Chapter 3

The boarding house was easy to rind. It was one of the more pleasant looking Victorian behemoths and had three bushy trees on each side of it. All the other houses that once might have stood to each side had disappeared and in their places sprawled two competing parking lots, one small drive-in hamburger joint, and a dry cleaning establishment built with naked cinder blocks. It seemed to be quite a comedown for the house, to have stood quite solidly all the years of its life only to find the grimness of urban sprawl its only neighbor at the end.

It was owned by a black family who kept it shiningly brilliant on the inside. The house possibly was their only source of income and they seemed to protect it with the same care a bank would the contents of its vaults. If the presumably aristocratic original owners of the house might have quibbled about its presently being owned by blacks, they certainly could not have argued about their cleanliness.

When the lady of the house invited me in, I stood my small suitcase on the floor at the foot of the stairway. I had a glimpse through wide doors of the parlor as she led me upstairs to show me the room. If any original furniture had survived, it had all been discarded or stored in the basement, because the present parlor furniture was the kind anybody could buy for $5 a week at a discount store. And it was all covered with a cold-looking plastic, he house's cleanliness nearly made up for the coldness of the parlor, but I was not sure that I would not have preferred a sterile motel.

But once we got to the upper floor landing we passed into another time. The house had been converted to roomers a long time ago because the furniture up there was old-style hotel oak-even the beds, which had tall wooden headboards with the rails about two feet off the floor.

"Sorry about the bed," the lady told me, "but that was in the house and we never got to change it."

I liked it right away. The woman could keep her parlor however she wanted, but I was glad she had not changed this room. Branches from the trees outside brushed against the screen in the window. The pane was propped open with a stick. Old-style air-conditioning. Whenever it got too cold and I wanted to turn it down, just take away the stick. A fresh breeze blew through the window and the trees hid the parking lots and the dry cleaners, so it was quite easy to imagine myself as a roomer wandering the California coast seventy years ago.

The room was four dollars a night I could have a key to the front door, but I had to make sure I returned it when I checked out. How long did I plan to stay?

"Until Monday."

"That will be fine," she said. "You can stay longer, if you like."

She showed me the communal bath down the hall. The largest bathtub I had ever seen stood proudly, gleaming its porcelain, on four clawed eagle legs. The wainscoting around the room had all been painted white, but the floor was plain wood heavily varnished. Fresh towels hung on the racks and lay folded on an oak chest with a marble top. The commode had an oak box overhead with a pull chain.

I asked the lady her name. "I'm Mrs. Harmony."

"I like the room, Mrs. Harmony. The bath too. I think I'll enjoy the weekend very much."

"I hope you do. Tell you the truth, I like this ratty old furniture a whole lot more than I do that fancy stuff down in my rooms, but my kids, well, you're too young to know what kids can do to you, but my kids they don't like anything that's been used by anybody. They want everything to be brand, spanking new." She shook her head.

"Do you want some money in advance?"

She seemed to regret it, as if she would rather have been a friend than a landlady. But in the end she did take the twelve dollars I offered. "I guess if I'm going to be successful at this business I got to learn to take the money in advance. It's something I find real difficult."

"Take the money in advance, Mrs. Harmony." I decided to throw some forestry lookout philosophy at her: "Your friends will still be your friends, and you enemies won't be able to cheat you."

She laughed with a hearty, enjoyable shaking of her stomach.

I went back to the room and unpacked a few things. Hid my traveller's checks between the curtain and the Venetian blinds that were drawn-up tight. I trusted Mrs. Harmony, but her children did not sound exactly like my kind of customers and I didn't trust them not to come rifling my room while I was cruising the streets looking for one or another of my six girls.

I took a bath in the big tub, hot water up to my neck, the bathroom window open and sounds and smells and warmth of a summer California afternoon drifting in to bathe me almost as much as the water. My only concern for the next two and a half days was to find and win the girls to my ideas, and stay out of sight of Sheriff Anderson. On Sunday, I would drop in at the garage to see if the mechanic felt like working on my car. I had gotten the impression that he was willing to help me all he could and I wanted to be there to help him, if possible, and urge him to get me back on the road.

Other than my car, I wondered if I had enough to get all six girls in two or three days. I relaxed, stretched out in the tub, letting the warm water do its job on my body, which I thought was completely recovered from the workout with Bea the night before. I wondered if I could really pull it off with the car wash girls.

I put on clean clothes and stuffed all my dirty ones in a sack for the cleaners. Then I started downstairs to begin my trek through the ragged undergrowth of California femininity.

