“Psst—hey,” the voice whispered.
God help me, a cordial killer, she thought, willing the light to change so she could cross. And then she thought she could just toss her bag over the wall. Right, Cassy, then he can afford to take a cab over later to return your wallet and kill you at home.
But then, at the same moment that she saw a man waiting to cross the Drive with what she hoped could somehow be a savagely fierce beagle, she realized that she recognized the “Psst—hey” voice, that it had sounded like…
She whirled around to look at the rock wall. The streetlight was filtering down through the arborway of trees over the promenade, casting an intricate pattern of shadows over it. She took a step closer. “Jackson?” she whispered.
A glint of eyes appeared just over the top of the wall. “What are you doing walking out here at this time of night?” he hissed. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Oh, God,” she sighed, letting her shoulders slump. “It is you. I thought you were a mugger.”
“Excuse me?” the man with the beagle said, walking past her to the brick promenade that ran along the wall.
“Oh, hi,” Cassy said, smiling. “I was just talking to my friend over there.” She pointed to the wall. Of course, Jackson was no longer there. “Jackson,” she said sharply.
Silence.
The beagle was taking a whiz against the tree; the man was looking at Cassy.
“Psst—hey,” the voice whispered.
“A friend of mine is playing games behind the wall”
The man looked at the wall and then back at Cassy. “He could be dead by now,” he said. “Something coulda gotten him by now.”
“Jackson,” Cassy said, walking over to the wall. She started to lean over it but decided against it.
“What?” came a whisper.
“Would you come out of there?”
“What’s he doing behind there?” the man with the beagle said, coming over. “Is he all right?”
“I’m fine,” Jackson said, finally standing up, the white of his dinner jacket and shirt luminous in the night. “I was just following this lady here. You know what she did? She got out of a limousine, caught a cab, took it two blocks, got out and walked over here to get attacked and killed. What’s the matter with you, anyway?” he asked her.
“So you’re okay now?” the man asked Cassy. “I can go ahead and walk Mickey-Luck?”
She nodded.
The man and his dog went on their way.
“Bye, Mickey-Luck,” Jackson called softly.
Cassy watched the man and his dog stroll down the arborway, acutely aware of how hard her heart was pounding. The second she realized it was Jackson, something inside her head had clicked over into a dream world, where none of this was quite registering as real. And there was this peculiar feeling coming up over her shoulders, into her neck, this strange sensation that something was about to happen and that it was going to be very important. And then that feeling passed and she felt scared; she could feel it, the fear, a chill, right there, in her diaphragm, making her breath difficult. But mixing in with that fear was—coming fast—the adrenalin of thrill, creating something new, keenly alive, urgent, swelling her chest, making her chest feel tight. She turned back to him. “You were following me?” she managed to say.
“Yes, I was following you,” he said, putting his hands on top of the wall and swinging himself on top of it. “I didn’t want them to see me.” He jumped down to the other side, dusting off his hands, and walked over to her. “And I wasn’t sure if I wanted you to see me either.” And then he took her in his arms and kissed her very hard on the mouth.
Is this happening? she thought, letting him hold her, letting him kiss her, not being able to respond yet.
He kissed the side of her mouth. He kissed the other side of her mouth. Then he” hugged her to him, enveloping her in his arms. “I don’t know what the right thing to do is,” he whispered. “But as soon as you left, I knew that wasn’t right. I knew I—” She felt him kiss the top of her head.
His arms felt wonderful. He felt wonderful. But her mind was racing back over what was wrong with this. Why she couldn’t do this. “I’m not sure I can do this,” she whispered.
His body tensed for a moment, and then he released her. “Oh,” he said, backing away a step, sliding his hands down her arms to take her hands. He looked at her—frowning—and then he dropped one of her hands and pulled her to walk with him under the trees of the promenade. “I keep forgetting that you don’t know,” he said, more to himself, it seemed, than to her.
