Ingrid (Act 1 of 2)

Then all of a sudden Ingrid makes Will swing by a smoothie place. She orders a big yellow pineapple thing and insists they sit on the smoothie place's blinding hot patio while she sips it. Will drinks from a small plastic cup of very icy water.

The smoothie lady had flirted with Will while preparing it. It had been a minor ordeal. She had demanded he let her put a straw in the lid for him, had torn off the lower part of the straw wrapper and then very slowly and sensuously undressed it for him before positioning the straw with both hands over the slot in the lid and finally punching it in. She even made a little noise as she did this. Then she tappa-tapped it all the way down, and made noises doing that too. She gave the papery bit still clinging to the top of the straw a playful flick. She had touched his hand as he took it from her. Her fingers had been cold and soft. He'd told her thanks and finally left to go join his sister on the blistering patio.

All this for a cup of water. He must be emanating some kind of vibe today.

"That bitch," Ingrid grins, chewing on her fat red straw.

"No, she was just being playful, I think."

"I mean Mom."

"Oh."

Ingrid is sitting across from him at a dinky table whose backless seats are bolted to the pavement. Her feet are loose of their flip-flops and presently extended underneath the table onto her brother's lap. She wears a sort of lacy white sundress and straw sunhat. She wears red-tinted sunglasses with pink rims. She looks cute as fuck.

"Hey Ingrid?"

"What?"

"Say something in French."

"Bois de la pisse."

She rubs one bare foot into his crotch, looking for the shape of him. His junk isn't quite situated the right way for this, but he starts to harden all the same. French, for fuck's sake.

"Thanks," he mumbles, smiling and squinting. He has no sunhat, no sunglasses. His sister's white sundress glows so hot it burns to look at.

Drivers by, rolling slowly through the density of traffic, almost unanimously check out Ingrid's long naked legs poking out from under her dress.

A semi slows to a halt alongside their little patio, blasting brake noise and diesel fumes as it rumbles to a stop at the light. Its odor is hard and burnt and hellish. Will and Ingrid make matching faces of revulsion, and are quiet until the light finally changes and the truck rolls on.

"I want to go to the beach today," Ingrid says. "It's a good day for it."

It is unseasonably warm. The beach will be a mess of noisy tourists and bummy locals. But like all mortals, Will can't say no to Ingrid.

"I guess we have our swimsuits. You want to go now?"

"Yeah! But hey," and she gives him a cheeky look, "are there any nude beaches in town?"

"Um." Will's cock is being readjusted inside his shorts by his sister's toes. She can feel him with her feet as well as he can feel anything with his hands. "I don't know?"

"Well? Look it up," she rolls her eyes. She starts rubbing his cock through his shorts. It feels more weird than good.

He gets out his phone and types in "nude beaches near me."

"Sure enough," he nods. "Huh."

"I went to a nude beach with some girls in France. We drove for hours to get there. It was ... worth it."

"It wasn't just a bunch of old people?"

"Oh, no, it was."

"And that was worth it?"

"Wellll, you know I have a thing for older men," she smirks, and now finally does something with the ball of her foot on his cock that straight-up makes him go dopey.

People driving by can probably see this. Her feet are very obviously where they are not supposed to be.

"Yeah, I g-guess you do, Sis," he says dreamily, with maybe a touch of heatstroke.

"But no," she sighs. "It wasn't about the perverts staring at us. It was just ... It was nice to be naked outside. And to just not care. It's hard to describe if you've never done it. But it feels so ... so ... primitif."

"Primitive?"

"Primitif. That was the word Lilou used for it."

"Is Lilou the blonde one?"

"No that's Chloe--and she bleaches her hair--but yes, Chloe was there too."

"Holy fuck, Chloe was naked with you? DETAILS, Sis. I need details. She is a goddess."

"Um," she makes a peculiar face, "do you want to just see a picture?"

"You took PICTURES?"

He could take his sister right here on this tiny little table, rubberneckers be damned.

"Yeah dude. You know me. I'm a creep."

Ingrid reclaims her feet and bends down to grab her phone out of her purse. She fiddles with the phone for a moment. Chuckles as she sifts past a few happy memories. Finds the ones she's look for. Hands them over to her brother.

"They start here. Swipe over to see the next ones. I took a few."

The shots are all candids. Will can tell Ingrid was trying to keep her creepiness on the downlow.

