Seven #2
He hadn’t wanted to host a party last Memorial Day, but Honey insisted despite the iffy weekend forecast. Western New York’s lake-effect weather was most pernicious during the winter, but the ever-shifting atmospheric systems over the Great Lakes could also bring in a sudden rush of clouds and thunderstorms to ruin a perfectly lovely summer day.
Or not. Lake effect, in Finn’s understanding, just meant you could never be sure what was coming.
The cobblestone lake house had originally been built by Finn’s grandfather and, like many of the houses on the east bluff of Keuka Lake, was constructed as four levels built into a hillside, each level approximately seven hundred square feet.
Cramming forty adults and an unfathomable number of kids—mostly teenagers—into one floor was impossible.
Managing a party that spread over many levels ended up being more frustrating than fun.
On sunny days, when guests could congregate on the large outdoor deck Finn’s father had added, larger gatherings gained some kind of critical mass.
Left indoors, the parties tended to languish.
And if the older kids couldn’t water-ski or swim, they would gather sullenly in front of the television on the ground level watching game shows.
Finn didn’t think any of the kids were a bona fide couple, but the world of teens and sex frightened him, between the pill and the so-called sexual revolution (whenever he heard that phrase, he pictured a bunch of hippies marching naked down Main Street waving flags with a hammer and sickle).
The morning of the barbecue dawned bright and promising.
Blue skies without a wisp of a cloud. Toward noon, surrounded by hungry guests, and just as Finn got the charcoals exactly right, the skies darkened, and the rain started.
Everyone was well into their third Bloody Mary or screwdriver, and as Finn scrambled to move the food from the outdoor tables to the claustrophobic indoor kitchen, he realized they were going to need the folding chairs stored in the boathouse.
Much like the night he met Honey, he would replay that afternoon over and over, wondering if it had happened the way he remembered.
He was in the slightly mildewy boathouse, wiping the spiderwebs from the metal chairs, when he heard someone banging at the door, saying it was locked.
He pulled the door open—it wasn’t locked, just sticky—and there was Nina Larkin, trying to cover herself with her hands because now it was pouring. She was soaked and grinning.
“Oh no,” he said, seeing her state. He took her arm and pulled her across the threshold.
“It’s freezing in here,” she said.
“I know. It doesn’t get any sun until the late afternoon, so it’s always cold. Not that I expect the sun again today. We must have a towel around here somewhere.”
“Oh, I’m fine until we get back upstairs,” she said, shivering.
“Why were you out in the rain?”
“Honey said you might need help.”
“She did?” Finn didn’t even think Honey had noticed he’d gone. Nina tried to wring the water out of her long hair, and when she looked up, she said, “What’s wrong?”
“Wrong?”
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
He saw Nina Larkin, soaked, her white blouse clinging to her body in a way that temporarily undid him.
She pulled the blouse out from her jeans and away from her body, self-conscious.
Embarrassed by the churn of feelings, he turned and looked around the room.
He spotted a pile of old swim towels that Honey stored down here for when they needed to dry off the boat.
“Here,” he said, grabbing a few. “These are clean.”
She took one of them and leaned over and deftly wrung the water out of her hair. “Better,” she said, handing him back the towel.
He walked toward her and for the rest of his life would marvel at his boldness.
“Let me help,” he said. He undid the top button of her blouse and stared at her.
She let her hands drop to her sides. They were both perfectly silent, but Finn could hear Nina’s breathing change, and he didn’t even try to conceal his erection.
He kept unbuttoning until he could slide the blouse off her torso.
He took another towel and wrapped it around her shoulders and pulled her close to him, and when she responded with fervor, not anger or reluctance, he was a goner.
He stepped away after many minutes. Her mascara was smeared from the rain, her face red from the kissing, but she didn’t move.
She stood, in her bra, pressed against him, and when he touched her nipple she groaned and said, “Don’t stop.
” He didn’t know what would have happened next if Dune hadn’t started yelling for his father from upstairs.
Nina quickly dressed and they each grabbed a few folding chairs and went back to the party.
He went into the bathroom to wash his face, to wash Nina off his face, and wondered if he’d imagined the entire thing.
The contrast that imbued his life from that one kiss, that one spectacular grope, plunged his marriage, his daily existence, into bleak shades of gray.
Things he’d been able to ignore were now like little fleas nipping at his bare ankles.
The growing independence of his children.
The hostility from his wife. The unlikelihood that anything would ever get better, and who was Honey going to direct her ire at when the children were all gone?
And this: was he done having sex? He was fifty-two.
Fifty-two! Honey had indicated in many ways over many years that she was willing to endure his approach, intimacy, a few times a year.
Hovering over the mother of your children trying to have an orgasm while that person literally braced herself against the onslaught was almost worse than nothing.
He couldn’t even masturbate. Where? Honey was on him every minute of every day.
He had one constant, consuming desire and her name was Nina Larkin and he was determined to make her his wife.