Cassy felt elated suddenly, strangely, wonderfully elated, walking along with him like this, holding his hand, feeling the breezes of summer, walking through the moving nighttime shadows.
“That I don’t know what?” she asked him, thinking how nice his hand was, how large and warm it was.
“That I think I might be in love with you,” he said, looking straight, walking on.
There were no cars on the Drive at this moment, and the sound of their soles over the brick inlay seemed very loud.
“I’m pretty messed up, you know,” he continued after a while, still walking, still looking ahead, still holding her hand. “I’m not the sort of guy who’s done real well with love. I don’t seem to know how to do it very well. Love people, I mean. Something always seems to happen to them. And so I don’t think I’ve liked it for a long time. Love, I mean. I mean I do love people—there are a lot of people I love, but I guess what I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t seem to do very much good for any of us. What I mean to say is, Cassy,” Jackson said, abruptly stopping and turning to her, taking her other hand, “is that there aren’t any recommendations for somebody like me. I’ve tried and it didn’t work out. And I’ve had an awful lot of women in the last years. So, for someone like you, I don’t think you’d want someone like me, but I guess I wanted to find out if maybe there wasn’t something about you that maybe could make it not be such a disaster.”
Cassy didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything.
“What I’m trying to tell you is that you scare me,” he said, frowning. He paused, swallowing. “But I’m more scared of not saying anything, of not doing anything, now, while you’re—before someone else—I mean, I know this isn’t a good time with your divorce and all, but then someone like you—some other guy will—” He looked away, searching for whatever it was he was trying to say, and then he looked back at her, anxious.
She smiled.
He smiled, nervous, put his arms around her and kissed her again.
This time Cassy slid her arms up his back to hold him too.
But then he backed away slightly, parting them, and he held her hands again, just standing there, staring down into her eyes, the wind rustling through the trees above them. Another dog owner went by; Cassy could hear the jingle of tags, though she couldn’t see anything but the pain in Jackson’s eyes, and all she could feel was the gentle warmth of his hands and how hard her heart was pounding because in this moment, in this very second, she did not think she had ever felt such an exquisite kind of pain as this.
She reached up to kiss him again, and he must have wanted proof that she really wanted to kiss him because he didn’t lean down this time, but just looked at her, his mouth parted slightly, his eyebrows flinching. “Come here,” she said, pulling on his neck. “Come down here so I can kiss you,” and he did, and she, holding his face in her hands, kissed him as warmly, as tenderly as she knew how.
When she stopped, they parted, and stood there, smiling at each other.
He closed his eyes then, inhaling deeply and holding the breath, and Cassy stepped in close to him, sliding her arms around his waist, laying the side of her face against his chest. He gently rubbed her back, sighing. “I don’t know what to say now,” he said.
“Please don’t say anything,” she murmured. “Please, let’s not talk at all. Not now.” She pressed her forehead against his chest and held it t
here, wondering how it could be that she had done something to deserve this. This that she thought she had long lost. This that she had told herself would never, could never happen to her again. That in one moment she could step out of the world and into this wondrous basking of healing, where nothing existed save the divine sensation of slipping away. Just gone from the world, born into another, into a place where it felt splendid to be alive, so impossibly, exquisitely alive in ways that could only register in the ache of her heart and the longing of her body, and not get analyzed to death in her mind.
Somehow they were standing at the wall, when or how they got there she was not aware, but they were standing by the wall now, looking over it. At this place, overlooking the glen, the wall dropped fifty feet down and so they were looking down through the trees into the park, seeing how the lamps glowed along the paths below, how richly green were the trees and grass. The forest smell was delicious.
He turned to her and she to him and in that second Cassy felt something fall down through her that made her almost ill with longing. He was kissing her again, holding her, but that was not enough now, and she opened her mouth further, in a kind of plea he seemed to hear, because he pulled her in so tightly that she could feel him—God, yes, this was wonderful—against her.
