Summer of Denial

He had ventured into the interior of the island and discovered the small Gullah community still in residence. An amalgam of English, Scottish, and West African ancestors, the Gullah were scattered in small enclaves like this all along the insular South Carolina island coast. Damien had found a buxom, berry-brown, and sensually aspected young woman with a big ass who suited his image of a Tahitian maiden perfectly—not that he’d ever been to Tahiti beyond the frames of Gauguin’s paintings—and thus she was in as his model and Tish was out. From the way Damien was humming and grinning as he moved around the house, the young woman had evidently proved to be pliable and willing as well.

Tish had taken the ousting in her natural way. When Damien was close, she had pouted and they, like Helena and I, were sleeping in separate bedrooms now. But behind Damien’s back she would give me a wink and would glide off to some corner of the house or island or other. It didn’t take much imagination for me to decide what she was doing—and, in some cases, who she was doing it with. I had no doubt that she and the hunky young Gullah, Vandi LaRoche, had hooked up. And the captain of the twice-weekly tourist boat from Savannah, well-muscled and good looking, if approaching hard onto forty, had stopped by the last three trips with fresh milk and eggs for us. Although I couldn’t imagine how Tish had hooked up with him, I was quite sure that eggs and milk were not his true interest at our house.

And then there was the liaison I was sure of. Four times in the past two weeks Tish had visited me in my bedroom after I had drifted off to sleep—three times in the afternoon when I was napping and Helena was deep in the web of her writing in the library and once in the morning after Helena and Damien had left for their golf game at the Haig Point Signature course. Each time she had rolled me on my back and mounted and ridden me in a languid fuck that was over and she gone before I even was fully awake. I had continued to take sleeping pills to give me at least some hours of legitimate separation from the world each day.