Chapter 6: Plan Ahead

“CAN WE GET ANY WEATHER information on the radio?” Ronda asked. “This rain lets up and then starts and lets up and starts again. Nothing is going to get dry.”

I crawled over the seat back into the front and turned on the engine so I could turn on the radio. After fussing for a while, I found some decent music and we settled back to wait for news and weather. Ronda crawled over the seat to settle in my lap. We were both still stark naked. Even with the rain, the temperature was near ninety. It felt like we were in a steam bath. Nothing was drying out.

When the weather finally came on the radio, it sounded bleak. Rain would continue through Wednesday and be sunny and hot on Thursday.

“I know this is going to be icky, but we need to go find a hotel someplace and get a room,” Ronda said. “We could have toughed it out if all our stuff wasn’t wet. We’ll be miserable tonight if we don’t get dry and get our temperatures regulated.”

“I agree. Is there anyone camped near us? Can you see anyone?”

“No. I think there’s a trailer on the other side of the campground, but nothing near us.”

“See if you can find us dry clothes and put them here in the front seat. I’m going to just go out and take down the tent,” I said.

“Naked?”

“Otherwise, I’d just have wet clothes. You don’t need to come outside. I can break it down alone. I’ll be handing stuff inside to you, though, so we’ll basically have a pile of wet stuff inside. It will probably stink by the time we get back to Tenbrook.”

“Nate, you’re crazy, but I love you for it. I’ll get clothes for us in the front seat and start bringing the chairs inside from the tent.”

I remembered seeing a Holiday Inn near the University not far after we came through customs. I made my way back to it and we went into the lobby to see if we could get a room. I about choked when they said $28 a night! What could we do?

“We had a week of wonderful camping in the wilderness planned, and then it started raining and we got totally soaked. It’s going to ruin our whole honeymoon,” Ronda said, sniffling. It was what?

“Oh, that’s too bad. Just married, huh? Let me see what I’ve got available. I think you’ll be comfortable in this room.” He handed Ronda the key. “And enjoy a meal in our restaurant tonight with our compliments,” he said, handing her a gift certificate. Wow!

I paid for three nights and we grabbed our bags and a few things we thought we could dry out, and went to our room.

We were on the top floor of the hotel. I guess, in fact, we were on the top two floors. The guy at the desk had given us a suite that had a living room and kitchen on the main floor and stairs that led up to the bedroom and bathroom above. It was gorgeous. And for two weary teens who just wanted to take a hot bath and wrap up in a blanket in an air-conditioned room, it was very nice. We even managed to get both of us in the bathtub and I got to spend time washing Ronda’s beautiful golden locks. I don’t think I’d ever washed a girl’s hair before. Beth and I had showered together, but we took care of our own shampoo. Leaning back between my legs was the most exquisite creature in the known universe.

I suppose I felt that way about all my girlfriends, but Ronda was the one naked in the tub with me.

The hotel was equipped with a hair dryer, so she got her hair blown out and returned to its most beautiful and silky state. She spent time in the bathroom restoring her makeup and when she emerged, I sprouted an instant boner. She walked toward where I was sitting on the bed and stood in front of me.

“Did you know you are the only boy who has ever seen me naked?” she asked. “For all I know, you might always be the only boy who ever sees me naked. And you are the only person I can stand naked in front of and not be the least bit embarrassed. Do you know why that is? It’s because I’m in love with you and I want you to see me naked. I want you to touch me. I want your kisses all over my body. How did it happen that I ever fell so deeply in love with you?”

“I don’t know, honey, but I’m so glad you did,” I said. “According to one of my patrons who visited the gallery where Anna could overhear, I’m some kind of Casanova who can sweep women off their feet with a word. I don’t think that’s true. I think the only reason most women have any interest at all in me is because I have a camera. But not you. You’ve only posed three times for me. I don’t think you ever really wanted to, but you needed to find out if I was for real. You don’t see me for my camera. You see me for me.”

“Well, get your camera out now. I’m standing in front of you completely naked and I will pose in any way you want me to so you can take my picture. Not for display on any walls. Not for any contests. No release at all. You can take my picture, just so you will have me lying naked by your side when we are a thousand miles apart between Chicago and Boston. I want to know that sometimes at night before you go to sleep, you open your private album and turn to my picture and think of me lying beside you.”

