As if he could sense that I was awake, he smiled at me, wide and happy, and that quickly his presence seemed perfectly normal. I hadn’t seen him smile like that before, and I thought we were embarking on this adventure in which each day would be marked by the new things we learned about each other.
“You’re back,” I said. It was as if he had chosen me again. My body was warm; my limbs slid across the soft sheets. Did he know of the tradition on the eve of St. Agnes? He said he did not.
“Virgins fast all day. They make sure that they kiss no one. At bedtime they remove their clothing and lie down on their backs with their hands beneath their pillow and say before sleeping: ‘Now good St. Agnes, play thy part, And send to me my own sweetheart, And shew me such a happy bliss, / This night of him to have a kiss.’”
William put a chopstick full of noodles in his mouth. “And?”
“They see a vision of the man they’re going to marry.”
“And you’re a virgin?” he said, looking skeptical.
My face must have gone blank. I hadn’t wanted him to guess that.
“You’re very beautiful when you’re sleeping,” he said.
“But I’m awake now. Does that mean you’ll leave?”
He brought the food over to the bed and sat on the end.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“Not really.” I wanted some kind of explanation for his presence, but he seemed perfectly at ease, as if it were a natural thing. He took a mouthful of food. I watched him chew, and he pointed to the television.
“Do you remember this show?”
I looked at the screen and couldn’t make anything out. “No,” I said, propping myself up to get a better view of the images beneath the static. My grandmother’s afghan slipped down my body.
His face changed, quickly, like clouds moving over the sun and the shadows lengthening on a lawn. “You’re still naked under there,” he said.
He set the food down on the floor. He pulled me onto my knees and put my arms around his shoulders. I tasted the food’s spices on his mouth. His breathing caught, his body’s tension shifted like something coiled and tight, releasing. His hands were cold, but it felt wonderful, his hands and mouth moving, his groans. I didn’t worry about what made him change his mind. I thought: He came into my room while I slept. He fell back into bed with me and fumbled with his belt, with the clasp to his pants. His entry was hurried, knifelike, and though I was prepared for it I may have cried out. He stopped suddenly, surprised. But then I pretended that nothing was different or wrong, even though at that moment I understood it to be. My deflowering, I thought, and then I knew I would never be able to tell Del a thing about the moment, that it was mine, not something I could share.
William and I stayed in bed all that day. Geoff came up the stairs and slipped his key into his lock. I wondered what Del was doing, but only briefly, and with no guilt for having forgotten her. Once or twice I may have heard her footsteps on the stairs, a gentle tapping sound. Maybe she really was listening at the door, but William held me in his hands. I felt my body transform, heighten and strain and sigh. The light moved, watery, across the foot of my bed, across the worn oak floor. It settled in the lap of the duck-carved chair. We let the room grow dim and darken and match the outside. When the streetlight came on, we watched the snow falling in it.
“Does it ever stop snowing here?” I asked. His hand was heavy, pressed to my bare stomach.
“It’s winter,” he said, as if this were an answer.
My stomach rumbled, and he said we needed to feed me, and so he pulled me up and my nakedness was light and airy in the dark. I stood on the foldout bed. He slid off the end and stood in front of me, and I was suddenly shy, unmoving under his gaze.
“Look at you,” he said. “Galatea.”
I was still, like marble.
William put his hands on my hips. This moment would stay with me for a long time after—the press of his thumbs, his cradling of me. He leaned in and kissed my hipbones, my thighs, and I gave in to him. I didn’t need food. I wanted to be ravished. This was, for the most part, what became of us. My desire, and William satisfying it. I should have known better—desire brought suffering.
Maybe our movement in the room getting dressed, putting on our boots, alerted Del—she was at the door with her distinctive knock, a pattern we used when we played clairvoyants as children, rigging a lever to make a banging on the underside of the galvanized tub. Some patterns were warnings from the dead, and others, like this one, were more benevolent. “I miss you” or “I’m thinking of you.” I looked at William. “It’s Del,” I whispered.
“I can hear you in there,” Del said. “I was just heading out for a walk. Want to come?” I opened the door to Del on the landing in her new coat, its large hood pulled over her hat. “Finally,” she said.
William shrugged on his corduroy jacket and took a long time with the buttons. He put his hands into his pockets, as if searching for a pair of gloves, but came up with nothing. Del and I waited in the doorway until he was ready. “Are you going to be cold?” I asked him.