Me and Marlowe, he thinks, lengthening his stride as he rounds a corner and catches sight of the house. He woke up this morning both surprised and thrilled that the previous night had gone so well. It wasn't often that he won women over with the point blank bluntness that he knows is the absolute opposite of charm. Most of the women that he meets think that he is a bad boy; they approach him secretly thrilled with the idea of taming him. So most of his relationships quickly dissolve into boredom: the women tire of his modulated personality, and he tires of the many faces they put on to entice him, entertain him, or evade him.
Marlowe's different, Lucas thinks as he slows to a walk and trudges up the cement driveway. She has her quirks, but last night she responded to his bluntness in kind. His attraction to her has taken on another deeper dimension. He is finding in her a woman as responsive as he is active, a woman as fierce as he is determined. She questioned his behavior but she warmed to him. When she stopped thinking and let herself go, she squared up to him toe to toe. He likes that. He needs that. Because he can't stop being the kind of man that he is.
Lucas quietly opens the unlocked front door and walks in. He scrapes off his sneakers as he closes the door behind him. The house is as silent as a tomb, but he is used to being alone in the mornings. Rising before dawn is a habit that he learned in his youth. He strips off his shirt and rakes his hands through his sweaty hair, contemplating a shower. But the thought of the cold dark expanse of the pool sets him trotting across the living room. Oddly enough, Roderick and Tamara do not have a fitness center in their otherwise well equipped home. Roderick has a gym membership; the treadmill and small set of five and ten pound dumbbells in the den are Tamara's toys, expensive and seldom used. Push ups and a few laps in the pool are his only options for an upper body workout.
Lucas stops in the laundry room off of the kitchen to retrieve a towel, strip off his track pants and leave them on top of the washer. He has to wash today; he didn't bring enough clothes because he hadn't planned to stay. He strides through the kitchen towards the pool room in his blue boxer briefs. He doesn't have any swim trunks, but he doesn't care. He'd swim in the buff if he wasn't worried about the one in one thousand chance that the newlyweds would wake up at this ungodly hour and find him skinny dipping. It is a slim possibility, considering the intentions they took to bed with them last night, but it is still a possibility.
The one scenario that he didn't anticipate is the one that presents itself when he slips through the sliding glass door. Marlowe is awake and kicking hard across the water towards the deep end of the pool. Lucas checks his watch; it's 6:52 a.m. "Early riser," he murmurs, grinning. One more thing that they have in common.
He doesn't wait for her to notice him. While her back is turned, he rushes to the shallow end and quietly steps in. The icy water feels heavenly against his hot flushed skin. But he doesn't dive in. He backs up into a corner near the stairs and waits, watching her.
She's doing kick drills this time. She dives under at the wall, turns, and snakes through the water like an electric eel, her pumping legs creating only a slight ripple on the surface of the water. She rises midway across the pool for a breath and then dives again, taking up residence just under the water level as though the surface tension is as fragile as a spider's web.
She's no Olympic swimmer, but Lucas can't articulate how her athleticism turns him on. He feels it though, low in his belly, like a stretch of hot sand along the coastline. The smile on his face dissolves to a slight frown as he realizes that it will be some time before he can get out of the pool without suffering embarrassment.
Marlowe is ten feet away when she catches sight of his long limbs underwater. She stops where she is, stands, and scrapes her goggles off of her face. "Hey," she says.
"Good morning."
"Good morning." Marlowe's voice is ragged and wispy, as much from exertion as from the shock of seeing him, shirtless, leaning casually against the pool wall. She'd spent a good part of the morning in bed drifting in and out of dreams about his liquid silver eyes, fantasies about what it would be like if he made good on last night's parting remark. She couldn't help herself; men shouldn't throw things like that into casual conversation.
Lucas does, she muses as she stares at him. "You just say whatever you want, don't you?" Marlowe doesn't feel any shame about skipping over the usual polite remarks that people make after they greet each other. She doubts that anyone has ever used the word 'polite' to describe Lucas Klein.
Lucas smiles at her and wades into the water. He dives under as she backs up; when he emerges in front of her, she is neck high in the deep end. "Sometimes," he answers finally.
"Sometimes," Marlowe repeats dubiously. "You expect me to believe that there are times when you care what people think about what comes out of your mouth?"
Lucas chuckles. He shakes his head and brushes his hand back and forth over his wet honey colored hair. "I care. If I think I'm going to say something inappropriate, I just keep my mouth shut. Be honest or be quiet - those are my choices."
Marlowe turns to the side when he approaches her; she wades away from him along a five foot perimeter. "You thought that was appropriate, what you said to me last night?"
Lucas blinks, thinking, and then his dimples appear. "I didn't think you would mind. Actually I hoped that if you thought about it, since you like to think about things, you might decide to take me up on the offer."
Marlowe wisely keeps her mouth shut. He has a way of explaining himself that makes her protests feel feeble. He makes thinking seem like a worthless activity. He moves toward her again, and again she moves away. They circle each other like sharks.
"I didn't expect you to be up," Lucas remarks.
