The Map That Leads to You

by J. P. Monninger

  “Amazing.”

  “You looked beautiful driving that fast. You looked possessed.”

  “I felt possessed.”

  “I didn’t like being apart from you, Heather. It didn’t feel right.”

  I took a deep breath. I wanted to be clear. My body still tingled from the speed.

  “New York is not a prison I am building for myself. It’s the start of my professional life. I am going to work, and I am going to travel, and I am going to surround myself with good human beings, and I am going to try to do charity work and be kind to puppies, and what the hell is so wrong with that, Jack? Why does that constitute a prison?”

  “It doesn’t. And if I went with you, it couldn’t be prison, could it? We’d be in it together.”

  “You want to go with me?”

  “You’re not going to say we’ve only just met? That we need time?”

  “You didn’t answer if you want to go with me.”

  “Would you have me?”

  “You still haven’t answered.”

  “I would go with you. Yes. Maybe, probably. Yes.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t help it. I had no idea if we had come to some sort of an understanding. I opened my mouth to ask for clarification, but then I shut it. For once in my life I didn’t have to make everything tidy. It did not seem fair to go a hundred miles per hour and then worry about precision in language. Not in the same interval.

  He took my hand and held it. He only let it go when I needed to shift.

  * * *

  I checked in with nothing. No bag, no suitcase, no clothes carrier. Nothing. I wore my hair in a ponytail, and I smelled of sweat. At a hostel, it would not have been much of an issue. But this was not a hostel. Not by a long shot.

  It was the Hotel Adlon Kempinski, a five-star hotel on Unter den Linden with a killer view of the Brandenburg Gate. A killer view. It was a place my parents might have stayed. It was big and stylish with royal-purple lobby chairs and potted plants as tall as Christmas trees. An enormous check-in desk took up one side of the hotel lobby, and a flurry of bellboys and luggage handlers zipped around wearing determined looks. The stone floor let out an occasional squeak, but otherwise the hotel had a decorous silence—a good silence, not an uncomfortable one, that promised the staff had not been distracted by the usual electronic nonsense that infiltrated most modern establishments. The hotel felt elegant without being old, serene without being library-like.

  “A room for two,” Jack said. “I phoned for a reservation.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I liked this side of Jack. I liked his manner with the desk clerk; I liked that he felt comfortable in this environment. I suspected he could be comfortable on a Vermont farm, too, or in a lovely hotel, and I had to give him points for that. I also liked that he took for granted that we would stay together, that we would ride up in an elevator and take up residence in one of the rooms. It wasn’t a particularly feminist stance, but I admired that he took some responsibility for our comfort. I had years of dating in high school and college when boys looked nervously around themselves and tried to figure out what was required of them. Jack provided a different experience. Clearly he had traveled enough to navigate exchanges like these.

  “Before we go up, I think we should buy you a dress,” he said when he finished with the desk clerk. “We can go up to our room in a while.”

  “A dress?”

  “For dinner. We need to eat dinner, don’t we? By reputation, they have a pretty great dining room.”

  “Jack, the expense—”

  He leaned over and kissed me. He had it covered, I guessed. I knew I sure didn’t.

  “Are you sure?”

  “It’s a splurge.”

  He took my hand and led me back through the lobby toward a small row of boutiques just outside the hotel. I felt a little upside down. I had planned for a brief workout, then maybe a salad for lunch, but within the course of a few hours, I had taken a car over one hundred miles per hour, eaten a bunch of Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream, and checked into the nicest hotel I had ever visited. Strangely, I also felt my stomach calm, as if being with Jack was something it knew I needed even if my mind did not. We had just the beginning, just the start, of the familiarity a man and woman can gain when they are left to their own devices. Nevertheless, it felt as if we had crossed an important line.

  And we had gone over 100 mph together.

  We ducked in a boutique that looked like a German version of the Gap. It looked like a nice boutique. I had trouble gauging anything for the time being. As soon as we entered, a German salesclerk asked if she could help me find anything. She spoke beautiful English. I didn’t answer right away. Jack stepped up for me.

