'Salem's Lot(42)

'I'll just get a jacket,' Susan murmured to Ben, and turned up the back walk. She was wearing a red play skirt, thigh-high, and she exposed a lot of leg going up the steps to the door. Ben watched, knowing Ann was watching him watch. Her husband was damping the charcoal fire.

'How long do you intend to stay in the Lot, Ben?' Ann asked, showing polite interest.

'Until the book gets written, anyway,' he said. 'After that, I can't say. It's very lovely in the mornings, and the air tastes good when you breathe it.' He smiled into her eyes. 'I may stay longer.'

She smiled back. 'It gets cold in the winters, Ben. Awfully cold.'

Then Susan was coming back down the steps with a light jacket thrown over her shoulders. 'Ready? I'm going to have a chocolate. Look out, complexion.'

'Your complexion will survive,' he said, and turned to Mr and Mrs Norton. 'Thank you again.'

'Anytime,' Bill said. 'Come on over with a six-pack tomorrow night, if you want. We'll make fun of that goddamn Yastrzemski.'

'That would be fun,' Ben said, 'but what'll we do after the second inning?'

His laughter, hearty and full, followed them around the corner of the house.

2

'I don't really want to go to Spencer's,' she said as they went down the hill. 'Let's go to the park instead.'

?'What about muggers, lady?' he asked, doing the Bronx for her.

'In the Lot, all muggers have to be in by seven. It's a town ordinance. And it is now exactly eight-oh-three.' Darkness had fallen over them as they walked down the hill, and their shadows waxed and waned in the streetlights.

'Agreeable muggers you have,' he said. 'No one goes to the park after dark?'

'Sometimes the town kids go there to make out if they can't afford the drive-in,' she said, and winked at him. 'So if you see anyone skulking around in the bushes, look the other way.'

They entered from the west side, which faced the Municipal Building. The park was shadowy and a little dreamlike, the concrete walks curving away under the leafy trees, and the wading pool glimmering quietly in the refracted glow from the streetlights. If anyone was here, Ben didn't see him.

They walked around the War Memorial with its long lists of names, the oldest from the Revolutionary War, the newest from Vietnam, carved under the War of 1812. There were six home town names from the most recent conflict, the new cuts in the brass gleaming like fresh wounds. He thought: This town has the wrong name. It ought to be Time. And as if the action was a natural outgrowth of the thought, he looked over his shoulder for the Marsten House, but the bulk of the Municipal Building blocked it out.

She saw his glance and it made her frown. As they spread their jackets on the grass and sat down (they had spurned the park benches without discussion), she said, 'Mom said Parkins Gillespie was checking up on you. The new boy in school must have stolen the milk money, or something like that.'

'He's quite a character,' Ben said.

'Mom had you practically tried and convicted.' It was said lightly, but the lightness faltered and let something serious through.

'Your mother doesn't care for me much, does she?'

'No,' Susan said, holding his hand. 'It was a case of dislike at first sight. I'm very sorry.'

'It's okay,' he said. 'I'm batting five hundred anyway.'

'Daddy?' She smiled. 'He just knows class when he sees it.' The smile faded. 'Ben, what's this new book about?'

'That's hard to say.' He slipped his loafers off and dug his toes into the dewy grass.

'Subject-changer.'

'No, I don't mind telling you.' And he found, surpris?ingly, that this was true. He had always thought of a work in progress as a child, a weak child, that had to be protected and cradled. Too much handling would kill it. He had refused to tell Miranda a word about Conway's Daughter or Air Dance, although she had been wildly curious about both of them. But Susan was different. With Miranda there had always been a directed sort of probing, and her questions were more like interrogations.

'Just let me think how to put it together,' he said.

'Can you kiss me while you think?' she asked, lying back on the grass. He was forcibly aware of how short her skirt was; it had given a lot of ground.

'I think that might interfere with the thought processes,' he said softly. 'Let's see.'

He leaned over and kissed her, placing one hand lightly on her waist. She met his mouth firmly, and her hands closed over his. A moment later he felt her tongue for the first time, and he met it with his own. She shifted to return his kiss more fully, and the soft rustle of her cotton skirt seemed loud, almost maddening.

He slid his hand up and she arched her breast into it, soft and full. For the second time since he had known her he felt sixteen, a head-busting sixteen with everything in front of him six lanes wide and no hard traveling in sight.

'Ben?'

'Yes.'

'Make love to me? Do you want to?'

'Yes,' he said. 'I want that.'

'Here on the grass,' she said.

'Yes.'

She was looking up at him, her eyes wide in the dark. She said, 'Make it be good.'

'I'll try.'

'Slow,' she said. 'Slow. Slow. Here . . . '