'Actually, this isn't my Edsel,' says Lydia Kindle. 'It's my brother's, but he's in the service.'
New perils everywhere I turn. Lydia Kindle's strapping brother, a punchy Green Beret, coming after me with deft chops to the clavicle, his terrible vengeance brought down on me for defiling his sister and his Edsel.
'Where are we going?' I ask again, feeling her hard thighs bounce under my head on what must be a rough road. I see dust swirl by the windows; I see a flat sky not bent by a single tree, not laced with any powerlines.
'You'll see,' she says, and her hand strays off the wheel to brush my cheek - with the faintest, most innocent perfume at her wrist.
Then into a low ditch and out again; I can tell that we've even left the dirt road because there's no dust at the windows and the car dips deeper on a softer surface; occasional snapping sounds, which in Iowa can only be corn stubble or hog bones. We're headed in a different direction too, because the sun warms my kneecaps from a new slant. Then there are some tire-slipping noises, like a squeegee on wet grass. I fear we'll be stuck miles from anywhere, that overnight we and the Edsel will settle forever in some soybean bog. 'With only the ducks to cry over us,' I say, and Lydia peers down at me, looking slightly alarmed.
'A fellow took me here once,' she says. 'Sometimes there's a hunter or two, but no one else. Anyway, you can always see the hunters' cars.'
Some fellow? I think, wondering if she's already been defiled. But she guesses my thinking and says hurriedly, 'I didn't like him. I made him bring me back. But I remember how we got here.' And her tongue darts out a moment, to wet each corner of her mouth.
Then shade, and an incline; the ground is firmer and bumpier; I hear rustling under the Edsel and smell pine pitch - in Iowa, of all places! A branch lashes the car, which makes me jump and bump my nose on the steering wheel.
When Lydia stops, we're in a dense grove of new pine, old deadfall, flat-leafed fern and spongy, half-frozen hunks of moss. Mushrooms are about. 'See?' she says, opening her door and sliding her legs out. Finding it wet and cold out there, she sits, her back to me, dallying her feet above the ground.
We're on a knoll, in a scruffy thatch of tree and shrub. Behind us are cut corn and soybean fields; in front and well below, what must be part of the Coralville Reservoir lies frozen at its fringes, open and choppy in the middle. If I were a hunter, I'd take my stand on this hill, deep in the ferns, and wait for the lazier ducks to fly this shortcut between one feeding ground and another. They'd come over low to the ground here, especially the fat, sluggish ones, their bellies bright with a glance of the sun off the lake.
But leaning against the Edsel's armrest, I extend my foot to the small of Lydia Kindle's back, and for just a moment feel like propelling her out her open door. But I just touch her spine, and she looks over her shoulder at me before she swings her legs inside and shuts the door.
There's a blanket in the car-boot, and an older-looking girl in her dorm has bought beer, she tells me. There's a nice cheese, too, and a warm, circle loaf of pumpernickel and apples.
Climbing over the front seat, she lays this picnic spread in back, and we hunch the blanket over our shoulders, tent-like and cosy. Under the blanket, a bit of cheese sticks to a tiny blue vein on Lydia's wrist. She snares it with her fast tongue, watching me watch her; her legs are crossed under her in such a way that her knees face me.
'Your elbow's in the bread,' Lydia whispers, and I giggle witlessly.
She squirms her legs and shakes the blanket around us for crumbs; I watch the bread roll to the floor; I see her skirt lift to her hipbone as she pulls me further up in her lap. She has baby-pink and baby-blue flowers on her slip, flowers too reminiscent of one of Colm's early crib blankets. She says, 'I think I love you.' But I hear a measure to each word, so deliberate that I know she's practiced saying this. As if she too feels it didn't sound quite right, she amends it: 'I think I know I love you.' Pressing her fine, thin leg against my side, she shifts to one hip and gently tugs my head to her thigh. My heart hits her knee.
There are the same damn flowers on her panties, too. A baby in her bunting; such frilly, flowered things for Junior Misses.
She squirms again and gives a weak pull on my ears, aware that I've seen her flowers. 'You don't have to be in love with me,' she says, and again I hear the practiced measure. Somewhere, I know, in Lydia Kindle's dormitory room, there's a piece of notebook paper - with this conversation written out like a script, scribbled on, revised, perhaps footnoted. I wish I knew what responses she has written for me.
'Mr Trumper?' she says, and as I kiss her under her hem, I feel a tiny muscle slack. She tugs my head up to her bird's breast, her suit jacket open, her blouse a thin shiver over her cool skin.
'Vroognaven abthur, Gunnel mik,' I recite. Old Low Norse is safest in such circumstances.
With the slightest shudder, she sits up against me, but even an ark like an Edsel is awkward, and there's much wriggling before she's free of her suit jacket. My hunting-coat snags on the rear window handle; sitting back against her, bobsled style, I manage to unlace my cloddy boots while her hands braille-read my shirt buttons. Turning back to her, I find she's unbuttoned herself, but she is hunching on her knees, arms folded over her bra; she shivers as if she was undressing for some unsure dip in a winter river.
Almost relieved, she stalls against me, happy to be hugged still semi-clothed, her skirt unzipped but only half down one hip. Her damp hands skitter across my ribs and pinch the unfortunate fold that curls slightly over my belt.
Lydia Kindle says, 'I never have, you know ... I have never ...'
I drop my chin to her sharp, bony shoulder and brush her ear with my mustache. 'What does your father do?' I ask, and feel her sigh, both let down and relieved.
'He's in burlap,' she says, her fingers finding my kidneys. And I think, He's in burlap! All the time? Wrapped in it, dressed in it, sleeping in it ...
'He can't be very comfortable,' I say, but her hard collarbone is numbing my jaw.
Lydia says, 'You know - feed bags, grain sacks ...'
Imagining Lydia Kindle's huge father, hefting a hundred-pound burlap duffel of onions and swinging it against my spine, I wince.
Lydia straightens up on her knees, pulling away from me, her hands at her hips, working down her skirt; she has the smallest bulge of a tummy under her flowered slip. Seeing her hands so busy, I slip her bra straps off her shoulders. 'I'm so small,' she apologizes in a tiny voice as I drop my pants to my ankles. Hoisting my feet over the front seat, my clumsy heels strike the horn; with all the windows closed, it sounds as if it's from another car, and Lydia suddenly crouches against me, allowing me to unhook her bra. The label reads: A YOUNG PETTY-PIECE UNDERTHING. How true.
I feel her hard breasts pushed against me and I shrug off my shirt, aware that the fly of my boxer shorts is gaping and how she's staring down at me; she's rigid, but her hips help me get off her slip. There's a mole, and the brief V of flowers, baby-pink and baby-blue.
She says, 'You've got such tiny nipples.' Her fingers wander over them.