Chapter 12

She spent more than an hour puttering around in her room, hanging up clothes and putting things away in drawers. She found that she was in no hurry to get to the beach, no hurry to do anything, in fact, and that surprised her. Usually she went at the smallest chores with dispatch and got where she was going as soon as possible.

When she'd finished with puttering, she debated with herself a moment before getting into her bikini: She had a new suit she'd bought during her after-noon in New York, right after her inoculation, and she didn't like bikinis, but right at the start it would give her more exposure to the sun. As well as to stares, if there were men on the beach, but she was used to that, bikini or no bikini. Angel Ass. Damn the silly boy who'd tagged her with that name, so long ago.

The bright blue Mediterranean was less than a hundred feet from the front of the hotel. As she walked slowly toward it, she had the feeling that she was dreaming. There was something unreal about the scene. It looked too much like color slides projected in a living room to make the neighbors envious. The sky was too blue, the wispy clouds too white, the sun too bright, the shrubbery too green, the water too sparkling. She thought of pinching herself, but decided against it. She bruised easily, and it showed in a bathing suit. Or when with people who wanted to be friends, like Rita and Chris. She wondered where they were this morning.

And then, there they were, coming toward her on the concrete walk up from the beach. They were fully clothed, in sandals and shorts, but they looked sleepy, Lynn noticed as they got closer.

"We went down to take a look at the beach before we got some coffee," Rita said. "Gorgeous."

"Did you sleep well?" Lynn asked. Maliciously. Chris had circles under his eyes that hadn't been there yesterday.

"We slept some," Chris said.

"After coffee we're going to rent a car and see what :there is to see around this part of Spain," Rita said. "Why don't you join us?"

"Thank you, but I'm going to get some sun, from now until lunch time," Lynn said. "Some other time I'd like to go driving and exploring with you."

"Any time," Chris said. "We're going to keep the car while we're here."

"See you later," she said, and moved on to the invitation of the clean, white sand and the cool, bright water beyond.

A couple of dozen people lay stretched out in an irregular row of chaise-type beach loungers, most of them in the shade of permanently placed, straw-thatched beach umbrellas. More than half of the loungers, she noticed, were men, some of them with-out wives or girlfriends by their sides; and as she walked along the sand along the row, she was aware of baritone comments, many of them clearly meant to be audible.

"Good Christ Almighty," she heard a man say, in a tone of prayerful awe, as she passed. "I'll give up everything. Martinis. The ponies. Gin rummy. Other broads. Smoking. If I can just go to heaven with that."

She tried not to smile, and walked steadfastly toward an empty chaise she'd spotted, next to the last one in the row.

"My mother never told me there were things lice that alive and walking around."

"Good God. They're climbing the walls at the monastery."

"Vows? What vows?"

"I'd climb a million stairways just to watch that girl take one little step."

"Think of the poor kids getting their kicks out of pot and hash and LSD."

"There's a trip that couldn't turn out bad."

"You wouldn't ever come back."

"I wouldn't want to."

When she got to the empty chaise, she found that Curt was on one side of it, Larry on the other.

"Looks like I'm surrounded by old acquaintances," she said, smiling at them.

"We've had a hell of a time saving this for you," Curt said. "Beating women off with sticks."

She let herself down and stretched out in the sun. God, it was hot. So early in the day, too.

"Where are the girls?" she asked.

"Resting," Larry said. "They like to rest a lot."

"More likely sitting around plotting your down-fall," Curt said.

"What for? They seemed like nice girls."

"They are nice girls. Who said they weren't? Cold noses, though. From Boston."

"It's just that they don't like competition," Larry said. 'They have no competitive spirit."

"That's Boston for you," Curt said. "Would you like a drink?"

"No thanks. It's too early."

She noticed that they both had long drinks sitting on their stomachs, each supported by one protective hand.

"It's almost eleven o'clock. And it's never too early to drink around here. Around the clock. Never bothers you."

"I'll find out later."

"You do drink, don't you?" Curt asked. He raised his head and turned toward her, looking worried.

"Sure," she said. "Don't let that Vermont business fool you."

"I'm trying not to," he said. "But you better get some of that sun oil on you. You'll be medium rare in no time."

"I forgot," she said, digging in her bag. She found the suntan lotion at the bottom of the bag, and care-fully anointed her face and arms and midriff, and then the front part of her legs.

"Now roll over," Curt said, carefully setting his drink in the sand. "I'll do your back."

"We'll do your back," Larry said, sitting up and looking over at Curt. "You selfish son of a bitch."

"You look tired," Curt said.

"Never that tired," Larry said. "Or they'd have to lead me out and shoot me."

"Not a bad idea," Curt said.

"Oh, shut up," Lynn said. "Go ahead and do my back." She rolled over onto her stomach and handed Curt the lotion.

They went to work on her back, Larry on her legs, Curt on her upper torso. Larry took special pains to see that her inner thighs were protected from the sun. She wriggled a little, but didn't say anything, until Curt started being protective about the area al-ready protected by the bottom strip of bikini, between her legs.

"The sun can't get to me there," she said, wriggling violently. "So you can stop rubbing me there."

"You never can tell about this Spanish sun," Curt said. "It penetrates everything." His oily hands were now moving across the soft mounds of her ass, under the light fabric.

"It's penetrated your mind," she said, and rolled over abruptly. "Thank you both."

"You're welcome," Curt said regretfully, settling back, reaching for his drink.

Larry sat upright where he was and finished what was left in his glass. "I think I'll go see how the girls are doing," he said.

"Good idea," Curt said.

"You trying to get rid of me?"

"Yes?

"Can't blame you a bit, old man," he said, and smiled at Lynn.

