“Do you think it’s been fifty counts already?” Meredith said.
“Let’s wait twenty more.”
There was a pointed silence, so I assumed my customary role and counted Mississippis. Then we swung the door open. Whispering, the twins turned right and slunk between two waiters carrying trays of highball glasses.
I was unexpectedly nervous. I started toward the big oak staircase and then stopped. Isabella only wanted fifty counts, so she couldn’t have gone too far. Instead, I crossed the kitchen and approached the basement stairs. I felt out for the steps with one foot and slowly descended, my heartbeat tinny in my ears. On the left was a utility room, with a narrow window that peeped over the top of the lawn, allowing gloomy light to mark out the shape of a washer and an old bathtub. The room was stuffy, the air damp. It was harder to hear the rain down there, although the gutters on the side of the building gurgled with water.
“Isabella?” I whispered. I waited and listened. A woven wicker mat lay across the top of the bathtub, and two folded sweaters had been moved from the mat onto the floor. I rolled the mat back from the edge of the tub. And there she was!
Isabella grinned. “Quickly,” she said, shuffling over.
I climbed into the bathtub. We just about fit, although we had to nestle down under pleats of her mint green silk. Isabella shook out the mat and shifted it about until it covered us. It was utterly black and unbearably hot inside the tub. Our breath stewed in the confined space. Beads of sweat pearled on my skin. The heat of Isabella’s body pressed all along the right side of my own. As my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I saw her face was painted with darts of faint light through the weave of the wicker.
Footsteps clattered down the stairs and the staircase jogged about. I hoped it hadn’t shaken so heavily when I came down it.
“Izzy?” Alison’s voice.
Slowly, Isabella’s fingers crept to the bodice of my dress. She started tickling. I squirmed but clamped my mouth shut. I would not cry out and lose the game. She tickled harder, scrabbling beneath my underarm. I buckled against her once, twice, snorted out my nose. I put my left hand on her shoulder to push her away. The glint of her smile was visible even through the gloom. She grabbed hold of my hand.
“Izzy?” Alison came into the utility room and flicked the light switch, but the power was still out. My heart was beating wildly. I could feel the drum of Isabella’s pulse against my shoulder. She took hold of my ring finger and brought it to her mouth. I felt the dampness of her breath against my fingers, and then the hot softness of her tongue against the tip of the one she held. She closed her teeth and bit it gently. A squirm went through my body, like a guitar string. It caught under the curl of my toes and traveled through my core and into my throat. My pulse surged so rapidly, my temples grew tight. I said nothing. I willed myself not to make a sound. It would lose us the game. She would not make me a loser. But I was concentrating so fiercely my whole body trembled.
The staircase thumped again. Now I heard Eleanor’s voice. “Did you check the kitchen?”
“Yes,” said Meredith and Alison at the same time.
“Where’s Bridget?”
“I haven’t seen her.”
“I’m getting creeped out now.”
“Ugh! Is that a spiderweb?”
“Do you think she’s in the washer?”
“I felt something on my neck for sure.”
“Is there another room down here?”
Isabella inched closer to me, and now her mouth was by the corner of mine. I could feel the humid exchange of our breath. The quake traveled into the tips of my fingers. My heartbeat must be so hard she would surely notice it.
Isabella inched closer.
The backs of my knees were shaking.
And then she bit the corner of my mouth. I may have gasped, but I don’t think so. I would not give the game away.
Then her tongue was liquid inside my bottom lip. And her mouth was moving for mine. Her pulse was beating through her lips and in the arc of her neck, where her heartbeat fluttered. I let my tongue curve up and meet the slightness of hers. And the guitar string was plucked again, harder, deeper, through the center of my body from the hollow of my throat right to the join between my legs. I felt I might be passing out. My brain unspooled. Her body tensed and then gave, a yielding, an accord. And Isabella made a noise, just a slight noise. And at that, I began to unwind.
With a judder and a whir, the lights flicked back on. A record player stuttered back to life, and there was a cheer from upstairs, followed by the chime of clinking glasses.
Laughing, Isabella sat up and pushed the mat aside. “Hurray! Come on, Briddie.” She clambered out of the tub and fluffed out her dress, combing down her hair with her fingers.
I sat up, dazed, my lips swollen, prickling. Isabella began climbing up the staircase. The hairs on my arms were standing upright. Everything in my body was alert, listening. I climbed out and followed up the staircase, my ears ringing.
In the kitchen, the waiters were blowing out candles and the air was tickly with smoke. My eyes stung. Mrs. Riordan was talking to Mrs. Quincy about the Catholic League; someone in another room was playing a violin. My brain felt full of bouncing putty. I leaned on the edge of the drinks table.
“Bridge, where were you?” Sophie said, gripping me by the shoulder. Her cheeks were pink. “I was looking for all y’all.” She smiled, but her mouth was twitching. “My mom gave this toast.” She picked up a glass of champagne from the table.
“Sorry,” I said. “Isabella—” I swallowed.
“Ugh. Izzy. I should have known. Where is she?”
I pointed to where Isabella was standing, behind the door of the ballroom. She was talking to a young man, presumably Ralph. His features were puffy, bland, given shape only by the bulb of a snub nose.
“Sometimes, I swear—” Sophie shook her head. She let out a breath and sipped from her glass. “Well, you know what Izzy’s like. The thing is not to let her wind you up.”
“OK,” I said.
But I was unwound completely.
II
One Year Later
Italy
4.
August 1957
I traveled to the academy a week before the start of term. It was my first Italian train journey and I pushed the window right down to the quick for my introduction to Europe. After leaving Milan we jostled between hills lined with crumbling stone walls, silver olive trees crouching in the scorched grass. We passed through fields of blazing sunflowers, women wearing faded head scarves yawning by the tracks. Somewhere outside Colonna, three boys on the roof of a shed waved to the train, then pelted the carriages with mulberries, shrieking. I closed the window after that.