Well then.
Smiling, she said: “My writing has gotten better, yes?”
“Yes it has,” Jarett replied, giving her a peek. “You’re not telling me anymore. You’re showing me. That’s a huge step. And your prose has gotten far more concise.”
“Thank you. Practice helps. I’ve gotten better at holding my breath, too,” she added, watching him closely.
Now he looked at her. Really looked. Success.
“Have you?” he put forth. “How much better?”
“Do you want me to tell you or do you want me to show you?”
Crystal filled her chest with as much air as it could hold…and dropped under the surface. As always, the cheerleading lungs felt perky and strong, eager for a challenge. This was a good thing, for Jarett’s tub—an antique clawfoot—was very deep. A surprising amount of pressure squeezed at her ribs and throat. Also, the water was still hot. Her body burned as if immersed in a Jacuzzi.
After twenty seconds Crystal pursed her lips. Her chest was beginning to hurt. Did Jarett know yet? Could he see the discomfort in her twitched brow, her curled fingers? A flurry of bubbles plumed from her nose. And the pain, the tightness, kept coming. Harder and harder. Suddenly she let out an underwater yelp, spewing hundreds more bubbles of air to the surface.
“Come on,” Jarett said as she passed thirty seconds. “Fight it, Crystal.”
Thirty-five seconds. The need to breathe was an agony now. Perky or not, her lungs were about to become water balloons. With a desperate heave—HAAUUUHH!—Crystal broke through the surface. The act put her bare breasts on full display for the man in wait, and it pleased her to see his eyes drop and take the view in. Good boy. Now that she had him interested in the prize it was time to see what tricks he could do.
“I think that’s a personal best,” Jarett said.
“Maybe,” she gasped back. “Maybe. But I want to try again. This time you hold me.”
His face looked as if he hadn’t heard her right. That was fine. She knew how to repeat herself and did so.
“Hold you?” he asked, giving her a flutter of confused blinks.
His frustration was charming, particularly since she was the one taking all the chances.
“That’s right, Jarett,” Crystal smiled, slipping her breasts back down beneath the water.
“Well…okay. For how long?”
Her smile became toothy, her appetite like a piranha’s. “Until I beg you to let go. That is if you think you can make me beg.”
His hands came out slowly to take hold of her shoulders. Raising them to meet his touch, Crystal drew in a deep breath and let it out. The lungs felt strong again. Ready for another dive.
“I like that,” Jarett managed to say, between a few heavy breaths of his own. His large, strong hands gave her a squeeze. Then, in a cautious voice: “But you’d better get a deeper one.”
“Oooh,” Crystal purred, goading him on, “somebody’s getting excited.”
Even if he hadn’t already admitted as much the evidence was everywhere to be seen. Jarett’s eyes were dilated, his arms shaking and covered in goose-bumps. Beads of sweat gleamed on his temples. To Crystal, it all made for a fascinating—and arousing—paradox. Here was she, the damsel in peril, about to be pinned underwater without air by a man twice her size, locking her gaze with that very same man and daring him to do so, while he remained tentative despite the smoky imminence in his words.
Tentative…but not unwilling. Sensing that the time had come, Crystal arched her back, giving Jarett another view of the small, pretty chest she used to scream cheers on the basketball court, and gasped in hard. In an instant her lungs were filled tight. True to his word, Jarett pushed her to the bottom, keeping a firm pressure on her shoulders so that she had no choice but to keep her lips pursed and wait.
All the same, the author’s face continued to look worried, as if she were tasked to escape from a set of chains to which she had no key. She gave him a smile of reassurance, keeping her lips closed. At that same moment a faint, distant thunder began to rumble along the horizon of her endurance. Crystal bent her knees. Her fingers curled into thoughtful fists. And ever so slightly, the smile on her face faltered.
Its effect on Jarett was immediate. He narrowed his eyes and pressed her down harder against the bottom (forcing a small, bubbly yelp from her throat). “You’re not going anywhere,” he said. “Come on, Crystal, show off those lungs.”
His out of nowhere sinister behavior caught her off guard. She made a twisted face, as if to say: Huh? What’s going on? But either the message didn’t get through or he chose to ignore it. The grip on her shoulders remained firm, even when a sudden, stabbing pain tore through her lungs, forcing out an enormous plume of ever so precious air.
Jarett?she tried to ask him with her eyes. Jarett, can you please let me go now?
The answer was apparently still no. Crystal’s tiny hands seized hold of his biceps to claw uselessly at the muscles detaining her. She squirmed first to the left and then to the right, splashing water over the edge of the tub. But Jarett gave no quarter. The smile on his face had become more like a leer. She moved up a fraction of an inch and he pushed her right back down. What was wrong with him? Did he think a girl could hold her breath forever? She needed air! Air!
Jarett please! Please PLEASE!
And later she became convinced that it was this word, pealing in red screams like a fire bell from her eyes, that caused him at the very final moment to pull her body to the surface.
Her gasps could not have been more desperate, more greedy. With steam rising from her naked body, she clung to him until the air came back. Then, when there was sufficient breath for independent function, she did the first thing that popped into her head.
