Chapter 5

Nica's Adventure

Chapter 5

“It’s almost 7 o’clock,” I said. “You sure it’s not too late?”

“What time does it get dark?” asked Nica.

We had been dating for a half a year at this point and were already in love but, now that I think about it, we were still learning about each other. It was late July in Indianapolis and we were considering going to a nearby lake to swim and enjoy the cool summer night.  Nina suggested we go to an area northeast of Indianapolis called Lake Kesslerwood.

“I don’t know,” I said.  “After nine, I’m sure, maybe later.”

She was bent over looking in the fridge and stood up straight and looked me in the eyes.  I melted a little whenever she did that, right up to the end.

“It’ll take us a half an hour to get there,” she said. “Let’s go.”

I hesitated a moment.  The practical side of me thought, was it really worth it, by the time we arrive?  We’ll get, what, maybe an hour, hour and a half by the time we get settled?”

Her position didn’t change and I wondered what she was looking for.

“All right,” I said.  “Let’s hustle then.”

That was my way of nudging her a little.  Nica wasn’t just late to everything, she took a while to actually be ready to leave.  That’s probably part of why she was late all the time, and it’s funny, it wasn’t because she fixed herself up or whatever.  Whenever we would be getting ready to leave to go somewhere, she would wander around with a slight grimace, as if she was looking for something. 

“It’s a man made lake,” she said.  “A human made lake,” she added, correcting herself. “A friend of mine used to take us out there.”

She did this all the time.  Said something out of the blue that felt like an abrupt shift that might be tangentially related to what you had been talking about, but took things in another direction.

“It’s actually two lakes,” she said.  “And they don’t allow big boats or jet skis, so it should be quiet.”

“Sounds great,” I said.  “Is this back in high school or something?” I asked.

“What?” she said, looking confused.

“That you used to go out to this man - sorry - human made lake,” I said.

“No,” she said. “Later,” she added and then pursed her lips. “You wouldn’t know them.”

Nica grew up in the Indianapolis area shuffling to different foster homes, some in the city, some just outside.  She wasn’t just tight lipped about those experiences, though, but was like that about her past in general.

“We should get going, then,” I said.  “You almost ready?”

*******

We took Nica’s car because mine was making a funny noise and we didn’t want to chance that we’d break down at night on the way home, especially.  It was tiny with a small engine that, although it was an automatic, shifted gears in a clunky way.  The back and forth motion this created was accentuated by Nica’s driving style, which was …frenetic.

Sometimes she asked me to drive when we took her car, but not this time.  The fact I was tall for this little Honda Fit, combined with the rocky gear shifting and Nica’s driving technique, made for an uncomfortable ride out to the lake, but she was right about how long it took.  Almost 30 minutes exactly.

“We’re almost there,” she said.  She was peering out the windshield as if looking at birds flying over the car or something.

“There,” she said.  “That’s it.”

“What?” I said.  “This looks like a regular neighborhood.  How is there a lake nearby?”

She ignored me and kept looking.

“I think that’s it,” she said.  She hit the breaks and I lurched forward.

“Yeah, that’s it,” she said.  “It’s bigger than it was, but that’s it.”

I took a deep breath and thought, I’m not playing this game today.  I pursed my lips and looked directly at the right side of her face.  She looked different to me yet again.

She backed up the car and then pulled forward to park in front of a colonial style house with olive green vinyl siding.  After she turned off the engine, she looked up at me.  I was still staring at her.

“What?” she said.

I sometimes couldn’t tell with Nica.  Was she really lost in thought or something?  Her lack of presence frustrated me sometimes, to be sure, but it also intrigued me.  Did she do this deliberately as a form of testing me or something?  Was she trying to goad me?

“I couldn’t remember where we’d park, but I finally recognized the tree,” she said.

Or was she just a unique and intelligently strange bird who operated on her own terms, her own schedule and sense of time? I was always too sensitive to the needs of others, often ignoring my own in a way that did not feel assertive or independent, but weak and obsequious. There was always a part of me that wanted to not give a fuck what others think, but I could never get there.  If this is what she was doing all the time and not being manipulative by playing stupid mind games, I could live with that, even admire it.

But I could never tell which one it was. 

“Look,” she said, pointing to a path that went along the side of the house without the driveway.  “We can take that trail to a little beach area that’s not so crowded.”

We gathered - what seemed to me - our excess of supplies …beach towels, a cooler, chairs, a blanket, blow up pool innertubes, a bag of hers that contained some extra clothes for her to change into - never mind where she’d do that.  We could barely carry it in one trip, but we managed with some struggle.

“What if they’re in the backyard?” I asked about the homeowners whose yard we were cutting through.  She didn’t acknowledge my question and my wondering began anew about whether it was her attention span or intentional disregard.

Or her hearing …maybe it was her hearing.

“Oh good,” she said, “there aren’t too many people.”

*******

Nica popped up like she was jumping off hot coals or something.

“Oh!” she wailed, “I knowwww!!  It kills me sometimes!”

We were talking about how boring our jobs were, which led to a discussion of the centrality of purpose in a meaningful life.

“Sometimes I just want to say to these store managers, who gives a fuck?  They ask me about sales projections, upselling, product placement.  I mean, who gives a fuck how many socks you sold?”

She had been laying down on the blanket we had spread carefully in the small beach area that was more dirt than sand. One family with small children and one other, slightly older couple were our only companions.  Her floppy garden hat had been covering her face as we conversed until she cast it aside amidst her vertical explosion.

“You do what you have to to pay the bills, I get it,” she said.  “But I will not live without meaning and purpose, not just in my work, but my life.”

