“She’s just what?”
“Nothing. Did you tell her you know me?”
“Yeah. She asked if I was the one who cut your hair, and I said I was.”
Marian was outraged. “Why did you tell her that?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
She didn’t know, exactly. She said, “I’d think you wouldn’t want to go to whores.”
“Why not?”
“You know why. I wouldn’t have thought you’d want to drink, either.”
“Don’t talk about my mother.”
They stared fiercely at each other, chins in the water, lips purpling with cold.
“Sorry,” she said.
She saw him decide not to be angry. He turned sly, said, “Belle taught me things.”
“What things?”
“She said it was good to know how to make a girl happy, but if I want to be happy myself, I’m better off just going to see her. She said other girls will just worry about being proper and won’t be any fun.”
“I’m not worried about being proper,” she said before she’d thought.
He smiled his pocket-picking smile. “You want to make me happy?”
“No.” Marian had no real word for the part of her that had come alive, was tugging at her attention. Twat, Miss Dolly’s girls said. Twitchet, they said. Peach, bits, clam. None of these seemed quite right. She said, “What things?”
“You mean what did she teach me?”
Marian nodded. He moved closer, backing her into shallower water. He leaned down and took one of her breasts into his mouth. The sensation was more strong than pleasant, the completion of a circuit. They were standing together, their torsos out of the water, him bending to his task. She felt his erection. She watched, fascinated, the place where her flesh disappeared into his mouth. He did not quite devour like the beast with Gilda, was gentler, deliberate. He was the one to pull away.
“Did you like it?”
“I don’t know.” She couldn’t admit she had.
He kept moving toward her, and she kept moving away, so they traced a circle in the water. “Belle told me Barclay Macqueen liked you, and Desirée got jealous. Is that true?”
“What if it is?”
“Do you know who he is?”
“Of course I do.”
“Are you going to let him do things with you?”
“I’ll probably never see him again.”
“So you would let him.”
The idea of Barclay Macqueen touching her seemed absurd, fantastical. “It’s a silly question.”
“So you would.” They were standing still now. He looked serious, worried, like he was going to ask another question, but instead he said, “I don’t want you to be my girl or anything.”
Was he telling the truth? “Good, because I don’t want to be your girl.”
“Just fun, then,” he said. Underwater, his hand swam toward her, but she stepped away.
“I’m cold,” she said and got out, feeling his eyes on her backside but not caring. She dressed without drying off, went back through the trees, drove away. She didn’t worry about leaving him alone so far from town. One place was as good as any other to Caleb.
At night in the bath she studied her breasts, one now so much more experienced than the other, tiny red pinpricks visible around the nipple where his mouth had left a bruise.
* * *
—
A July afternoon flaring and fading into evening. Marian knocked on the back door of a house near Pattee Canyon, up at the end of a long narrow track cut through forest. The house was handsome but not large, freshly painted green with white trim. It had no close neighbors. She had not made a delivery there before.
Barclay Macqueen opened the door. She could only gape at him. He wore a white shirt and black waistcoat. One corner of his mouth turned up. He said, “Hello. Who are you?”
She couldn’t read his tone, whether he thought he was asking her for the first time or whether he was alluding to Miss Dolly’s hallway. “I’m Marian Graves.”
“So this time you have an answer.”
He remembered. Of course he did.
“I’ve got a delivery.”
“Let me.” He took the basket from her. Four bottles of moon. He’d only ordered them so she would be sent to him, that much was clear. It was herself she’d delivered. “Come in and I’ll pay you.”
“I’m fine to wait here.” Through the open door she saw a red-haired man sitting at a kitchen table, reading a newspaper. He glanced up, went back to reading. She had seen him before, around town.