The Spiked Heel

The barn boasted stacks and stacks of hay, and Cara visited that barn often during that hectic summer at Taka-Manna. The hay was softer than any feather bed, filled with a succulent aroma she could almost taste, exciting by its very nature. She was kissed for the first time in that barn, and she decided she liked being kissed. She could not remember later who first put his lips on her own. She only remembered, with a warm sort of laziness, that it had been very pleasant and unlike the later kisses she received. The first kiss had been misty with innocence, a delicately fragile thing which would have shattered under the pressure of fiery lips. She had not known how to kiss then, but she learned during that summer, and the subsequent kisses were more expert but never like that first one had been.

She learned that lips were mobile things, and she learned about the soft inner cushion of those lips, and she learned the secret of a slightly parted mouth. She learned remarkably well, and, considering the fact that her education was all at the hands of male tutors, it was something of a miracle that she did not learn more than she’d bargained for.

She left Taka-Manna amid a welter of crushed hearts. She did not go back to camp again.

The next summer, fresh out of high school, aglow with the idea of college in the fall, aglow with the idea of wanting to help her father pay her way, an idea which had been born and nurtured the summer before, she took a job as a waitress in a Borscht Belt mountain resort.

Rainbow Hill was a dump.

For Cara Knowles, it was exciting and gay. The hennaed women rocking their chairs on the pine-shaded front porch, the shouts and cries from the swimming pool, the horses trotting off into the mountains, the cool nights with crisp stars overhead, the crystal clear days, the sudden thunderstorms ripping themselves from the jagged mountain ridges, bristling with electric fury, the dancing in the casino, the hikes, the stolen kisses, the given kisses, the kisses begged for and the kisses poutingly offered, and the kisses wholeheartedly delivered, the kisses…

The touch of a hand on her full breast.

A tentative inquisitive touch, the warmth of spread fingers, the sudden anger, and then a questioning of the anger, a secret hidden questioning, unspoken, sharp and searching, why am I angry? All at once the unbidden stiffening of her nipples, as if a cold wind had passed over her breast, and then a strange awareness, and the fingers gently caressing, the pressure on her breast warm and wonderfully soothing, and then a quiet, pleased, unashamed, warm, contented, lazy withdrawal, a small feminine shaking of her dark head and a whispered “No, please don’t,” but a slight smile on her full lips, her eyes alight with a new discovery, dancing and mischievously knowing in the darkness, and the beginning of a greater awareness.

The awareness did not reach full flower that summer. Oh, there were numerous attempts to complete the education of Cara Knowles, but Cara was not ready for her degree. The attempts started with Bud, the boy who had first touched her. But when he tried to initiate her into the more complex and universally secret society of the enlightened, he was greeted with a frosty, horrified refusal. The attempts came hard and fast after that. The bus boys, the boys in the band, the kitchen help, the guests, all tried their hand, but Cara refused to become enlightened.

She was not afraid, and she did not think of herself as being particularly moral.

She simply was not ready.

She did not become ready until her junior year at the University of Wisconsin. She became ready on a starlit April night in the back seat of an automobile owned by a senior named David Brooks. She became suddenly and uncontrollably ready, and Brooks was somewhat amazed if delighted by the fiery passion of the woman who had suddenly sprung to life under his caresses.

Curiously, she was not in love with Brooks, nor was her heart broken when he was graduated that June. After that first time in his car she had remained casually aloof, treating him with cold disdain.

Cara left Wisconsin in the first semester of her senior year. She told herself she was fed up with the useless senility of a Liberal Arts education. Actually, she was bewildered by the rapidity with which she made her body available to other boys after her first sortie with Brooks. She was bewildered and dismayed, because her lovemaking was a strangely loveless thing which gave her little satisfaction. She was plagued, too, with a gnawing knowledge that time was hurriedly passing and she was no longer a starry-eyed adolescent. Other girls were already married or engaged, other girls had been in love. Seeking love desperately, not knowing why, she used her body as a divining rod, cutting each affair short in its infancy, unwilling to settle for a tiny burst of pleasure when the full glory of a real love might be lurking right around the corner.