Read Online Twenty Grand by Rebecca Curtis - Free Book Online Page B

the park. He was going back to college in the fall, and she had another year of high school, so by necessity it was a turbulent and passionate affair, one that touched us all. Dave Z. had blond hair and a deadly smile full of teeth. He never spoke to us except to tell us to do something, and then he called us kids. It seemed fitting and tragic that Amy Goldman should be his. She was a blond goddess—five foot eight with strong legs, a waist like a man’s neck, and the largest breasts it was possible to have without their being too big. Her posture was as straight as if she were walking at sea. Her skin was bruised apricot, her nose hooked, and her eyes green. Her smile could make any of us agree to perform the dingiest tasks—spraying down the concrete floors of the bathrooms, for example, or cleaning up a shit someone had taken on the men’s-room floor. At the waterslide, she always wore a red bikini, and when she leaned forward to blow her whistle or tell a child to move away from the bottom of the slide there was an ever so slight bulge of flesh beneath her breasts.
    She and Dave Z. did it in the waterslide office on the black vinyl chair. They did it in the showers on a cloudy afternoon. They did it in Jacques Michaud’s office, on his desk, when Jacques Michaud wasn’t there.
    Jacques Michaud was oblivious. He walked around the sandy paths of the park with his head down, looking for pieces of glass. When he looked up, he seemed to be staring at a lone house—the local millionaire’s—on the pine-covered mountain opposite.
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    O CCASIONALLY , Amy and I worked together at the top of the slide. Where, because I couldn’t work the lift, I spent a lot of time—in a high, sunny, sandy clearing, surrounded by white pines and hemlocks and scraggly junipers—showing the people who emerged from the path in the woods how to use their sleds. One afternoon, it was slow, and Amy and I were left sitting in the sun by ourselves. She was wearing her bathing suit to tan.
    I asked her what the virus was that had kept her out of school for a year. She said the doctors had had about five different explanations and that none of them had made sense, that they’d tested her for everything, even syphilis. Sometimes her arm had been numb, or her leg, off and on, for a night or a day; and she’d felt tired. One doctor had told her that it was growing pains. Another had said that she was depressed. She laughed and said that it didn’t matter now, because she was fine.
    She took a carrot stick out of a Baggie and offered me one.
    â€œIt made me realize that I should study more,” she said. “Once I get to college, I’m going to study all the time.”
    She tucked her hair behind her ears and smiled. Her cheeks were round when she smiled, and she suddenly seemed very young. I smiled, too, for no reason, and a bunch of kids came out of the woods with their sleds, laughing and shouting, then stood by the slide for five minutes arguing over who was faster. They made us count down for them so that they could race, in sets of two. After they left, it was quiet. Two dark-blue dragonflies sloped through the clearing. I stared at the red berries on the junipers, the shiny green leaves of the checkerberries below—and then I asked her when Jacques had taken the picture for the brochure. She said a few days before the park opened. I asked her if he’d paid her to do it. She shrugged and said that he’d offered, but she’d said no. She didn’t see why he should. “It wasn’t a big thing,” she said.
    â€œDid he take it himself?” I asked.
    She stared at me. “Of course he took it himself. He’s not a millionaire.” She frowned a bit. “He was very sweet,” she said. “It wasn’t weird.”
    I nodded. Then she asked me if I had a boyfriend. I shook my head.
    â€œWell, you’re not missing anything,” she said.