The Love of a Good Woman

with her hair.
    “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s the way it always takes her. Isn’t it, honey?”
    “Yes it is,” she said.
    Kath found Sonje wandering around the fire circle, doling out marshmallows. Some people were able to fit them on sticks and toast them; others tossed them back and forth and lost them in the sand.
    “Debbie Reynolds is crying,” Kath said. “But it’s all right. She’s happy.”
    They began to laugh, and hugged each other, squashing the bag of marshmallows between them.
    “Oh I will miss you,” Sonje said. “Oh, I will miss our friendship.”
    “Yes. Yes,” Kath said. Each of them took a cold marshmallow and ate it, laughing and looking at each other, full of sweet and forlorn feeling.
    “This do in remembrance of me,” Kath said. “You are my realest truest friend.”
    “You are mine,” said Sonje. “Realest truest. Cottar says he wants to sleep with Amy tonight.”
    “Don’t let him,” said Kath. “Don’t let him if it makes you feel awful.”
    “Oh, it isn’t a question of let,” Sonje said valiantly. She called out, “Who wants some chili? Cottar’s dishing out the chili over there. Chili? Chili?”
    Cottar had brought the kettle of chili down the steps and set it in the sand.
    “Mind the kettle,” he kept saying in a fatherly voice. “Mind the kettle, it’s hot.”
    He squatted to serve people, clad only in a towel that was flapping open. Amy was beside him, giving out bowls.
    Kath cupped her hands in front of Cottar.
    “Please Your Grace,” she said. “I am not worthy of a bowl.”
    Cottar sprang up, letting go of the ladle, and placed his hands on her head.
    “Bless you, my child, the last shall be first.” He kissed her bent neck.
    “Ahh,” said Amy, as if she was getting or giving this kiss herself.
    Kath raised her head and looked past Cottar.
    “I’d love to wear that kind of lipstick,” she said.
    Amy said, “Come along.” She set down the bowls and took Kath lightly by the waist and propelled her to the steps.
    “Up here,” she said. “We’ll do the whole job on you.”
    In the tiny bathroom behind Cottar and Sonje’s bedroom Amy spread out little jars and tubes and pencils. She had nowhere to spread them but on the toilet seat. Kath had to sit on the rim of the bathtub, her face almost brushing Amy’s stomach. Amy smoothed a liquid over her cheeks and rubbed a paste into her eyelids. Then she brushed on a powder. She brushed and glossed Kath’s eyebrows and put three separate coats of mascara on her lashes. She outlined and painted her lips and blotted them and painted them again. She held Kath’s face up in her hands and tilted it towards the light.
    Someone knocked on the door and then shook it.
    “Hang on,” Amy called out. Then, “What’s the matter with you, can’t you go and take a leak behind a log?”
    She wouldn’t let Kath look in the mirror until it was all done.
    “And don’t smile,” she said. “It spoils the effect.”
    Kath let her mouth droop, stared sullenly at her reflection. Her lips were like fleshy petals, lily petals. Amy pulled her away. “I didn’t mean like that,” she said. “Better not look at yourself at all, don’t try to look any way, you’ll look fine.
    “Hold on to your precious bladder, we’re getting out,” she shouted at the new person or maybe the same person pounding on the door. She scooped her supplies into their bag and shoved it under the bathtub. She said to Kath, “Come on, beautiful.”
    • • •
    O N the dock Amy and Kath danced, laughing and challenging each other. Men tried to get in between them, but for a while they managed not to let this happen. Then they gave up, they were separated, making faces of dismay and flapping their arms like grounded birds as they found themselves blocked off, each of them pulled away into the orbit of a partner.
    Kath danced with a man she did not remember seeing before during the whole evening. He seemed to be around Cottar’s age. He was tall, with a thickened, softened waistline, a mat of dull curly hair, and a spoiled, bruised look around the eyes.
    “I may fall off,” Kath said. “I’m dizzy. I may fall overboard.”
    He said, “I’ll catch you.”
    “I’m dizzy but I’m not drunk,” she said.
    He smiled, and she thought, That’s what drunk people always say.
    “Really,” she said, and it was true because she had not finished even one bottle of beer, or touched the punch.
    “Unless I got it through my