Genevieve was lying still with her head turned away. She could hear her breath moving in and out of her nostrils.
“I admit, I thought part of it was exciting. I don’t remember if I came myself; we’d been drinking so much, and I don’t know if I was excited because of what he was telling me or excited because it excited him. But it was only a minute later that we were back on the mattress with my head on his bare chest, and he was stroking my backbone with his fingers as gently as if he were sorting pearls. And a few minutes later he was asleep, and I could feel my head rising and falling with his deep breathing, and in a half dream I was seeing him as a boy kneeling at the edge of the water along a lake with a pebbled beach, and turning over small stones and holding them up to the sun, and I was wondering what it was inside of him that would want to be bleeding and half-unconscious while his love was raped in front of him.”
For a full minute neither of them spoke. Finally, Genevieve said, “I wish I knew how to answer that, Claire.”
“He was only twenty. A boy. In my memory, I can see him as a boy. And when we woke the next morning, our heads hurt. We’d drunk more than we ever had. And it was late February, but it was one of those winter-into-spring days, where somehow the temperature had risen overnight, and when I walked from the bedroom to the front window, I could see the mounds of snow melting into rivers that ran down the street, and there were people outside in the sun walking without their coats on. Seth came up from behind me and was holding me while we looked out the window. A boy was out on the sidewalk kicking a soccer ball. I remember it surprised me because I didn’t think there were any families living in the neighborhood. He kept kicking it toward the front porch steps of his house, and it would careen off in different directions, and he tried to keep saving it from going into the street. I watched him for a while and then turned my head to look back at Seth. ‘What?’ he asked, but I didn’t say anything. Then I told him I wanted to take a walk.
“So we got dressed then, and went out into the day. And Genevieve, it was one of those magical mornings. The kind you always remember even years later, maybe even when you’re very old. The air had that fragrance, you know? That smell of moisture and warmth that I’d lived long enough to know was how things turned green. The patches of grass in the row houses down our street weren’t winter dead anymore, and we could see bulbs pushing out of the ground where a few of the older people who still lived in the neighborhood had planted them. A man was walking a puppy, and I remember watching how it sniffed at every melting and fragrant thing, all those smells released by the cold, and yeah, there was some garbage, and yeah, dog shit in people’s yards, but it didn’t matter. I liked how everything seemed released, and we saw a couple walking up the street, on the other side, opposite to us, holding hands, and it was like we recognized each other, recognized ourselves as mirrors of each other, and the girl even smiled at me and gave a little wave.
“Near the main drag through that part of town, so many people were out. Some of them in overcoats, even though it was sixty degrees, but out of habit, you know, because it had been so cold. But also boys in shorts and basketball jerseys. And all the sounds were amplified. People’s conversations, the roar of buses, the flap of pigeons near the library steps. And Seth and I, we hadn’t intended to go to the bakery. It was too expensive for us, and we saved our money for drinking, though I don’t think we ever said that out loud to each other, but the smell of bread that was hovering near the door—the proprietor had propped it open; it was one of the last original bakeries in the city, and he knew how to draw people in. He was old, and he ran the shop with his wife, and I think it was only a month or so later that they closed.