"Watch his left," he said, and got up and shuffled away through the sand, waving back over his shoulder.

""I'm sharing a room with him," Curt said. "Very old friend. But he can get to be a pain in the ass."

"I think he's very nice."

"Do you? I guess he can be, if he wants to. But don't trust him, Lynn. Never trust him for one sec. "But you I can trust?"

"Absolutely. Like an uncle."

She noticed a bulge at the crotch of his trunks that hadn't been there before.

"Some uncle," she said.

"What?"

"Nothing. What do you do in New York?" She knew it was a gauche question, but she wanted to change the subject.

"You mean what did I do in New York."

"Did?"

"I'm retired."

He had to be kidding.

"You've got a long wait for Social Security," she said.

""Thank you," he said. "But I really am retired, from the New York scene, anyway. For good, I hope."

She saw that he was serious.

"That's wonderful," she said. "To be able to afford to cut out at your age."

"I can afford it for a year or so, anyway. We'll see what the year brings in. Besides some disappointment. I expect that."

"What did you do in New York?" Now she was very curious, and didn't care about being gauche.

"You really want to hear about it?"

"Yes."

"Then you better let me get you a drink." He sat up, swallowed what was left of his drink, and got to his feet.

"All right," she said. Nothing wrong with a couple of drinks before lunch, she thought. She'd have to get Vermont out of her system.

"What'll you drink?"

"Whatever you're drinking."

"Just a wine cooler. Wine is the drink of the country, I guess, and when in Fuengirola, do as the Spaniards do."

"Sounds fine with me," she said. "With all the sun and sea and sand and all."

"Don't go away," he said, and went off toward the hotel, walking slowly in the bright sunlight. God, Lynn thought. You could forget that you'd ever seen a snow bank.

Curt came back, handed her a long, cold drink, and stretched out. She took a deep sip. The wine with soda ice was perfect. It went with the sea and the sky and the sun.

"Before we go into my life story," Curt said, "what do you do? In Delmont Vermont?"

"What did I do?"

"You retired, too?" He looked over at her. "At a senile seventeen?"

"I'm twenty-one. No, I'm not retired, but I was a librarian. A brand new librarian. It's what I took at school, library sciences. I graduated in June. But I took a leave of absence from my job for reasons of health."

"Reasons of health?" he said. "You're the healthiest looking goddamn specimen of young maiden-hood I've ever seen."

"Never mind that maidenhood bullshit," she said. "And never mind what reasons of health. Anyway, I'm not going back. To Vermont, anyway."

Curt looked at her for a long time without saying anything. Then he took a deep swallow and settled his glass comfortably on his flat stomach. He had a nice build, Lynn had noticed when he came back with the drinks. Lean. No fat on him at an age when most men were beginning to go soft around the middle. Not further down, though, she thought, and tried to push that train of thought from her mind immediately. Before it took root and started to grow.

"Well," he said, "to begin with, I'm a musician. A piano player. And maybe that's all I am. I intend to find out."

Lynn didn't know quite what to say, so she looked away from his face and at his feet. He had very long toes.

"Well," she said, "you have piano player's toes." He wriggled them and laughed, then raised one foot.

"I have, you know?" he said. "Voltaire once said any man who can look at his own feet without laughing has no sense of humor, but I think Voltaire must have had funny-looking feet. I can look at my feet without laughing. I have very good-looking feet."

She looked at them carefully.

"You have beautiful feet," she said. She was quite sincere. He did have beautiful feet.

"Anyway, my feet aside, I'm a piano player. I gigged around a lot after getting out of school, and got a small combo together. We played a lot of dances and weekend affairs, and had a couple of extended gigs at hotels. But it's really a hell of a way to make a living."

"I bet it is. Should be fun, though. You must meet a lot of . . . " she almost said "interesting people." Vermont. "You must meet a lot of flaky people?'

"Outright crazies," he said. "Anyway, I formed a partnership with another guy, and we went into business, making musical radio and TV commercials. He supplied the words, mostly, and I supplied the music."

"Sounds like a great business."

"You meet a lot of crazies in that business, too. Ugly crazies."

"I suppose so," Lynn said dubiously. He was talking about another world. Another planet.

"Anyway, I had a great partner. Wrote great lyrics, for a man with a glass eye."

"He has a glass eye?" Lynn was intrigued. She'd never known anybody with a glass eye, or anyone who even knew anybody with a glass eye. Spain had a lot to offer a girl.

"Yup. Lost his left eye as a kid when he walked between a couple of other kids dueling with golden-rod stems."

"Gee," Lynn said. She didn't want to sound so girlish, but she was impressed. Goldenrod stems she knew about. Radio and television commercials were something else.

"We had a couple of theme songs, my partner and I."

"What were they?"

"I Only Have Eye for You. That was one of them."

Lynn giggled. She hated herself, sounding like such a goddamn silly young girl.

"What was the other one?"

"Jeeper Peeper."

She didn't giggle this time. The song was from somewhere before her time.

"You ever write any songs yourself?" she asked. "Sure. Mostly sentimental ballads."

"Like what?"

"Up to my Ass in Love. That was one of them."

"That's enough to choke anybody up," Lynn said, getting a grip on herself. No more giggling. "Any others?"

"Who Gives a Shit About Spring."

"Any more?"

"Well, there's my favorite. It never went any-where on the juke boxes, and Lawrence Welk wouldn't touch it."

"What was that?"

"I hesitate to tell you."

"Tell me anyway."

"Don't Fuck Around with Love."

She thought that one over for a minute.

"I like that," she said. "But it's too damned pro.. found to be popular."

He laughed.

"You put your finger on it," he said. "Let's go for a swum.

"That's a very good idea," she said.