Chapter 13

On her way to have lunch with Curt, after showering and changing into a dress for the dining room, Lynn ran into Chris and Rita. They were coming up the ramp leading to the walkway to the rooms, just back from their drive.

"This is a great country," Rita said. "Judging from what we saw of it in an hour and a half."

"Will you have lunch with us?" Chris asked.

"I'm meeting a man I was talking to on the beach this morning. Why don't you join us?"

Chris started to answer with a fast yes, but Rita cut him off.

"No, thank you," she said. "You go ahead. You work fast, for a country girl." She smiled when she said it.

"I was only talking to him on the beach. He seems like a nice guy. Plays piano. Has piano player's toes, too. Wants to do some composing over here."

"That all he wants to do while he's here?" Chris asked.

"That's mostly what he talked about this morning. Very funny guy, incidentally. You'll like him."

"Watch these funny fellas," Chris said darkly.

"Oh, shut up," Rita said.

"How long do you plan to stay in Spain?" Lynn asked, as Curt was stabbing at his grapefruit.

"As long as I can stand it. I'm looking for some kind of cottage or shack or little house. I don't need a hacienda. I can get a small place very cheaply, they tell me."

"So I've heard, too."

"How long do you intend to stay?"

"I have an open-end reservation here at the hotel, I guess. But I have no idea, really. I'm in no hurry to go anywhere or do anything. I just wanted to get away from that job in that town as fast as possible, for as long as possible. Like forever."

"Why the sudden revulsion for your job and for Vermont?" Curt asked.

"It's a long story."

"Tell me some time."

"I will," Lynn said. But she doubted it.

"I'm going to spend the afternoon looking for a place to live," Curt said, over coffee. "I've rented a small Spanish car--a Fiat, really, but in this country they go under the name of Seat--to get around in. Would you like to come along?"

"I can't today. I promised some friends of mine that I'd spend the afternoon with them on the beach. Sopping up more wine, I suppose. They seem to like to drink." It was only a small lie. Lynn didn't like the idea of house-hunting with a man four hours after she'd met him.

"That's too bad. I wish you could come.'

"So do I." She surprised herself again. She meant it.

"How about having dinner with me tonight? That's a pretty expansive offer--on the plan I'm under, dinner's on the house, like breakfast. They don't call me Zircon Jim Brady for nothing.'

Lynn laughed. If he was nothing else, Curt was funny. She needed somebody funny, after Delmont. There was nothing funny about Delmont, except from a great distance. Like from Mars.

"Sure," she said. "Love to. What time?"

"Meet me in the bar around seven?"

"Fine," she said.

After lunch she took a nap in her room. A siesta. Something about Spain, this part of it anyway, the constant, soft, warm breeze, maybe, made her feel ready to sleep any time.

When she woke up she found that her bikini, hung over the railing of the little balcony outside her room, was already bone dry, and she put it on and walked down to the beach, still feeling sleepy, but knowing that a swim in the clear, buoyant water would wake her.

Chris and Rita were there ahead. of her, stretched out in the sun, glistening with fresh oil. She smeared herself carefully and stretched out on the empty chaise next to theirs, in the shade of one of the big beach umbrellas.

"Long lunch," Chris said, looking at her lazily. "Have a noonsie with your new friend?"

He sounded faintly jealous, Lynn thought.

"Goddamn it, Chris," Rita said. "Behave yourself."

"No, I didn't have a noonsie with my new friend. Or with anybody else's friend. I took a nap, known locally as a siesta. This sure is a great country for siestas. They could be habit-forming."

"Taking naps alone is bad for the complexion," Chris said. "Siestas, too."

"What do you do in New York, Christ?" Lynn asked. The same gauche question she'd asked Curt earlier that day, but anything to change the subject. Chris was acting as if she were depriving him of something, the jackass. Him and his "just being friendly" on the plane.

"I work for an advertising agency." He named the agency. It sounded like a big one, with all the names, but Lynn didn't recognize any of them.

"What do you do there?"

"He's what's called an art director, if that means anything to you. He makes layouts."

"Layouts?"