Somebody new was in the parlor. A tall, slim black girl, maybe sixteen, sat cross-legged on one of the plastic-covered horrors. She looked up from her book when she heard me and she smiled. "You must be the new roomer."

All boarding houses should have a landlady's daughter like her. She wore a mild Afro, not one of those wild haired, electric-looking things, and her long neck was slim and black and her teeth were as white as fresh bed-sheets. I immediately placed her in my mind on the sheets upstairs , in my room, her rich black skin contrasting elegantly with the white sheets into some incredible kind of sexuality.

"Well," she said, the joy and friendliness still lingering, "be seeing you," as if she had a long time ago gotten used to dismissing boys who simply stood and stared at her.

I recovered enough to make it the rest of the way down the stairs. "Okay," I said, and made it fast out the front door as if she had been merely a charming child.

But she was much more than that. I thought it was a pity that I had liked her mother so much. It was always difficult for me to screw a daughter if I knew and liked the mother. It was difficult, that is, to keep it simply screwing and not let it develop into anything more serious. I had discovered when I was about nineteen that it was easy to allow screwing to lead you into more serious entanglements and since I had barely escaped the bonds of matrimony with one girl I liked very much, and with whom I had very much enjoyed the fruits of sex, I did not want to succumb too easily. I thought in the back of my mind that when and if I wandered home, after the urge to be a forest ranger was out of my system, I might see if that girl was still around and if we still felt the same about each other. I thought it would be nice to live with her for awhile and see if we thought we could make it together. But I was not ready yet to settle down even to that, no matter how pleasant it might have been.

And the surest way to find yourself settling down before you were ready was to find yourself liking the mother as a friend as much as you liked to screw the daughter. I was colorblind as far as that went and knew there was as much danger here in sunny California, in this old Victorian house, as there had been back home.

After dropping off my laundry and making sure I would be able to pick it up the next day, I took a spin through town in the old pickup. The first person I saw, almost, was my adversary, Sheriff Anderson. I wanted to duck my head in case he recognized me in his nephew's truck, but then I figured that a driver-less vehicle would attract the attention of a sheriff much more quickly than simply another pickup truck driving through town. I tried to look like a farmer's son and possibly it worked, because the sheriff didn't look up or make any more moves and I watched him in the rear-view mirror until I was safely around the corner.

I drove through some of the residential streets, looked at the fine houses with spreading lawns. It was a nice town, if you liked solid comfort. But I was glad I was staying with the Harmony family and that they had such a fine old house, even if they had parking lots for neighbors.

Seeing Sheriff Andy had made me nervous, but I wasn't quite ready to drive back to the house and hide out until Monday. I decided on a quick spin past Ernie's Gas Station so I could rethink my plan. I thought I wouldn't stop so there would be little risk.

I passed Ernie's, but the car wash was vacant. The hoses and buckets lay under the oak tree and the sign CAR WASH HELP THE FLOWERING OF OUR CITY still beckoned but there were no cars, no girls. I began to think I had imagined them, that my fears of a girl-less less summer on the mountain had given me hallucinations. Maybe if I looked through the dirty windows of the nephew's garage I would see my robin's-egg blue car sitting in there just as dirty as ever.

I drove quietly past, beginning to give up on my idea, beginning to settle into a quiet, comfortable but frustrating wait until Monday. And then I saw them.

I had passed the gas station and was going through a small section beside a large city park, antique stores on one side of the street and a small grocery. Up in the park was a rugged tumble of water where the river that flowed through town fell about fifteen or twenty feet over a bluff into a jumble of rocks and stunted trees trying to grow through the thunder of the falls. Enterprising city developers had built a bridge over the falls and on the bridge stood two girls.

Even from that distance I could recognize Anne and Bonnie. Anne had her hair cut short, like a pageboy, and Bonnie's hung radiantly bleached over her shoulders.

Even across the park I recognized Anne, who looked like a girls' gym instructor, young and short and firm bodied. And Bonnie in her man's undershirt and her cutoff Levis ripped up the leg.

I parked the pickup at a meter in front of one of the antique stores and put in a dime. I felt like running across the park, but I also wanted to keep cool since over eagerness never paid off in love. When I thought they recognized me, I waved. Bonnie waved back without hesitation. Anne might have, except she seemed shy and was carrying a paper sack from the grocery store.

Bonnie yelled something that I couldn't hear because of the waterfall. When I got closer, I heard her ask, "What happened to that shiny, just-washed scrubbed and powdered car of yours?"

