The diamond bikini - By Charles Williams Page 0,27

have to get further away from the bald-headed row.”

“Have you got a bathing suit?” I asked.

“Well—yes,” she says.

“Why don’t you go back and get it?” I said. “And we can go on up to that point and go swimming now.”

“Oh, I’ve got it with me,” she said. “It’s here in my purse.”

“Well, fine,” I says.

We walked on around the edge of the lake and into the trees. In a little while we passed the point where the lake turned left and when we walked out to the edge of the water we was out of sight of the house and everything. It was nice. The lake was about fifty yards wide here, and the trees made shadows clear across it now that the sun was about to go down. It was real quiet and peaceful.

“Do you reckon it’s too deep close to shore?” I asked. “I don’t know how to swim.”

“No,” she says. “I think we can wade out. And I’ll help you. But you wait till I change into my suit.”

She went into some bushes and ferns that was growing along the bank off to the left. I stripped down to my boxer shorts and waited for her. It looked like a fine place to swim, and I was anxious to start learning. Pop was always going to teach me, but they never seemed to have any pools close to the race tracks.

She came back in a minute, and when I looked round the first thing I thought was that Dr Severance had sure been telling the truth when he said her folks was rich. Her bathing suit was made out of diamonds.

Of course, there wasn’t much of it, just a string around her middle and a three-cornered patch in front, but it was all just solid diamonds. It must of cost a fortune. I wondered if it was comfortable to wear.

And then I saw the vine, the one there was such a hullaballoo about in the papers later on. It had little blue leaves, and it wound around her bosom like a path going up a hill, and right in the center there was this little rosebud. It was the prettiest thing I ever saw.

She stopped, all of a sudden, when she noticed how I was looking, and her eyes snapped. “Hey,” she says, “what goes on here? Are you a midget, or something? How old are you, kid?”

“Seven,” I says.

“Good God, what a family,” she says. “Not even eight yet—”

Then she glanced down and saw I was looking at the vine, and she started to laugh. “Oh,” she says. “You had me worried there for a minute.”

“It sure is nice,” I said. “I wish I had one.”

“Well, I wish you had this one,” she says.

“Why?” I asked.

“Well,” she says, “I guess I developed kind of uneven when I was a kid. I had a place to put it before I had sense enough not to put it there.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about, but it didn’t seem to make any difference anyhow because I just figured then that all the women had vines, and that if you had one that nice it was all to the good. So we waded out in the water, kind of slow to see how deep it was. She’d had to pin her hair up on top of her head with bobby pins to keep it from getting wet because she didn’t have a swimming cap.

She swam across the lake and back while I watched, so I could see how your arms and legs was supposed to go. Then she stood up and held me flat out in the water while I practiced.

I began to get the hang of it in a little while and could go for two or three feet before I went under when she turned me loose.

“The main thing is, don’t be afraid of water,” she says. “It can’t hurt you, so don’t fight it.”

She swam across and back once more just for fun, and then we got out because it was beginning to be dusk out in the trees. Her hair had got wet on the ends in a few places, so she took a cigarette out of her handbag and we sat down on a log while she shook it out to let it dry. It was inky black, wet like that, and touching the skin on her shoulders and neck, it sure looked nice.

“By golly, you’re swell,” I said. “Teaching me to swim,