“I heard twenty-nine, just in your first year.”
He shook his head, stubbed out the cigarette. Did that mean more than twenty-nine? Less?
“I need a drink.” He rose as the old proprietor delivered a bag of food to the table. “Thanks, Nathaniel.” Jason passed across a wad of bills without really counting them, then shouldered the door and led me into the heat. “You ready for a beer?”
“I’m driving.”
“Nah, I got it.” He circled the hood and slid behind the wheel. I waited a moment, then got in, too. “Bottle opener is in the cooler.”
I looked around. No cops. No one seemed to care. Rooting through the ice, I found bottles of Michelob, and pulled out two, opening them and handing one over. Jason drained a third of it in a single pull, then eased onto the four-lane and turned east. I kept the bottle between my legs, sipping nervously when we hit gaps in traffic.
“Nice car,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Robert and I had to walk.”
I looked for resentment, but didn’t see it. I could have told him how I’d paid for it mowing lawns and fueling boats, but I didn’t want to break the mood. His fingers filled the grooves on the wheel, and he whistled at the easy acceleration. In seconds, we were doing sixty in a forty-five, and he was smiling like a man fresh out of prison. He took us farther east and then north, bending around the city until we reached an expensive area filled with bright glass and trees and off-street parking.
“About these girls…” He pulled to the curb. “Don’t let them scare you.”
“I don’t. What…?”
“Ladies!”
Jason swung out of the car as two young women appeared from a nearby condo. I saw a blur of terry cloth and thin shirts and bare, smooth skin. They giggled down a flight of steps and met Jason on the sidewalk, each one rising on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. The shorter one leaned in as if whispering. “Is this him? He’s cuter than you said. See, Sara. I told you.”
Both were staring, both braless and tan. The blonde wore a headband with a turquoise stone in the center of her forehead. The shorter one with dark hair wore it feathered.
“All right,” Jason said. “Ladies in the back. Little brother rides with me.”
“Aww…”
“I’ll share later. Now, come on. Load up.”
He gestured at the car, and the young women piled in, the tall blonde speaking first, her voice soft and calm. “I’m Sara,” she said. “This is Tyra.” I responded as best I could, but was lost in a cloud of perfume and legs and the quick glimpse of a pale, curving breast.
“Oh my God, he’s blushing. That is adorable.” Tyra leaned over the seat, and I felt her breath on my neck. “What’s your name?”
“Gibby.”
“How old are you, Gibby?”
“He’s eighteen,” Jason said. “His birthday was last week.”
“Oh my God. So adorable.” Tyra squeezed my shoulders, laughing, but my eyes found Sara’s. They were blue, shot with green, and they watched me from a calm, still place. “It’s very nice to meet you, Gibby. Is this your car?” I stammered something, and she leaned forward, showing a second glimpse of the same pale skin. “It suits you, I think. The lines of it.”
She leaned back after that, and looked away. I felt a flutter, an emptiness. Jason’s knowing smile returned.
“All right, boys and girls.” He fired the big engine. “Who’s ready to party?”
* * *
The party started in the car and moved, over an hour’s drive, to a gravel road that twisted through undeveloped forest at the southern shoreline of the state’s largest lake. Sunlight slanted in, and water glinted beyond the trees. Pale dust rose behind the car as Jason took us farther from the neighborhoods and boat ramps and parks. The girls were on a second bottle of wine, talking a lot and asking questions that Jason apparently wanted me to answer. He rarely replied to any of them, choosing instead to smile or tip back a beer or say something like, You know who has a funny story like that?
Thing was, I did have funny stories. Whenever he said that and looked my way, I knew exactly what to say and how to say it. Maybe it was the beer, or maybe his confidence was contagious. Whatever the case, the girls responded. Tyra liked to laugh in a full-throated way, her lips as pink as the inside of a shell, her teeth as glistening and damp. Sara’s responses were subdued but more gratifying. She’d touch my shoulder and lean close, her smile softer and intimate and small. As a spell, I wished it to remain unbroken. The streaming hair. The heat of her hand.
“Where are you taking us, anyway?”
Tyra raised her voice to ask the question, but Jason didn’t respond. He turned right when the road forked, and bounced us down a weed-filled track that ended at a meadow filled with wildflowers. Beyond it, the lake stretched for miles, a spill of glass fringed by forest and hills and high, empty sky. When the car stopped, Tyra stood, pulling off her sunglasses. “Oh my God.”
We got out of the car, the stillness remarkable in its perfection. “How’d you find this place?” I asked.
“It wasn’t me. It was Robert.”
I took a few steps into the meadow. Flowers carpeted the earth, a thousand colors, a thousand shades. Wind made jewels of light at the water’s edge. “Why didn’t you ever bring me here?” I asked.
Jason moved beside me and pressed a fresh bottle into my hand. “I didn’t know about it.”
“How is that possible?”
“Robert didn’t bring me, either. Not until he left for the war.”
“What do you mean?”
“He came home right before he shipped out. Remember?”
“Of course.”
“He brought me here before that last dinner, just the two of us. The sun was setting. It was cold. He said he found this place when he was sixteen, and wanted me to know about it, just in case. Beyond that, he didn’t say much. We had a beer and watched the sun go down. He was scared, I think.”
“Why did he keep it a secret?”
“We were twins, right. That meant we shared most everything, whether we wanted to or not. Birthdays. Clothes. Even girlfriends got us confused. I think he liked having this place for himself, alone. Do you blame him?”
It was a fair question, given the beauty and the stillness. I wondered who owned it, but only for a moment. My thoughts turned to Robert. It was easy to see him here all those years ago, alone or with a special girl. It hurt that he’d brought Jason and not me, but they had been twins. I forgot that sometimes.
I’d forgotten the girls, too.
“Who wants to go for a swim?” Suddenly Tyra was beside us, one hand on Jason’s arm. “How about you, big boy?”
She shrugged off her top, laughing. The shorts followed, and she was naked, running through the flowers. I’d never seen tan lines on a naked girl, never seen a naked girl at all.
“Hold this.”
Jason pushed a beer at me, and sauntered into the field. He took his time, and Tyra enjoyed it. She turned and feigned shyness, then splashed waist-deep into the water, covering her breasts as Jason disrobed with a slow dignity I could only imagine in myself. He was marked by war and prison-pale, but muscular and confident and steady. I didn’t think I could be jealous of Jason, but suddenly was.