  “We need something for her to wear to dinner. And maybe some basic things for day wear.”

  “Yes, of course. This way.”

  I looked at Jack. He looked at me and smiled. Who is this man? I thought. Then we followed the clerk, whose name, we learned a few minutes later, was Gilda. She had shiny black hair worn close to her head. I liked her boots.

  We spent an hour shopping. I attempted to recall, as I tried things on and wore them out of the dressing rooms for Jack—spin, yes, nice, okay, does it ride up, is it the right length—if I had ever shopped with a man. The answer, I was fairly certain, was a definitive no. No way. But I liked shopping with Jack. I liked slipping into something, hearing his voice speaking to Gilda, then being astonished that he had a good eye when I came out and examined the dress in the three-way mirror. Moreover, he liked clothes, or at least liked seeing me in clothes, because before the hour had passed I had tried on at least a dozen dresses and day outfits. It was sexy, too, modeling for him. He watched me, but it was not all about the dresses.

  “This is very strange,” I said to him when we decided finally on a confetti fit-and-flare dress that swung flirtatiously whenever I moved. I liked the dress, and Jack liked the dress, and I liked that we liked the same thing. “I’ve never shopped with a man before. Do you really like to shop with women?”

  “Not really. I like shopping with you. Shouldn’t we get you some other things?”

  “I’m going to wear this until you get sick of seeing me in it. We’re going back tomorrow, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can make it through the night with what I have.”

  We kissed while we waited for Gilda to price out everything and bag it. We kissed again out on the street. I made Jack wait while I called Constance. I didn’t want her to think I had been abducted. But she answered calmly and revealed no surprise when I told her I was with Jack in another part of the city.

  “Oh, sweetheart, I’m glad you’re together with him,” she said. “Even though you hate him, of course.”

  “You told him where I was.”

  “I thought you could always say no if you truly didn’t want to see him.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I found Jack in the hotel lobby. He didn’t say anything. He took my hand and led me to the elevator bank. He held my hand as we waited. When the elevator doors opened, we stepped inside. It was a nice elevator, heavy and solid, with a brass rail that went around the interior at waist height. As soon as the door closed behind us, Jack pulled me into his arms and kissed me. It was more than a kiss, really. He devoured me. He pressed me back against the wall, and for a little while his hands traveled as they liked over my body. But we did not cease kissing, not for an instant, and when the elevator finally stopped, I had to put my hand out against the wall to steady myself.

  “Best elevator ride ever,” Jack said.

  I nodded. I couldn’t trust myself to speak.

  He took my hand and led me down a carpeted hallway. I admitted to myself, as I walked beside him, that there was something about the anonymity of a hotel that aroused me. No one knew us. We were answerable to no one. I held his hand tightly. He managed the room door without letting go of my fi
ngers.

  We stepped inside, and he closed the door behind us. The room was lovely; the bedspread possessed a golden shimmer that might have been horrible in a lesser hotel, but the quality was good, and it worked. The carpet, dove colored, was thick and silent. Jack crossed the room and opened the curtains. We could see the Brandenburg Gate, though not fully on. It was a sideways view, merely a glimpse, but Jack asked me to come closer, and I did. He held me against him from behind. He kissed my neck.

  And that was nearly unbearable.

  “I’m going to shower,” I whispered, my body churning, his lips on my shoulders now and back to my neck. “I have to shower.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Yes, I do. But I am a fast shower-er. Trust me. I won’t wash my hair or do anything else, but I need to rinse off.”

  “Okay, yes.”

  “Then I want to kiss you for a long time. Would that be all right?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I think we made a mistake buying the dress.”

  “Why?”

  His lips did not leave my neck. I felt my body turning slowly to syrup.

  “Because I don’t think we’re going to dinner. I don’t think we’re going anywhere. I think this is our world, and we don’t have to leave it.”

  He nodded against my neck.

  “Okay,” he said.

  I pressed back into him. He was Jack. He was the perfect size for me. I slowly peeled his arms away and then turned and kissed him. It was an afternoon in Berlin, Germany.