"Designs," Chris said. "It's my job to make an advertising message look as intriguing, as appealing, and as attractive as possible." He sounded like a textbook for a moment. "I do my best to further the campaign to con the boobs into spending money they don't have on things they don't want or need."

"You don't sound crazy about your work."

"I'm not."

"Why don't you do something else?" It was a naive question, she knew as she uttered it, and Chris made it evident that it was a naive question by raising his hands in a helpless gesture and looking at Rita.

"I have to make a living," he said. "And I don't know any other way. To make as good a living, any-way. I can't do it by painting pictures. I'd like to, but I can't."

"You sound a little like Curt," Lynn murmured, almost to herself. "He didn't seem to like the business, either. The people in it, anyway, he didn't like. Doesn't like." She corrected her tense.

"Who's Curt?" Rita asked.

"Man I had lunch with. He had something to do with advertising. Made musical radio and TV commercials. Do you have anything to do with television in your job, Chris?"

"I do a lot of storyboards," he said. All at once he appeared a little more interested in the conversation. "What's the rest of his name, the guy named Curt?"

"Ammons."

"I know him," Chris said, looking pleased. "He did a bunch of beer commercials for us. Very jazzy commercials, but they didn't sell any beer, and the client finally killed the campaign and went back to showing clean-cut young virgins jumping around in the daisies, waving cans of beer. It's one of the world's lousiest beers. No kind of commercials can sell it."

Chris lay back, looking exhausted, as if the short speech had taken an awful lot out of him. Lynn suspected he got suddenly tired just thinking about working. He probably needed this vacation. All at once she felt a little sorry for Chris. For no good reason at all.

"I'm having dinner with Curt Ammons tonight," she said. And then, on impulse, "Why don't you and Rita join us?"

Chris looked over at Rita. "Want to?"

"Why not?"

"Curt and I may start talking shop."

Rita laughed.

"You may talk about business, or about the people in it," she said, "but you won't be talking shop. You won't be talking business. You never do."

"I guess you're right," Chris said. "Sure, Lynn, we'd like to join you and Curt Ammons for dinner. What timer "Seven," she said, "thirty." In the pause she figured it might be pleasant to have half an hour with Curt before they arrived on the scene. "In the bar, naturally. And in Spain, I understand, nobody gets around to actually eating dinner until around eleven."

"You're on."

Conversation died, and without even being aware that she was drowsy, Lynn fell asleep. She woke up with Chris' voice in her ear. He was leaning over her.

"How about a swim?" he was saying.

"Sure," she said, looking over toward Rita, but that chaise was empty.

"Where'd she go? In the water already?"

"Back to the room to take a nap, she said. I think this air gets to you, in the beginning. Makes you want to sleep all the fine."

"I think you're right."

"Instead of a swim, we could go to your room."

"No, we couldn't go to my room."

"For a siesta."

"Not for a siesta or anything else."

"Why not?"

"Well, for one thing, if Rita comes back to the beach and doesn't find us here, she'll know exactly where to look."

"You're right," Chris said.

"And I don't think she'd like that at all."

"I think you're right. She wouldn't like that at all. She has some archaic notions. Fun and games are fine for the three of us, not for the two of us. Not when the two of us are you and me."

"So let's swim."

"So let's swim," Chris said, ruefully.

His trunks were bulging out in front. He ran across the white sand, bending over, splashing into the water still on the run. He wasn't showing off for the loungers in the conventional display of beach virility, Lynn knew. Chris wasn't the jock-strap type. He was doing just the opposite--being discreet about his hard-on in its elastic prison.

She walked down to the water more slowly, in no hurry at all, and kept on walking when she reached it, with no tentative toe-touching and withdrawal. Walking out into this water was easy. It was not cold--cooler than the air, but comfortable to walk into. And it was gin-clear. Lynn had never seen such clear water, even in mountain lakes. Looking down from the float, anchored a hundred feet from shore, you could see the bottom clearly, and the water there had to be ten or twelve feet deep.

Chris was already on the float when she got there, lying on his stomach, breathing hard. He'd raced out, doing a fast Australian crawl. Probably trying to dissipate his erection, Lynn thought.