"I'm a teacher. I usually get up early."
"You didn't yesterday."
"I was hung over yesterday. That's why I don't drink much."
"Same here."
"What time do you have to get up in the Army?"
"At the butt crack of dawn like everyone else."
"You like the Army?"
"Yes."
"You know there's a war on, right?" she asks sarcastically. "Ever thought about a career change?"
"No."
"So you don't care about the war?"
"I'm in it. TRADOC," he says, laying out on his back and floating. His mind drifts to his unit, to soldiers he knows that haven't seen their wives and children in a year, to men who left their limbs in the desert, but not their courage. He stands up, his eyes cool and distant. "I care."
"I mean, you don't care that our kids are dying, kids a few years older than my students who thought that the military was their best option in life? Dying," Marlowe repeats emphatically. "That's not a problem for you, huh?"
"Bloodshed is always a problem," Lucas replies quietly. "If you want me to justify the war for you, I can't. But I believe in what I do. I have kids, too: eighteen year old privates fresh out of high school that I have to teach to focus so they don't get killed and get other people killed in the process."
"You're a teacher?"
"Yes. Med-Evac instructor." Lucas falls silent and presses his hands together, squeezing water between his palms. "I'm not a military strategist. I don't know everything that's going on; most of us don't." He takes a short breath and looks at Marlowe. "I'm an ant; I don't know the secrets of trees."
Marlowe frowns. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Again, Lucas lays out in the water, withdrawing into his thoughts. His most deeply held beliefs are condensed into images. He doesn't usually talk about these icons; just like the idea of the favorite jacket last night, he finds it difficult to explain himself. "I saw this redwood once that was crawling with ants. The tree was like an old man compared to the ants, crawling and scrambling and what not. Those ants are dead but I'm sure there are more now, doing the same thing, scrambling through their short little lives. But the tree is still there." He moves his arms, turning himself in a circle. "I can't tell you exactly where or how the reasons for the war started. People say 9/11, but I can take it back to Saudi Arabia when I was there, or go back to the Gulf War, or go all the way back to Iran/CONTRA. We fucked up; they fucked up. We're all scrambling like ants." He stands up, looks at her, and shrugs. "I'm an ant; I can't tell you about the roots of the tree. But I have my part to play, whether we're right or wrong or somewhere in between. This is the tree I live in; this is where my loyalties lie."
"But what if you're being loyal to something that's wrong?"
"Then I'll pay for it with my life." His voice is hard and even, as solid as steel. "I always bet my life. That's why I have so few loyalties."
"Loyalty," Marlowe repeats, rolling the word over her tongue. It tastes ancient and metallic like blood dripping from a suit of armor. It is a warrior's word. "So you would rather be loyal than be right?"
"Yes."
Marlowe gazes at him, considering him. "So if Roderick killed somebody in cold blood, you wouldn't turn him in? Out of loyalty?"
"I'd show up at the door with a body bag and a shovel if he asked me to."
Marlowe frowns. She had him pegged as a great American hero. Meanwhile, her own ideals are peppered with words like 'social construction' and 'globalism'. She's an American to the extent that she doesn't want to live anywhere else and she can't stand to hear the international press trashing her country. America is her family, and she doesn't like outsiders talking about her family problems. There are just so many problems. She expected Lucas to be blind to them, but he isn't. He's. . .
"What's the verdict?"
"What?" Marlowe gapes at him.
"I can hear the wheels in your head turning from over here. Did I fail the audition or what?"
Marlowe's cheeks heat up. He's too damn perceptive, she thinks. She circles left when he circles right.
"Are we going to do this all day?" Lucas asks.
"What?"
He fakes left and she dodges. "That," he says, grinning. "I won't bite unless you ask me to."
Marlowe rubs her wrinkled fingertips over her eyelids. Her eyes are hot and irritated. She needs a new pair of goggles. "I'm getting out. I have things to do today."
Lucas' grin flattens to a straight line. He's just trying to have fun with her, but she won't loosen up. He thought that he'd sufficiently invaded her personal space the night before. But today is like starting from scratch, except that she's talking to him, questioning him.
Lucas pauses abruptly. Maybe she's giving him more credit that she realizes. She isn't put off by his innuendos; she just isn't very interested in them. She's not auditioning him as a sexual partner. She's auditioning him as a person, as a potential friend. The idea stirs something inside him, a hope mixed with anxiety. Most of the women in his life haven't dug very far below the surface. And because he is a man who frequently goes to ground, he isn't entirely comfortable with the idea of being in the light, of bearing the deep scrutiny of a woman like Marlowe.
She's been watching him during his silence, observing him. And for the first time in many years, Lucas feels self-conscious.
"I'm leaving. I'll catch your act later," Marlowe says.
Lucas shields his eyes and withdraws to the far side of the pool. "Goodbye." She looks at him strangely before turning and wading to the other side. Lucas watches as she hoists herself out, grabs her towel, and leaves. Then he stretches out in the water and begins his laps, his mind growing still and vacant.
