by Devon, Gary;
She waded into the shallow depths, startled by the water’s coldness, kicking at it, splashing. Despair washed over her. Now even Denny was leaving her. She walked slowly along, remembering with a strange delectable pain how much she had once liked him too, and how even that was receding from her.
They went along behind an old beachfront hotel, only a few curtained windows burning with lights. Why was he married?
Sheila wondered if maybe it was a mistake to be doing this. She knew what she was supposed to do and think and feel and say—she remembered Rachel saying, “Don’t get confused and think you’re in love when you’re not.” But I’m in love with him, she thought, I’ve always been in love with him.
The moon sailed high, and the strip of sand, broken here and there by upright boulders, curved before them like a long, white tusk, stretching to dark infinity. Far in the distance, across a gulf of water, a bonfire burned like a tiny collapsing coal and the minuscule sounds of laughter and music wafted to them through the darkness. “It’s like walking on the moon,” Sheila said, tilting her head to look at him.
“Yes,” he said, “and listening back to earth,” while his eyes explored the terrain. He listened to see if anyone was about, but around them the air had condensed to stillness. Only his heavy heartbeat sounded in it.
He felt the sand sliding and sinking under his feet, enveloping him. Offshore, he could make out an abandoned rig of some kind, lightless, rusting—once in a long while metal clanged with an empty sound. It seemed, then, that his life was like that rig, stark and cut off, floating through a gray universe. Waiting. Decades passing.
The scent of the ocean drifted over them. With a repetitious hiss, the water broke in gentle, ever-running waves, leaving behind traces of froth. Above them, the moon shone so brightly that nothing escaped its pale glow and the infinite roof of the night, shot through with innumerable stars, was like a great and splendid jewel—it was as if they had stepped into the dark, blue, sparkling heart of a sapphire.
“I want to tell you something about myself,” Slater said. “There are so many things you don’t understand, Sheila; so much I can’t tell you and you’ll never know. You have no idea what you mean to me.” Once he had started, his feelings came pouring out, but his words seemed trivial, like bubbles that effervesced as soon as they were spoken. Yet he persisted. “The few times I’m able to see you, it always seems unreal to me. Every morning I wake up and I think about you, I remember dreams about you … I never stop thinking about you. Maybe you can’t see it, but for a long time, a very long time, something’s been going on between us. I think you must know … you have to know. If I’m wrong about this, tell me to stop.”
Half-turned, she raised her head, and for a long moment she looked at him but with an expression he couldn’t clearly see in the dark. Then she looked down again at the sand.
“Tell me I’m wrong about this, Sheila.”
“No,” she said. She tried to sound firm, but fear and excitement undermined her. “You’re scaring me a little.”
“I don’t mean to scare you.” Surrounding the beach was a snarly mass of cypress and maritime pines and one towering weeping beech tree. “I’d never let anything hurt you. Sheila, don’t you know me at all? I would never. I’d die first. No one will ever love you the way I do. No one could. You don’t know.”
He had meant to wrap and bind her with all the things a young girl would want to hear; now, he would tell her the truth. It was as if he had known the words all his life, holding them in, waiting for this moment to spend them, but even as he spoke, Slater wondered what she would do. He half-expected her to try to end it swiftly, to demand he take her home at once, but instead there she stood only an arm’s length away, listening.
“What I felt for you years ago just never stopped. I don’t know what you think of me or even if you think of me at all, but don’t hide from me anymore. I don’t even care if you can’t love me, but I want to know.”
Slater opened his jacket and set it around her. His hands began to caress her shoulders through the jacket with light, slow, hypnotic strokes. “I love your beautiful face. In my dreams, I hear you laugh. I love the way you move: I love your body. Just the fact that you exist fills me with—it fills my life. You could have any man you want, you know that and I know it, but you won’t ever find again what I feel for you. I’d give you anything I have and I have nothing you need. You’re the only one I’ve really cared about—for years and years. Sheila, don’t you know what I mean? Haven’t you felt it?”
