Schmidt Delivered Read Online Free PDF Page B

fields reaching all the way to the dune before the farmers sold out to make room for rich men’s beach houses.
    Perfect day, I’m glad you got back early.
    The sand was soft and rutted. He trotted awkwardly to the water to test its temperature.
    It’s not cold, he called out. We’ll have a swim after the walk. This is too good to be missed.
    You swim. I think I’d drown.
    You won’t. I’ll hold on to you.
    No way José.
    She made a neat pile of their towels, wiggled out of her sweatshirt, and took him by the hand.
    Hey, what are you waiting for, how about a kiss?
    She wore the smallest of bikinis. Strings around her waist and between her legs that held in place a triangle of red cloth. Two smaller triangles of the same cloth attached to strings covered her nipples. Unbroken, luxurious tan; a salacious invitation to dream of the hours she spent lying in the sun naked. He took her in proudly, noting that even her feet werebrown. A savage virgin goddess: no, a temple whore, ministering to adepts of Eastern mysteries. When she untied the cotton kerchief she had put over her head to drive in the open car, her hair, a mass of tiny curls, became a black halo surrounding her face.
    Feasting locals, two couples of Schmidt’s age, the others younger, probably their progeny accompanied by wives and husbands, comfortably installed in folding chairs, drink beer out of bottles. The older men are big, no taller than Schmidt but heavier, with comfortable paunches under their T-shirts and dull blond faces. Retired telephone repairmen or managers in one of the supermarkets at the mall. Wives apt to work at the checkout counter as supervisors, correcting the black teenage girls when they screw up on the cash register. Sour looking, but they’re the last generation to have learned how to count. Bags of Fritos and a bowl of green dip pass from hand to hand. Does the younger set aspire to the same lives, to longevity in a society that has less and less use for the old? Have they thought up new ways of making it in the information age? Beside them, a cooler with more beer on ice and a barbecue grill. The charcoal briquettes have fine white ash on them. They are ready to receive the halved chickens and coils of Italian sausage spread out on a table covered with a sheet of plastic. These good people have brought their mountain of stuff in the pickup truck and two minivans parked steps away, too close to the dune and the once plentiful sandpipers nesting in it. Men Schmidt knows, upright denizens of the Georgica Association, would bellow stentorian reproof at these yokels. Schmidt doesn’t feel up to theinsults they might yell back. There was a middle way: he intensified his stare. As though rehearsed, the heads turned to stare at Carrie and him. Let them. This is about class warfare, not protection of the environment. Thank you for your interest, Mrs. Mahoney and Mr. O’Toole, please enjoy your front-seat view of the father out at the beach with a daughter who doesn’t look much like him. Wait for the surprise. All I need to do is rotate her forty-five degrees and stick my tongue in her mouth. Then watch closely: she’ll glue her body to mine while I’m running my hand over her back and buttocks and, yes, even down the crack between them.
    He reaches for Carrie. Rising on exquisite toes, she deposits a chaste kiss on his lips.
    Come on Schmidtie, that’s all for now, these guys are watching. Let’s get away.
    I love you with all my heart.
    I’ve got a secret for you. I love you too.
    Just beyond where the tide reached, the sand was better: smooth, cool, and very hard. They walked fast, holding hands. That was where one might have wanted to run. Far ahead, at what seemed a great distance, were little human figures with animated black dots, their dogs, circling around them.
    Charlotte called. Right after you left. She’s coming out this weekend.
    No kidding.
    Yes. Do you mind? She said she would stay in the pool house.
    I don’t mind.