Into the Great Wide Open Read Online Free PDF Page A

right? Do you know what I mean?”
    “Kim said you were smart,” Junie said.
    They walked along. Kenny felt stupid. “Where are you going, anyway?” he asked.
    “Just getting away.”
    “You want to go down to the beach?”
    She thought for a minute; again, Kenny felt her judgment on him. Don’t mistake me. She didn’t want to be a body and he understood that. The life of the body: fighting, fucking, getting drunk. Junie wanted something else.
    “I should leave a note at my cabin,” she said. “In case they come looking for me again.”
    He wondered why they were worried about her, but he knew better than to ask. He wanted to keep her near him. Followed her down the path to one of the little toy houses, followed her inside, watched her handwriting, which was long and tall and carefully considered:
    I’ve gone down to the ocean
    I’m perfectly all right
    June Williamson
    Artistic
, Kenny thought. A life beyond the body. Then they were back in the dunes, the saw grass rustling in the wind, sound of the waves. Junie was leading, Kenny following. The rain had let up and the clouds were breaking apart in the sky, edged in moonlight. A wind coming off the sea, bone-cold. They left their shoes on, stepping lightly, hoping the sand wouldn’t seep in, which it did anyway; down to the hardpack at the edge of the water, and then she sat down in the sand and stared out at the waves. Kenny sat beside her, following her movements—like church, he thought. I kneel, you kneel. But following seemed like the only way he was going to stay with her.
    “Next stop, Portugal,” he said.
    “I’ve been to Portugal,” she said.
    “And?”
    “It was full of people speaking Portuguese, and gentlemen trying to pinch your butt. My butt, anyway. I don’t want to sound like that.”
    “What?”
    “Oh, those girls that go around the world and then come back and tell you how much they hated it. France is all right but it’s not good enough for me.”
    “I’ve never been anywhere,” Kenny said.
    “Not even Canada? Mexico?”
    “Not even Chicago. I went down to Day tona Beach for spring break once.”
    “What’s the deal with that?”
    “Oh, it was stupid. It was this girl I was going out with, she wanted to go, she wanted me to drive down there with her. We got into a fight. I ended up sleeping in the backseat of the car.”
    “But she looked terrific in a bathing suit,” Junie said.
    “She did,” Kenny said. “As a matter of fact, she did.”
    “She had gigantic bosoms.”
    “Not quite gigantic.”
    “A voluptuous behind. I love that word,
voluptuous
.”
    Kenny wanted this part of the conversation to end. He said, “Where should I go if I do go somewhere? Pick a spot for me.”
    “I don’t know what you’d like.”
    “A place that you would go back to, then.”
    Junie thought for a minute; glanced at him, and then back out at the Atlantic. She was wearing her glasses again, holding her legs in front of her, bent at the knees and circled by her arms. She was leaning forward, like she was looking for something in the waves. Her skirt was restless in the wind. All half-unseen, the faint light of the moon shining through clouds, reflecting. The ocean talking, edge of something.
    “All right,” she said. “I’m going to send you to Verona. In the summer, they give operas at the old Roman amphitheater in Verona.”
    “I’ve never been to an opera, either,” Kenny said.
    “Me neither, not till then,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. It’s just where everybody goes on a summer night in Verona. And it’s beautiful, you know, people have been coming to this same place to hear music for a couple of thousand years. Everybody waits outside like wolves, waiting for the gates to open so they can grab a place to sit. I mean, they leave their kids behind.”
    “Who were you there with?”
    The question bothered her; she woke from her trance, decidedto answer. “This was Kim and I,” she said. “We were traveling