“Yes,” she whispered, “I know what you mean.”
But he knew she couldn’t know the depths he had gone to and there was no way to tell her. He let go of her shoulders. And he knew he couldn’t do it; he couldn’t end it. “I brought you something,” he said. In her hand, he placed the gold necklace she’d left dangling for him in the night.
“Oh,” she said. “I had decided you didn’t see it.” Sheila opened the tiny clasp and slipped the chain around her neck. But still she wouldn’t look at him.
He said, “Don’t you know I’d do anything for one of your kisses?”
It was then, when all his words ran out, that he saw how sad she seemed, sad and skeptical, both. She raised her head and took a long breath. “You wouldn’t lie to me …,” she said, “would you?”
“No, I never would.”
“Then you mean it … what you said?”
“By my sacred oath.”
“Oh …,” she said, and something that had been knotted up inside her suddenly came undone. Her nervous fingers touched his arm and slipped into his hand, trailing flames along his wrist. She smiled at him, and it was right this time. It made his heart feel impossibly heavy and yet her smile grew until there was nothing in the night but her upturned lips, and he thought, This is wrong but God help me, I can’t stop it. I can’t. I can’t. The stars, the dimness around her faded to nothing; in the world there was only her face and her smile and her tender, trusting eyes.
Her hand went out. His jacket fell from her shoulders and she let it fall. Ever so lightly she put her hands up along the sides of Slater’s face as if trying to recognize who he was through touch and then, she closed her eyes and kissed him. With her lips softly on his, she did not murmur or whisper; she opened her mouth and put her life into one kiss—he could feel it vibrate through him.
Never with anyone had she opened and laid herself so candidly bare. She knew that for her there could be no turning back. She put her pain into her kiss, and the awful grief poured out of her, all the lonely hours of her suffering. And when it was emptied from her, all that remained was herself, alone, and her inviolable sad, sweet trust in him. In those brief seconds, she died in his arms; her past died and now she would start again.
Slater didn’t speak when she drew away; he knew that his hands were empty. Sheila continued to look at him for several seconds as if coming to a decision all her own. With her back turned to him, she suddenly started to walk away. He was at a loss; all confidence abandoned him. She stopped after a few steps, poised in midstride, muscles tense, as if debating what to do next, and without looking around, she lowered the dress straps from her shoulders.
“Sheila,” he said, taking a step toward her, but she took a corresponding step away.
Reaching awkwardly behind her back, Sheila pulled the zipper down and her dress parted like a peel, swooping open to the lowest curvature of her hips. The sight of her came at him with such speed and it struck with such force that Slater felt a moment’s foolish disorientation, as if he had never believed that this could actually happen.
With a shrug, the dress bunched at her waist, catching on her hips. She pushed it down, wiggled it over her hips, and then stepped out of it and into the shadow of a boulder.
Her reemergence from the gloom was like an illusion, as if she were cast of moon rays. She was wearing a white lace merry widow. A trifle of lace ran just above the band of her very brief panties. “You bought this, too,
” she said. “Do you like it?”
“I like everything you do.”
“You’ll never get rid of me now,” she said, in a soft, insatiable voice. “I’ve always loved you.”
“I’ll never want to,” he said. He took her in his arms and kissed her with burning slowness, until every inch of her smoldered. His hands were still moving over her when she tried to undo his shirt; she unbuttoned one button, then gave up. “You’ll have to do it,” she said, “I can’t get my fingers to work.” He could smell the clean scent of her hair, the faint perfume.
“Sheila, this isn’t the place for this. Let me take you somewhere else.”
She laughed edgily and caught her lower lip between her teeth. “Please let it be here. No one’ll come. It’s the middle of the night.” Lifting her hair from the nape of her neck, she twisted, presenting her back to him. Her bare shoulders were blue with moonlight, blue as dawn. “Undo me,” she said. “I can’t reach it.”
He experienced a sensation like dreaming as he felt the skin he had so long and so often imagined. He unfastened the small hooks down the back of her merry widow. Without hesitation, his hand slid over the taut band of her panties and down across her swollen mound.
