Let's Go Play at the Adams'

rope, the adhesive tape and all, and he was out here inside of himself as well. The mutual

isolation was complete, and to John, it was quite honestly sad. I don't want ·to do this to

you, John said, but how could I any other way?

No way.

What was left was at least bittersweet. If he couldn't be her grown-up, voluptuously

welcomed lover, it was sad and nice at least to touch what he

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loved, and-like Paul-he, too, lost some of his fearfulness. Increasingly his hand moved over

all of the parts of a woman's body that he had only daydreamed about, and moved gently,

almost protectively. There was nowhere he could look and not be dumbfounded by a

sixteen-year-old joy.

The sharpness of ankle running over the thinness of shin to the strength of knee; the

fullness of inner thigh merging into the complex of hips, belly, navel; the body, the

breasts, the nipples (as if in defiance, they were cold, tiny, and shrunken); the slenderness

of throat, the chin line, Barbara's hair. John loved. For the moment, he rather desperately

loved.

Throughout all of this, Barbara lay absolutely rigid. It wasn't simply that she was bound but

that there was an inner rigidity that was somehow her hopeless defense against him. Her

nearly covered face-taped and blindfolded-was turned away from him. No matter what he

did, he received no response at all. He was not there. Thus he arrived at the second part of

last night's plan rather defeated and elated all at the same time.

How easy it had seemed then. How he had tossed and turned with impatience. Now, as it

turned out, his hands were shaking as he stood up, unbuttoned his cutoffs, kicked off his

moccasins, and fearfully lay down beside her. Don't be mad, John Randall said, don't be

mad; and he turned against her.

Barbara's flung-out position made the whole episode difficult. Nevertheless there was an

instant touching of his whole body-even the parts he rarely had occasion to touch himself-

with hers, the conjugal experience never before felt or imagined. It wasn't her nakedness

that so impressed him but his own, and yet not so much his own but theirs. Although it was

wrong, that is, although the moment was gained by theft in a borrowed hour at the Adams'

house with an older girl who was helpless to reject him, although the sureness of

punishment came steadily closer, still the feeling changed his life forever. As he knew it

would. He loved her, and he felt himself rising in proof. Getting up on all

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fours--elbows and knees-he crossed to between her legs. At last she acknowledged him,

shaking her head violently from side to side, No, No, No. That was when he did it to her.

Dianne had the last guard duty of the day. When she looked at her tiny silvery watch and

got up and left the beach, it meant that Cindy and the rest of them (except for John, who

was on watch) had to come out of the water, dry off, and follow her up to the house.

Afterward there was always the elaborate and possibly dangerous business of moving

Barbara and feeding her, the dull thing of getting out of wet bathing suits and hanging

them to dry, and then the unhappy part of having to watch everybody go home. The sun

was still high up and all, but it was the end of the day, and Cindy hated it.

Not only was the boredom of spending nights alone with nobody to talk to, becoming

harder to endure, but each finished day was one closer. Reckoning time was coming.

For Cindy, of course, time did not race by with adult speed. Preoccupations, duties,

schedules, arrangements, meetings were no part of her life. Instead she drifted, sometimes

pleasantly, sometimes petulantly, in a vague continuum of night-day-night needing only

amusement, approval and a little petting to be happy. Nonetheless she marked treats and

punishments accurately enough. Mommy and Daddy would be home this Monday, and

today was the end of Wednesday. Five more days.

Presumably by then, the kids would have let Barbara go, and she would have turned

around and let them have it good. The first time. Afterward she would tell Mommy and

Daddy. What would happen then, Cindy couldn't even guess-she had never been so bad-

and it worried her.

Immersed in this mood with a child's singular intensity, she banged into the house and

down the hall unaware of low serious conversation ahead of her. Not until she reached

Barbara's room did she realize that

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anything different was happening. Then she stopped at the door, dirty, dragging beach

towel coming to a stop on the floor behind her. John and Dianne were talking.

"What did you do to her?" Dianne was angry. John glanced down at Cindy and back again.

"Everything,'' he said.

There was an extra second's hesitation in which Cindy thought that they looked at each

other with a kind of secretiveness; certainly, they weren't including her, at all. Then she