The bruise on Holly’s thigh was the color of a sunset, thought Jenna, dark purple ringed by a greenish yellow. She glanced over from the next stool at Berlitz’s, a dockside bar on Canandaigua in the Finger Lakes. They’d just shrieked Hi and hugged. Jenna hadn’t seen Holly in five years, since high school, when Jenna came up to her family cottage for July. Holly was a townie.
Jenna nodded downward. “What happened?”
“Oh nothing. Just clumsy getting onto Freddy’s boat.” She pointed at a motorboat rocking among a dozen others at the dock. Across the lake the sun was dropping, and red flares were sparking along the shore to mark the 4th.
“Who’s Freddy?”
Holly pushed back a strand of her red hair and swiveled. “See for yourself.”
Freddy sidled in next to Holly and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “Sorry, babe, a guy I used to know kidnapped me.” Jenna thought he had to be in his 50s, with a Navy buzz cut that was gray bristle. His white polo bunched around his middle.
“Freddy, this is Jenna,” said Holly. “An old pal from my high school days.”
Freddy let a smile form. “Oh yeah?”
“Her family had a summer place on the lake.”
“Must have been some wild times.” His breath smelled like booze.
“If you count diving from the top of the Glen,” said Jenna, “down into that tiny pool.”
“Oh my god,” laughed Holly, “I totally forgot about that. We were insane back then.”
Jenna caught the eye of the bartender with blond dreads. “Cape Codder, please.”
“Whass that?” He had on a t-shirt whose front blared “Get Blitzed!” framed by lightning bolts.
“This ain’t the Cape, sweetheart,” said Freddy.
“Right,” said Jenna. “Vodka and cranberry juice.”
“That sounds yummy,” said Holly. “Make that two.”
“Right away, ladies. I’m Brad, by the way.” He bowed and backed away.
Freddy took a swig of his Corona. “So what brings you back to our little town?”
“My aunt Catherine died this spring, so I came back to sell the cottage.”
“Sorry,” said Freddy, “that’s tough.”
“I liked her,” said Holly. “Even though your cottage was old and a little creepy, I always thought it was kind of cool. I loved those warm nights sleeping out on the porch, with the bats knocking against the roof.”
“Me too.”
Under the blue awning at the other end of the deck, the house band kicked in. They were old dudes, sitting on stools. The bass drum said The Retreads, the lime-green letters wrapped around a deep violet circle. They were snarling their way through the Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil”: “Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste.”
Freddy grabbed Holly’s hand and they sashayed to the dance floor. It was packed and noisy. Some sparkly teen-aged girls were jumping around, and ragged boat people with dyed blond streaks and tropical shirts were lurching back and forth. Everybody seemed to know each other, exchanging nods and high fives.
Jenna smiled to herself; it had been a while.
She wondered where Holly had gone at the end of their last summer. They had a spat over nothing, and Holly had just vanished. She stopped answering her texts. Jenna knew Holly had started to see some mysterious older guy—could it have been Freddy?
“Cape Codder for the stranger,” said Brad, setting her glass down. Jenna started. Below his short sleeve, she could make out the half circle of an identical bruise: a sickly yellow with a dark maroon core. How freaky is that, she thought.
“What happened to your arm?”
“Oh nothing.” He tugged his sleeve down. “A little run-in with Freddy’s boat.”
A splash of red and blue lit up the sky, cheered by hoots and whistles. Some lake-people were starting early. Motorboats with running lights purred along the dark lake, and the echo of a party ricocheted from the far shore.
Jenna took a big breath; she had to get some distance.
“Be right back,” she said, hopping down. “Which way’s the restroom?”
“Down the back stairs. Be careful, it’s dark.”
Jenna made her way down the steep steps, holding onto the handrail. At the bottom she couldn’t tell which way to go down the hallway, lit by a single bulb. Both sides were stacked with cardboard boxes: lettuce, napkins, ketchup. The metal door to her right was locked, and it was icy to her touch. She thought it must be the freezer.
She felt her way along the left wall. From further down she heard something like a goat, braying in distress. Must be a dog tied up outside, she decided. Over her head, she could hear the band’s music thumping. She tried a wooden door, locked too. She started to panic.
Someone bounded down the stairs behind her in the shadows. Jenna flattened herself against the wall and sank down.
“Jenna, Jenna!” called Holly in a whisper.
Jenna stood up. “Thank god it’s you.”
Holly ran over and grabbed her by the elbows. “I only have a minute before they look for me,” she said. “You have to get out, now.”
“What’s going on?”
“There’s no time. It’s complicated. But I can’t stop them.” She dragged Jenna down the hall. There was a high window giving off a faint light.
Holly pried it open and boosted Jenna up. “Swim out to where the boats are docked and keep your head down. Run for your car when you have a chance and keep going. Forget everything you saw tonight.”
“Thanks,” gasped Jenna, hauling her legs through the opening. “You gonna be alright?”
Holly gave her a ragged grin that took Jenna right back to their summers together. “Sure, I’ll be fine. You know me.”
Jenna plunged into the chilly water and bobbed back up. She swam toward the dark boats bumping together. Overhead there were brilliant starbursts of fireworks, with glittery trails arcing down toward the water, followed by muffled booms.
She grabbed onto a rope under the dock. Her arms shivered but she held on. A reverberation thrummed through the water, and a humming noise like cicadas filled the air. She stopped paddling and looked around, spooked.
In the middle of the lake a concave indentation appeared, purplish in the flash of fireworks, tinged chartreuse around the edge. From the center an enormous radiant disc arose, illuminated by tiny lights racing around its rim. Behind her, the band had stopped. She thought she heard a chant swell up from the deck, a guttural utterance that was primal, half human. She thought of Jenna, trapped at Berlitz’s, but knew she had to silently drift to shore, climb the bank and turn the key of her Civic; she would leave the sale of the cottage to local agents and drive half the night to get back East, letting the highway roll under her in a steady gray stream, the night punctuated by the ghostly luminescence of gas stations and all-night diners.
Gary Duehr has taught creative writing for institutions including Boston University, Lesley University, and Tufts University. His MFA is from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. In 2001 he received an NEA Fellowship, and he has also received grants and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the LEF Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Journals in which his writing has appeared include Agni, American Literary Review, Chiron Review, Cottonwood, Hawaii Review, Hotel Amerika, Iowa Review, North American Review, and Southern Poetry Review.
His books include Winter Light (Four Way Books) and Where Everyone Is Going To (St. Andrews College Press).