They are staged in a damp, hideously lit locker room off the beach. The first shot doesn't even have any nudity in it. It's just a picture of a white cinderblock wall with blue writing on it. A parallelogram of sunlight glows across a quote, "It's not true that I had nothing on. I had the radio on. -- M. Monroe."

Will reads it twice, not quite chuckling but snorting faintly. "Marilyn Monroe?" he asks.

Ingrid informs him that she wasn't just famous in America, and that most Parisians can read English.

"A lot of them are better at it than I am," she sips. "Anyway, I took that shot so that I could get the camera app open without raising anyone's hackles. Plus, I liked the quote."

She is her brother's sister.

The money shots take place on a rickety wooden bench, along which sit or stand three differently shaped, differently hued, differently naked women.

Will sees Chloe, her yellow striped top freshly peeled but still rolled up around her arms above her head. Her armpits are shaved, but there's a hint of darkness there. She is more brownly tan than Ingrid--whose knee is visible in the foreground--and more vigorously chiseled. Her ribs jut out as she strips her top. Her untanned breasts are still tan, medium-small and plump, her nipples a sort of pale brown not all that different from her natural skin tone, but with fat puffy areolas and soft pink tips. In the next couple shots, she is no longer the object of the camera's interest. She sort of slouches off to the side of the frame, her breasts still bobbling adorable, her face hard and happy and forever stuck in the middle of saying something scandalous.

The other two girls are more friends of Chloe's than of Ingrid's. Will has seen them in group photos before but doesn't recognize them by name.

"That's Lilou," Ingrid smiles, flipping ahead to the next photo for him see the soft-faced, willowy black woman in the nude. "Easily the smartest in our class. We all kind of hated her. I mean look at her. But she and I got on well enough. She basically taught me French."

Lilou stands facing the girls, fully undressed but for a pair of sheer lilac stockings that come halfway up her thighs. She is posed sensuously, with hands on hips, shoulders forward, collar bone protruding, and one knee turned slightly to the side. Her cute little breasts--all of these women have slim figures, it seems--are rendered perfect by this pose. She stands with her nose turned up, her lips in a moody pout, and behind a piece of straightened hair dangling strategically over one eye gives her friends a look at once haughty, lusty, and ironic. Her pussy is shiny and black, and her pubic hair is trimmed to a small, sensible upside-down trapezoid. A thin band of brownish purple clit and inner labia smiles out from between her tight, compact outer labia. Her lilac thighs are long and hypnotic and enormously strong looking. Her stockinged feet are sadly not visible in the shot. Will worries he's got a legit foot thing now.

"And this little masterpiece," Ingrid sighs affectionately, "is Manon."

She flips to the next image. Slight, pale Manon does not look old enough to be in this photograph, but Ingrid assures her brother she is eighteen. "Trust me, it's okay to think she's hot. We all had a crush on Manon," Ingrid blushes. "You should have seen the girl dance. In fact, I might even--"

Ingrid starts looking around for a video.

She finds it. Watches it for a second. Then she eagerly hands her brother the phone and promises him it's worth it. Will watches.

Manon can in fact dance. The girl spins like a thing unleashed throughout the entire video, kicking and windmilling and cartwheeling and using her cherubic little face like just one more weapon in her arsenal. The women she dances with in the video echo her movements, weaving perilously close to harm at certain points, but chiefly only serve to exaggerate, by way of juxtaposition, the ferocity and sensuality of Manon. She is dressed in a black skin-tight cocktail dress with stripes of fabric cut away across her pale chest, up her slender thighs, and all the way around her sides. She is not wearing a bra, scarcely needs one, but her black panties poke out repeatedly throughout the video. Many of the moves she does are overtly sexual. It's not a dress or dance most women could pull off. But Manon, with her sharp, raven-black bob and too-short bangs, with her uncomfortably cute face, and with a physique seemingly immune to fatigue, pulls it off just fine.

Will asks if they can go back to the naked pictures now. He wishes his sister would put her sweaty feet back on his cock.

"Maybe later," Ingrid slurps, delighting in her brother's disappointment. Her smoothie gurgles near-empty in its big foam cup. "Let's hit the road. I want to go be naked in public."

Chapter Twenty-eight, Part Two of Two

"How far is it?"

"Mm, about an hour from my old campus, apparently."

"Oh. Okay."

