Body Surfing

stories of that one.”
    Dumas looked up to see that the barman had reappeared.
    “He is a wild one. A real demon. Your friend does not know what she is getting into.”
    Dumas took one last look at Ileana as she left the room. Her hands were crossed behind her back, and one of her fingers had slipped under the band of the man’s watch she wore, rubbing the skin beneath.
    “Somehow,” he said, turning back to the barman, “somehow I think she knows exactly what she is getting into. Oh well,” he sighed, “at least she left me the bottle.”
    And, shaking his head in amused regret—a true Frenchman, he was honest enough to know when a woman was out of his league, although it never hurt to try—he poured himself one last drink.

4
    T he sound of water dripping into the spaghetti pot woke Jasper the following morning. The drops ping ed on the base of the empty pot with a crisp metallic sound, meaning the water had only now managed to work its way through the loose shingles of the roof and the large patch of mildewed plaster that hung over the teenager’s room like some crumbly French cheese. From long experience Jasper knew that meant the rain had started about an hour ago: April showers blah blah blah.
    He opened his eyes briefly. Painfully: how many cups of Caitlin Reese’s bathtub punch had he been stupid enough to chug last night? Gray light the color of old gym socks illuminated a tattered carpet of clothing: Tshirts and boxers and Tshirts and jeans and Tshirts and sneakers and still more Tshirts. The clouds made it impossible to tell the time. Six in the morning? One in the afternoon? Jasper’s throbbing head didn’t care. He pulled a pillow over eyes and ears and tried to go back to sleep.
    Ping!
    Ping!
    Ping!
    The trickle of water pricked at Jasper’s headache like an electric charge. But then the pain disappeared beneath a memory that washed over him like a pot of boiling water. A dark closet, the smell of mothballs, shoes that could use a shot of Dr. Scholl’s. Fingernails scraping his back, a pair of voluptuously soft breasts. Moist breath in his ear: “Fuck me!” A tug at his zipper. Then: darkness, warmth, confusion; pleasure, need, release. It all sounded great, save for one troubling detail: Jasper was pretty sure the girl hadn’t been Michaela. Oh God, he thought. What the hell did I do last night?
    Just then, his dad’s voice cut through Jasper’s hangover like a bandsaw. “Rise and shine, buddy boy,” John Van Arsdale called in his best imitation of country geniality. “Weekend’s getting away from us, we got work to do.”
    A groan escaped the pillow as Jasper remembered that his dad wanted him to turn the garden over today. Like most things on the Van Arsdale farm, the rototiller was broken—had been for, oh, seven or eight years—which meant Jasper would have to work the quarter-acre plot with a pitchfork.
    Ping!
    Ping!
    Ping!
    Quarter acre; pitchfork; rain. All that, plus a hangover. It was shaping up to be a stellar day.
    “Ahem. Jap?”
    Jasper pulled the pillow from his face and saw his dad in the open doorway. John Van Arsdale wore an old flannel shirt and threadbare overalls, one strap left undone in a gesture that was probably meant to be jaunty, boyish even, but was undermined by the salt-and-pepper stubble grizzling a face that was entirely too creased for its forty-three years.
    Jasper, on the other hand, was completely naked, and he yanked the blanket over himself.
    “Dad! You can’t just barge in here like that!”
    John Van Arsdale didn’t try to hide his grin. “Door was open, Jap.”
    A steaming cup of coffee tilted precariously in his dad’s right hand. As Jasper smoothed the blanket over himself, he wondered if the stale smell of alcohol came from the cup or his dad’s skin—or hisown. God, he must’ve been trashed last night. He never slept naked, let alone left his door open.
    “How many times do I have to tell you that Jap is just not cool?” he said now, hiding his embarrassment behind condescension just as he’d hidden his morning wood beneath the blanket. “It’s racist and anti-Semitic and, given the fact that I am neither Japanese nor Jewish—nor, for that matter, female—particularly inappropriate.”
    John Van Arsdale’s jaw muscles tightened as he stared at his annoyingly articulate son. “Your ma called you Jap,” he said finally, and turned from the room.
    Jasper threw his pillow at the empty doorway.
    “Cheap