She looked straight into my eyes as she spoke and I realized she was …present.  Present in a way that was not the norm for her, though I didn’t stop to analyze it at the time.  Her energy in these times was palpable, exciting.

“I was put on this earth to exude connection and foster meaningful relationships.  To live with purpose and intentionality,” she said.  

She looked out at the water.

“I just haven’t figured out exactly what that looks like yet,” she added.

I nodded because I didn’t know what to say.  We were in our early twenties then and no one else I knew our age talked this way.  My mother and I would broach such philosophical topics now and again, but I always considered them theoretical discourses, not roadmaps for living.  Nica embodied a kind of genuine search for meaning when most people that age, hell at any age, have blinders on, unaware of what has always been there but they don’t see. 

“You and me both,” was all I could come up with.

She turned her gaze from the water toward me and offered a sweet smile where her thin lips didn’t completely cover her large,white teeth.  Then she reached out for my hand, held it up her mouth and kissed my knuckles softly, parting her lips so I could feel her tongue faintly.

“Come on,” she said, moving my hand down from her lips but still holding it.  Then she stood up and tried to pull me up with her.  I reached down with my free hand and propped myself up so I could go where she was leading me.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“In the water,” she said softly.  Then she let go of my hand. “Grab the innertube,” she added.

She walked a few steps ahead of me, turned around in the shallow water and grabbed the innertube from me.  Then she turned back toward the deeper water and waded further out until she was submerged up to her neck and holding onto the innertube.  For some reason, I halted when the water got up to my waist and watched her.

I saw her reaching down with her free hand and struggle a bit.  I thought maybe she was adjusting her bikini bottom but, no, I could see she took it off under the water when she plopped it onto the innertube.  Then she reached behind her back with her free hand - the water was still up to her neck - and removed the top and put it next to the bikini bottom she had removed a few moments before.  She was skinny dipping in broad daylight.

And in front of other people, including kids, it occurred to me suddenly.  I whipped my head around and looked behind me.  Yep.  The older couple and the young family were still there, though they seemed oblivious to Nica’s adventure.

That’s when it hit me.  This was clearly her adventure and, for a change, I didn’t know my place.  Should I go out to join her?  Do I stay here and just watch?  Do I go back to the blanket?

She had seemed to invite me along when she pulled me up off the blanket and said to bring the innertube, but now she seemed as oblivious to me as she herself had been to the other people on the beach a few moments before.  I was hoping she would yell out or wave me over to join her, but she had turned around and all I could see was the back of her head.

The sound of the young children in the beach area screaming with delight rocked me out of my indecisiveness and I dove head first into the water and swam out to join her.  I maneuvered myself to the other side of the innertube and then reached down with my free hand and removed my swim trunks and placed them next to her bikini.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” I said back.

“Doesn’t the water feel great?” she asked.

“It does,” I replied.

Her green eyes sparkled next to all that water and reflected sunlight.  They were all the more intense because her dark hair, which was usually parted on the side and swept over her forehead, was not competing for attention.  She was all sparkly, green eyes.

I looked into those eyes directly, but she seemed to be looking over my shoulder off into the horizon behind me. I was trying to think of ways to ask her what we were doing skinny dipping like this when her eyes finally met mine.  When they did, however, she spoke before I could even open my mouth.

“For the first time,” she said. “I can see a life with someone else.  I can see us searching for meaningful work and lives together, see us thinking big and living overseas, in Central America or something.”

I didn’t hesitate.

“Me, too,” I said.  “Me too.”

                                                          *******

We spent an hour in the lake talking like that, sharing visions of where we might go, what we might do to make a living, valuing experiences over owning a house in a neighborhood like the one by the lake we were in.  We talked about climate change and racism, economic justice or other issues we might engage in and what that might look like.  We talked about communication and sex and vulnerability and what else makes a good relationship with your partner.  We talked about writing and music and other creative pursuits until it was almost dark and the few other people there had left.

“I’m getting cold,” she said.  “We should probably get going.”

I nodded, reached to grab her bikini and handed it to her.

“It’s going to be harder to put these on out here than it was to take them off,” I said.

She smiled at me, turned around and waded toward the shore with her bikini in her left hand. I held on to my swim trunks with my right hand and the innertube with my left and thought, she wouldn’t …

But, of course, she did.  She walked casually over to the blanket, toweled herself dry and started to put her sundress on over her naked body.  My head darted in all directions as I looked for onlookers; it was getting darker out, but it was not dark.  I didn’t see anyone so I replicated her exit strategy from the lake, though considerably more quickly.

I wanted to say something about her brazeness, but it felt out of place, inappropriate for the moment.

“Do you see my shirt?” I asked..

After we had gathered all our possessions, we walked back to the car and packed everything away.

“You want me to drive?” I asked.

“No, I’ll do it,” she said.

After we navigated out of the neighborhood and eventually on to Fall Creek Parkway, the main road back home to the southside of Indianapolis, I turned the radio on and fiddled with the dial to find some music.

“Hey,” she said.  “Do you mind if we just drive without music?”

“Of course not,” I said.  “Do you want to tell me all the reasons you love me until we get home?” I asked, trying to be charming.

She smiled, no, she smirked at me while glancing back and forth from me to the road.

“I might think of a few,” she said, “but I actually have something else in mind.”

“What’s that, baby?” I said.

She extended her right hand, her left hand on the steering wheel and reached for my left forearm.  When she had a hold of that, she spidered her fingers down to my hand, held it up to her lips and kissed it as she had before we went skinny dipping. 

I expected her to let go of it, but she did not.  Instead, she moved both our hands down to her right thigh and, in concert but with her taking the lead, our conjoined hands proceeded to hike up sundress until I could see all of her on the car seat.  Then she put my hand down between her legs.