"In the garage," I yelled, "getting its insides cleaned." I climbed over the railing and stood beside them. Bonnie grinned and Anne smiled. Anne shifted the sack in her arms so she would look more like the young girl she was than a housewife toting groceries.

Right then I decided that Anne would have to be the first one. Bonnie could easily have been the first, but she was too obvious. And if the others knew I was screwing her they might trunk I was cheap, possibly like her, that I would screw anybody, and that was not the way to sneak up on a virgin. Girls who considered themselves candidates for a virgin marriage wouldn't let me within arm's length if they knew I was fucking a girl like Bonnie. So I would have to ease in gradually, through Anne, before they knew it, and once I had broken through Anne's hymen the others would be easier. I knew I could pick up Bonnie any time, whenever I had a few minutes to spare.

I leaned on the railing. Anne rested the sack on it and stood between me and Bonnie. I talked to Bonnie but since Anne was between us I looked mostly at her. She kept moving her eyes and was hard to pin down. She had a very pretty mouth.

"Why aren't you girls busy working?"

"No cars to wash," Bonnie said. She was a nice girl, despite her bleached hair. Her voice was neat and crisp as if she knew exactly who, what, and why she was. "We're willing, but you can't wash cars that aren't there."

"That's a fact," I said.

"Business was so slow we went out to buy some Cokes. Ernie's machine went empty on us and the guy won't be around to supply it for a week. What do you think of that?"

"That's just a fact of life."

For a girl who reminded me of a girls' gym instructor, Anne surprised me by blushing when I said "fact of life." As if I had said one of those four-letter words that went with those facts. Anne was going to be difficult, I thought, but I had always thrived on challenges.

"What are you doing while your car is getting fixed?" Bonnie asked.

"Not much to do, is there? I have to be here probably until Monday. I got a room at the old house toward the highway, the one that stands by itself just past the Take-Out-While-It's-Hot hamburger joint."

"I know that house," Bonnie said. "Black family has it, right?"

"Their name's Harmony."

"We know them."

Anne said, "Their daughter Charity is in the class behind me in school. She's a junior and I'm a senior." "I met her," I said. "She's cute."

"They're nice people," Bonnie said. "The whole family is nice. I used to date Charity's big brother. I was the only girl in town who would date him."

Anne laughed. "Not any more."

"He got elected student-body president his last year in high school. That did it" Bonnie shook her head and her hair moved like silk. "Once that happened, every girl was willing to date him. We had what we wanted from each other anyway, so we were ready to break up. He had gotten his entry into society," Bonnie said that word as if it were italicized, "and I had gotten my ruined reputation repaired to the extent that people didn't think I was as stupid as they all had thought I was."

Anne laughed. When she smiled, her cheeks dimpled and her eyes seemed to shine. "A lot you cared about that"

"Oh, my reputation is very important to me. Why do you think I hang around you guys, washing cars all da when I could be lying in the sun."

The more Bonnie talked the more I liked her.

"Don't let her kid you," Anne said, looking directly at me. "She hangs around us to meet all the fellows who hang around the car wash."

"A lot of guys hang around there?" I asked, trying to sound naive.

Anne shifted the sack of Cokes. "You better believe it, but it doesn't do them any good." She stepped away from the railing. "Hey, Bonnie, those gals are going to be mad if we don't get these Cokes over there."

"Meredith is the only one who'll get mad." To me, Bonnie said, "Meredith thinks she's the boss."

"I'd have offered to carry the Cokes for Anne, but I knew if I tried to hang around all six of them at the same time they would only laugh at me. I had to separate one from the herd, like a lobo wolf working alone, circling a herd of sheep. I knew that sooner or later, to the delight of the wolf, one of the sheep would wander off in search of greener pastures or because a certain bush on another hill looked especially tasty.

Bonnie was the sheep who separated herself. And like the wise wolf I decided to go after the one which was closest. My plans, while sometimes too elaborately laid, were always subject to events.

"Go ahead," Bonnie said to Anne. "I'm going to hang around here awhile. There's no business now anyway."

Anne looked at me shyly over the top of the sack, he felt bad about being left out, but she was too afraid to stay. "All right," she said.

"Tell Meredith I'll be along in about an hour. Things'll get busy then anyway." To me, she said, "We always get some business about four when people start getting off work and are driving home. They like to get their car washed so they can have a good look at us girls. Makes them feel good when they get home."

"Maybe makes their wives feel good, too?" I asked.

"Maybe."

We leaned on the railing with the vacant space where Anne had stood still between us. We watched Anne walk down through the park, past the waterfall to the street.

