880s photograph hanging in the clubhouse. As with most of the houses in the club, Katie has seen it hundreds of times from the outside but has never been inside. Once they enter, they are thieves, uninvited guests, intruders—what Jack and Katie are doing alone in this closed-up house is forbidden, nerve racking. The outside light clicks off, and the darkness is so dense that for a second she can see nothing at all: no furniture, no windows, no Jack. It takes her a while to trace the windows with her eyes, the night sky outside a slightly different shade of black.
“What happens if we get caught?” she whispers.
“They’re gone already. Back to Connecticut. I’m the only one who knows where the key is.” He takes her hand again, and this time his skin is cooler, more papery, and she grasps it a little tighter, brings her body close until her hip touches his. They stand together until their breathing slows and their eyes adjust. Then he tugs on her hand slightly, and she follows him up the curving wooden stairs.
He stops on the landing at the top of the stairs, and she bumps into him. The trees outside the window are silhouetted against faraway stars. Their upper bodies touch, Katie’s breasts tucked under his rib cage and her head reaching the crook of his neck. She could lay her head on his chest easily, and they would fit together perfectly, her cheekbone in the hollow above his collarbone, but instead she holds her head up and looks, as he does, out the window. There is something tense and beautiful in this holding apart and touching at the same time.
Katie breaks the spell first by looking up at him. His face is angled and earnest, and she sees that he will always have a boyish quality to him. The slight curve of his shoulders seems to come from some invisible weight he carries, and she thinks, I don’t know him at all; he’s full of secrets.