Nearly a whole minute goes by before Ingrid says:

"Hey that reminds me--"

"What?"

"You said something a couple days ago. That I wanted to ask you about."

"What'd I say?" Will gets a little knot in his stomach just asking. He's already kind of stressing out about the traffic they're caught in. Traffic is crawling. So, what's this, now?

"You said your head hadn't been in the right place lately, or something like that. When I asked you if you wanted to do acid with me. Remember?"

"Oh," he nods a little uneasily. "Yeah?"

"Dooo ... you want to talk about it?"

"Not really," he answers honestly. That is his honest answer.

"Oh," Ingrid says.

Someone suddenly cuts out from behind them, speeds up past them and cuts back in front, into the car-sized bit of space between his car and the tow truck that had been ahead of him. He really hates this sludgy 15 MPH lunchtime traffic. It just brings out the worst in people. He's got half a mind to cut out around this asshole in front of him now, speed up alongside him, and cut back in front of him.

"I mean, thank you for asking," he tells Ingrid. "That's thoughtful of you. But it's one of those things, it's hard to explain."

"It's okay. I get it." And she lets it go, just like that.

It's really not a sexy drive. The scenery is just highway stuff--trees sometimes, manicured slopes and glassy two- and three-story office buildings other times, congested exits and on-ramps, badly placed construction zones, you get it, who cares. You've driven down a random US highway, you know this stretch of road. He hopes traffic will thin out the further they get out of the city. This beach is supposed to be in a state park.

Sure enough, it does thin, and his ankle finally just relaxes onto the gas pedal. The scenery starts to get a little more rustic, the buildings a little older and sparser, and suddenly it's just Will and a few speedy cars cruising through dry, green, brushy hills and navigating the occasional clot of slower vehicles together. Will and the other speedy drivers become a sort of temporary cadre of left-lane superior beings, savoring those fast, languid stretches free of slower-going traffic, tolerating and even appreciating the right-lane meek when they must pass them by, and viciously despising those ignorant morons who disrespect the sacred law of Slow Traffic Keep Right that governs the natural order of the highway. When one of his superior brethren finally merges to the right lane and gets off at an exit, Will feels a minor pang of loss.

"Goodbye, friend," he says to the speedy car. And Ingrid doesn't say anything.

Some clouds have bubbled up out of nowhere, just hilly white things, Mario clouds he used to call them and it would tickle Ingrid pink.

"Mario clouds," Ingrid says now.

Will looks at her. He can't say why but he doesn't see her as sexy right now. Beautiful though she is. Naked though she'll be. He just sees Ingrid right now. She isn't looking back at him.

"You remember?" she asks her window.

"Do I remember Mario? What kind of question is that?"

"No, I mean how we used to--" she smiles, then her face goes blank again, and she says, "It's okay. Never mind."

"Hey," he says to her.

She finally looks at him.

"I remember the Mario clouds," he tells her.

She smiles a little. Still, though, she keeps looking at him. Even when he goes back to looking at the road, she just stares at him across the cabin. She goes to take another sip of her smoothie but it's a dry empty Styrofoam cup now. She stuffs back it into the cupholder in between them. She looks at him again.

"Hey," she says.

"Hey."

"You'd tell me if you were depressed, wouldn't you?"

"Huh," Will says. "Yes?"

"I mean, I feel like I'd be able to tell. But ... you are good at keeping at secrets when you really want to."

"Am I, though?"

"So, okay, sorry, but I need you to just let me say it one time. Just let me say it one time."

"Say what? Just say it."

"Here it is: I am your sister, and I care about you, and if you're not feeling okay then I want you to know you can trust me not to mishandle that information, okay? I won't jump down your throat. I won't try to save you. I'll just be there for you. Okay? You'd do it for me in a heartbeat, and I don't want you to think I wouldn't do it for you too. Just because I like messing with you. Okay? You believe me?"

Will just keeps driving for a sec. He figures he has a sec. Before he needs to respond to a thing like that.

"Will?"

"Yeah, Sis. I appreciate you saying all that. I promise you, please, you can relax. If I was depressed, I mean, you of all people would be able to tell."

The last of his cadre peels off at another anonymous exit and now it's just him and the empty road. Hills and trees. They're maybe ten minutes from the state park.

