Wolf Point by Edward Falco Page B

him in amusement. She looked cozy buried under the covers, only her head peeking out above the quilt. He considered asking her how she could be so sure Lester would be back, but decided against it. Instead, he went into the bathroom and peeled off his wet clothes.
    “How’d you get so wet?” she called to him.
    “Sitting on a rock watching the river.”
    “That’s so romantic.”
    He sat down on the john and struggled out of his pants. “Where’d Lester think we’d go without a car?”
    “Lester’s weird,” she said. “Who knows?”
    “Any idea why he’d take my photography equipment out of the Rover and bring it in here?”
    She was silent a moment, and he imagined her in the next room curled up comfortably inside her little cocoon, the way her eyes might be gazing intently at nothing as she gathered her thoughts. He was surprised at how vividly her image hadlodged itself in his mind, especially her eyes, which he felt he still had not been able to read accurately, and so the image of them, green and gazing at something intently, was a kind of puzzle, an unanswered question.
    She called back, “Who knows why he does the things he does?”
    T said, “I was hoping you might.” He hung his wet clothes over the shower curtain rod, dried himself off with a towel Jenny had left on the sink, and then wrapped it around him and went to the master bedroom for his suitcase and the pajamas he remembered packing, the ones that looked like an upscale prison uniform—silk, with diagonal black and white stripes. Maura had given them to him as a birthday present several years ago. They had been the only ones he could find clean.
    When he appeared before Jenny in the doorway, she said, “Oh my God, oh my God,” and buried her head under the quilt. The bed rocked as she laughed.
    T said, “I wasn’t expecting to be seen by anyone,” and got under the covers with her.
    She turned over and looked out at him from an opening in the quilt. Her face was red. “Oh my God,” she said. “You’re so cute.”
    “Thank you,” he said. “That’s exactly how I want to be seen by a young woman, as cute.”
    “Oh, stop,” she popped her head out from under the covers and rested her cheek on his shoulder. “You’re so sensitive,” she said. “You’re like a sad little boy.”
    A small rush of anger came over T at being called a little boy. He closed his eyes and waited for it to subside. “So you feel absolutely certain Lester is coming back?”
    “Absolutely,” she said, and cuddled up closer to him under the blankets. “I promise, I know the guy: he’s scared to death you and me are going to hook up and leave him on his own. Really, I know him.” She wiggled closer to him and pushed a quilt-covered knee up over his thigh.
    T saw himself for a moment as he might look to someone perched in the corner of the room, near the ceiling, or from a cinematic view, a camera angle: an older man in silk pajamas, the look in his eyes world-weary, a little cynical, with a young woman crawling over him.
    Jenny said, “I never woke up in bed with a guy when I didn’t, you know, the night before.” She kissed him playfully on the chin.
    “Obviously,” T said, “you’ve never been married. What about Lester?”
    “What about him?”
    “When you lived with him for a year.”
    “Lester told you I lived with him for a year?” She slid down and rested her head on his stomach. “I didn’t live with Lester. Well, I guess I did, technically—but it wasn’t like, you know, living with him.”
    “It was…?”
    “We shared a house for a year, when I started at UTC. I got a place in town, and then I rented a room to Lester, who myfamily’s known like since forever. So, I guess he lived with me for a year, but it was, you know: he had his room, I had mine.”
    “You weren’t lovers? This is your freshman year in college we’re talking about? You’re seventeen, eighteen?”
    Jenny nodded. “Lester was older. Twenty-three,