Joe Burke's Last Stand Part 37

"Amber!" Patrick said to himself, walking back to his room. Frieda had gone to bed with him a couple of times during his last summer in Germany. He'd gotten lucky once at a party in Tallaha.s.see. That was it.

No one like Amber. His eyes opened wider as he remembered her. He put his hand on her shoulder, imagining the warm solid body under her white blouse. His mind spun out, and he cleared his throat. He shook his head, got control of himself, and walked faster.

A man playing a blues harp pa.s.sed him on the other side of Tinker Street. The blues pulsed up into the evening sky, mournful and elaborate, a peac.o.c.k tail of sound. Feelings stirred for which Patrick had no words. He pumped one fist in the air like a brother and turned aside to the rooming house.

2

He likes you, as usual," Willow said. "And of course you don't care.

You are such a b.i.t.c.h, sometimes."

"I am not. I can't help it if he likes me." Amber made a tiny swaggering move with her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Anyway, he likes you just as much."

"Well, why doesn't he look at me?"

"If you'd wear something besides jeans and work shirts . . ." Amber's pants and short skirts clung to perfect legs. Her blouses were tight.

She was averagely good looking. Her face was open and energetic; her hair was chestnut tending to blonde, shoulder length and wavy. Men found themselves looking at her, talking to her, and then--the more they looked, the more they saw. She was faster than they were; she adjusted effortlessly in flight, becoming more serious or more carefree, more cerebral or more pa.s.sionate under their gaze.

"Men are SO stupid," Willow said.

"Don't you think they're cute sometimes? Even AhnRee with his tan and those big white towels he wraps around his belly at the pool. He's old--G.o.d, do you think he's fifty?--but he has those big round dark eyes." AhnRee had picked up Amber the second day they were in town.

"When I see someone so special, I know! I must paint you. My name is AhnRee," he had said with great dignity.

"AhnRee?" Willow asked.

"As in Matisse," he said. "It is an honor, such a name. A curse . . .

But never mind." He smiled gallantly. Gigi, Willow said to herself. No one should copy Maurice Chevalier. They get the eyes and the teeth, but they don't have the engine. No fire engine inside the doors.

"No fire engine," she said to Amber. "Huh?" AhnRee had said something to Amber and Amber was asking why they shouldn't try living in his studio.

"You will find it most private," AhnRee said. "It is some distance from the main house. In return, a bit of modeling, say, once a week? Say you will," he pleaded.

"Only if it is all right with Willow," Amber said, kicking Willow in the ankle.

"Ah, Willow," AhnRee said, wrenching his eyes from Amber who was becoming ever more elusive, more of a muse.

"Where is this place?" Willow asked.

"A short drive up the mountain. An easy ride on a bicycle. In fact, I have several bicycles--if you don't mind the old fashioned kind with baskets on the handlebars."

"And what do I have to do?" Amber kicked her again.

AhnRee considered. "You may mow the lawn around the studio. And, if you wish, attend a little to the flowers."

Willow had given in, and it had been fine. AhnRee had left them alone.

And Amber seemed to enjoy modeling. "It's not so bad, being admired,"

she told Willow.

"Well," Willow said, coming back to the present, "you knocked Patrick out with that bit about foggy mornings on the Galapagos Islands."

"Can I help it if my father is a Darwin freak? He practically made me go with him."

"Christ," Willow said.

"He likes you; I'm telling you," Amber said.

"Gee, maybe he'll let me hold his hand someday, comfort his broken heart." She smiled to soften the edge in her tone, and they pedaled toward home in the early evening light.

Willow liked Patrick. He thought for himself. And his eyes were cute, a penetrating blue that changed from hard to soft. He was the right height and looked strong underneath that funny European work shirt. Her imagination slowed at his belt. She had shared sleeping bags with Aaron at a sing-out, but it had been dark. It had been pleasant enough, I mean, O.K., she wrote in her journal, but men's bodies were basically terra incognita. What she knew of s.e.x was a fuzzy blend of Michelangelo and the diaries of Anais Nin. There were plenty of men around--it wasn't that--it was just that none of them turned her on. She tired of their talk and endless compet.i.tion. She'd rather listen to the Beethoven quartets. That was another thing about Patrick. What did he say? "Rattled his cage," that was it. Exactly. Her perfect brother, David, said he liked Beethoven; David always said what he was supposed to. But he never listened to Beethoven. He liked the Beatles, for G.o.d's sake. I mean, yes, they wrote some catchy melodies, but really. They were a long way from Dylan, let alone Beethoven.

