The Boy
Charlotte Ainsley didn’t belong to the gulf coast like my other old ladies; actually, she said herself she had borrowed the cottage for the summer from a dear friend. Not only that, she was English, a cool sort of woman who spoke the language like it hurt her mouth to move it. I ain’t going to try to imitate the way she talked, because I can’t, but she clipped her words off like a knife cutting cheese, so that she sounded impolite even when she didn’t mean to be. When she did want to be impolite, her tone of voice could chill a body to the bone.

She was older, too, than most of my ladies . . . must have been close to forty. Wasn’t a big woman, either, though somehow or another you always had a feeling that she was big. She had sharp eyes, with a glitter of interest in everything about her, and color that was somewhere between blue and green, depending on the light. There was a yellow in her eyes, too, so that they looked like the eyes of a cat.

She had a beautiful nose, though you wouldn’t have thought so if you had thought about it, because there was a curve to the bridge, with the flanges cut very sharp and fine. Not a large nose, but a definite nose, and her face wouldn’t have been the same without it. Because her mouth was too soft and promising, you see, a real woman’s mouth.

When she met me in the kitchen the first morning I delivered an order of groceries, she was wearing a pair of white shorts, and her legs, not long but well-shaped, were so tanned it made the shorts look all that much whiter. She was wearing a man’s shirt, the tails tied in a knot at her small waist, and it was unbuttoned, showing her belly was tanned, too. The minute I looked, I knew she wasn’t wearing anything to support her nice breasts, and I thought to myself, Oh, Lord, here’s another one. Little did I know!

“Want me to put the groceries up, ma’am?” I asked, like always – though this time it was only one sack, a loaf of bread and a quart of milk and a box of crackers – and she said, “Oh, leave it there on the table. I didn’t need the groceries anyway, I just wanted to get a look at you. I’m Charlotte Ainsley.”

So I stood there and let her have her look. Which she did; and then she nodded. “Yes. When that girl described you in the powder room at the Yacht Club last night, I thought you might do.”

“What girl?” I said, sort of surprised.

She grinned. “The woman who gave you that nice wristwatch you’re wearing,” she said, and then she laughed. “Are there so many of them?”

I looked at my wristwatch. It was a Rolex, and I liked it a lot. But it made me uneasy that Miss Sarah had been talking about me to the ladies at the Yacht Club, because every time that happened, I got a couple of new customers, and it was already all I could do to keep up with the old ones. It seemed like there just wasn’t no way to keep my old ladies from dropping a hint or a brag to another old lady.

So I sighed, inside where she couldn’t see it, and said, “It was might nice of Miss Sarah to give me such a pretty watch. She’s a nice lady, all right.”

Miss Charlotte was already through with that subject; in her clipped voice she said, “Come along, then,” and turned to walk out of the kitchen without waiting to see whether or not I was following.

Which was a surprise to me, because I didn’t hardly ever get invited into the other parts of the house. It was like when it happened in the kitchen it didn’t count, like it would have counted in the bedroom.

I left the sack of groceries on the kitchen table and followed Miss Charlotte. The living room was all wicker furniture, old and comfortable, the room darkened and cooled against the Gulf Coast sun by heavy drapes over the windows. We didn’t stop there, but went out onto a sun porch that faced not toward the Gulf but away from it.

She had made it into a workroom, rolling up the fiber rug against the house wall and laying down a canvas sheet like a house painter would use, and all the wicker furniture was shoved back out of the way, leaving a clear space in the middle. In that space there was a stand with some kind of artistic work on it, modeled out of clay, and around about was all the paraphernalia she needed to make such things.

“Look at him,” she said, so I looked at the piece she was working on. It was something else, I can tell you, shaped strong and right, and I thought to myself that Billy sure would have liked to see it, unfinished though it was. It was the sort of thing, like a Gulf Coast sunrise or a flight of pelicans, that it pleased him to look at when he was alive.

I went close and walked around it. There wasn’t anything there that said, “Male,” because you couldn’t say this was an arm and that was a leg or here was the shape of a thigh. It was all molded too much together, you see, for your eye to break it down into parts. But somehow or other she had made it to say “Male!” right on, in the strength and flow of the lines, in the mass of the unfinished clay.

“What do you think?” Miss Charlotte said.

“It’s . . . it’s nice,” I said.

“Nice?” she said dryly. “It’s great, young man, the best piece I’ve ever done.” She frowned. “Only if . . . there’s something missing. There must be one absolutely naturalistic observation, the central fact of a man, the . . .”

I wasn’t listening, because I didn’t know what she was talking about, and couldn’t have understood it if I had know. Instead I was studying her hands, thinking that they had done this job of work. Not big hands, but strong, the fingers short and shapely, and I thought there would be a roughness in the skin; they’re useful, not just a woman’s hands; they would have to earn a roughness to do the work she calls on them to do.

She quit talking – to herself as much as to me, I knew, because I wasn’t paying any attention to her words. Then she said, turning around, “So let me have a look at you.”

“What?” I said.

“Take it out so I can see it,” she said impatiently. “Your cock, old cock.”

I felt myself drawing back. “It’s not an it, it’s Him,” I said.

She turned her head to one side, peering at me with her bright eyes like a bird. Her voice softened. “All right, Him, then.”

“Ma’am,” I said.

“Oh, come along, don’t be bashful,” she said. “Every woman without her own man along the Gulf Coast has seen Him and used Him You’re notorious, my dear fellow. Don’t come the bashful-boy bit with me.”

I stood just frozen, wishing these old ladies would learn to keep their mouths shut. It seemed like every time one of them got the use of Him, she had to whisper about it to her friends. Looks like they’d want to keep the secret to themselves, don’t it? But I guess they couldn’t help bragging about Him. For which I can’t truly blame them, I reckon.

When I didn’t move, Miss Charlotte came close, her strong fingers suddenly at the belt buckle of my khaki pants and then pushing them down on my hips. Nothing else for it, so I stepped out of my hockey shorts of my own free will.

“My, my, that is a nice one,” Miss charlotte said. “No wonder your ladies are as proud as peacocks.”

Stooping, she took Him in hand to observe closely as she skinned the head bare, then shaped her hand underneath Him. He lay limply in her palm.

“I need Him standing,” she said, and closing her fist, began to pump gently. I had been right; there was a roughness to her palm that felt so nice, the way she was using her hand, and of course he got up and stood just like she wanted Him to.

Taking her hand away, she stepped back, then to one side to take v in profile, He stood up at a sharp angle, jerking slightly.

She nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. That’s what I need. One utterly naturalistic object, embedded in the very heart and center of the piece. It’ll be shocking, it’ll ram the message and the meaning home like nothing else.” She lifted her head.