Another dog was being walked past them and they smiled a bit in the midst all of this deep exploration of mouths, but they did not give in to self-consciousness and continued, and when the sound of whoever faded away, Jackson’s hands slid under her, lifting her up and closer into him, making a slightly groaning sound as he did so, finalizing Cassy’s body’s decision about what it wanted to do more than anything else in the world right now. But then she heard that awful mind of hers starting to argue—What do you think you’re doing? You can‘t do this! What about your work?—and she wanted anything but that awful mind of hers to start up and so she tried to shut it down, only for it to conjure up Michael. Michael!
Cassy pulled away from his mouth—out of his mouth—inhaling sharply through a smile—oh, God, how good he felt against her—and pushed his shoulders back so she could look at him and make sure he was not Michael, not her husband, not the man she had been sleeping with for twenty-two years, but Jackson. And, thank God, it was Jackson, and it was Jackson who was now down into her neck, and she was thrilled it was Jackson, still not believing it was him, but knowing it had to be because it felt so different, was so different, and they were acting like fools—oh, yes; yes, yes; this was good—like teenagers, grappling with each other in the middle of Riverside Drive with people walking their dogs around them and cars going by and muggers probably ready to drop down out of the trees on them and, oh, God, Jackson practically had her off the ground, he was pulling her up so hard against him—
“We have to go somewhere,” she gasped, breaking away from him, pulling him over to the edge of the Drive. “We’ve got to go,” she repeated, waving her handbag at the cars. She looked back at him and saw that his face had fallen. “What? What?” she said, going back to him, holding his face. “We’re going to go together. I want to go somewhere with you.” She kissed one side of his mouth and then the other.
A vacant cab finally came down the Drive; they flagged it down and fell into the back seat.
“Where to?” the driver asked.
“Where?” Jackson asked her, kissing her ear.
“Where are you?” she asked him, pulling his head around so she could kiss him on the mouth.
“Here I am,” he said, kissing her back.
“Gonna have to be a little more specific than that,” the driver said in the front seat, flooring it to his unknown destination.
Jackson felt around in the pocket of his jacket. He withdrew from her mouth, holding up a key and looking at it. He looked at her. “Plaza? We’re in New York, right?”
“I think so,” she said, smiling.
“The Plaza,” Jackson said, staring into her eyes.
Somewhere around the sixties he kissed her and pushed her down across the seat, both of them laughing because there was no room, no room at all for this kind of thing, and because they were crazy to carry on like this, in a cab, for heaven’s sake, but oh—oh, who the hell cared so long as she could go on feeling his hands, Jackson’s hands, running over her dress, over her breasts, her hips, down over her legs, up under her dress—
But damn the Central Park South lights anyway!—forcing them back into an upright position, or something that resembled one (or resembled the inside of a clothes dryer stopped in motion), and Cassy laughed at his hair and couldn’t imagine what hers—oh, no, she could feel what had happened to her hair. It was down, it was all over the place, and she tried to pull herself together, trying to convince herself that she cared that she would be seen crossing the lobby of the Plaza, looking like this, feeling like this, when clearly there was only one reason she would be there at this hour with Jackson, and then suddenly there they were, at the side entrance to the hotel, and Jackson was hurling money at the driver and then they were out and the doorman smiled at her and they were going around the bronze door and they were crossing the lobby and then they were in the elevator and the doors closed and they were alone and Jackson was on top of her.
Oh, this was great, Jackson didn’t even know where he was going—what floor? This floor? The next floor? But this way? What does the key say?—and as Jackson led her around, Cassy noticed how wonderfully thick the carpeting was and wondered if this was left from the old Plaza management or if this was part of the new, and then they were at a door with an ornate brass handle and Jackson fitted the key in the lock but before he turned it he turned to her. “I’ve never had anything,” he said. “And I got tested last fall. I haven’t been with anyone sense.
