Nights blur into days, and days blur into nights. North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke, Wake Forest and William and Mary are all explored. She buys some kind of paraphanelia from each one, and the sun deck in the back is littered with pennants and mugs. His left arm is now sunburnt, they've both gotten tanner and wirier, and her hair is thick, tangled and slightly less than clean.
"It's time to stop somewhere."
"Oh c'mon Rory, it's part of the roadtrip magic."
"I've been shaving my legs on the hood of the car using the windshield water at gas stations. I'm sick of small bathrooms. You've been wearing that same shirt for three days and I've been wearing the same underwear for two."
"That was more than I needed to know."
"So will you?"
"Fine," he sighs, and they pull into an old motel, a faded sign above them flashing "Harbor Motorcourt". The neon buzzed, scattering little rusty sparks on his shoulders. The night was warm and damp, crickets chirping in the tall grass. They are on a South Carolina shore, tall reeds on one side of a gully, the ocean on the other side. Small islands spread into the blue water like mysterious inkspots floating into the sunset-stained water. Evening is falling, thick and black as sin, a southern summer night.
The light in front of the office flickered; a few cars are scattered in the parking lot. She thinks it's beautiful; there is something old and secret about it, like a place where some terrible, beautiful thing has happened.
"One room, two beds," he orders, and the old lady behind the counter with the horn-rimmed glasses peers at him suspiciously. She moves slowly, eyeing them, muttering to herself. They take the key, walking under the lacy, peeling white-painted iron work hazy with spiderwebs. A big moth flutters between them and dissapears into the dark.
Their door creaks and sticks; she almost expectsa skeleton to fall out when they open it. Looking inside, they grimace. The carpet is old and worn, the walls gaudily covered with cream silk embroidered wallpaper. A tacky lamp and two dubious beds are thrown in, along with a tv and mirror; the tub has a rust rim and the water drips ominously like small footsteps in the dark night. She shudders involuntarily.
"There's something about this place......" he notes thoughtfully, and she feels his discomfort as well. They check the bedsheets; thankfully, they are more or less clean. They each sprawl out on their bed, staring at the cracked ceiling.
"I know this sounds stupid, but don't you get this feeling like something's weird here? That William Faulkner thing."
"Yeah.....it's southern gothic," he replies, and they both fall silent for a while, lost in their own thoughts.
Each takes a shower, each avoids each other, and they both crawl in, but can't not sleep. She kicks her pajama pants off; the air is thick, hot and stifling, the crickets screaming outside their window. She feels as if a hand is pressing against her throat.
On the other bed, he tosses and turns. He is scared, he realizes; this was the feeling he can't name. The night seems to seep in like a disease through the air vents. Reeds moved slowly like fingers outside. He trembles under the covers.
Her eyes are brimming pools, tipping, spilling; she feels the cool liquid trace it's way down her cheek. Her thighs stick together and her skin is sandpaper. She shivers. The blue light from the neon casts unearthly shadows.
She sees his dark form moving around. The clock reads midnight.
"Jess."
He jumps, startled, a tiny movement. She sees his eyes gleam in the dark.
"You scared me."
"Where are you going?" she whispers, throat dry, a plea. She clambers to her knees, covers falling around her.
"To the shore. Can't sleep."
"Don't leave me," she breathes, reaching an arm out into the dark quickly. It brushes against his shoulder like a wraith. He is still for a moment.
"Then come with me."
Mutely she obeys, throwing a big sweatshirt over the t-shirt and underwear she is wearing. She gets up, and he looks at her standing there in the blue light. She seems like a little child; long, awkward legs sticking out bare from the sweatshirt that skims her thighs, messy hair hanging in her face.
They walk to the edge of the surf, listening to it lap quietly against the shores. The waves roll in, rhythmic, faceless, like a mysterious voice in the night.
They sit on the sand. She watches him out of the corner of her eye, wondering what he is thinking about, wishing in some sort of strange way that she could touch him. She has clean hair tonight; sand is sticking to her legs, but she doesn't mind.
He is barely more than a dark shadow beside her. She reaches out her hand and places it on his face.
Her thumb makes out his cheekbone. His nose. His crooked mouth, the strong chin, his ears, his hair. He says nothing, but stands very still, very cautious.
Her hand pushes him back on the sand, flat.
She lays down beside him, scared, shivering.They lay there, shoulders touching.
Her hand raises up, landing on his leg; her elbows moves across his stomach as her hand raises to his hip, fingers pressing the bone that juts out there, before the hard muscles of the abdomen.