“Let me take them off.”
“No, Sheila, hold still and let me.”
But quickly she had done it. She was trembling. She was naked. A gust blew and she turned her face toward it, lapping it in. He saw the wind harden her nipples, saw her turn dark lavender with moonlight. She still wore her necklace and earrings, nothing else, her hips firm and very round.
“Is this how you’ve wanted me?”
“Yes,” he said. He reached for her but Sheila twisted playfully away. Her eyes never left him. He said, “I believe you’re the most beautiful girl in the world.” Where the sun had not touched her, her skin was like ivory, a smudge like pale smoke between her legs.
“Then why don’t you kiss me again?”
Joyously, he lifted her up in his arms and she threw her legs around him, letting his hands run all over her. When he let her down, she remained close, standing on tiptoe.
“Can I take your jacket?” She stooped and picked up the jacket where she had dropped it. “I’ll wait for you,” she said. She brushed it off with her hand and hiding nothing from him, walked naked toward the weeping beech tree. Pulling apart the branches, she disappeared among them.
Slater saw himself poised at the brink of a chasm, and all his work, his life as mayor, everything he valued, plummeting into it. I’m risking it all, he thought and dropped his unbuttoned shirt. Pushing off his trousers and shorts, Slater entered the tent of branches. Immediately, she was there; he felt her hair against his cheek, her body pressed to his. “I don’t want it to be fast.”
He started to answer but her mouth rose to him, still murmuring. “Touch me. Please. Hurry up, before I change my mind.”
It was a small space; the two of them nearly filled it. Going to his knees, he kissed the warm hollow at the small of her back, between the dimples from which her buttocks swelled. He was rubbing his hands over them and his hands were like torches. He was quivering, even his voice was quivering. “Lie down,” he said.
She knelt facing him and slid down on his jacket. He moved his body slowly, full of reverence, then his hands moved over her again, feeling her, caressing her belly, his fingers searching between her legs and then going on around her until she was completely surrounded by him. With every breath, she shuddered. He pulled her to him, his mouth hard, his body hard. “Kiss me,” she said, “keep kissing me.”
And he kissed her. In his embraces, she gave him back long kisses, and when she shifted under him, she was wonderfully inexpert, but in full possession of her place. Slater proceeded to kiss her all over, nibbling, biting her gently, scores and scores of kisses, insistent, soft, then fierce, as if she were succulent and he were famished. “Oh,” she sighed, “Oh.” He sucked her nipples and licked her throat, her body rippling now to every swift stroke of his mouth, and then all at once, he folded his arms under her thighs and sank deeply between her legs.
“You’re too big … you’re too big …,” she whimpered, but she was aligning herself, searching for him. Then, “Please, Mr. Slater, don’t …” and then with the last of her breath, Sheila gasped, “Oh, goddamn …”
Suddenly, massively, she felt him entering her.
Everything seemed to stop: he was sliding into her and she felt full of him and it hurt. She could hardly move. For seconds at a time she forgot where she was. Even the ground where they lay seemed to recede. Sheila moaned and clung to him. She leaned forward, pressing her mouth to his shoulder, muffling her cries, feeling him begin to push in and out.
Everything was stopping and going on and on at the same time. Her eyes were shut; she reached down to feel herself with him inside her. And then, for her, it began, and Sheila gave herself up to the long winglike beats of her passion. Her hair was all over her face; panting, she snatched it away.
“A little longer,” she pleaded, “a little longer,” and she could feel herself enter another dimension of movement, one in which her body claimed its own fluidity and pleasure and speed. And the sweet pressure grew, layer upon layer, wave upon wave, to an intense trembling peak that wouldn’t fall. She was like a sleek powerful cat running effortlessly at top speed, muscles gathering and exploding and gathering again. She couldn’t slow down, and not wanting to, not even knowing how to, she began to come as he plunged into her; she could feel herself erupt from every sweet nerve, from her fingertips and toes, as she cried out.