  * * *

  The Hotel Adlon Kempinski should have won an award for the greatest terry cloth robes ever manufactured by human hands. I found two robes in the bathroom. I took the smaller one and put it on. That was all I put on. Then I went back into the main room and found Jack sitting in an enormous armchair turned to overlook the window. I made myself slow down to take in the sight of him sitting there. He had turned down the lights; or he had decided not to turn on the lights at all. A quiet gray-blue light suffused everything.

  He pulled me firmly onto his lap, and I had to make a quick catch at the hem of my robe to keep it closed. Then his lips kissed mine. He kissed me gently and slowly, and for a long time that was all that happened. I couldn’t believe how easily I fit on his lap. He kissed me again and again, and after a while our lips seemed to gain knowledge of their own. I felt the moisture of my skin from the hot shower, and I felt his body responding to mine.

  After a time, he reached down and undid the belt to the robe.

  He kept his eyes on mine. I had an impulse to be shy, to cover, but he shook his head slightly, just a fraction of a movement, and I let myself sink more deeply into his lap.

  He pulled the robe apart slowly, slowly, inch by inch, and his hands touched only the cloth. He bent down to kiss my lips again, then he opened the robe a tiny bit more. I had difficulty remaining still. Lightly, he put his fingers on the skin of my rib cage, against my belly, on my hip. He moved as if unwrapping something valuable, something he could not rush to see. My body rose to his fingers, retreated, rose again. He bent periodically to kiss me, but he always pulled back, opening the robe farther, his hands growing more solid on my skin. I felt myself opening to him. As absurd as it sounded in my own head, I was the robe, I was being opened, and he continued to move his hands over me, touching my skin lightly and moving on. He touched my nipples carefully, gently, and I had a difficult time staying still. But he kissed me and took both my wrists in his hand, and he pulled my arms above my head. I felt like an instrument spread on his lap, a thing to be played and used and valued. And then he had difficulty containing himself, because he pulled my arms higher and tighter over my head, and he slipped his other hand down between my legs, and I was ready for him, waiting for him, and he looked at me as if to say, Yes, now, this part is mine now, and I shivered and tried to raise up to kiss him, and that was when he gathered me up and carried me to the bed.

  23

  Flesh. His body on mine.

  His lips on mine, slowly, softly, then more urgently. The white curtains at the hotel windows tucking into the room for an instant, breathing with us, then releasing, letting the curtains blossom and wave into the late-afternoon light. The smells of the hotel garden reaching us only in our silences, when our senses clear for a moment before he moves against me, stirring everything, everything important, and we kiss, and kiss again, and it is sex, gloriously sex, but not as I have known it, not exactly, not as sweet and rounded and filled with the earthy sting that I cannot know will take me until it does.

  Jack. My Jack. His body beautiful, and mine white and soft beside his, around his, my legs over his waist, his force driving deeper and deeper into the bed, into me, then other ways, more lewd, more edge, more blood seeping into my skin, a wild, crazed feeling, balanced only by the return to his lips, his lips always safe and thrilling, and we look into each other’s eyes—a stupid, absurd cliché—but what else can we do? It is the afternoon in Berlin, and all the world is quiet and the curtains continue to lift and fall, maybe rain coming, and we stay a long time, him inside me, deep, deep, not moving, not doing anything but kissing in this bed that floats in the island of Vermeer light. I kiss him and hold him, and for a long time we do not speak, do not try to, and then it builds again, becomes naughty and wonderful, becomes exploration and tongue and fingers and inexpressible surges. I want him to turn me inside out, to take me, every inch, but to give something back, something he has for me.

  His body is perfect. Perfect. It is strong and long and fine, and he moves it gracefully; there are no gaps, no moments where skin leaves skin, and when his moment comes, when he is ready, he puts his eyes on mine and we do not glance away, do not surrender anything until he can no longer stand it, and I kiss him, pull him deeper, and then the white curtains flap harder and the breeze from the garden comes again to find us. I can barely keep from crying because if this is real, if one particle is real, then I am a dead pup, I am lost, I am so hopelessly gone that nothing can save me.

