MINA WAS RIGHT—it wasn't perfect. The bus wound up the road and pulled in at a reverential distance alongside it. We all stayed in our seats peering through the heaving sheets of rain, straining to make sense of the grassy mound that rose out of the surrounding hills like a lopsided mole.

I was reading the brochure out loud to Mina. When I got to the part that said the mound was really a tomb, the last best example of Stone Age Celtic architecture erected well before the pyramids of Egypt, Mina said, "It's not perfect."

And that right there is one thing I love about Mina. She is so goddamned cynical about everything it will take your breath away. I've never told her this, but that bleak world view of hers gets me going. Maybe love is too strong a word, but when she goes all glum and pessimistic, I want to do things to her. Things she doesn't even know about. Things she doesn't even know I know about. But I do.

When I asked her at the end of fifth period chemistry if we could go out sometime, Mina said only if we could take things slow. Her mom had just remarried and she had some stress about that. I obliged of course, because that's the kind of guy I am. And I've been obliging for these last three months. But that doesn't mean I don't have dreams about what the future might hold. Man, have I had some dreams about Mina.

Mina's mom, with red wavy hair like her daughter but a bigger ass, was sitting across the aisle from us holding hands with Johnnie Bananas. Johnnie was her new husband, whom she'd married two years after divorcing Mina's father, whom she'd been with for a quarter of a century. Johnnie was ten years her junior. He'd been on the waiting list for 11 years for a chance to see the winter sunrise at the mound. He called it The Illumination.

"I dig those pants," I said to Johnnie, all of us waiting there in the bus.

He shifted in his seat so his massive thighs strained the seams of his red-and-blue striped bell-bottoms. He was a part-time bodybuilder, but also an importer of roses from South America, and a self-schooled expert on the warring tribes of prehistoric Ireland. Mina's mom had made the pants herself.

"Yeah," said Johnnie, "only danger is this damn thing." He lifted up his jacket to show me where Mina's mom had sewn the fly too low so the zipper snaked deep into his crotch. "My boys live in fear every time I put 'em on."

Finally there was movement at the head of the bus and we filed off into a soggy morning. The mound looked even bigger when we got up close—dark and hulking and covered in a fuzz of brilliant green, perfectly shorn grass. A wall of white stones cinched its base. Turned out it was built in 3200 BC as a burial place for kings, or a granary; no one was exactly sure which. It had a name too—Newgrange.

We stood at the entrance for a while examining the swirling designs carved into the gateway stone. Mina yawned and put her head on my shoulder. The guide said these particular swirls were the ancient symbol for infinity. Right after he said infinity, I noticed Johnnie's hand slip between Mina's mom's legs from behind, silent as a blade through butter. She didn't make a sound or even turn around, only shifted her stance to give him room. His hand settled between her legs in a cupped position and began a slow massage. I looked over at Mina, but she had her eyes closed. We were all packed in so tight I decided no one but me could see what Johnnie was doing. His face was right next to mine and I thought I heard his breath quicken. Without looking away from the gateway stone, he said, "Some shit, huh?"

Inside the mound, we followed a low tunnel back to a tiny central sanctuary. This is what we had all been waiting for. At precisely 8:20 AM Greenwich mean time, sunlight would stream through a small slot above the doorway and move down the tunnel to illuminate the central chamber for 17 whole minutes.

It was hard to wrap your mind around. Mina standing next to me, her nose pink from the cold. Johnnie Bananas lifting weights and screwing Mina's mom, all the while counting down—eleven years, ten, nine—to his chance to see the light. And the people who came up with the idea to light their tomb this way in the first place. I imagined them all hairy and hunched—barely evolved, really—seated around a fire in a cave somewhere hashing out the equations of their miracle.

When the time finally came, I put my arm around Mina's waist and pulled her close. I thought about licking her nipples. The light was barely visible at first, but it got brighter as it crept slowly down the tunnel until it reached the center and we all felt its warmth on our faces. I tried to focus on the purity and significance of the situation. I looked at Johnnie. The stripes on his pants were muted in shadow and he and Mina's mom were holding hands.

I think no one knew what to say when we came out. The rain had slowed and the world around us was bright again and that took some getting used to. Mina and her mom wandered off to run their hands over the infinity swirls. Johnnie and I took a seat on a nearby bench.

"So you gonna tap that or what?" Johnnie said, unzipping his jacket to reveal a striped denim vest with brass snaps that matched his pants.

"Jesus," I said. "She's your stepdaughter."

Johnnie stretched his legs out in front of him and shrugged his shoulders.

"I'm just waiting for the right time," I said, "the right place."

Mina and her mom came back and Johnnie slapped his knees and stood up. "We're gonna go look at postcards," he said too loudly to me and Mina.

Mina's mom gave him a puzzled look. "But you never—"

Johnnie clapped his hand hard on her ass, she jumped, and they tittered away.

Mina and I cut off around the back of the mound. It was so wide that we couldn't see beyond either side to the buses or the parking lot, and looking out over the empty countryside gave me the distinct and welcome impression that we were alone. The wall around the mound was crumbling piece by piece. I thought about what Johnnie said, and I remembered waiting for the watery sunlight to make its way down the tunnel, how impossibly slow it moved, and the slight smile that spread across Mina's face when it finally found us. Mina had her back to me and I walked up behind her and grabbed her shoulders. I flipped her around to face me and slid my hand inside her coat. It was raining again. We fell down on the grass and my hand was up her skirt in a matter of seconds. I snapped the elastic on her panties one, two, three, four times—just how I'd dreamed it—before my fingers found their way inside. Mina moaned and opened her mouth so raindrops disappeared between her lips and I saw how her teeth from below looked like a sweet little row of white stones.


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