Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [47]
Across a large lawn, maybe four football fields in size, sat the public pool. It looked like a dozen or so people were milling around it. On the far side, I read the words Spa and Laundry.
Bingo.
I stepped out of the woods but remembered what Abbie had said. The point was to not draw attention to myself. I turned around, hopped behind a tree, stripped to my birthday suit, pulled my sunglasses down over my eyes and began strolling across the lawn like a regular. Then I thought through the process of carrying something back, so I backpedaled, grabbed my shirt and threw it around my neck like a towel.
I’d never been so self-conscious in all my life. I tried to whistle but couldn’t get my lips to cooperate.
I made it halfway across the lawn when an older woman stepped out of her cabin maybe fifty yards off. She wasn’t wearing anything either, and hers was a wrinkled and sagging image I could have done without. She waved, turned her back—another image that will haunt me to my grave—then began watering flower boxes across her deck, paying me no more mind.
These people are weird.
’Course, then I thought about me, walking across their backyard, naked as a jaybird, and figured I was probably weird too.
I made it to the pool and tried not to make eye contact with the eleven other people either stretched out around the pool or swimming in it. There were three kids, a couple of teenagers and four adults. Looked like two families. Feeling more self-conscious than I’d ever felt in my life, I strode across the pool deck and stepped into the spa where I was met by a women’s yoga class.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
Looking at no one and yet everyone, I walked down a hallway and into what sounded like the laundry room. I didn’t draw any attention, which was good in an odd sort of way. The women were all focused somewhere between a downward dog and rising moon. In the laundry, twelve sets of washers and dryers were all running. Evidently, the women brought their laundry to yoga. Jackpot!
I looked over my shoulder, then started quietly rifling through each dryer. I found a bathing suit bottom and top, a towel, and some cutoff shorts that all looked like they would fit Abbie. Then I thought, Feet. I grabbed a pair of socks and a bar of soap off the sink. I rolled everything inside the towel, slung it back around my neck and walked back out through the yoga class trying to think about taxes, the square root of pi or tinkering with a Rubik’s Cube.
I skirted the pool deck, waved at one man reading a book on the far side. The woman next to him raised her nose out of a book and said, “You new here?”
“Yeah.” I turned sideways, pointing to the far row of what looked like rental cabins. “Just in. We try and get down once a year.”
She sat up and pointed to a row of cabins opposite the pool house. “You ought to come up tonight. Number fourteen. George here is grilling burgers and we’re inviting the neighbors. Just a get-together.”
“Sure. Uh…’bout what time?”
“Sixish. You bring your wife?” It was a question.
“Yes. Thanks. We’ll see you then.” George waved and the lady returned to her book, smiling.
I walked back across the lawn where two men and one other woman waved at me from their porches. This is just shameless exhibitionism. Men are not made to walk around naked. It’s not comfortable. I stepped into the woods and found T-shirt-only Abbie doubled over. Tears were running off her face. She was laughing as hard as I’d ever seen her laugh.
I handed her the clothes. “That’s not funny.” She couldn’t even talk. I grabbed my shorts, looped my arm into hers and we strolled butt-naked through the woods.
She looked behind me and slapped me on the right cheek. “You got a cute butt.”
“Well, it’s not my best feature.”
We reached the river where a rope swing hung above us. Swingers could perch themselves on