Read Online The 14th Day by K.C. Frederick - Free Book Online Page A

to crowd all his life into a brief span. Ila, three years younger, had always felt closer to him than to any of her friends. She herself had a reputation for daring—fast driving, staying out all night, smoking cigars in restaurants—the kinds of things that would get back to her father and vex him; but Ila was always aware of a kinship with Stipa, for all his external conservatism, and she suspected that in his thoughts he might be more adventurous than she. At any rate, she was certain he understood her as no one else did.
    That warm night, rich with the scent of lilacs, Stipa seemed so merrily sad. He’d been drinking, she’d had a few furtive sips herself. “Let’s leave these boring people to themselves,” he said, taking her hand and walking with her through the night filled with fish flies, galaxies of them clustered around the lights on the walk. He’d brought some marijuana to the party and they smoked in the boathouse, looking at the darting silhouettes of fish in the luminous rectangle of water where their father had once kept a speedboat: dark shapes emerged, disappeared, random motions formed momentary patterns. “Maybe we could go for a swim,” Stipa suggested after a long silence. She looked at his white shirt turned blue in the dark. She was already unbuttoning her blouse before he’d even asked her, it seemed. She laughed at the way time had bent. “What is it?” he asked. “Why are you laughing?” “I don’t know. Tell me a joke.”
    They entered the water in the enclosed space of the boat house, then swam out into the chilly lake. Fragments of music from the party were suddenly close to them, then only faint murmurs drifting over the dark, bobbing surface of the lake. Every star in the heavens was visible above them. There was a sense of daring in the night air and when they came back to the boathouse, they wrapped themselves in musty tarpaulin boat covers that they used like blankets and they smoked some more, listening to the water lap against the wood, watching its faint, swimming light move across the walls. “You’re a very attractive woman,” Stipa told her. The sweet scent of marijuana was everywhere, blending with the fishy smell of the water, the tarpaulin, the faint tang of creosote. The cover had slipped off Stipa’s shoulder and his skin glowed palely in the reflected light of the water. “I wonder,” he said, “may I touch your breast in a brotherly way?” She laughed. “In a brotherly way? Of course.” He pulled down the tarpaulin and she felt his fingers gently, delicately move over her still-wet skin and even before he asked, with a voice not entirely under control, “Can I kiss you there in a brotherly way?” she was ready to answer yes, of course, please; but just at that moment the two of them heard voices calling “Stipa, Stipa, where are you? The party’s just getting started.” Without any words between them she and Stipa dressed quickly—she remembers them handing each other articles of clothing, a wonderfully intimate act—and soon they were back among the partygoers; but many times when she hasn’t been able to sleep, Ila has wondered how that uncompleted story would have ended had it had time to move to its conclusion. It was one more thing taken away in the Thirteen Days.
    Ila looks at the woman across from her, who smiles distantly, as if she’s listening to something Stipa is telling her from the other side. She nods. “He’s at peace. He knows you remember him.”
    Ila is flooded with joy. And yet, at the same time, she wants more, she isn’t content just to explore the past. She came here because she’s certain something is happening, something is going to happen here, in this town in the host country. “Is there someone else?” she asks the woman. “Is there another man? Now?”
    â€œYes,”