"There much to do in town over a weekend?" I asked.

"Sometimes."

We watched the traffic for a few minutes. There wasn't much; it was a quiet town. The park was deserted below us. It was like one of those Parks that the city fathers are always creating in small towns, but then everybody is embarrassed to sit in it because then the neighbors would all know that you had nothing to do but sit in a park all day.

"It sounds like fun," she said, "being up on a lookout all summer."

"Come with me. It would be lonesome without you."

"It's illegal to have company, isn't it? Aren't you supposed to be scouting for fires all the time?"

"You have to go to bed sometime," I said.

She pursed her lips and looked at me as if she knew what that meant. I just looked back at her.

"Who looks for fires when you're asleep?"

"Nobody. Can't see smoke at night anyway."

We leaned on the railing some more. I took out a pack of cigarettes and asked if she wanted one. She shook her head no and I put the pack away without taking one myself. That seemed to make up her mind about something, because she pushed herself away from the railing and said, "Come on, let me show you around a little bit."

I hesitated. It wouldn't do for the wolf to seem too anxious, to make his moves before the sheep was really separated from the flock. I looked again at her breasts when they were clearly outlined under her father's old under shirt. Her nipples seemed to have gotten firmer while we talked. Her tits barely moved when she pushed away from the railing. Finally I let go of it myself. "All right, show me."

"What's your name?" "Tim Howard."

"Come on, Tim." We walked around the end of the railing and down the slope toward the waterfall. She waved an arm. "This is the park."

I grinned. "I recognized it."

"You're just awful smart"

She walked a bit ahead of me and I kept watching the way her trim little ass bobbed right-left, right-left. I wondered if she was wearing anything underneath those cut-offs. There didn't appear to be anything under there as the seams that she had ripped flashed as she pumped her legs forward. I pretended to be as casual as she was.

"If you know so much," she said, "do you think you could find the waterfall?"

I pointed toward the left, where the river cascaded over the rocks.

"That's fine," she said. "Do you think you could find your way under the falls?"

We stopped and stood together, our shoulders almost touching. "Probably, but wouldn't we get wet?"

"Maybe not"

She led the way, following for awhile what seemed to be a faint trail. It lead through a grove of trees that shielded us from the street, then emerged closer to he falls, and there among the rocks the trail disappeared. We dipped down into a shallow ravine formed by the stream, then climbed back out, closer to the falls. She scrambled like a pro over those rocks and I fell behind her to watch her ass. She gave a fine stretch to the finest material Levi had to offer.

Finally we came to a ledge that seemed to go in under the falls. It was covered with a film of running water so I took my boots off and lay them on a rock. I was only wearing a thin T-shirt and a lightweight pair of cords, so I didn't care about my clothes. Bonnie was barefoot already. She probably lived that way all summer. Correcting myself, I remembered we were in California so I decided she probably dressed like that all year, maybe getting dressed up for Christmas.

She walked across the ledge and I followed. The water was cold but I quickly got used to it This part of the falls was hidden from the rest of the park because of the way the land fell and because of the rocks and thick, stunted timber. I felt a fine mist across my face. The roar was very loud and I heard only Bonnie's tinkling laughter when I nearly slipped and fell into the river. I recovered my footing and my dignity and joined her under the falls where it might have been like standing in a shower except that the river roared over our heads and hardly got us wet at all.

She said something to me, her lips moving quickly and her face smiling. She leaned against the rock face of the bluff.

I could barely hear my own voice when I yelled at her, "I can't hear a word."

She screamed and that long and loud and joyous cry did reach my ears. Her face was so happy and her cry so joyful that it was like a shout of freedom from being cooped up in a small town where everybody knew everybody else and resented everything they did. I began to suspect that this was Bonnie's favorite place, that under here she was able to be as free as she desired and no one could criticize her because she couldn't hear anybody's voice anyway.

I looked at her face. She was laughing from the freedom of her wild howl here in the middle of town where no one could hear her. There was no one to tell her to be quiet No one to tell her to stop. She was free, wild anc1 young. She stood with her head thrown back, her hair swinging, her chest thrust out and her tits pointing toward the cascading river, her feet spread apart and her naked thigh muscles tensed.

I stepped over to her and put both my hands between her legs.

She looked up at me. She moved her crotch down onto my hands and I pressed harder up against her. I might have thought, had I taken time, that maybe I had been the sheep and she the wolf, but I did not think about that or anything else. Her mouth was open and her eyes bright. We set about doing the only thing either of us was thinking about at that moment.