CHAPTER ONE
It was the walk up the stairs I seem to remember most. Simply thinking about it always sets my heart to thumping. I find myself, mostly late at night, but too, at the oddest and occasionally in the most public of situations, succumbing to the daydream and reliving vividly everything about each step, from the creak of that one loose board to how her hair looked in the afternoon light and the way her dress moved as I followed, watching her from behind. It was one of the most singular events in my life, so alive, so indelible, imbued upon me with a level of immediacy and intensity, I'm sure, something akin to the scale of awareness and anticipation a condemned man must experience, when he takes that last, long walk.
Her name was Cynthia, but I almost always called her Cynth. We were neighbors. Neither one of our homes was very much by today's standards. We lived in one of those lower middle class neighborhoods, which seem to sprout amongst the cracks and fringes of every big city. Except for the occasional pink, plastic flamingo displayed in the small plots of lawn out front, or perhaps a slightly different color of paint on the shutters or door, it was virtually impossible to tell one house from any other, row after row after row.
That day, I'd found her out on her porch. Summers here were always so hot, and come about late July a heavy boredom always set in. Our neighborhood was always quiet, even more so now as lots of families were away on vacation, at the beach, the mountains, anywhere they could find a cool breeze or breath of fresh air. For those who remained, the hours stretched out interminably to where it seemed one could easily count from one to ten between each tick of the second hand. Ironically, during these dog days even the neighborhood animals seemed to have fallen prey to the monotonous languor, and it became rare to hear a dog bark, or for that matter, to see a car drive by and momentarily disturb the heavy hush hanging over the streets. The very stillness of the air and the emptiness of the haze lingering in the sky were all just elements of the doldrums of summer.
I'd come outside and noticed her right off. She was wearing one of those summery, cotton dresses. I can still recall, for a fact, it had a pattern of little, blue flowers sprinkled across a light, yellow fabric. Cynthia Marshall, two and a half years older than me, and an effortless beauty with soft brown hair and lips so rich, so sweetly pink, when she smiled those bright, green eyes of hers just seemed to melt my heart and snatch my poor breath away.
We'd known each other forever; you can't live fifteen feet from someone else's driveway all of your life and not get to know them. When I was little, Cynth used to trick–or–treat with my older brother and me, the two of them holding my hands between them as we ran from door to door. Our families would sometimes share Easter egg hunts between our houses and bar–b–ques on the Fourth of July. She'd always been sweet to me, but in a big sisterly way. Yet, she'd been the one, through the luck of a spin, to endow me with my first real kiss, when we both found ourselves playing a game of spin the bottle during a neighborhood birthday party. Even before that unforgettable afternoon, when that empty Nehi bottle spun our way, she had been the featured highlight in every fantasy of mine ever since I could remember.
But most things change as we grow older; and she'd become one of the girls who ran with the big kids long before I ever did. I came to know about her, more than I knew her. I remember lying in bed, in the room I shared with my brother, Mark, and listening awestruck to stories about Cynthia ringing people's doorbells and running away, or teaming up with other kids to cause feuds between the cranky old ladies at the end of the block by switching around or stealing their prized ceramic garden gnomes and molded cement figurines. She was rare for such a beauty, because she was fun, maybe even what some people might call a little rambunctious. I never remember having seen her out on the street when she wasn't either running or skipping, her long pony tail flying as she passed. And as she began to mature, she was one of those girls who just suddenly blossomed. By the time she was in her middle teens, there wasn't a boy I knew who didn't hope she'd turn a smile his way. Yet, along with her budding physical charms, she was one of those girls possessed of a rare nature, which complements a sincere sweetness and an ease of confidence about herself. And later, when she was a senior in high school, and I was just a gangly freshman, there wasn't a person I knew who didn't think she was someone entirely special. Unfortunately, for all the rest of us waiting breathlessly in the wings, her boyfriend, a guy who owned a car and was a sophomore in college, was the one who was lucky enough to be the apple of her eye.
But that afternoon, that became our own. It will always stand out so freshly in my mind. The frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel won't endure as long or shine as clearly in time as does the clarity of this memory. I remember being bored, so bored I wandered outside, as that in itself was something to do. Seeing her out on her porch, I let the screen door slam a little too loudly and was rewarded when she sat up and looked my way. Sitting down on my porch railing I waved, and she waved back. Crossing my feet at the ankles, I hitched my thumbs in the pockets of my shorts, nowhere to go and nothing to do.
"Hey!" She called out, making another quick wave, beckoning over her shoulder with her hand. "Jimmy! Jimbo! Come on over!"
No sooner had I stepped up on her porch than she halted her swinging on the porch glider and scooted over, patting a spot for me to take a seat. "How've you been doing there, Jimbo?" Her voice was as warm and friendly as if we'd spoken only yesterday. "Haven't seen much of you this summer."
"I haven't seen you either," I came back. There simply was no feeling uneasy around her. With some friends you haven't seen much of, it sometimes takes a bit to get the awkwardness out of the way and get back on track. But there was something just so easy about everything with Cynth, so amiable, so sincere, totally at ease and completely disarming. "Where's your boyfriend, Cynth? I haven't seen him around much either."
