We talked a minute more, I brought him a glass of water. He grinned the whole time like he’d just won at bingo. Then he flopped on his back and slid under again.
After the third or fourth break I realized: He was happy. Charlie was doing something that delighted him. He was humming under there, and I hadn’t heard him hum since Chicago. He didn’t want to break for dinner, though I heard his stomach grumbling. It pleased me to see this anxious man at ease, working but content.
This was the guy I had run around the theater with. The fella who gave me lovely gloves. Here I was, in a New Mexican version of sitting on the cellar steps. Saturday night and there was no other place I would rather be.
Eventually Charlie slid out and sat upright. “All my life,” he said, completing a thought that must have started under the console, “I’ve believed that authority meant wisdom. That’s why I obeyed it. Knowledge and prudence, based on education and experience.” He wiped his hands on his trousers. “I was wrong. The Hill has convinced me. All authority actually means is power.”
I wanted to hear more, but something had occurred to me: it had been a long time since I heard any churches toll the hour. “Charlie,” I said, “what time does the last bus leave for Los Alamos?”
“Eleven. We’d better get moving.” As he stood, he glanced at his wristwatch. And deflated entirely. “Brenda.”
“What time is it?”
“Twenty past the last bus.”
In a way I was pleased. It was an echo of the night in my father’s workshop. I considered the tools scattered around me. “My fault. I should have been keeping track.”
“Forget who’s to blame. What do we do?”
“A hotel?”
“I only brought enough money for dinner.”
I had a wrench in one hand, needle-nose pliers in the other. I dropped them in the toolbox with a clatter. “I’m sorry, Charlie.”
“Enough of that.” He squatted to bring his face level with mine. “No one put anyone in charge of the clock. Besides, now you’re in good shape for tomorrow.”
Collecting the other tools, I put them one by one into the box. When I’d finished, I raised my eyes and he was still squatting there. “I don’t know what to do,” I said.
“Why don’t we try the East Palace offices? It can’t be the first time this ever happened.”
So I locked up the church and we hurried across town. The whole way, I knew what the answer would be. The iron gate was closed, no lights on, no one home.
An idea fluttered inside me, disobedient and exciting. It had come to me on the way over, and there by the iron gate it had me by the leg.
“Well,” Charlie said. “We are in a bit of a pickle. Or I am, anyway.”
My idea was full of risk: my housing, my job, my reputation. But it did not feel like temptation, it felt like opportunity. I could not imagine going through with it, much less convincing Charlie.
I put both hands flat on his chest. He seemed so skinny. Sometimes I forgot.
Out of nowhere I remembered a time at my aunt’s place in Wisconsin, the summer I was eleven or twelve, and we went to a beach house that had a high dive. All my cousins were scrambling up the ladder and throwing themselves off. But I hung back, scared of the height. Even Bonnie, the eight-year-old, inched her way out and jumped from the platform.
“Go on, Brenda,” my mother said, behind a fog of cigarette smoke. “A little courage won’t kill you.”
Funny how one sentence can reverberate through the whole rest of your life.
“Why don’t you walk me home,” I said to Charlie, “and we’ll see what comes up?”
Which was how we wound up outside the boardinghouse, a quarter moon overhead and heading west. I whispered to Charlie. “Take off your shoes.”
“Excuse me?”
“Socks too. And do exactly as I say.”
Charlie chuckled. “Haven’t you trained me to do that already?”
I put a finger to my lips. As soon as he was barefoot, I eased the door open.
“Really?” he whispered.
“A little courage won’t kill you.”
Today I am proud of that girl, and her boldness. Life has many high-dive moments, and some turn out to be belly flops. But Charlie was not sleeping in some park or hideaway, not if I could help it. Lizzie had been smart enough—or coconspirator enough—to switch off the light at the top of the stairs. That meant we climbed slowly, in the dark, every creak amplified.
At the top, I took Charlie’s hand and led him to my room. The worst of it was over, and we could see well enough by the light of the moon. Closing the door, I had him sit on the narrow bed. The mattress creaked under his weight.
“What are we doing?” he whispered.
I leaned close, my lips an inch from his ear. “You are sleeping here.”
He shook his head no, but I nodded and whispered again, “You can stay till it’s almost light. No hanky-panky.”
He gave me a look I did not understand. Pained, almost.
“Not that I haven’t thought about it a hundred times,” I added, the boldest thing I had ever said to a guy.
Charlie smiled. “A thousand times,” he whispered.
“But not tonight,” I repeated. Then I kissed his forehead. “I’m going to brush my teeth. You get comfortable.”
When I returned, Charlie had stretched himself out on top of the covers and snug to the wall, leaving two-thirds of the bed for me. I grabbed his toes with both hands. “Hello, Charlie’s feet.” Then I made a spiral with my finger, so he turned away as I slipped out of my clothes and into a nightgown.
I lay down as gently as if I were made of eggshells. He curled around me as softly as if he were made of glass. The mattress sagged. We had no choice but to touch.
“Sweet dreams,” I said, kissing his knuckles.
“You too, Brenda,” Charlie whispered, his lips against my shoulder.
Moonlight poured through the open window, onto the floor like a blue-white spill.
That night was an agony. I remember it all these years later, clear as if I’d cut my finger this morning. I had just turned twenty-one, for heaven’s sake, and Charlie was even younger. We had no experience with the opposite sex beyond kisses and hugs. And here we were, touching the length of our lovely bodies. Charlie’s feet tucked up beneath my feet, his knees nestled behind mine, his hips snug to my rump like I was sitting in his lap. Longing filled me, top to bottom and hot at the core. I pressed his wrist to the bone between my breasts, and we lay with eyes wide.
At first it was a bath of pleasure. Warmth, and comfort, and melting into each other. Charlie smelled like dust from the organ repairs, but also leather somehow. Of course I wondered how I smelled to him too. An hour passed, I heard the church bells, and I was no nearer to sleep than when we’d put the church’s toolbox away. We snuggled closer, but it only made things worse. Another hour. Another.
I ached for him. There is no other way to put it. I craved Charlie Fish in every cell. I experienced the physical pull that in the moment seemed naughty and wrong, but that I now know to be natural and right. It was a delicious yearning, and I wondered if Charlie was feeling the same torment.
He let out a huge sigh. Not the sound of a sleeping man, not deep or easy, but wide awake. That sigh contained all the hunger I felt, perhaps more. With that, I gave up on trying to sleep, pressed myself back against him, and decided to let the night pass under that powerful, unfulfilled spell.