Read The Gazebo: A Novel for Free Online Page B

“If you keep on seeing this girl, I guess it’s because she has something very … sweet about her, if you follow what I’m saying. And the sweetness of the honey is what counts, isn’t it?” Ash nodded to himself. “It all tastes the same, rich or poor, and what’s the harm so long as you don’t knock her up, althoughI’m sure we could do something about that too—”
    Martin put down his own glass of bourbon and stood. “You don’t know anything about Claire,” he said. “Or about anything.”
    “Oh, I know loads more than you think,” Ash said in a quiet voice. “But you can’t see that right now. Someday, maybe you will. But here’s the truth: if you let her, which you seem bent on doing, that girl is going to ruin your entire life.”
    “Thanks for the advice,” said Martin. And he turned and left this cold room with its walls of unread books.
    “So I guess you’re planning on letting her!” Ash Rayfiel called to him, but Martin didn’t answer. “Fine! Go right ahead!” he heard his father shouting as he descended the stairs.
    Claire and Martin became more discreet over the course of the summer, meeting less frequently and in places where they felt fairly certain they would not be discovered. They no longer met out in the open in the gazebo during the day, or even in the meadow, or by the pond. Instead, they met miles away in the farwoods on the periphery of Longwood Falls, a place visited by the occasional trembling deer and by very few people. The woods were thick here, and there were mosquitoes dotting the air. They usually planted themselves in a tangle of branches and leaves. It was darker in the woods than in the places they were used to, for the sun couldn’t find too many openings to poke into between all the trees. The woods were like a dark, slightly forbidding bedroom. Sometimes Martin posed for Claire here when she asked, taking off his shirt and letting her sculpt him from a few scoops of red clay that she had brought with her in a tin.
    Claire was miserable in the woods, and she said so. She was upset that she and Martin had to go so far away to be alone together, that they couldn’t walk hand in hand through town like other swooning couples in love. And it was all because of money. She didn’t want Martin Rayfiel’s wealth or status, though some people in town had suggested she did. She wasn’t looking to marry “above her station,” to leave behind the life of being the daughter of a man who pruned hedges and repaired sidewalks and painted the gazebo for a living,upgrading to be a rich man’s smug, idle wife. It was said in town by some of the smaller–minded citizens that Claire Swift was trying to buy her way out of what she’d been born into. Only when she and Martin were alone together did the rumors and passing comments fade into a distant, insignificant chatter.
    And then summer was almost over; now a new kind of urgency infused their time together. One day at the end of August, as they lay in the woods, Martin turned to her, propping his head on an elbow, and stopped talking. “What is it?” she said.
    “You know what I’d like? To be with you for an entire day,” he said. “Someplace that’s not here. Someplace where we can lie together without goddamn stupid pinecones sticking to our clothes.”
    “Where?” she said.
    “The Lookout.”
    Claire sat up and stared at him. “We can’t go there,” she said. The Lookout was one of those two–story motels off Route 9 with peeling aqua paint and an old pool that had remained empty for years, filled with trash and cobwebs.
    “It will be okay,” he said. “It’s probably nicer on the inside. I just want to be with you,” he went on. “We don’t need to do anything you don’t want to.”
    She turned away from him. The truth was that she wanted to be with him in a place that wasn’t covered in a thicket of branches, too. She wanted to sleep with him. But this went against everything she had been