I had ridden the rat into a copse of trees and covered it with the camouflaged rain-fly of the small dome tent that I now used as a blanket over the shady spot. I had sprayed odorless insecticide all around the edges to discourage any ants. An occasional vehicle would come by and go off across the bridge, so I liked the idea of us not being too noticeable. Just in case.
But well into my third sandwich I was half convinced that there wasn't going to be a 'just in case.' I was sitting on my rolled-up sleeping bag that was atop my backpack, watching Moira sway like an exhausted dervish on the riverbank, a neglected coil of smoked ham wrapped in a slice of whole wheat in one lilting hand, singing senseless lyrics, her back to me, looking at her silhouette in the shallow water.
That doesn't sound very ominous; but I couldn't see her face. I didn't know, until she turned her face toward me, that her eyes were now like dark blue marbles: cold and lifeless. She had stopped singing. The marbles were poised to propel themselves at me, as if to knock me away, out of the circle. Then she hurried up to me, leaning forward and holding the ham-stuffed slice of bread for me to take. There was one bite out of it. For some reason the sight of her teeth-prints hit me with a poignant force. Her expression was strange, like that of a tourist giving food to a starving native.
I knew what she was going to do. I imagined her doing it before she actually started. The shoes and socks came off first, then the jeans, then the snug cotton pullover of variegated blue, with the low V-neck and lacy cuffs at the short sleeves. I hadn't imagined the yellow bra and pink panties; in my mind they had been white. She kept her underthings on and very cautiously stepped down into the river as though she were lowering herself into the maw of a voracious beast. It was an offering of sorts. Like a ritual. She wasn't doing this to bathe or refresh herself. I wanted to think she was deliberately enticing me, but no; that idea was something that floated on her motive. This was all about her. I was just an audience, one that was expected to interact a little.
I stood up with my bottle half full of Mountain Dew and went up to the edge of the bank. Moira was hunkered down in the secretive dark water folding her bra and setting it on a patch of grass. She weighed it down with the second rock she selected, the cleanest one. Then she stared up at me with a look full of twisted memories, though at the time I thought she was just being playfully mysterious. I didn't have anything to say. The blue marbles were churning out messages I couldn't read. Then she was turning around and slapping the surface with her palms, spanking the water for its naughty inferences.
I don't remember what she said exactly. I didn't understand any part of it except that she was trying to tell me something about her past. She would ask me to strip and join her, but in nearly the same breath she mentioned how much she hated being touched when in water. She would smile inbetween expressions of anger and once or twice her look was the blackest sorrow.
My own feelings were a study in contrast, not unlike Moira's, maybe. I was sexually aroused but distracted by an irritating puzzlement. The satyr in me was struggling to throw the irritation off its shoulders. I finally said, "I've a towel. Come up out of there." And I went to fetch the towel from my backpack.
I was on one knee pulling out the towel when Moira put her wet arms around my neck and laid her cheek on my bandanna. The combination of wet coolness and body heat was intoxicating. That's a sharp pang in my memory. I turned, putting an arm over her head and around her bare waist. She did the 'melting surrender' thing, so I eased her down on her back and would have given her a brutal kiss but for the dolorous look on her face. "I wonder," she said, "if I'll ever be glad it happened?"
"Who was it?" I asked, hopelessly. Her eyes flashed at me. But she said, as if giving me the time of day, "Josie's mother. When I was ten she gave me a bath. It was a sleep-over at her house." Then, angrily, "I don't like questions."
"Life's full of questions, Moira, get used to it."
Frankly, I don't know if I really said that or if I have wished I would have said it; wished so often that it does seem that I said it. Nothing very profound anyway; but I'm afraid that I didn't say anything like it. But I will never forget the damp sour taste of her lips.
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