She kissed him hard on the mouth.
He tried to back away, but now she was the captor, the controller. Her fingernails clawed into his scalp and pulled. A hard breath—his breath—burst from his lungs while she kept her own in check, waiting, holding, using what was hers, what had been hers since the very moment she’d decided to knock on the door of his house.
The urge to indulge even further upon that possession took all of her might to resist. After all, this was a new place, a new territory, made up not of flowers and color like her own, but of steel that shined silver under fiery stars. Might and muscle. A place of guardians by which to stand, soft and naked, and feel safe. Yet for all of that she knew that his was still a world cast over by fear. Long ago, something had happened amongst these dark edifices, something to which Jarett still paid a deep and solemn respect. There were always tears in his eyes, even though she had never seen him cry.
Thus, between every kiss, at the crest of every sigh, she whispered words of encouragement, telling him to let go, that he didn’t have to be afraid anymore. He responded by placing a hand over her back and tracing along the spine. Crystal told him yes, that was it, that was just lovely. She opened his shirt so he could shrug it away from shoulders double the width of her own. His hard, strong chest came forward…but then froze. Crystal kissed him again, the water splashing as her weight shifted to close what little distance was left between them.
“Relax,” she whispered. “Relax, baby. It’s okay.”
“But—“
“Shh. You’re gonna be fine. You’re gonna be fine, Jarett, I’ve got you.”
More water splashed as she rose to her knees, and then, before he could object further, stood to her full height. Now Jarett, still seated on the toilet, was a very accessible target. Graceful as a ballerina, Crystal stepped out of the tub to let him behold her soft nakedness from head to toe.
“What are you feeling?” Jarett asked.
“Red,” she replied with honesty. “Like fruit on a tree.”
He looked at her for a long time without moving, then unfolded a towel from a hook and rose to wrap it around her. This dampened Crystal’s spirits at first, but she soon discovered that his motivations were not rooted in rejection, but in protection from the cold. With her body now cloaked in heavy cotton, she was lifted off her feet and carried down the hall to Jarett’s bedroom, where the blizzard could be heard blowing its strongest yet.
***
Afterward there was sleep. It came more peacefully to Crystal than in any time she could remember. She lay naked in his arms like a goddess and dreamed blankness—blankness on which any story she liked could be written. Nearby, convenient, was a pen. She picked it up, and had the tip pressed to the paper when Hannah of all people came dancing into the room.
“Now what?” she asked, smiling through her blonde hair.
Crystal just laughed. “Now anything, Hannah. All the doors are open.”
“Of course!”
And as if on cue a door at the other end of the room banged open. In it stood Jarett. In one hand he held a key. The other was hidden behind his back.
Crystal opened her mouth to ask what gift he bore (flowers? chocolates?), but she never found out, because at that moment the blizzard came back, and the bedroom, and the blankets. She was awake.
Blinking, she reached for Jarett’s alarm clock on the bedside table.
“It’s just after one,” her partner said as she fumbled with the light.
Crystal peered at him from under the quilt. “Have you slept yet?”
“Some. What about you?”
“Yeah. Some.” She slithered forward to plant a kiss on his mouth, and then another next to his ear. “That was…really awesome. What we did. You know that?”
“We’re in trouble.”
“No we’re not. This is our secret, Jarett.”
“You can’t keep secrets in a small town.”
She kissed his ear again. “That’s pulp fiction nonsense, boss. Cheap drama for bad writers. That isn’t us.”
“What are we then?” he asked, his head tilting in the dark.
“Oh we’re lovers now. I hope you don’t mind that. Because boss”—her kisses came back round to his lips, then down to his neck and chest—“I am going to take advantage of you.”
“Haven’t you been doing that since the day we met?”
His tone was reproachful, but Crystal felt a different truth hardening in between his legs.
“Yup,” she said, unabashed.
“But why me, Crystal?” he countered, breath quickening as her kisses sank lower and lower.
“You don’t ask questions about love. Remember that line?”
“No.”
“You wrote it, dummy. The Girl And The Grotto.”
His hands rose from the bed to fondle her hair. He was surrendering again. His erect penis was a white flag.
“Why do I get the feeling that’s a personal favorite of yours?” she heard him say.
“Because you’re right. Because that’s where I found out you like your girls…a little on the breathless side, Jarett.”
“So you held your breath for me.”
A gust of wind, the thousandth that night, swept past the house; there was a heavy crash as something huge fell over in the woods.
“I sure did. And I’ll do it some more for you, Jarett. As many times as you like.”
“But did you like it?”
“Boss,” Crystal said, “I loved it.”
And she gasped in for another dive beneath his steamy waters.
17
At some point before dawn the snow stopped. In its wake lay a town that had done the same. As she made Jarett’s breakfast and put on the coffee, Crystal listened to one horror story after the next come over the radio. They ranged from traffic accidents to missing persons to broken power lines spewing sparks beneath mammoth drifts that swallowed whatever victims they could find—cars, school buses, people—whole.
None of it distressed her. Today there was no such thing as pain. Her thoughts were clear and bright as the snow. Even the dead janitor’s ghost had fled for the time being.
