Read Up Through the Water for Free Online

from last year, do you?” Lila said, cracking her pink gum.
    He didn't know what to tell her. He could remember her, though only vaguely—one of the thin shy girls who hung around the docks at night.
    “I saw you once doing push-ups on the beach. Your nose in the sand.”
    “For wrestling.” Eddie tried to laugh. He knew how his face contorted when he exercised. “You said you'd show me the ponies.”
    “I might,” Lila said. “After the rain stops and it gets dark.”
    The bartender put down sodas and Eddie heard his fizz. “Can you ride them?” he said.
    “If you know how,” she said, twisting her hair around her finger.
    “So you've done it?”
    “Sure,” Lila said. “At first it seems scary. I've gotten thrown a few times. It's weird; you feel like you're flying, then you smack on the ground. Everything's quiet till the ponies gather around and laugh.”
    “I think I could ride them,” Eddie said. Lila smiled but seemed to ignore him. He'd never seen a girl like her. The high school girls he knew in Tennessee were always combing their hair and giggling over the basketball players. Lila could talk regular and there was something kind of fierce about her.
    “Last summer I could fit in my father's crab trap,” Lila said. “They used to call me chicken because I was so bony.”
    “No way,” Eddie said, slightly embarrassed.
    “This spring I put all my old toys, dolls, puzzles, that kind of stuff, in a box, taped it up, and wrote childhood on every side. Clever, huh? It's up in my closet next to my globe.”
    It seemed a funny thing to admit, Eddie thought, and he watched her stir her Coke with her fingers. He didn't know what to say. “Is the island on that thing?”
    “At first I thought it was a little dot like a speck of pepper,” Lila said, shaking her head. “But it's not even on there.” He thought of the island, the Victorian sea captains’ cottages around the inlet and the sea oats that curtained the beach. She leaned her face closer to his. “When I was a kid,” she said, “I used to wonder where hell was on globes.”
    “That's funny,” Eddie said. He liked the way her throat trilled when she laughed. She smiled and brought her cheek down close to her shoulder and rubbed it slowly against her shirt. Eddie had a feeling he was watching something private.
    The small arcade was separated from the dining room by a half wall and was darker than the rest of the bar. The pinball machine played “Pop Goes the Weasel” in tiny notes, its light concentrated like a camp fire.
    There was something about the big blonde dressed like a soldier on the glass back that he liked. She looked similar to the girls in the X-rated comics he'd seen back home and she reminded him of his friends there. The woman was barely clothed, with one leg straddled over her motorcycle. There were rats in uniform around her feet, all grinning so their spiked teeth showed.
    Eddie put quarters in the thin slot and the numbers, set inside the woman's chest, cleared to zeros. The silver ball shot down past the motorcycle men with raised clubs. He flipped the ball up and it pinged on a rat with a handgun and then to an army nurse in a short dress. He caught the ball, balanced it on a flipper, and asked if she wanted to take over.
    Lila moved her body in back of his, reached her arms around, and pressed down on his fingers resting on the knobs. She flipped the ball back and Eddie ducked under her arms. He leaned against the side of the lighted scoreboard, watching as her eyes narrowed on the game. She pressed right up against the edge. “This machine's been here for ten years. I remember my father telling me those rats were rabbits.” Eddie saw her move her neck like a swan bending to water. She missed and the silver ball slid past the flippers and down into the machine's inner organs.
    Lila swung the flashlight to the beaten grass around the wooden stakes. “They must be down by the water, grazing in the swamp.” She