His hand slowly moves under hers, on the sand, until it hits her thigh. His fingers scrape across her skin.
The thick night air and the lapping of the waves surrounds them. Above them a devil moon suddenly emerges from behind a cloud, casting their faces in black and silver. They are both rigidly looking straight up at the sky, not daring to move their heads an inch, to look at each other.
They both draw their own hands back suddenly, scared by the fierce light illuminating their secret actions.
The surf laps.
His lips are dry. He hurts from being so close to her, he hurts from her touch, it has turned his whole body rigid.
"Why."
Her lips curve upwards slightly in a desolate, bitter smile.
"This is how it felt last fall. The whole time I was near you. It hurts, doesn't it."
"So you want to punish me now?"
"I don't have to. You're punishing yourself," she whispers, eyes brimming moonlight.
"I'm sorry I hurt you," he hisses, fighting back waves of heated nausea.
"Because you want me now. It's too late. It was fall. I came back. I threw myself at you like an idiot. You kissed me, you touched me, you made me believe, and then you were gone before it was even Christmas; I should have known it was just retaliation."
"It was only the same thing you did."
"Then I believe it's my turn again," she smiles, cheerful as death. She flies to her feet.
"C'mon Jess! C'mon!" she screams, laughing, dancing on the sand. "Aren't you hot? Aren't you stifling? Let's go swim!"
Then she's flying over the sand, and she dissapears into the dark waves, as though they had swallowed her whole, erased her immediately. He's at the water's edge in a flash.
"Rory, stop this! This isn't funny!"
The dark shimmers quietly under the moonlight. Her head does not surface.
He runs in, slicing through the water, desperately diving under, but nothing can be seen; the night is dark and the water is India ink; salt water is in his eyes, his mouth, he yells for her and dives under again.
It is then he can that he feels her pass under his, and she touches his ankle, light as a poisonous jellyfish.
He surfaces desperately, and there she is, walking out of the water. She stands on the shore, her graceful sihlouette like a blue heron's in the moonlight. She steps across the sand like a ghost, disappearing into the sand dunes.
He wakes up, hearing the shower run. He watches her as though in a dream as she steps out of the shower in a towel, daintily making her way across the room. Modestly, she shuts herself in the bathroom to change and proceeds to towel-dry her hair. She smiles at him as though last night never happened.
"Hey Rip van Winkle. It's lunch; I brought you a donut and some Winstons. Sound good?"
"Uh, sure."
He is confused, cautious.
They hop into the car; she drinks coffee out of a 7-11 Big Gulp cup that she sticks into the dashboard compartment because it does not fit into any cupholder. She hums along softly with the radio-it's Clash, from London Calling.
"Hey remember a long time ago when you wrote down all the verses to Guns of Brixton?" she grins, pulling her hair back with a rubber band, shoving it into a worn out Yale baseball hat. The sleeves on her ratty shirt are rolled up, a shirt that shows a big bottle of clear liquor in front of a Confederate flag and says Absoloot Southern on the front; she's got another one that says Skank the Yanks or Yanks are Stank or something of that sort. She picked them up at some convenience store in South Carolina, somewhere near Charleston. The hem on her rolled up jeans is frayed all the way up to her calves, and she's wearing beat up Converse Chuck Taylor's. All she needs to look like a little boy is a baseball glove.
"Yeah, it was that night," he says softly, wincing. He looks at her.
"You look like Tom Brokaw cover art."
"And you look more like Marlon Brando than Marlon ever did. I'm buying you a cowboy hat."
"Then I would look like the Marlboro man," he grins weakly.
She digs around in the duffel.
"Ok, tough decision. A Good Man is Hard to Find, by Flannery O'Connor, or From Death to Morning by Thomas Wolfe?"
He winces again at the clear blows.
"You're really into this southern literature thing, aren't you."
"Yeah, I was even thinking we should go see Nachitoches where Kate Chopin wrote the Awakening. I hear it's beautiful."
"You and your women's lib."
"You say it like it's a bad thing," she says lightly, dangerously.
"I'm not. You're not the bra-burning Stein type. Don't get offended."
"I'm not offended," she says, her lips a thin line.
They drive in silence until they hit another town for the night, splurging a little on a cheap hotel. He sits on the balcony, smoking furiously, biting his lips and trying to read; below him, she floats quietly in the swimming pool like a corpse, occasionally doing a lap.
Neither of them sleep much that night.
