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And seeing no way out of it, he leapt in ahead, like diving through a sheet of glass, such a terrible, crushing cold, but he beat her in at least, though Faith was right behind him. Wolf thought he would die for sure but he kept on swimming, he’d be damned if he was going to look like a coward in front of this freshman, this prissy little girl, Jesus Christ. So with the teeth knocking in his head, he kept going, straight out. Sharks, he hadn’t even thought about sharks—after all, this was the fucking ocean. But some distance out a funny thing started to happen: the cold water began to feel almost hot, literally kind of tropical, warming his limbs; it felt pretty good, he had to admit, and on top of that there was this weird power, being out there in that gray heartless sea—as if you’d crossed over to a place most people didn’t know existed. Faith swam near him. Wolf had the impression some of that heat he felt was coming from behind her skin, and he reached out, touching her—just did it—they kissed right there in the water, so easy, as if they knew each other when all they’d done was say five words and jump in the freezing sea. When Faith looked back at the empty beach, she was smiling. Wolf had never seen her really smile before; it shook on her face she was so cold, and he wanted to get her back onshore. Around school he was pretty used to calling the shots, being a senior, having the truck and all, but as he breathed the cold salt air and the wind beat his head, Wolf had a feeling those days were probably over and he didn’t mind, really. He was actually kind of glad.
Phoebe went to the window. Yellow light from the kitchen smeared the dark glass. She heard their laughter, the tinny sound of a radio, and it seemed to Phoebe that her sister’s life was entirely effaced, a shadow beside the vivid presence of Carla. Wolf’s fiancée reminded her of girls in high school who’d worn their boyfriends’ athletic jackets to smoke cigarettes outside on foggy days, sleeves reaching halfway down their slim, manicured fingers. They had seemed to Phoebe so dazzlingly complete, lockets tangled in their turtlenecks, a dozen rings, jade, turquoise; girls who didn’t hesitate, whose very thoughtlessness she longed to copy.
“Look at you,” he said, touching the small of her back as they left the room. Getting on the elevator, Phoebe thought Wolf paused to catch her smell, and again she felt that shock of longing, like a heavy object plunging into deep water. It was not quite painful, but had something in common with pain. She and Wolf rode down in silence, patterned light sliding over their faces.
“I think one of these days the world’s going to look a lot different to you,” he said.
Phoebe was intrigued. “How?”
“Just—yours,” he said. “Yours.” And he looked at Phoebe with such palpable sympathy that she wondered what in herself could possibly have inspired it.
“I hope you’re right,” she said.
Wolf grinned. “I’m right.”
Veal, chicken, ribbons of salad; like casualties, the empty plates and second empty bottle were spirited away from their table. So much wine had eroded Wolf’s usual guard; gone was that studied good nature reminiscent of young male teachers at Phoebe’s high school. She found her gaze stumbling against his and leaning there, unable to break away, and again that desire would stun her. She stalled mid-sentence, too amazed to continue. For all her crushes on boys, Phoebe had never felt so powerfully drawn to anyone. In fact, often when she and the boy finally sank back on the sand or a bench or the seat of his car, something in Phoebe shrank from his soft lips and clamoring heartbeat. Her mind wrestled free, veering back to Faith and Wolf in her mother’s bedroom, the white door shut, watching from the end of that long hall, trying to fathom it. “Come on,” Faith said, taking Wolf’s hand, and Phoebe would try with her mind’s eye to follow, always realizing that whatever happened between herself and this boy would not bring her any nearer that door, not make the slightest difference in her life. Finally she would have no choice but to break free as she had that day from Kyle, for already she was gone. Like hearing her name called again and again, louder each time, finally having to turn.
Time compressed. She felt herself aging telescopically, older now than she’d been last week, or yesterday, even this morning, before the sun made its lazy arc across the bed.