  * * *

  “I had sex with you, and I don’t even know your last name.”

  “That’s excellent. You should definitely slut-shame yourself.”

  “Do you have a bad name? Is that why you’re keeping it from me?”

  “How do you mean, bad?”

  “Like, I don’t know, Pancake or something.”

  “You think my name is Jack Pancake?”

  I kissed his shoulder to hide my smile. It was a perfect moment. The wind had risen and now pushed against the hotel. We lay under a beautiful white down comforter, and the sheets glimmered white, contrasted as they were against the dark wood of the bed and bureaus. Jack’s body felt warm, and everything felt lazy and quiet and smooth.

  “Quiller-Couch,” Jack whispered into my hair. “That’s my name.”

  “That’s not your real name.”

  “Yes, it is. I promise it is. I know how strange it sounds.”

  I pushed myself up and looked at him. He had his eyes closed. I couldn’t read him.

  “Your name is Jack Quiller-Couch? You’re making that up, Jack. That’s impossible.”

  “I am not making that up. It’s really my name.”

  “Let me see your wallet. I want to check your license.”

  “You can call me Jack Vermont if you prefer. Or Jack Pancake.”

  “So some woman, someday, is going to have the option of keeping her own name or becoming Mrs. Quiller-Couch. I think we can guess how that will go.”

  “It’s a perfectly fine name. My mother kept her name, Quiller, and hyphenated it with my dad’s name, Couch. So I’m Quiller-Couch.”

  “That’s just nutty. Jack Quiller-Couch. You sound like a pirate or something. Or like a British dessert.”

  “I could change it to Jack Pancake.”

  “Maybe Jack Vermont. I like that.”

  He kissed me and pulled me closer.

  “Jack Quiller-Couch. That’s going to require some gett
ing used to. I’m not sure I even believe you. Are you joking right now?”

  “I think it’s too much last name for a simple first name. That’s the problem. It’s out of balance. I like your name better. Heather Mulgrew. What’s your middle name?”

  “Christine. Mulgrew always sounded to me like a mushroom you find in your basement. Oh, there’s a Mulgrew.”

  “You’re very strange. Heather Christine Mulgrew. I like it. So when we get married, you would be Heather Christine Mulgrew Quiller-Couch. You would be your own law firm.”

  “We’re getting married now, are we? And I’m taking your name? It’s all established?”

  “It’s inevitable.”

  “Do you simply say these things for effect? It’s a bad habit. It’s a habit you should denounce.”

  “I don’t think you denounce a habit.”

  “What do you denounce?”

  “Satan, I think.”

  He rolled me to one side and spooned me. His breath tickled my ear. I felt his body jump once as it relaxed into near sleep. For a long time, I watched the curtains move with the wind. This was Jack, I told myself. Jack Quiller-Couch. And we had met on a train and had our first kiss on the station platform, and now we had made love, and we were in Berlin, and it was all too fast, too easy to believe entirely, and I had driven a sports car over one hundred miles an hour, and now this lovely man held me and dozed, and I told myself I should remember this moment. I should trap it somehow, because someday I would be old and wrinkly and I might sit in the sun and remember Jack in this white, white bed, and the pleasure we had, and the taste of the Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie, and his body covering mine like a tree growing around a stone.

  Kraków, Prague, Switzerland, Italy

  24

  We took the night train from Berlin to Kraków, Poland. Poland had never been on my list of “must-sees,” but Raef assured us it was spectacular, and I had learned to trust Raef’s opinions about travel, restaurants, and jazz nightclubs. Kraków—the old city—was a World Heritage Site. It was, he said, the next Prague, meaning the next chic place to visit if you were young and mobile and in the mood for adventure. Jack had never visited Poland, either, and on the train we sat with Constance’s Lonely Planet guide on our laps and turned the pages slowly, each of us reading and pointing to things we wanted to see. Raef and Constance slept in the seats across from us. Constance’s head rested in the crook of Raef’s neck as if she were his precious violin. I took a few pictures of them; I wanted Constance to know how sweet they looked together.