For long minutes afterward, he hardly moved. He wanted nothing more than to stay as he was, completely steeped in her. He sought and found her mouth and his kiss was now lingering and devout. When he began again, he was infinitely slow and tender, his circumference gradually ebbing out of her and just as slowly sinking back in, sensing her with it, tasting and savoring her.
Having her was far beyond anything he had ever experienced before, or dreamed of, or imagined. It was beyond anything that he could have expected or foreseen. Not the act itself, but the enormous purity that surrounded and attended it. For the first time in his life, he felt himself immersed in and bathed by a girl’s young body, a girl whose goodness he believed to be unconditional. He had plunged to the very heart of something excellent and divine. A feeling of gratitude welled up in him, that she had given herself so completely. To him. It was as though, in the blind blackness where they lay, her body had slowly shaped and accepted that part of him that had no shape and that no hand could touch. Everything that had troubled him had been left behind without any thought or memory, like a life shed and disposed of after long sleep. The doors of heaven had been torn away and the cold breath of fear that had haunted his heart vanished—only this girl, who opened herself beneath him, this girl who was invested with a wild, improbable splendor that rang over all his life.
There was no need to utter a word, but he whispered into her ear, “Forgive me.”
And her answer came back to him. “Oh, yes, Henry. It’s all right. I wanted you to.”
Sheila remembered holding him tightly, not wanting to stop or ever let go, afraid it would never be the same again. When it was over, when, flung out beneath his exhausted weight, Sheila opened her eyes, she saw only the moon-streaked leaves above them. A breeze blew, shaking the air into black and silver bits. Everything was new. Even the darkness itself was transformed.
Slippery with sweat, she lay utterly spent, unwilling to move, reverberations still quivering in her belly and legs. Her body ached all over, oh, not ached, stung, so delicately, as if she had been burned—as if she had passed through fire that had scorched every part of her. Even minutes later, after he had slipped to her side, Sheila was still aware of the fluttering between her legs.
For a moment, she sat up in dazed delirium, her hair a soft cascade in her face. The night slowly resolved into focus although particles of moonlight still stirred above her.
“I’ve always known,” he answered.
And that was how it began.
18
The sound accumulated until it rose above the noise of leaves and the lowing wind—a motor that amplified and then abruptly died against the dew-wet bricks.
Almost three in the morning. Faith raised her unsteady fingers to her face and then forced them to stop shaking over her eyes. All right, she thought, he’s here; he’s home. What should I do? She heard the car door close and the muffled clatter of the garage door shutting down. She sat on the bed and listened for him until her ears rang with listening. Somewhere in the house a light came on—a thread of dim illumination outlined the bedroom door.
He’s got to be exhausted, she thought. He’ll come straight to bed. Still, her mind was rampant with questions and doubts. A minute or two later, the light disappeared. What’s he doing?
Faith, don’t let him see that you’ve been waiting. Act as though you’re asleep. Quickly, she stretched out on her side between the smooth sheets, leaving one leg straight and drawing the other up akimbo, her dark head burrowed into the pillowcase. She draped her arm gracelessly back over her head, arranging the arm in such a way that the crook created a ledge over her eyes, hiding them but also allowing her to watch him, undetected. She could hear him distinctly now: Henry was coming toward the bedroom door. He was whistling, low, between his teeth. Why is he so happy? It’s five to three in the morning.
When the doorknob to the bedroom clicked open, her eyes were like an animal’s eyes peering out from a cave. Pretending to be asleep, Faith drew slow, regular breaths, feeling the sheet ride lightly on her nightgown. She tried to force her muscles to relax, but her nerves were as tense as wire. His whistling stopped; the door swung open and his big, blurred shape advanced over the threshold.
He was close. She thought he stood perhaps ten or twelve feet away. The closed curtains let in a thin light, dark and coarse as pumice; through it, Faith saw the pale sheen of his white shirt. Why are you standing there? What’re you doing? she thought.