She kicked out, setting the swing going in an easy arc. "He went with his folks to the mountains. They're going to be gone 'til Labor Day." Even her acting out an exaggerated childish pout couldn't fall flat. "He left me here to wilt while he goes plays chess with his dad and fishes for bass with his brothers. More likely though, he's just lying around like a big lout drinking beer all night and sleeping most the day."
"Sounds like the life," I replied.
"Yeah." That little half smile of hers was distant and wistful, and her eyes looked so far away. "I miss him."
We sat like that for quite awhile, maybe an hour, maybe more. Who knows? Time didn't mean a thing on such a sleepy summer's day. I hadn't really even said ten words to her in months, only "Hi" now and then in passing. But like old times, we fell back into ourselves, and before long we were remembering the old stories and recalling kids we used to know and things we used to do, just kicking back and chatting, again the best of friends. After a bit she went inside and got us some lemonade. We talked and sipped at our straws, laughing, as she could always make anyone laugh. And when my lemonade was gone I sat back, sucking on the ice cubes and just listening to her ramble about nothing of any importance, which was exactly what I was in the mood to hear.
"How's that brother of yours doing?" She asked out of the blue. "Does Mark still have that same cutie girlfriend?" She spiraled a hand above her head. "The one with all that hair?"
I wasn't really focusing on anything, just looking off across the street, but seeing her little pantomime got me to laugh again. "Yeah, I think so," I grinned. "Last I heard of, anyway. You know, he's going to be graduating from college next semester." She gave a quick whistle, her lips forming a note of genuine surprise. For some reason my eyes were spellbound by the shape of those lips.
"Where'd time get off to?" She asked after she'd let the whistle trail off. "Seems like forever since I last saw him, Christmas I think it was." She hitched her feet up under her dress, cross–legged, planting her hands down in the center of the spread of her dress and letting me swing the swing. "I'm glad next fall I'll be transferring to a college that's reasonably close. I'll be able to get home weekends and holidays. I get real lonely so quickly being away from everybody. I guess I'm just a hometown girl at heart. Mark though, who knows where that guy will end up."
"He's just a ramblin' kind of guy," I came back, feeling good about getting a laugh out of her.
"I forget," she asked. "What's he studying?"
"Photography," I answered, "just like my dad did. When he graduates the plan is he's supposed to work at my dad's portrait studio for a while. But he really wants to get in with an agency, in New York or LA and do some advertising photography and maybe even some freelance or artistic stuff. He's been shooting weddings to make a little extra cash." I raised my eyebrows and leaned in close to confide to her in a whisper. "He even did a boudoir shoot a couple of months ago."
"Boudoir?" Right off, her eyes lit up, and she leaned into me nudging me with her shoulder. "Isn't that," she started slowly, "isn't that where women pay to have pictures taken of themselves in sexy lingerie or bathing suits ... like for their husbands or boyfriends?"
She was so close, almost nose–to–nose; and the way she looked at me. It was as if the air around us had gone suddenly still and the heat had grown up around us. She was staring right into me, and I could see she was thinking of something. In a bit of panic I couldn't believe I had let that slip. I wondered what I could possibly have been thinking to have been so stupid as to have blurted that out. Mark, I'm sure didn't want it getting around. Even though it was 1965, and Playboy had been around for quite a while, some of our local Neanderthals could still get pretty up in arms about that kind of thing. Mark had told me about it when he was home over Memorial Day. I hadn't seen the pictures, but I knew he'd had to borrow my dad's private darkroom to develop the negatives and make the prints, as he probably would have gotten arrested had he tried taking the shots to a regular lab.
Suddenly Cynthia leaned back and planted her feet, stopping the swing. She slapped her hands down on her legs and stared back at me with that Cynth wildness in her grin. "You still shoot photos, too, don't you?"
"Yeah," I nodded. "I just got a new 35mm Ricoh for my eighteenth birthday last month. It's got a 28mm wide angle lens, f1.4, and my dad even got me a 100mm to go with the stock 50mm." I was always proud of any opportunity to talk about my cameras. I scooted around a bit to better face her. "It's got a flash, too! My dad's been helping me get the knack of it; flash is tough though. But you need it if you want to get an indoor shot just right. Of course, my dad he knows it all. He's got a full set of background lights with filters and gels, and he uses a system of umbrella strobes he's got synched to his large format Hassleblad."
She locked a hand down on my knee. "You've got film and stuff, too, right?"
"Sure, color and black and white." Her hand on my knee made me suddenly conscious of how close we truly were. Maybe it was the air had changed, but we seemed very alone together out on that porch. And up close, like this, I became aware I could smell her too. There wasn't any particular scent or flowery fragrance to her, just fresh, a breath of Cynth, clean and sweet.
She took her hand back and swiveled a bit more to face me straight on. She started to say something, but didn't. Maybe it was the heat, but her cheeks looked hot and flushed.
When she didn't say anything I asked, "What?"
She pursed her lips and shook her head.
"Come on, Cynth," I pressed. "It's me, Jimbo. What were you going to say?" I recall thinking she'd probably come up with one of her infamous gags or jokes to play on someone.
"I don't know." She pulled her feet out from under her skirt and let her legs swing down, twining her ankles and locking her knees. "I just kind of had a goofy idea." She shrugged and cocked her head, looking awkward for the first time I could ever remember. "You know me."