I got my camera and Ronda posed in any way I asked her to. And every angle that I photographed her, was perfect. It only took me about fifteen minutes to use up a roll of film and set my camera aside.

“I think I have all the pictures I need,” I said. “What I need now are more memories of holding you in my arms.”

“And after we make some of those memories, we need to go enjoy the hotel’s kind offer of dinner in the restaurant,” she giggled.

“You’re devious, you know? But I love you so much!”

“What are you looking at, babe?” I asked when we returned to our room after dinner.

“I saw this little booklet in the lobby. It’s homes for sale.”

“Do you like Windsor so much you’re thinking of moving here?” I laughed.

“Sort of. Look. Here’s a two-bedroom, one bath bungalow downtown for just $20,000. You should buy it!” Ronda said.

“I should what? I don’t have enough money to buy a house. Most of what I’ve got is committed for my college fees. It’s going to cost more than that to live in Chicago.”

“Maybe we could pool our money and get a mortgage. We’d own a place in Canada,” she insisted. I unlocked the door to our room and we tested the bedding we had hung around from our wet campout.

“Come here, honey. Tell me why you are interested in having a house in Windsor, Ontario.”

“Well, it doesn’t need to be here. I’ll bet if we looked farther out in the country or in a small town away from the city, we could find something cheaper and just as good. It wouldn’t really make a difference where it was as long as you could set up a studio in it or near it,” she said. She curled up on my lap on the sofa with the real estate booklet in her hand.

“Okay. I’m not sure what it would take to start a photo studio out here. I’ve really been given my studio space and nearly everything in it both in Tenbrook and in Chicago. But that still doesn’t answer why.”

“Nate, you really can’t go into the army. You mustn’t. If you get a draft notice, you have to come to Canada. Please, you have to promise you won’t go. It would kill us. Patricia seriously couldn’t take it. Anna would be a nervous wreck. And I’d ... Nate, you can’t go,” she said. She was near tears and I held her and kissed her.

“You know I’m not going to go. That’s what this trip is all about, honey. We’re testing getting away when the time comes.”

“But think of how much easier it would be if you already knew you had a place to come to! That’s the why. You become a property owner in Canada and spend regular time up here, getting established in your business. Then if the time comes, you are coming to Canada to visit your property. You have a home here. You’d already be established, not just making a mad dash for the border with no plan for what comes next.”

“Oh, wow! That’s brilliant. I bet I could even establish a kind of residency up here part of the time. Let’s look at some of these properties, my beautiful genius.”

We leafed through the booklet, not really seeing anything that jumped out as a perfect location. The paper got laid aside and we got caught up just kissing and petting a little, not getting into any serious loving, but whispering and giggling about what kind of life we might have in Canada.

“When you talked about why I shouldn’t go into the army, you mentioned you, Patricia, and Anna. What about Beth and Christine?” I asked.

“I hope Beth is with us for the long term, but I don’t know her well enough yet. Anna loves her. But is she serious about a relationship with you? With all of us? I hope so, but I really don’t know how she’d respond to you getting drafted. She might think you should go.”

“I don’t think so, but you’re right about the newness. A lot of times when we talk, she considers herself to be giving me the ‘outsider’s opinion’ about whatever the topic is. She said that’s because she didn’t go to school with the rest of us and has only known us since December.”

“Yeah. That’s one of the things that happens. It could be that you’ll share a lot of Chicago and college experiences with Beth over the next four years and the rest of us will become the outsiders. I don’t know,” Ronda said.

“And Christine? Well, she told me once before that she wouldn’t move to Canada with me, I guess,” I said.

“Nate...” Ronda was suddenly struggling to hold back tears. “She’s ... She’s not going to come back to us.” The dam burst and Ronda cried on my shoulder. My own tears welled up as I realized what she meant.

“She’s just gone to Peoria,” I said. “Sure she’ll be back.”

“You kissed her just before we got in the car Thursday. What was the last thing she said to you?”

“Well, she said ‘goodbye,’ of course.”

“Not ‘see you later.’ Not ‘I love you.’ She didn’t give you any suggestion that she’d be with you at Christmas,” Ronda said.

“Well, no. I just assumed...”