He finds he can't bring himself to look at Ingrid now, ever since she'd said what she said. So he isn't sure when she finally quits looking at him. He only knows that whenever the GPS finally speaks up to let them know to use the right two lanes, he glances at his sister and she's looking out the window again.

Chapter Twenty-eight, Part Three of Two

By the time they park it's officially cloudy. The sandy lot is empty but for one other car. A kind of hideous, very nice luxury sedan.

Some wooden stairs lead down from the parking lot along a cliff and then down a grassy hill to a gusty, forlorn beach. The sand stretches off to a point at infinity in either direction along the water, walled off the whole way by a pale cliff that appears to range in height from monstrously tall to pleasantly squat.

There's what looks to be an older couple, tiny as pixels on a cell phone, walking along the beach to the north. They look dressed.

"Are you sure this is a nude beach?" Ingrid asks, looking at the desolate landscape. "It's a pretty place, but in a very ... Academy Award Winning way? Not so much in a fun in the sun kind of way."

"Apparently," Will says. He points at the words "clothing optional" on the sign at the top of the stairs.

She loops an arm through his and hugs up next to him. The wind rips at her dress. She has to hold her hat on her head.

"Do you still want to do this?" Will asks, a pinch of hope in his voice. Please say no.

"We're here," Ingrid answers. "Might as well check it out."

They walk for awhile along the water. They keep quiet. Ingrid takes her flip-flops off and carries them. Will keeps his shoes on. She bends over every once in awhile and fucks with tiny shells in the sand. She makes him stop and look around, waiting for her.

"You should look at these, Will, they're fascinating!" she beckons him over. He comes over. It's a bunch of tiny shells in the sand.

"I like that one," he says, and points with his toe at a big blue one with white spots.

"You want it?" she asks. She has a nest of shells already gathered in her sunhat. She picks up the blue one with the spots and shakes the wet sand out of it. She hands it to him.

"Um," he says, and takes it from her. He rubs a little more sand off of it. Up close he can see it is in fact a shell. "Here," he says. "Add it to the collection."

"Okay," she says, "but if you're planning on picking up anymore, you carry them. I'm running out of room in here." His own shell kind of disappears into hers, inside her hat. It's maybe the biggest one in there. But that's all that really makes it unique.

"I think that can just be my one shell."

"Oh, you're a one-shell guy now, huh?"

"Yeah."

"You sure you don't want a side shell, maybe like a hot little Mommy shell, just for you?"

Will has already kind of wandered away again as his sister is speaking. He opts to pretend he hasn't heard this question.

"Will?"

"Hm?"

"Can you carry my flip-flops?"

"What? Why?"

"This hat is getting really full. It's hard to carry both."

"You want me to carry your flip-flops."

"Please?"

"Fine, give them here."

They walk awhile further, Will now toting around a pair of smelly, sandy flip flops in his hand. Ingrid catches up to him and keeps pace for a minute.

"Do you want to stop and find a spot to get undressed?"

"Being honest?"

"Being honest."

"Not really."

"Oh."

"That alright, Sis?"

"Well, yeah, I guess. Sorry. This was a dumb idea. I'm sorry."

"It's alright, Sis. This place is kind of neat in its own shitty way."

Ingrid laughs.

"I like the shells."

"Yeah," he frowns. "I had noticed that."

They walk for a little while longer.

"Come here," she tells him.

"Yeah," he frowns again.

"Will," she calls to him.

"Huh?"

"I said come here, dingus."

"Oh."

He comes to her.

She is looking at the big ugly shelter made of driftwood that he has been actively ignoring. It's odd, to be sure, but not an inviting kind of odd. It's more the kind of odd you want to keep a wide berth from as you walk past it on a lonesome beach.

It is certainly not the kind of "place" a person should want to enter when they look at it. Ingrid wants to go inside of it, however. She points out that it has a little driftwood sidewalk leading up to its front door. She hunkers down and points inside to what is in her mind a habitable space.

"There's a little room in there," she awes. "Let's go."

"Um, no I'm good Sis," he tells her. Like fuck he's going in there. There are such things as spiders, and spiders love places like that. He can't even imagine what kind of fucked up spider gets to rule such a roost, given how many different kinds of spiders must absolutely want to live inside a place like that.

"Why are you being like this today? Come on, just real quick."

"That thing is creepy as fuck. Please don't go in there."

"Will," she glares at him. "Come get in the creepy shelter with me. This is a weird, memorable experience that wants us to have it."