Chapter 2 - Nudist

He sat up. His back ached. The mattress was thin. He'd slept in his clothes. Wrinkled shirt, wrinkled shorts. He smelled like someone who'd slept in his clothes.

The bathhouse. Communal. Everyone shares.

He put on fresh clothes from his bag. Clean shirt. Clean shorts. He grabbed a towel. He stepped outside.

The morning was gold. The light came through the trees and made everything look like a painting. The air was cool but not cold. He could smell the garden. Earth and green things. He could smell bread baking.

He walked toward the bathhouse. He'd passed it yesterday. A low building behind the main house. Stone and wood. Steam came from a vent in the roof.

He stopped at the door.

The door was open. There was no lock. There was no partition. There was no curtain. There was nothing between the inside and the outside except air.

He could hear water. Someone was inside. He could hear humming. A woman's voice. Low. Content.

He stood there. He held his towel. He looked at the door the way a man looks at a door he doesn't want to open.

Maya came out.

She was naked.

Completely naked. Wet. Her hair was dark and stuck to her shoulders. She had a towel over one arm but wasn't using it. She was drying her hair with her hands. She saw him and smiled. The dimples.

"Morning, city kid."

"Morning."

"You're up early."

"Couldn't sleep."

"Nerves?"

"Something."

She walked past him. Close. He could smell soap. She smelled like soap and something else. Something warm. He kept his eyes on her face. It took effort.

"Bathhouse is free," she said. "Water's hot. Don't use all the soap. We share."

She walked away. He watched her go. Then he stopped watching her go. Then he watched her go again. Then he stopped.

He went inside.

The bathhouse was simple. Stone floor. Wooden benches. A row of shower heads along one wall. No stalls. No dividers. A large tub in the corner, fed by a pipe. Steam rose from it.

He showered. Quickly. Eyes straight ahead. He didn't look at the walls. The walls had shelves. The shelves had bottles. The bottles belonged to people. He could read the labels. Names on tape. Chloe. Maya. Diana. Ruth. Others. He didn't read all the names.

He dried off. He dressed. He walked to the main house for breakfast.

Seven o'clock. The dining hall was full.

Most of them were naked.

Not all. Some wore sarongs. Some wore shorts. One woman wore a tank top and nothing else. She was older, maybe fifty, with gray hair cropped short and arms like someone who'd spent a life working with her hands. She sat at the head of the table and ate oatmeal like it was a mission.

JJ was there. She wore a sarong. She saw him and waved.

"Alex. Sit. Eat."

He sat. He ate. Oatmeal. Fruit. Bread. The bread was still warm. Someone had baked it at dawn.

He tried not to look. He failed. He tried again. He failed again. The problem was that looking was natural. Not looking was work. And the more he tried not to look, the more he looked, and the more he looked, the more obvious it was that he was trying not to look, which was worse than looking.

A woman sat across from him. He hadn't met her yet. She was tall. Broad shoulders. Dark skin. She wore nothing. She ate her breakfast and read a book. She didn't look up.

"That's Diana," Chloe said. She appeared beside him. She was wearing shorts. Just shorts. He was grateful for the shorts.

"She doesn't talk much," Chloe continued. "She's reading Marcus Aurelius. She reads it every morning. She's been reading the same book for three years."

"Is it that long?"

"She says she's not reading it for length. She's reading it for depth."

"That's... something."

"Everything's something." Chloe sat down next to him. She reached across the table for the bread. Her arm brushed his. She didn't move it. He did.

"You're jumpy," she said.

"I'm not jumpy."

"You moved your arm."

"You reached for bread."

"I reached for bread and you flinched like I was reaching for a knife."

"I didn't flinch."

"You flinched."

He ate his oatmeal. It was good oatmeal. Better than the packets his mom made. This oatmeal had texture. It had substance. It tasted like someone had stood over a stove and stirred it.

"How'd you sleep?" Chloe asked.

"Fine."

"Liar."

"I slept okay."

"Liar. You look like a man who spent the night staring at a ceiling."

"The ceiling has knots. They look like eyes."

"Everything looks like eyes when you can't sleep."

She was right. He ate more oatmeal.

Maya came in. She was dressed now. Shorts and a tank top. She looked different clothed. Smaller, somehow. Less present. She saw Alex and sat on his other side.

"How was the bathhouse?" she asked.

"Fine."

"You didn't use all the soap?"

"I used a normal amount."

"What's normal to you?"

"One pump."

"One pump." She looked at Chloe. "He used one pump."

"That's restraint," Chloe said.

"Or ignorance," Maya said. "The lavender is good. You should try the lavender."

"I'll try the lavender."

"Two pumps. Not one. One pump is barbaric."

"Okay."

"Two pumps."

"Two pumps."

They ate. The dining hall settled into a rhythm. Conversations overlapped. Someone laughed. Someone else told them to keep it down. A third person told both of them to lighten up. It was domestic. Ordinary. Like any breakfast anywhere, except most of the people weren't wearing clothes.