She and Wolf left the room only rarely. When hunger drove them out, they ate ravenously at one of the town’s three restaurants, eyes fastened together across a white cloth, feet buried in each other’s laps. They ate mushrooms big as steaks, melting gnocchis in pesto sauce; they washed down lamb and veal and osso buco with bottles of Chianti. Phoebe grew fond of Tuscan bread, rough and saltless, perfect with the dry, tart cheese they were often served. When they’d eaten their fill, they walked straight back to their room and undressed.
ok not gonna lie this sounds amazing (really captures the sumptuousness of food/scenery/company)
Phoebe took his hand and led him into the nook. Tangled in the ivy at their feet were wine bottles, a pair of blue socks. As they kissed, Phoebe felt the responsibility drain off Wolf like an actual substance and it thrilled her, having that power. Wolf leaned against the wall while Phoebe unzipped his jeans—he’d joked about his permanent erection—now he gasped at the touch of her cool hand. The act itself was more awkward than Phoebe had imagined; being taller, Wolf had to bend his knees, but this didn’t seem to bother him now that they’d begun. Phoebe’s skirt virtually covered them—only the front was lifted. Wolf threw back his head, bracing it against the wall. Afterward he stayed like that, eyes shut, baring his throat while his breathing calmed. After a while he put his arms weakly around Phoebe’s shoulders and leaned there. “I’m gone,” he said.
And he was. Gone. Lost—in her. In bed he gathered Phoebe’s long hair in his hands and moved close to her face, watching the movement of her eyes. “You do what you do” was the nearest Wolf came to explaining all he’d jeopardized to be with Phoebe now. But it was less an explanation than an assertion of the pointlessness, the self-indulgence of attempting one. At times a certain wry fatalism would overtake him, a brooding ill humor whose basis, it seemed, was the belief that everything was lost. These moods terrified Phoebe at first, but their only effect was to drive Wolf back to her with even greater abandon, as if, by surrendering to Phoebe anew, he were proving that this—she—was worth the loss of everything else.
He looked away. Phoebe imagined him wishing her gone, and it crossed her mind that perhaps she should make a scene the way women did in movies, holler some insult, flip the table into Wolf’s lap. But instead she thought of Carla, alone in the empty Munich apartment, left behind with nothing but the lovely diamond on her hand. Phoebe’s outrage dissolved into pity. “Well, I feel guilty,” she said.
Their ostensible goal was a Jethro Tuli concert in Rome, but really it was killing time at sixty miles an hour, everyone tumbling around in the carpeted back of the van, hitchhikers hopping in and out, a jam jar full of liquid LSD sloshing around in someone’s lap. They’d lost the eyedropper, were just dipping in their fingers and licking off the drug. There was only one other girl besides Faith, an Italian sixteen-year-old who was shooting speed and running out of money. By the time they got to Rome, she’d been reduced to begging people for the cottons they used to shoot up. Once, in her excitement at receiving one, she’d dropped the cotton on someone’s white shag rug and spent twenty minutes crawling around in search of it, running shaking fingers through the dirty white shag, such a miserable sight that finally Wolf gave her the money for a bag. For the next two days she kept staring at him with these beautiful ruined eyes, saying, “Please, baby, I won’t ask again. But please.”
oh god
Wolf let go of her hand and backed away. The rest of them were propped against the church, watching Faith sort of goggle-eyed. The whole thing felt unreal. Wolf was terrified but riveted, too, in the grip of something bigger than himself. He leaned against the church. Faith stood on the wall. She had such guts. Someday we’ll look back on all this and die laughing, Wolf told himself, die when I admit how goddamn scared I was, and he felt himself reaching for that time, that calm, sweet place out ahead. Faith shielded her eyes from the sun. Wolf kept having the urge to sneak up behind her; the wind was loud enough so that she probably wouldn’t know until he was on her, pulling her down—he thought of that and rejected it time after time because it seemed low, so undignified against the vision of Faith alone on that wall facing the sea and open sky, something pure, almost noble in the sight of her, and Wolf found himself thinking, If I let her do this, the whole craziness will finally be behind us.