“She said the same thing to me. I went down to Peoria to help her move. I slept with her Thursday night and she wore pajamas to bed! She wouldn’t kiss me. Wouldn’t even touch me. She said she was purging the pervert from her psyche. She had cut loose and was crazy, but she was starting over in Peoria. When I kissed her Friday before we left to come back to Tenbrook, she said the same thing. Just, ‘Goodbye.’ She’s not coming back to us, Nate.”

“Oh, Christ! She’s been trying to tell us that for weeks, hasn’t she?”

“Yes. She wants her happily ever after. A Leave It to Beaver life with a husband and two children and a white picket fence. I thought she loved us. Loved you like I love you. Loved me like I love her. She doesn’t.”

“I never even considered anything other than Christine and me always being together. Ronda, does that mean ... Are you planning to break up with me now?”

“No, you idiot! I’m never going to break up with you! I just suggested we buy a house together so WE’D have a place to run to. And I’m not asking you to break up with Anna or Patricia or Elizabeth. I definitely love Anna and Patricia and Toni, and I think I’ll love Elizabeth. I wish Patricia was a little bi, but I’ve discovered that I’m more interested in how I feel about a person than whether he or she will have sex with me.”

“I’m just ... I don’t know how to cope with this. I love you, Ronda. It’s going to be so hard this fall and winter.”

“Well, just remember that this can’t be the only trip to Canada. We need to come back. You need to bring Anna. You need to bring Patricia and Little Toni. You need to bring Elizabeth. Make them part of our plan,” Ronda said.

“I don’t think Patricia would move,” I said. “She’d want me to go, but Tony’s buried in Tenbrook. Her parents and his parents live there. Little Toni’s grandparents. She’s anchored in Tenbrook.”

“She would need to come back to Tenbrook, but she’d live with us at least part time in Canada. I’m sure of it.”

“I hope you’re right. I never planned to love her like I do.”

“You’re not Tony, but you are the most important man in her life now. You have another thing to think about, right this very minute.”

“What’s that?”

“Me. I need you to love me so hard I’ll be able to stand being away this fall. I’m already looking at a possible transfer to the University of Chicago. I don’t know if I can stand being so far away from you in Boston.”

I did my best to show her how much I loved her for three nights in that hotel room. We spent the next two days scouting around the area as far east as London, Ontario. There were definitely possibilities. We needed to figure out how to go about making a possibility into a reality.

We got back in plenty of time to go to the school yearbook party. I guess I made a statement. I picked up my three girlfriends and walked into the party Saturday night with all three of them. It was the first time Patricia had been out without little Toni, and the first time she’d so openly declared herself to be with me.

We picked up our yearbooks and went through the rituals of finding our classmates and having them sign our books. Ronda had a slip from Chris that let her pick up Chris’s yearbook and have it signed by as many as she could. She’d simply drop it off at Chris’s house.

It was fun to connect one more time with so many of our classmates. Some, of course, would be in Tenbrook for the next fifty years. They’d have the same friends, marry classmates, have children who went to the same school.

That made me think about the four of us and Elizabeth. Patricia would be our anchor in Tenbrook. Anna would be in Rockford, but promised to join me on any weekend I was coming back to Tenbrook and possibly come into Chicago on occasion. Ronda would be all the way out in fucking Boston. I wasn’t sure how I’d manage to connect with her, but we’d promised we’d be together over Thanksgiving and Christmas. And Elizabeth, newest to our little group, would be with me in Chicago. We’d be living in the same building but going to different schools—practically next door to each other.

In a way, I envied Chris and Ronda. Their colleges had actual campuses with dedicated buildings and green lawns with paths from one class building to another. ‘Campus’ was a little harder to define for the colleges in Chicago. DePaul and the University of Chicago had very nice campuses, but Elizabeth was focusing her work at the DePaul Loop Campus, which was really just a block along State Street that used to be stores and offices. It was almost right behind Camera Warehouse. Columbia’s official campus was a building on Michigan Avenue. Classrooms were scattered in half a dozen office and apartment buildings nearby.

But finding an actual college program that allowed me to specialize in photography had been a challenge. The other college I’d been accepted at was in California and really specialized in film rather than photography. Besides, I could mostly afford to go to Columbia with a little scholarship help.

“Can I still get an appointment for a senior picture?” Vicki asked as she signed my yearbook.

“I’m sure we can fit you in,” I laughed.

