Continued from...

Kip was the alpha male of the lifeguard fraternity who had his pick of the most attractive young college women who swarmed over the Cape each summer as waitresses, chamber maids, ice cream dippers, gift shop clerks, barmaids, cotton candy sellers, party-boat hawkers, and at the top of the female food chain, female lifeguards. Kip had the added benefit of being easy prey, himself. Many of these girls wandered onto the beach at noon or so and baked half naked under the sun until late afternoon hoping to find themselves a late evening date.

When Kip first saw Montana, he knew she was the one, even before the sun basted her skin a deep golden brown and bleached her hair sunset yellow blazing with light. Montana was a rookie lifeguard that summer, a sophomore to be at Mt. Holyoke College. She smiled from one side of her mouth, a look that made her seem clever, sardonic, irreverent, and a bit of a wise-ass. She often spoke in playful rhymes. "Move over, Rover," she grinned, the first day they met Kip at crowded bar in the Mill Hill Club.

"The name would be Kip," he smiled.

Wow, what teeth, she thought. Perfect rows sweeping around powerful jaws, teeth as perfect and white as a new set of dentures.

"Are you real?" she asked.

"Excuse me," he said.

She touched his arm, which sprouted forests of gleaming blond hairs from deeply tanned skin taut with throbbing veins. Then she pinched her own cheek.

"Real?" he asked.

"Apparently," she grinned in that lop-sided way that could be, even to hunk like Kip, a bit disarming.

Surely this girl was not mocking him, he thought. "Would you like a drink?"

"I thought you'd never ask," she said brightly.

By the end of July they were passionate lovers who met evenings in the Nomans' boat house for which Kip had the only key. Often they rigged the boat with its sprit sail of musty canvas and eased into the calming evening breeze of Nantucket Sound. Montana loved the evening sunsets, and as it grew darker, they often dropped anchor and went skinny dipping in the warm shallows of Kill Pond Bar. On most nights a land-breeze sucked them back to shore. Sometimes the wind would die altogether, and they would row back in tandem, the soft pine planks sliding through the velvety black water, oars thumping quietly in their ancient locks.

So what causes a smart young woman to fall in love with a handsome, charming young man, or at very least makes her feel she is in love? No listing can serve as proof, but Kip was kind to her, polite and attentive to her needs and desires. He made her feel sexy and beautiful and called her his Sweet Darling. He took her to elegant dinners in fine restaurants where he held her chair and spoke softly to her, smiling often, touching her tenderly, making her laugh, asking her about her wishes for life, her plans, respecting her desire to become a research biologist who would discover important things in her life. He was so attentive and socially adept that she didn't recognize the times when he stopped listening because he still nodded as if he were.

Unlike her roommate Madeline, Montana did not follow his eyes as he checked our her roommates, and they did not let her in on their quiet gossip that Kip was growing restive and had the look at times of a predator, a gentleman hunter on a safari for young women. He was, said the alluring Madeline, on the hustle. But Madeline was also jealous and would never have earned his affections beyond, perhaps, a one-night stand.

Jeannie, the other roommate, was much less certain. "All men look at women that way," she scoffed at Madeline after Montana and Kip had left for an elegant dinner date. "They can't help themselves, dumb animals that they are."

Montana did notice, however, that Kip spent more time of late at the other guard stations, not only on her beach but around town. And he took to wearing dark glasses, so she could not see him check out the legions of half-naked girls lounging on the beaches. One night, rather than going on their evening sail, Kip begged off for a night with the guys. "They're giving me a very hard time, so I need to humor them."

"A very hard time about what?" Montana asked.

"Oh, nothing. They're just jealous. They think I treat you too softly, that you're my favorite guard. And you are," he smiled and playfully tussled her spiky blond hair. "So I need to give them a little of my time."

So she went out with her roommates that night, and on the way out the door of the Beach Comber Lounge was stunned to catch a glimpse Kip standing at the bar with his arm around the bare shoulders of a tall, elegant young woman in a white dress who could have stepped out of a fashion magazine. Montana said nothing, of course, not even to her roommates and least of all Kip. But everything changed.

She pretended that nothing had happened and went sailing the next day and the next. Kip remained charming, warm, considerate, and affectionate.

"So are the boys still jealous?" she asked.

"The boys are fine," he smiled.

"Am I still your favorite?" she asked coyly.

"Of course," he laughed.

