(Continued from Saturday Night Special, Part 5)
I woke that Monday morning at 6 o'clock, force of habit, I guess. I felt still yet a little disoriented from the prior two days, and it occurred to me to lie back down and sleep another hour or two. The sky had begun to lighten, and I could hear the soft morning surf.
Teri was out cold, sleeping like a sack of sand, and I put my head back down, looking at the peace on her pretty face. She looked, if anything, to be younger than she'd been in the day or two before; the edge of street-tough was gone from her features, and what was left was pure.
As I'd come to believe last night, Teri was not just tough, not just that superficial bravado girls assume when left alone too young. I'd seen that she also was brave and untouchable, and that there were parts of her that no one ever could hurt. In that way, she was like the mother tiger, one who will give all to defend her brood or willinglly die trying. In a strange way,
I
felt protected by
her
.
And she by me, of course. I still felt intensely watchful over Teri. I wanted to have some coffee, but we hadn't even thought to get a jar of instant. I figured there might be a store nearby, but I wasn't about to leave Teri alone in the tent for any time longer than what it took me to take a piss. Which is exactly what I did. I went to the bathhouse and took a big long piss.
I decided to stop by the office to see if the old man had any coffee. I opened the front door, and the old man sat there as usual, counting up stacks of greenbacks -- the day's take from Sunday or something. "Hello there, young fella," he said to me without looking up.
I could smell brewed coffee. "You have any coffee for sale?" I asked him. "I could use a couple of cups."
"No," he said. "What I got in that pot is for my use. I used to try to have enough coffee for people in the morning, but it got to be too much, so I stopped. Most people here makes their own anyway."
He finished counting a particular stack of bills, tied them with a rubber band, put the stack in a metal box, and jotted in a ledger book. "There's a big new convenient store 'bout a half-mile back down the highway," he said. "They got coffee and doughnuts, probably anything you need. That would be the closest place to go."
He paused briefly, then continued in the same tone. "You kids going to stay another night?" he asked
"We haven't made our minds up yet," I answered. "Can I let you know in a hour or two?"
"No hurry to me," he said with a wink and a grin. "Just let me know by noon or so. I'll hold your place for you if you go out, but I'd suggest you take your valuables with you, as I can't warrant anything that might get taken."
I thanked him and walked back to the tent. Teri still lay sleeping. I was a little torn between leaving her be to sleep as long as she liked, and waking her with a nice, happy, just-out-of-a-dream kind of fuck. I decided to be nice about it, so i sat in the car, turned on the key, and caught up with the morning news shows. Nothing much I cared about. It was going to be hot again, hot and sunny. But I could have told you that.
Obviously I was going to stay close to Teri, so I had to forget about the coffee, at least until she woke. I felt a little restless, and I thought about maybe taking a shower, or walking down to the beach for a walk. Instead though, I stayed close, watching the other people who were stirring and moving about as the sun cleared the horizon.
Up in the next row of tents, I saw three, four girls about my age climbing out of their tent one at a time, all sleep-tousled and half-dressed. They looked and acted like college girls; they had a nice black Blazer parked on the side. I kind of zeroed in on one of them, a tall, dark-haired girl wearing a tan cotton sheath as a nightshirt. The morning sun shone through it, and she didn't look to have anything on underneath.
