658: Denny began . . .
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 7 continues
DENNY BEGAN TO SPEAK more directly and honestly than he had ever spoken to anyone before. He told her that he loved her and would always love her. He was amazed by the way he spoke. He used words that he had never used before: tender, forever, rapture, even marriage. Something had certainly happened to Denny there in the car, pushing himself on Ariane. He believed that he had really fallen in love with her. He couldn’t stop telling her so. He had begun to fear (since fear is one of the companions of love) that he would lose her. He began to beg. He began to apologize for what had just happened between them. Ariane heard only some of what he said. She had heard a great deal of this sort of thing before, said in virtually the same way that she was hearing Denny say it now, and she had even believed it the first couple of times, from the first couple of boys. The more Denny said, the less she believed him, the less she cared one way or another. She sat beside him, and she let her head fall on his shoulder, and a couple of times she dozed for a moment, but each time she woke with a start because she feared that she might fall into a deep sleep, and she didn’t want to be asleep in Denny’s car, at Denny’s mercy, so she sat up straight, as if she wanted to pay particular attention to what he was saying, and she turned around on the seat cushion and looked at him with an impish expression that she knew went over well, and the view beyond Denny, over his shoulder, caught her eye: it was a “resort motel” under construction at the edge of the bay, just a short way from the dock.
She had noticed the resort before, but she’d only seen it from farther away, and not from this angle, which was really one of the best. If you approached it from Babbington, coming along the road that led from the village, you saw the rear of the complex first, the service buildings and the backsides of the cheaper bungalows and low clusters of hotel rooms. It looked like a set of mismatched boxes. However, from the pier or from the bay it presented another face. The shoreline had been excavated and sculpted into a tiny cove. Wide steps led from the cove up to a broad terrace. Beyond the terrace was a large incomplete building, still a shell, hollow, with a roof that curved like the wide brim on a linen hat. At the sides of this building the walls continued beyond the roof and toward the bay. They were made of smooth concrete, every edge rounded, and they tapered and diminished as they advanced toward the bay, curving and meandering.
“It looks like a woman,” said Ariane.
“Huh?” said Denny.
“The motel. Or resort. Whatever it is. Look.”
He looked over his shoulder, awkwardly.
“See? There’s her face, the big building, but her features haven’t been put in yet. Just a big opening. But there’s her hat, and her shoulders. See? The buildings at the side? The way they’re curved is just like shoulders. She’s got her back to the town, but she’s reaching out to the bay. See her arms? Long and tapering. Very white, very pale.”
In the dark, Ariane smiled a secret smile, and she began to imagine another self, someone who moved through that interesting, curvaceous space, so white and clean and smooth and tropical, so out of place against the Babbington background, the houses of fishing families, small and dark and silent. The town was so still at this time of night that it might have been empty.
I’ll bet I can see home from here, she thought, just up the river.
To try to see home, she had to lean in Denny’s direction. Denny put his arm around her. She had leaned toward him, so he put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her a little closer. She didn’t look at him.
She couldn’t see home, but she could quite easily—surprisingly easily—see herself in that beckoning resort, walking across the terrace, with a walk that was different from the walk she’d walked before, gliding in the moonlight, as if the breeze were propelling her and lifting her chiffon scarf as she glided along. She could see a self as alluring as the setting, as intriguing as the concrete curves of the building, the arching roof line, the dazzling white walls, the curvilinear walkways that meandered among the clustered buildings. Her point of view began to shift. She slipped from the distracted young woman in Denny’s car on the town pier and into the elegant young woman she imagined on the terrace of the half-finished resort, leaning against the sweeping wall, looking back at her.
“It sure seems out of place,” said Denny.
“Yes,” said Ariane. “Yes, it does,” but she meant something different from what Denny meant.
[to be continued]
In Topical Guide 658, Mark Dorset considers Misfits, Eccentrics, Outsiders; and Architecture from this episode.
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