But she was wrong. He rolled over onto his back as Lynn lay down and she saw that he still had his bulge. It was more pronounced now, as he lay with his back flat on the board surface of the float. It made Lynn a little uneasy, that bulge, and she wished that Rita were there. She'd know what to do about it.

"Do you know about the elephants?" Chris asked.

It sounded like some kind of riddle.

"No. What about the elephants?"

"They copulate under water."

Copulate. There was a grand word for you. Chris was being phony. Madison Avenue.

"You mean they fuck under water?"

"That's right."

"Why? Out of modesty?"

"No. It has something to do with their great weight. The lady elephant can't hold up under the weight of the male on dry land, so she gets into the water and takes some of the weight off her back. The water holds him up."

Lynn thought about it for a second.

"He could take the weight on his elbows, like a gentleman," she said, and then relented. "But I guess elephants are pretty smart. Even besides their good memories."

"You're not getting the point," Chris said. "I think we should play elephant "

"I'm a registered Democrat," Lynn said. "Maybe the only one in the state of Vermont."

But all at once the excitement had started, the tingling was beginning between her legs. Just like yesterday morning, at the cafe in Malaga, and in the cab afterward, and in their room after that. She tried to think of something else, but the excitement mounted.

"Let's get into the water," Chris said. "There's no one here, and there's not likely to be. That bunch on the beach don't look like they'll stir till martini time. And they can't see us, if we stay on the far side of the raft."

Oh God, Lynn thought, she was feeling the same kind of curious excitement she'd felt as a little girl playing doctor and nurse. You show me yours and I'll show you mine. A new experience.

"All right," she said. "Damn you, anyway. I won't tell Rita if you don't."

"Do I look like a mental patient?" Chris asked, and got to his feet and dove off the float on the side away from the beach.

Being circumspect, Lynn dove discreetly into the water on the beach side, then swam casually around the float. Chris was treading water. He was holding his trunks up in his left hand and grinning.

"Didn't take you long to get ready," Lynn said, treading water and looking down. Chris' cock looked bigger today, and she remembered that water magnifies. But not much, she thought, as her hand reached down and closed around the swollen hardness.

She took a firm grip and found that she could move him around in the water at will, just by tugging gently on the convenient handle of his cock. She was feeling playful. And very excited, now.

"Cut it out," he said, reaching out to hold onto the edge of the float with his right hand. "Why don't you get out of the lower half of that damned bikini?"

She didn't answer him, just ducked and slipped off the narrow strip of elastic fabric, then held it aloft, triumphantly, in her right hand. With her left, she held onto the edge of the float, as Chris was doing. Treading water would be an interference and a chore, and a clumsy delay, and she was as ready as she'd ever be.

Chris reached out a hand and placed his trunks on one of the two-by-fours bracing the understructure of the float, containing the empty oil drums that supported it in the water. Both his hands were freed.

He reached and placed both hands on her hips, and drew himself close to her in the water. She felt the tip of his prick exploring underwater for her cunt, and she reached down her free hand to guide it, spreading her legs wide and hooking her heels behind his hips.

His shaft imbedded itself easily, deliciously, not needing the encouragement of her urging heels. And then Lynn made a big discovery.

Except for the feeble leverage he had with his hands on her hips, Chris was almost helpless. She had him almost completely in her control, with her legs locked around him, and she was able to regulate his fuck-strokes with the pressure of her heels behind his back.

"Jesus," Chris said, moaning happily, "it looks like I'm completely in your power, you empress of the sea. I'm all yours."

She toyed with him for a long time, bringing his cock deeply into her underwater cunt, then letting it out until only the head remained inside. She found the feeling deeply pleasurable, but it was all like an underwater dream. There was something missing.

She was nowhere near coming when she felt Chris spurting inside her, and she wasn't sorry.

After they'd struggled back into their formal swimwear, operating in underwater slow motion, they swam lazily back to the beach. Rita hadn't returned from her siesta yet.

"Tell me, Mr. Man-on-the-street," Lynn said, holding an imaginary microphone to her mouth after she'd finished drying herself, "How do you feel about underwater fucking?"

"It's like voting Republican," Chris said, leaning into her phantom mike. "You can't get a toehold nowhere."