Alex was getting used to it. Slowly. The way you get used to cold water. You don't warm up. You just stop noticing the cold.

He still noticed. But he was noticing less. The women were people. They ate and talked and read books and argued about soap. The nudity was just a fact. Like the weather. Like the garden.

But it was a fact his body kept responding to. Not obviously. Not in a way anyone could see. Not yet. But he was eighteen. He was surrounded by naked women. His body had opinions about that. He kept his lap under the table and his eyes on his oatmeal and his mind on Marcus Aurelius.

After breakfast, JJ assigned tasks. Everyone worked in the morning. Garden, kitchen, repairs, cleaning. Alex got the garden.

"You'll work with Maya," JJ said. "She'll show you what to do."

Maya led him to the garden. It was bigger than he'd thought. Rows of vegetables. Tomatoes, squash, beans, peppers. Herbs in boxes. A section for flowers. Sunflowers taller than him.

"We weed," Maya said. "We water. We pick what's ripe. You know how to weed?"

"I know how to weed."

"City weeding or real weeding?"

"There's a difference?"

"City weeding is pulling one dandelion from a lawn. Real weeding is getting on your knees and getting dirty."

She handed him a trowel. She knelt in the dirt. He knelt next to her. They weeded.

The sun was warm. Not hot yet. The morning light was kind. Maya worked in silence for a while. Then she talked. About the garden. What grew where. Which plants needed shade. Which needed water. How the compost worked. She knew all of it. She spoke about it the way someone speaks about something they love. Without performance. Without effort.

"You're staring," she said.

"I'm not staring. I'm listening."

"You're listening and staring."

"I'm looking at the tomatoes."

"The tomatoes are behind me."

"I have a wide field of vision."

She laughed. The dimples. She looked at him. Her eyes were brown. Dark brown. Almost black in the shade of the sunflower row.

"It's okay," she said. "Everyone stares at first. Then they stop."

"When does it stop?"

"When it stops being new. Give it a few days."

"A few days."

"Maybe a week."

"A week."

"Maybe two."

"You're not helping."

"I'm not trying to help. I'm trying to be honest."

She went back to weeding. He went back to weeding. They worked in the sun. He sweated through his shirt.

Chloe appeared at the garden gate. She was carrying a basket. She was naked now. Fully. She'd been in shorts at breakfast. Not now.

"Picking for lunch," she said. She walked past them to the bean rows. She bent and picked. She didn't acknowledge the nudity. Nobody did. That was the thing. Nobody acknowledged it because there was nothing to acknowledge.

Alex pulled a weed. He pulled another. His shirt stuck to his back. The fabric was heavy. Wet. Uncomfortable. He thought about taking it off.

He thought about it the way he thought about jumping off a high dive. The water was fine. Other people were in the water. The height was the problem. Not the water.

Shirtless. It was shirtless. Men went shirtless. It was normal. It was the most normal thing in the world. Men went shirtless in summer. At pools. At beaches. At parks. It was nothing.

But here it was something. Here, taking off his shirt was a step. A step toward something. Toward them. Toward the way they lived. Toward the thing JJ had said on the porch. Living naturally. As nature intended.

He thought about his goal. The one he'd made in the car. The one about the women. He'd told himself it was a joke. Half-joke. He was eighteen. Eighteen-year-olds made jokes like that. They didn't mean them. Except he'd meant it. A little. More than a little.

He pulled another weed. His shirt clung.

Maya was watching him. She wasn't staring. She was watching. The way you watch a pot that's about to boil.

"You're thinking," she said.

"I think a lot."

"What about?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing is never nothing. Nothing is always something you don't want to say."

He looked at her. She was kneeling in the dirt. Her hands were dirty. There was dirt on her cheek. She'd wiped sweat with the back of her hand and left a streak.

He pulled his shirt off.

It wasn't graceful. He didn't make it graceful. He pulled it over his head and dropped it on the ground beside him. The air hit his skin. Cool where the shirt had been warm. The sun hit his shoulders. Hot where the air had been cool.

He didn't look at Maya. He looked at the weeds. He pulled one.

Maya didn't say anything. Not right away. She weeded. He weeded. The silence lasted ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty.

"Huh," she said.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing is never nothing."

"You're learning."

"What did you huh about?"

"You're built."

"I'm not built."

"You have shoulders. You have a chest. You have a stomach that's flat without you trying."

"I try."

"Not hard enough to look like you try. That's better."

He went back to weeding. His ears were hot. Not from the sun.

Chloe looked up from the bean rows. She was fifty feet away. She squinted. She stood up straight. She looked at Alex. She looked at Maya. She looked at Alex again.

"Maya," she called. "Can you come help me with these beans?"

"I'm weeding."

"I need help. The beans are heavy."

"The beans are not heavy."