“I managed to fit you in!” she snorted. “Want to do it again before you leave for college? I’ve never seen the inside of your VW.”

“As long as you understand that I don’t mix photography and sex. I’ll take your picture in the studio and make sure you get a really sexy Attic Allure photo, but I won’t fuck you there,” I said.

“I didn’t want you to take pictures of us fucking. How about afterward?” she asked.

“Set the appointment with Anna. She’s carrying around my calendar,” I said.

“Okay.” Vicki flitted off and I glanced at the inscription she’d put in my yearbook. “To Nate, A really great guy. My butt will never be the same! Vicki”

So much for family-friendly yearbook inscriptions.

The book was snatched out of my hands and all I saw was a veil of dark hair covering it as Libby scratched furtively with her pen. She turned the book toward me and held out her own. I was shocked by what she’d written.

“Nate, Thank you for being my best friend. Love, Libby”

“Libby? Am I really your best friend?” I asked.

“Sort of. I think so. Don’t worry, though. I’m going to get another one. He’ll be so glad he found me,” she said.

“You know, he really will,” I said. I signed her book ‘To my shyest friend. Go get ‘em, Tiger!’ “As your best friend, could I have a dance with you?”

“Oh, wow! Um ... Okay. I guess.”

We set our books down and I guided her out to the dance floor. It wasn’t much of a dance. We pretty much ignored the music. I’d never been grasped so firmly in a dance as I was during our four minutes of shuffling our feet. As soon as the song ended, she let go and ran to get her yearbook. I didn’t see her again at the party.

I danced with Anna and with Patricia. They had no shortage of guys wanting one more chance to hold the two lovely girls on the dance floor. I couldn’t recall having ever danced with Patricia. We’d never dated, so we’d never really been where we would dance. It was nice and she suggested that maybe we could dance a little the next afternoon when she had her next photograph with Toni.

“So, you’re going to do the nasty with Vicki,” Anna laughed at me when we were dancing.

“I think I’m regretting that playful interchange. Is she going to come in for a photo?” I asked.

“Wednesday. Just before your date.”

“Before our...?”

“She said you told her you’d take her out one more time after her photo session. I’m pretty sure she intends to spend most of her time on the mattress in the back of the bus,” Anna said.

“Oh, crap. I really didn’t think she was serious. I’ll cancel with her.”

“Why? Honestly, if I were a guy and was offered the opportunity to fuck her little ass, I seriously think I’d do it. She just exudes sex appeal. And going out with her is pretty much a guarantee that you’ll be invited to invade her butt. You like it, don’t you?”

“Well, yes, of course. That doesn’t mean I should be doing it. I have all the girls I want with you and Patricia and Ronda. And Elizabeth. Why am I even thinking about fucking a seventeen-year-old cheerleader’s ass?”

“I think you just answered that question. ‘Seventeen-year-old cheerleader’s ass.’ You’re eighteen years old, Nate, not thirty. Why shouldn’t you enjoy what’s offered?” Anna asked.

“Honey, have we corrupted you so thoroughly? You would have had a hundred reasons I shouldn’t enjoy what was offered when you turned seventeen,” I said.

“I don’t think I’ve been corrupted. I think I’ve been given a dose of reality that replaced my fantasy world. I’m not a pervert like some girls I know. I don’t need to hear everything you do with every girl you are out with. But me not being interested in anyone else doesn’t carry an expectation that you’re not interested in anyone else. I know you love me. I have a bigger opinion of what that means than I had when I was sixteen.”

“I do love you, honey. That’s what bothers me. I should behave more like that’s what’s important. I’m afraid I’ve become one of those guys who simply takes from girls and doesn’t offer my commitment in return. I mean, what am I doing getting girls naked in the studio and touching them and being sexual with them? Lisa isn’t a girl I love. Yet I stripped her and manipulated her into multiple orgasms, then sent her home. I’m really a cad.”

“The patron who came to the exhibition with Levi said you were a Casanova. Maybe that’s true. But I know that you don’t just take from girls. If you were taking from them, I wouldn’t need to go out with you after a photo session and make sure your balls got emptied. Which is a task I truly enjoy, by the way. I know you enjoy naked girls and that you enjoy touching them and making them come, but it’s what they want from you and you aren’t taking anything from them.”