Willow's indignation carried her to the top of the last hill before AhnRee's driveway. She got off her bike and waited for Amber. They walked up the b.u.mpy dirt road, one on each side of the gra.s.s strip in the middle. As they pa.s.sed the main house, they got on their bikes and pedaled to the studio along the edge of a small steep hay field rich in clover and wildflowers, surrounded by trees. The studio was made of dark weathered wood. It had a deep glow to Willow, perhaps because it was the first time she had lived anywhere other than home or the university.

She slept on a screened porch that looked into the woods behind the house. Amber had the bedroom. The central room had a cathedral ceiling and a skylight that faced north. It was furnished with an old couch, a coffee table, and two armchairs drawn up by a stone fireplace. They ate at a large table in the kitchen, the room through which one entered the house.

AhnRee explained to Amber that skylights faced north so that the light for painting would be more even, the changes more gradual. Painters had been settling in Woodstock for generations. There were many such houses--hard to keep warm in the winter, but, AhnRee pointed out with a shrug, "If one is in San Miguel d'Allende . . . "

"Mexico, right?" Willow asked Amber.

"Right. I guess he goes there every winter." Amber had spent her time meeting people and going to parties. She already had one guy chasing her, showing up unannounced and hanging around. Willow usually excused herself and read on her bed. An outside door led to the porch; the door was solid and blocked most of the noise from inside the house. When she wasn't reading, she took walks and rode her bike into town for groceries. She was learning to cook. You would have killed a robin if you hit it with her first loaf of seven grain bread, but she was getting the hang of it. She had developed a wicked lasagna. Mornings after, the lasagna pan was as empty as the Chianti bottle or bottles.

On this particular evening, she threw a salad together--avocado, feta cheese, a few scallions, red leaf lettuce, lemon juice, and a yummy Portuguese olive oil that Ann-in-the-deli had recommended. Ann was middle aged with a red face and a bad leg. She sat behind the cash register, talking loudly with customers, denouncing the government and its stupid war. She liked young people and extended credit when they were short of money. She had a metal box with 3X5 cards in it, alphabetized by name. Willow watched her accept payments and cross out numbers at the bottom of little columns while customers waited proudly with bags containing six-packs, cigarettes, potato chips, and quarts of milk. If someone was charging, he (usually a he) would mumble thanks and pick his way out guiltily while Ann added another number to his column.

"I've got to get a job soon," Willow said, taking another bite of salad.

"What for?" Amber's father made a deposit every month to her account.

While you're in school, he told her.

"I want to. I mean, I don't want to keep living on your money."

"It's not my money. I didn't earn it."

"Yeah, but . . . " They had taken a bus to Sacramento and caught a train east, the day after finals. The idea swept them off their feet.

They were just now, a month later, realizing that they were actually somewhere else. After a day of walking around the Village in New York, they took a bus to Woodstock. They got out in front of the News Shop, and here they were. Their parents weren't thrilled, but Amber convinced her father on the phone that she was having a good time and was in control of herself. Willow resorted to a stream of postcards--maple trees in October, scenes of the Ashokan Reservoir, and one of the tiny Old Catholic Church peeping out of the trees. "Father Francis built it himself with the help of his boys, I mean, acolytes," she wrote. "A kindly old fraud who presides over his two acres with tottering good humor, dispensing advice and tea to wanderers. Amber and I went to a wedding there last week. Lots of flowers. Lousy cake. It's halfway up a mountain called, 'Overlook.' Love, Willow."

"What would you do?" Amber asked.

"I don't know. I don't think I'm waitress material. I mean, G.o.d, I wish I were. I like food, but I'm too dreamy. I mean, I want to do something well."

"You don't want to work at night, anyway," Amber said.

"No." When it got dark, Willow would just as soon go to bed with a book. She was an early riser.

"Go with the flow," Amber said. "Something will turn up."

"I guess." Willow collected the dishes, washed them, and went out to the porch, to her comfortable bed, a warm safe cave. She undressed and snuggled into her pillows. Darwin, she thought. She imagined Patrick aboard H.M.S. Beagle. "Your m.u.f.fin, Sir." She presented him with a gorgeous cinnamon apple m.u.f.fin on a tin plate. "Aye, aye," someone said as she fell asleep.