Pia paddled over to us. “That’s just crap, Win. She should do this. You have to do this. It’s freaking paradise. It’s why we’re here.”
Sandra finished undressing, arranging her clothes in a neat pile. She turned, at first covering herself with her hands, but then let them drop. One full breast glowed in the moonlight, the nipple a dark halo; where the other had been, a pale pink scar crossed her chest. Another horizontal scar, from the cesarean she’d had with her son, Ethan, glowed faintly whitish in the moonlight just above her pubic bone. Though she was shorter and smaller than the rest of us, her body was full and soft, a stranger to diets or the gym. To me there was something wonderful about that. She stared straight ahead, as if obeying some far-off command, then calmly stepped into the water and disappeared with the smallest splash imaginable. In seconds she burst forth gasping and cursing.
Well, I had to go in now. Just as Rory had predicted, the moon had risen full and huge and shone down on us with papery blue light. The black water reflected it back in pieces.
“Hey, Rory?” I asked. “Do you think there are leeches in here?”
The women squealed until he answered, “No way! They’re only in still water. This is fed by the river. You’re fine.”
Rachel rubbed at the caked-on mud that still covered her neck and arms. Birds cooed and chittered above us, making sleepy night sounds. I dipped my hand in the cool, soft water, swirled it around, then started to take off my clothes. I turned away to do it, thought of everyone looking at my fat ass, then laughed out loud because I realized I didn’t care.
I’ve known several kinds of nakedness: moments of pride for whatever allure youth had granted my body, or—later—blushing mortification at my imperfections, but never the sort where I was outside in the Maine woods in early summer, with my friends and one strange man, at night, in a glacial pothole in a river . . . and I have to say it was a sensual-yet-easy nudity. There was the wild beauty of where we were, but we all looked how we looked and so what; the water so delicious you could have bottled and sold it as an elixir of health and happiness; the temperature on the shivery side but perfect to erase the shellac from a sweaty day of hiking in humid heat. I wondered, why did I ever doubt this trip would be the best thing I ever did?
“I want to hike the Appalachian Trail, maybe next year,” I heard Pia say to Rory as I came up from a rinse.
“Me too,” he said. “After I graduate, maybe. I hear it really changes you, being alone like that for months and months.”
Pia rested in the water at the rim of the pool near him, her small breasts half in, half out of the water. “But don’t you run into people on the trail, maybe end up hiking with them?”
He shrugged. Beads of water fell off his tight coils of hair, rolled down his beautiful shoulders as he launched himself from the perimeter of the bowl, a slow breast stroke, his leonine head high out of the water. “It happens. But unless you plan to do the trip with someone, you’re on your own.”
“Well, I want to do it,” Pia said. “As soon as I quit my stupid job.”
I smiled as I swam. Pia had been talking about hiking the Appalachian Trail as long as I’d known her, nearly fifteen years.
I pushed myself up and out of the water, dried off with my T-shirt and slipped on my clothes, then stretched out on the bank, a bit tipsy, half listening to chatter about plans for the next several days. My mind slipped back to a recent discussion with Sarah, our new Web developer, about coding. I’d said yes, of course, I get that coding is what makes everything we see online possible, but what is behind the coding? Who codes the code? And so on . . . Isn’t it magic? I’d asked, only half joking. She’d looked at me as if I were an idiot, or worse: boring.
She’d said, “Look, there is no magic. For everything you see, there’s an explanation. You just have to look behind things to see how they work. Open a watch. Take apart a car. There is always a man behind the curtain, pulling the levers; there are no mysteries left.”
I had agreed with her to keep the peace and finish our awkward conversation, but I still wondered. Once one mystery is solved, isn’t there always another lying just beneath?
? ? ?
“Wini . . .” A wet hand shook my arm. “Wake up!”
A spray of night stars. The moon in a caul of cloud.
“We’re heading back.” Rachel’s wet hair hung in tangled ropes, her glasses glinting silver in the moonlight. She stood up and tucked in her shirt, the fabric sticking to her slim torso. A back-to-business feeling coming from her. Nearby, Sandra floated, toes up like a corpse.
I sat up shivering, bits of gravelly rock embedded in my T-shirt. How had I ever fallen asleep this way . . . but the acrid taste of vinegary wine reminded me. I got to my feet, trying to hold on to the enjoyable stage of drunkenness as long as possible.
“Come on, Sandra, let’s go,” Rachel said.
Obediently, Sandra turned and swam the short distance to the edge of the bowl.