After the Blue Hour by John Rechy

Author:John Rechy [Rechy, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780802189332
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2016-09-09T04:00:00+00:00

19

Paul, Sonya, and I are sitting on stools at the bar on the sundeck under the shade of the canopy, which does little to check the heat. I glance down at our intertwined bare legs, Sonya’s—she’s in the middle—are smooth, lighter-dark, curling toward Paul’s, much darker, and then, turning on the stool to brush against mine, darker still, exposed flesh that darkens or lightens and glows with our shifting motions.

Sonya had removed the top of her suit, displaying bold nipples glistening with drops of perspiration that lingered until—this is happening now—Paul leans over and dabs them away with one flick of his tongue on each.

I relish the physical resplendence on the island: When Sonya wanders moodily about the lawn—which has miraculously survived the scorching sun—she looks like a golden ghost, lost within the shifting shade of trees. Paul, darker every day—I note this now—is leaner, more defined, his long muscles carved into his body. (In a glance, I notice that his trunks—sweat nestling at his groin—reveal his endowment, but, then, he just licked Sonya’s breasts. I won’t allow him to note my competition; I put on my sunglasses, and face away.) I am more muscular than he, more defined than when I first arrived. (I work out in a section of the boathouse that I converted into an adequate gym, with chairs and bracing bars; I caught Stanty there one day, working out. “Good,” I said; that was all.) I have succeeded in turning darker than Paul by going to the sundeck alone when they’re all swimming. I can’t honestly avoid Stanty in my evaluation. His hair has turned streaked blond, his flesh is coffee-colored—I notice that as he runs onto the sundeck.

“Sonya wanted to swim to the other island today,” he announced.

Sonya protested, in her warm tone, “It was you who suggested it, my darling, and I said it was too far to swim, remember?” She had quickly covered her breasts when Stanty burst in.

We are still at the bar sipping Paul’s refreshed Cuba libres.

Stanty dismissed, “I forgot…. You know, John Rechy, I’m the only one who’s ever been even near the other island. Ask my father, he’ll tell you.”

“That’s right,” Paul said—acquiesced, I thought.

“I swam there today,” Stanty announced.

Sonya corrected him gently: “You didn’t swim there, my sweet—”

“I did, I—”

“—you rowed there,” Sonya said.

“Same thing. I could have swum.” He grabbed a handful of ice and pushed it into his mouth. When it had melted, he went on breathlessly: “Listen to this, everyone: There was a man at an upstairs window in the house on that island, he yelled something angry at me. I couldn’t hear him, he was too far away.”

The house I thought I had discerned—was it really there? I anticipated Stanty’s fearful twists, which came:

“He said if I ever came around, he’d shoot me.”

No reaction of alarm from Sonya or Paul.

“But you said you couldn’t hear him,” I said.

“This is how it happened: When the man was at the window, he knew I couldn’t hear him; so he shouted at me, and that’s when I was able to hear him.

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