“I know it’s sunny outside but please stay indoors,” the radio begged. “We’ve got blowing and drifting snow, and more people missing it seems like than found.”
Everything was perfect.
Wrapped in another one of Jarett’s dress shirts, Crystal sang as she flipped eggs and buttered toast (the latter cooked the old fashioned way from a frying pan). Jarett clopped in minutes later, covered with frost from shoveling the back porch. Appalled, she gave him a long hug, then ordered him to sit down this instant, filling his mug with percolated coffee as he shook the last shiver from his bones.
“You’re going to get frostbite,” she said as she cut his egg.
“Nah. I’m used to working in the cold.”
“What’s the point in shoveling the back porch? Are you expecting slaves from the underground railroad?”
“It’s just a farmer’s habit. Not to let the weather gain too much ground over his crop.”
“The porch,” she told him, filling her own mug with coffee, “is not your crop.”
“It is though,” he replied in a tone grave enough to make her pause. “Everything a farmer owns is his crop.”
He took a bite of bacon, then gave a piece to Chubby, who had been loitering under the table for just such an offer.
“Fair enough,” Crystal allowed, crunching down on a piece of toast. “But you know…I’m rather passionate about tending my crops, too, Mister.”
Jarett peered at her over his coffee. “I absolutely know that,” he said.
The journey back to Eagle View Drive proved impossible that day, a fact which made Crystal almost dizzy with bliss. Meanwhile Jarett put checking the house for storm damage at the top of their list of things to do. There was very little to be found, which did not surprise Crystal considering how many winters these walls had already survived. A light lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and Coke followed, then another tutoring session, this time with a twist: Jarett wanted Crystal to come up with an idea for a novel, complete with theme and outline.
She stared at him from the couch, gob smacked. Was he serious? she asked. Why not? he replied. If she intended to be a novelist one day there was no time like the present to get started. And even if she never actually wrote the novel for this particular assignment, he added, it would still provide useful insights for them both on the importance of structure and foundation.
“All right,” she agreed, though the task seemed akin to fighting a dragon after only a few fencing lessons.
Part of her acceptance had to do with the way Jarett was walking back and forth in front of the fireplace. His words were as passionate as she had ever heard them, laced with gesticulations that were almost frantic in nature. At one point he spun around with his finger in the air, eyes alight with whatever fresh idea he was about to pitch, and knocked a picture off the mantle with the other hand. The frame shattered as it struck the hearthstones, but with barely a glance at what he had done Jarett went right on talking.
“Once you have your idea,” he said, “I want a theme that you care about attached to it. If you can’t come up with a theme then don’t bother with the idea at all.”
“So it’s idea first and then theme?” Crystal asked, charmed as always to discover something new in this man.
“Not always,” Jarett allowed. “But you need to care about both, Crystal. A lot. Because most writers take at least a year to work on a novel. I normally take two. That’s a hell of a long time, so you’re going to need a shitload of coal to shovel.”
“Got it,” she said.
“Once you have your idea and your theme down, I want you to write in one or two short, simple sentences what the book is supposed to be about. Don’t give me any bullshit, long-winded crap that makes me need to sit down and smoke a pipe while I try to understand it.”
“Um…”
“Short and simple. What is your fucking book about?”
“Jarett, I don’t know if I’m ready to write a novel.”
“You will be once you have your theme and outline. I want a list of your main characters, too, with descriptions for each. Tell me about their personalities, their traits.” He stopped pacing again. “Are you writing this down?”
Crystal snatched guiltily at her notebook. “Oh fuck. Sorry, sorry. Is there a deadline?”
“Bet your ass there is. I want everything in two weeks.”
“The theme and outline you mean, not the whole novel. I hope.”
“Of course not the whole novel,” he laughed. “I don’t expect you to be William fucking Goldman. I do expect you to be disciplined. If you want to write books you goddamned well need to be.”
“I’m disciplined, boss,” she said, thinking of her near fatal breath-holding performance in the bathtub last night.
Jarett went to the closet as she spoke and got out a broom.
“You’re getting there,” he said. “But we haven’t been aggressive enough with these lessons. That’s my fault. I’ve been treating you with kid gloves.”
“I—“
“Starting today we’re going to take bigger strides. You turn thirteen on Valentine’s Day, right?”
“Yes,” Crystal said, blushing happily.
“Hell, that’s only four days away. But you know what?” He brushed the broken glass into a dust pan. “You’re going to have a huge head start on being a novelist. Huge.”
Crystal kept smiling, though her buoyancy sprouted from a different source than his own. Ideas and outlines interested her far less than this newly awakened man who had gotten out of bed with her a few hours ago.
She followed him into the kitchen, where his chatter turned to more pedestrian topics. The house was still a concern. It had pipes that tended to freeze in weather like this, and a furnace that was getting too old for Ohio Februaries. And had he told her about the roof on the tool shed? It leaked, but only when it rained. He’d yet to fix it. He kept putting it off and off. Stupid. Also there were some rotten boards on the back porch that needed replacing—
Crystal touched his chin, cutting the litany off in its tracks.
“It’s okay, Jarett,” she said. “Whateve