But she could tell he was lying. In the coming days, she slowly worked herself into a fury over his perfect self-control, his warm smile, his affection, his doting. Their dates were shorter by an hour, and the days after he appeared to her a bit weary. He even snapped at Dale for coming to work late, and Dale was surprised. "Hey, what gives, man? I'm ten minutes late. What's the big deal?"

Kip stepped back, flustered. "Sorry, Dale. You know. Try to get here on time, that's all."

One August evening after several days of a brutal heat wave, Kip and Montana sailed into the sound on a gusty southeasterly, the air heavy with a hot, damp gloom. Huge, puffy clouds churned above a western horizon so thick with moisture it had turned yellow at the gills. Ordinarily Kip would have been more cautious, but he was trying a new Dacron sail and a sloop rig purchased by the town at his urgent recommendation. The boat danced briskly over a brittle chop, a fine spray cooling them both before the wind suddenly died, and the sails went limp a good two miles from shore.

It was too hot to row, so they sat in the damp, sticky heat.

Montana had no plan that day. But in the frustration of the heat, she blurted irritably, "So who's the new girl friend?"

For a moment Kip was helplessly disarmed. He stared at Montana's damp upper lip and avoided her steely blue eyes.

He eased out the sheet line so the sail could catch any wind that happened by, no matter its direction.

"Amanda," he confessed.

"She's beautiful, isn't she?"

"Yes."

"You don't love me any more, do you?" Montana demanded quietly.

Kip looked at her and shrugged. "I guess not. I'm sorry," he whispered.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the yellow at the gills of the clouds darkened to an angry brown.

Kip turned away from her to fiddle with the traveler, freeing the lines, checking the tiller. The boom swung lazily toward his head, he caught it, and pushed it away.

Montana was furious now, swearing at him inside her mind. You guess not, she thought with acid sarcasm. You GUESS, do you? You sonovabitch. You sniveling fake. You phony snot. You ruby-throated lying bastard. I hate you.

She said nothing but tightened her grip on the oar.

He gazed out to sea.

Then she stood slowly and very suddenly swung the oar with all of her considerable strength, whacking the side of his head with resounding hollow pop that echoed over the still water.

His body snapped sideways, then sagged like a wet beach towel over the tiller where he hung from his armpits, out cold.

She tossed the oar overboard and dove into the warm sea. You goddamned jerk," she yelled.

Montana raced to shore in fifteen churning minutes. As she gathered her breath, hands on her knees, she gazed out at Kip's boat sailing into the distance on a halting northeast tack. Good riddance, she thought to herself.

"You can't just leave him strung over the tiller," Madeline shouted at the door as Montana warmed in the shower. "He could end up sailing to England."

So Montana hurried with her shower and called the Coast Guard to report the position of what seemed might be "a lost boat." She rushed to dress and kissed Madeline goodbye--off to Montana, she was, to meet her mom.

Kip never knew what hit him. He didn't even remember being picked up by the Coast Guard and being rushed to the hospital with a moderate concussion. He was treated for short-term memory loss, an apparent "boom in the noggin," his good-natured nurse told him. "You need to watch those gusts," she grinned.

Kip was profoundly relieved to learn that Madeline had left town, freeing him to pursue his new girlfriend whose name…well he could not remember her name until she gushed at the bar of the Beach Comber Lounge, "Oh, hi, Kip. Remember me? Valerie!" she smiled. "You owe me a drink remember?" she lied.

"Oh, yes, of course, Valerie. I remember perfectly," he lied, "What will you have this time?"

Montana met her mother in Bozeman and joined her as staff assistant of the state's first women's shelter, named "The Battery" by Frances in commemoration of her husband's infidelity.

They were a ferocious pair who used baseball bats to chase off men who'd come to drag their wives or girlfriends away and beat them back to their senses. The police chief was especially fond of Frances and dated her for many years. "Try not to kill anyone unless he crosses the threshold," the police chief cautioned. "I would never," replied Frances.

Montana enrolled at the state university in town and earned her Ph.D. in ethnobiology, becoming a national expert in the relationship between behavior, hormones, biochemistry, culture, and violence. She titled her dissertation: "Punks and Predators: the Ethnobiology of Male Rage, Female Fear, and the Enculturation of Terror."

She was to become a grand celebrity and a stupendously successful single mom of three handsome boys.

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Last revised: 11-3-2006

Copyright Peter Owens 2005