"The basket is heavy."

Maya looked at Alex. She stood. She brushed dirt from her knees. She walked to Chloe.

Alex kept weeding. He couldn't hear them. They were too far. But he could see them. Chloe was talking. Maya was listening. Then Maya was talking. Then both were talking. Then both were looking at him.

He pulled a weed. He pulled another. He didn't look up.

They were still looking.

He could feel it. The weight of their attention. Like standing in a spotlight you didn't ask for. His shoulders were warm. Not from the sun.

Maya came back. She sat down. She didn't say anything about the beans. She didn't say anything about Chloe. She weeded.

"So," she said after a minute.

"So."

"Chloe thinks you should work without a shirt more often."

"Does she."

"She does."

"What do you think?"

"I think the weeding goes faster when you're not thinking about your shirt."

"I wasn't thinking about my shirt."

"You were thinking about taking it off for twenty minutes before you took it off."

"How did you know that?"

"You kept pulling the same weed."

He looked at the weed in his hand. It was the same weed. He'd pulled it four times. It kept coming back because he kept pulling it wrong.

"I'm not good at gardening," he said.

"You're good at other things," Maya said.

"Like what?"

She didn't answer. She weeded. The dimples appeared. She didn't smile. The dimples appeared anyway.

They worked until noon. The sun was high. The heat was real now. Sweat ran down Alex's chest. His back was brown from the morning. He'd burn later. He didn't care.

At lunch, he kept his shirt off. He sat at the table shirtless and ate soup and bread and tried not to think about the fact that he was the only man in a commune full of women and he was sitting there shirtless like he belonged.

Diana looked up from her book. She looked at him. She looked down. She turned a page.

Chloe sat across from him. She was still naked. She ate her soup. She looked at him over the rim of her bowl.

"Shoulders," she said.

"What about them?"

"They're nice."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

She went back to her soup.

A woman named Ruth sat next to him. He'd met her that morning. She was in her thirties. Red hair. Freckles everywhere. She wore a sarong tied at her waist.

"You're fitting in," she said.

"I'm eating soup."

"That's how it starts. Soup. Then shirtless. Then who knows."

"I know. I'll keep my pants on."

"For now," she said. She smiled. She ate her soup.

For now. He didn't like for now. For now implied later. Later implied change. Change implied a version of himself standing in this dining hall without pants, eating soup, like that was a thing people did.

He ate his soup.

After lunch, JJ found him. She was on the porch. She had her tea.

"Shirtless," she said.

"It was hot."

"It was."

"I was sweating."

"You were."

"It seemed practical."

"It was practical."

She sipped her tea. She looked out at the garden. Maya was out there. She was watering. She was still in her shorts and tank top. She was humming.

"Maya likes you," JJ said.

"She barely knows me."

"She knows enough. She's observant. She notices things."

"What things?"

"Things people bring with them. Baggage. Talent. Whatever you carry."

"I don't carry much."

"You carry more than you think. Everyone does."

She finished her tea. She went inside.

Alex stood on the porch. Shirtless. The breeze on his skin. The wind chimes. The sun. He felt different than yesterday. Not different in a big way. Different in a small way. Like a door had opened a crack. Not all the way. Just enough to let light through.

He thought about the summer. Two months. Thirteen women. His goal. The one that was half-joke and half-not. The one that seemed impossible yesterday. The one that seemed slightly less impossible today.

He looked at the garden. Maya was watering. She looked up. She saw him. She waved.

He waved back.

Chloe appeared from behind the barn. She was carrying a basket of eggs. She saw him on the porch. She stopped. She looked at him. She looked at Maya. She looked at him again.

She grinned.

He knew that grin. It was the grin of someone who knew something. Or thought they knew something. Or wanted to know something and was working on it.

She walked past him into the house. She paused at the door.

"City kid," she said.

"Yeah."

"You should know something."

"What?"

"News travels fast here."

"What news?"

"Any news."

She went inside. The screen door slapped shut behind her.

Alex stood on the porch. He thought about news. He thought about what news there could be. He'd taken off his shirt. That wasn't news. That was weather. That was practicality. That was a man being hot and taking off his shirt.

But he thought about Maya's huh. He thought about Chloe saying shoulders. He thought about Ruth saying for now. He thought about the way they'd looked at him. All of them. Not like he was strange. Like he was interesting. Like he was a new piece of furniture in a room that hadn't changed in years.

He went to his cabin. He lay on the bed. The knots in the ceiling. The eyes.

News travels fast here.

He closed his eyes. He thought about Maya's dimples. Chloe's grin. The way the breeze felt on his bare chest. The way the sun felt on his shoulders. The way it felt to take off a shirt and have someone notice.

He smiled. He hadn't smiled since he arrived. Not really. Not like this.

This was going to be a different kind of summer.

He still thought that. But today, for the first time, different didn't sound like a warning. It sounded like a promise.