Claire was remembering.
“So we’d sit at that table and sip that first shot of whiskey. And for a long time, each time seemed like the first time, if you know what I mean. Like we were friends, or on a first date. We’d talk about the chicken on the loading dock, or the sweet old man who came into the market all stooped over and ordered the same sandwich every day, or how Seth saw a falcon flying above one of the city’s skyscrapers, or how sometimes I could wash the smell of onions from my hands, and sometimes I couldn’t. And we’d sit at that table each night, and he’d say, ‘Can I smell your hands?’ and if the scent of onions was there, you could see his face—and he was beautiful in the way boys that age are. He looked feminine. I mean his face did. Narrow. An almost delicate, thin nose, and a shy, sideways smile. Wet eyes. But what I mean is that when he would smell my hands, this sense of relief would pass over his face. As if he were thinking, Okay, now I know you. Because of the onions. Now you’re familiar again. And then he’d pour us another whiskey into each of our shot glasses, which we’d drink faster. Because what we were really doing was trying to get to each other’s body.”
Her skin was flushed warm with the memory, and her scalp was tingling.
“We’d have four or five drinks like that. One after the other, and somehow we’d know when it was the last one, and we’d look each other in the eyes before downing it in a single swallow. And then I’d reach across that metal table for his hand, and we’d pull each other to our feet. I’d feel the whiskey burning in my veins, in my throat and stomach, but, you know … it didn’t hurt or make me sick because I knew what was coming. I knew that meant that we were going to the bedroom. It made me excited. By the time he pulled me down onto that beat-up mattress, I was almost panting.
“At first, it was the way it always is when you’re young. I was so hungry for him. Any part of his body. I wanted my mouth on it, or I wanted it in my mouth. Of course, we were drunk. I remember once I was kissing his legs. His thighs, his thick muscles. And then I started kissing his knee. This will sound silly, but he had beautiful knees. And I guess I was trying to—see it with my lips, too, and my tongue. The way the bone was rounded and how if I opened my mouth at its widest I could almost hold it inside. I mean, it was his knee. And then the slope just below that that led to his shin. I followed that with my tongue. And the dimpled spaces on either side. And the filaments of hair there. After a while, I felt his hand on my head, and he said, ‘You okay?’ I probably had been obsessed with his knee for five minutes. But it would be his ears another time. Or the small of his back. Or his rib cage when he lay back naked with his hands behind his head.”
She heard Genevieve’s steady breathing beside her, but she knew she wasn’t asleep.
“I knew I was troubled. I mean, not because of the sex, or even the drinking. My head wasn’t right, and my mother and father and the doctor said I wasn’t right. They worried that I was depressed, that I was bipolar, that I suffered from schizophrenia. I said stuff like, ‘Look at the schizophrenic world. I’m taking its cues.’ But the thing was, I knew. I knew it. I knew how I always felt the dark half of the world was screaming at my door. And then with Seth’s body—for a while all that mattered was that. I endured the day to get to the table and sit across from him and drink, and then I endured the drinking to get to our bed.”
Genevieve said, “For a while?”
“I’m getting to that. And it went on that way. He was taken with my body as much as I was taken with his. He would linger over my belly. He’d breathe in the scent of it, deep breath after deep breath. He’d lift his fingers to his mouth and get some saliva on the tips, and then he’d rub it into the crease behind my knees. And then he’d kiss those places. And all of this lasted for what seemed like a long time, probably into February. But, you know, even when you’re that young, that level of fascination has to turn into something else. You can’t live in that narrow space, even though I wanted to.
“At that age, I considered myself political. You know, angry at the hypocrisy of the world. There was the war in Afghanistan, and I’d go to protests, but there’d be maybe twenty people at those protests. Mostly older people carrying signs and waving at those who honked their horns in support.”