Her mouth fell open and her mind came back on. “I—” She was overwhelmed by this. Was this what everyone had been talking about? Safe sex?
“I didn’t mean to shock you,” he said, looking at her.
“Oh, no,” she said, kissing him. “No, it’s just that I’m a little new at this.” She smiled, nervous suddenly. “Um,” she added, realizing that he was waiting, “let’s go inside,” she said, pointing to the door. He opened it and they slipped inside. She stopped him from turning on the light and slid her arms around his waist. The two of them stood there, holding each other, in the dark.
But it was not really dark. The drapes were pulled back from the windows and by the lights of Central Park and the lights of Fifth Avenue stretching north and the lights casting up from Central Park South, Cassy could make out the living room they were in quite well.
“My tubes are tied,” she whispered. “I want you to know that.” She swallowed, looking up at him.
He kissed her. And then he took her hand and brought it down to touch him. It was like a bolt through her, the rush of desire that came, and for a moment she could scarcely touch him for the reaction inside her. “Here,” she said, breaking away from his mouth.
“What?” he whispered, sounding hoarse.
“Here,” she said. “Right here.”
He smiled. “You can bounce to the ceiling on the beds in—” His voice broke off and his eyes closed against the touch of her hand.
“Here,” she whispered, wanting only to act and not to think anymore.
“Oh, here,” he managed to get out, pressing against her hand. Then he jerked back from her, whipping off his jacket with such ferocity that she had to laugh. “Funny, huh?” he said, throwing the jacket and fumbling at his tie. He pulled the bow apart and yanked it out of his collar, tossing that too. “You think this is funny,” he said as she laughed, eyes on her, tearing now at his cuff links and throwing them and then saying, “Oh, hell,” taking hold of his shirt and simply tearing it apart, buttons flying. Then he lunged at her, taking hold of her dress
“Not my Chanel!” she cried, laughing, and he laughed too, but then they were quiet, their breath picking up as he unzipped her dress and helped her out ‘of it. She tossed it over a chair
and turned to him in her slip and, as he kissed her, she undid his belt, unhooked his pants, unzipped them and eased them down over his hips. And then, gently, she brought her hands back up to ease his shorts down over his hips as well. And then, with her lower body in a lock of anticipation, she allowed herself the pleasure of sliding her hands down to feel him.
Oh, glory.
She groaned a little, he felt so wonderful.
Glory.
Oh.
This was for her, all for her; and she was gentle with her hands, reverent, and was grateful. Because he was—Thank you, God, thank you—so very different from Michael, and now he really was completely and only Jackson, his personality complete, right down to this physical vulnerability, to this wonderfully expressive part of him that was longing for her. For her. All of this was for her. And she couldn’t stop touching him because he was so different and she wanted to know him, immediately, she wanted to know every detail of him imagine, Jackson, this was Jackson in her hands, so plentiful, and so hard here, and so sleek there, and so soft here—and there, how soft he was under there—and she wanted all of him, wanted to touch all of him, make him feel how in awe she was, make him feel how splendid he felt to her and how much she wanted him, so much so that she was willing to simply go on like this and maybe give herself over entirely to the effort of giving him pleasure—
Holding her shoulders, his breath had turned ragged. And now, holding his breath, he pulled down the straps of her slip and then pulled the whole thing down over her breasts. “Oh, yeah,” he sighed, taking her breasts in his hands, “oh, yeah. Oh, Cassy, you are… You are so beautiful,” he finished, feeling her. And then his body seized up for a moment—his hands going rigid on her breasts—and she stopped her hands and simply held him. “Oh, yes,” he said, voice scarcely audible, his body relaxing just a bit and hands moving over her breasts again. With each breath he made a small sound of exertion in his throat, and his hands grew stronger, massaging her breasts, pulling the rhythm of her breath to his, to that of his hands, of his sounds and sighs, and then, a moment later, to the rhythm of his gyrations in her hands.
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