“Don’t be sad,” she said. “We can be sad later. I’ve been sad all summer. I feel alive again.”
I felt weak and tired. I had nothing to offer, no tricks, and she knew me too well for any pretending. We were closer now, we’d been through some hell, we were into something less mysterious and not so fun. This would’ve been the place where something real would start, but there was nothing, no future, no gimmicks. I was afraid of the intense bond we’d formed on this crazy day, afraid that I’d never be able to shake it off, that I’d fallen too far. These were the panties I’d pulled off earlier, nude with scratchy lace. I knew her body now and worked it like it was my own. I sat up and banged my skull on the beam over the bed and grabbed my head, thinking I’d probably just gotten brain damage.
“Something else I need to tell you,” she said. “You’ll be happy to hear it.”
“Okay.”
“I’m getting my period.” With her shoulders back and boobs out she looked like a bust on a wooden ship. “I know how it freaks you out to think of some little towheaded kid popping out of me. You don’t have to worry.” But when I thought about it, I wasn’t afraid of the possibility, or maybe I liked the idea. “No one will ever know.”
“Okay.”
“My dalliance,” she said, staring into my eyes.
“Your what?”
“We’ll take this to our graves.”
I let go of her and lay back on the pillow and rested. On closer inspection, the skylight above us was plastic, not glass, and had cracking ice patterns and chips around the flanges. It was not what it appeared to be, and neither were we. This was something between us, a lapse, a misdeed. Light drizzle came down from above us, but if you tried to pull the skylight closed, pieces of rusty stuff rained down on your hair.
I drank some warm club soda. We had nothing else to say. I was ready. I’d been like this at seventeen, like a cow that needs milking. It was nothing at all but the relentless durability of our attraction. It turns out that all you need for kundalini multigasmic monkey sex is two people who know each other just well enough to feel safe but don’t share a kitchen. I’d never have her, I’d never lose her. It wasn’t real, it didn’t matter, would never sour, never fail.
It was more intense than the afternoon session, crammed into less space, both of us more desperate, all of our movement so fluid, sliding my palm down to shield her glaring white hip, caressing the dizzying nexus, moving in with the confident momentum of athletic routine. We cursed softly as we banged against that beam, then toughened up and suffered through the thump of bone on wood. I worried that it would ruin the sex, but nothing could. We stuck our tongues and fingers in each other’s ears and mouths and asses, like a single crazed body reconnecting, or like a family of Chihuahuas molesting a turkey leg, and sucked on each other’s lips and privates.
“Angel.”
“Oh my God, I love you.” She fell back, and in the dark I could see her tan lines, her splint, blue and white, her fingers dark, almost purple. Just look at her, laid out on my bed. You can’t have it. The guy who can have it anytime he wants it hates her. She planted her feet on the ceiling and made lovely faces as she lay there, staring up at me, taking me in. “This is how I’ll remember you,” she said sadly, “just let me look,” and as she stared at me I realized she was stupid and had no judgment, because I was horrible and dead inside.
“I’m like a cow,” I said, and tried to explain.
“What?”
“Moo.”
I knew it was sick, knew it was wrong, but had to keep going. Anyway, she wasn’t dying of cancer. She had one broken bone and the best drugs in the world and there was never a question of whether we would. I touched her and she turned and hugged a pillow and I kicked off my undies and sank into her, my eyes rolling into my head, my face wedged into the ceiling, forgetting to breathe, having and losing the feeling of flying, soaring, swooning, falling.
“Holy moly,” she said. “I prayed for this.”
It was the pill I needed to survive, to get me through another year, a scene, a place to park my soul through months of cold and diapers and screaming. The fog of goodness and responsibility needed to be burned off, gotten past, needed endless badness and rebellion.
It didn’t feel so much like an abrupt mounting, more like a frenetic angling with these parts pressed into service, and then a distinctly new angle and new sensations, and in between in a herculean feat I crawled down between her legs and she came, kapow, gesundheit. When we began again it was like the B side of an album. I hovered over her, quietly, in control, no movement to it other than the movement itself. She shivered a little, saying, every now and then, “You’re killing me,” shuddering while I made delicate adjustments, like an artist with his pen, and we fell into a timeless rift of hopeless, helpless, perfect contact. I had no thought in my mind except that I would pay dearly for this or maybe had already paid and earned it. One hand supporting her head, sifting the soft secret hairs of her nape, the other touching her collarbone, measuring the hollow place along it, covering the thin freckled plate of muscle across her sternum, kissing her forehead, kissing her mouth, saying I love you.
In the kitchen I found an old muffin tin and filled it with water to make ice cubes for her, for the morning, and placed it in the freezer. I felt good. It was like driving sixty miles an hour through a car wash and coming out on the other side, shiny and clean. Then I ran the faucet until it got warm and found a washcloth. The windows rattled in the breeze and the Barn creaked, breezes blowing in on all sides, flinging curtains. The rain came harder, slashing the roof.
She lay calm and still while I pressed the warm washcloth to her and cleaned her gently, and for that moment I think we both imagined this as our home. Then she got bored and wondered instead if she could make it to a meeting in the morning, since she couldn’t paint and didn’t want to waste the day.
“What meeting?”
“A brunch. Really interesting thing. Amazing.” She was being asked to fund a project in Afghanistan where farmers were paid to swap poppies for saffron, inspiring foodies while fighting the Taliban with capitalism. It didn’t matter what it was, one small part of her overall push to reform our planet, one small ship in her armada.
“Where?”
“Midtown.” She meant Manhattan. I asked how. “Chopper,” she said, using his word, saying it sarcastically. I smiled to acknowledge her sarcasm, and to allow the absurdity of choppering into Midtown to pass between us. I kept my smile in place, surprised to feel newly devastated and betrayed. The talk of choppering silenced me, forcing me to accept the unrelenting farce of my position. I lifted the washcloth to show her that it was tinged with rust.