“Aren’t you wondering?”
She laughed. “You couldn’t kiss like that and be contagious.”
“Kiss like what?”
“Careful. Honest. Like a guy whose candidates always lose.”
“A year is a long time. Don’t you get lonely?”
She shrugged, and he watched her breasts lift and drop ever so slightly with the flexing of muscle. “You mean horny. Don’t you think sex is kind of overrated? I used to think I wasn’t any good at it. Then I figured out it took more than just slapping bodies together. So I’d rather do without than feel crummy after.”
Hank lay down next to her in the dark, still fully dressed. He stared at his Rockport Pro-Walkers, muddy and ruined from the tree adventure, but the laces still double-knotted from morning. “You have a lovely body.”
She leaned up on one elbow and reached through the sweater tear to locate his shirt buttons. “I’ll bet you do, too. Guess I’ll never find out until I get past the armor. Want to help me?”
To Hank it felt like a long, slow dance, one he’d forgotten all the steps to. But that didn’t matter; she could lead. There was the vague recollection of a time before all this, his job, the faces of students, their uncorrected papers that tried to make the most of the least effort, the moment he felt the wheels of the Honda sink into mud all the way to the axle. Then the tentative kiss at the window, and the twisted branches outside, his sanctuary oak, which an owl called home. His own hesitation seemed absurd in the midst of this very promising present. Clothes all gone now. The slight wind through the makeshift cabin lifted each hair on his body. Not a cold wind, exactly; the wood stove was cooking. Strong arms circled his chest. He reached up behind her and fumbled with the bra; where was the catch? She guided his hand back to the front. “Here, it undoes in the middle. Right here.” Sure hands traveled and parted his thighs, creating a space in which to fit her own body. He opened his eyes and studied her above him, the angle of arm connecting to one hand which was parting the lips of her labia, positioning herself to allow him to enter. It was happening so quickly. He drew one hand up, touched his thumb to the moist delta of flesh between her legs, was both shocked and entranced at her readiness. He could feel her blood pulse under the skin he touched and was afraid he would come before they began to move.
She reached for his hand and drew it to her mouth, tasting herself, which caused the blood in his pelvis to throb painfully down the length of his shaft. He would come. He had to look away. Think of mathematics. First her left leg, then the right one, straddling him, corralling him beneath her muscles. Sixteen times eight point two was…
She rocked over him, letting the head of his penis graze her. “You like this?”
He made a sound, inarticulate, quickly covered by her kiss.
“Good. Then hush.”
With a single calculated pitch forward she guided him inside her, arched her back, breathed out harshly, then settled her body down, nestling her face into his neck, where she closed her teeth gently on his whiskery flesh. He felt the tips of her breasts press into his chest, and his hands cradled the sides of them, the impossibly soft flesh. He tried thinking how afraid he’d been, hugging the hard branches of the oak tree. He pictured his department chairman with his ingratiating Cook Islands tan and that silly gold chain he wore around his wattled neck. From there, he visualized shower mold. A hideous polyester sports jacket he’d worn in high school that had cost him the affection of a plain girl who admired his brain. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, that awful, awful music. Day-old trout in sunlight. Anything to make time stand still, to keep him from crossing the threshold of inevitability. But she knew that too, and showed him no mercy, digging her heels in as if he were just another horse to be broken, his cock straining to spill free inside her narrow passage, she softly laughing when he felt his eyes roll back and the shudder travel down the entire length of his body. Blinded by his release, somehow for the first time in years, he sensed the primal notion that he was home.
Out of his near sleep, he felt her rise up again, rock to life on what was left of his dwindling erection, her hips rolling and insistent until she came, too, crying out. Her cry was unearthly in the small room, part confusion, part bewilderment, part angry loss and sudden recognition. Her arms and legs tightened around him again, the heat of her body nearly stinging. He didn’t move, didn’t reach down to help her, she didn’t seem to want or require anything beyond that. Let her find the way. Then a smaller shudder coursed through her, and she cried out again, her second orgasm acknowledged by the howl and scratch of the dog outside the door.
She fell forward on him and sighed. “Oh, Hannah, just quit!”
He could feel the fluid of his ejaculation leak from her onto his thighs, gluing them together. She yawned loudly in his ear and drew the sleeping bag over them. He was afraid to sleep, afraid not to, and wondered briefly if he was dreaming her, the cabin, the entire evening.
He woke once in the night. It was still dark out. She was not in the bed. She sat on the counter, knees drawn up to her chin, feet pigeoned inward. She held a lit cigarette, the blue smoke making a nimbus around her head. He watched as she smoked the cigarette down to the filter and dropped it into the basin. He could hear it sizzle out in the sink water. The mattress underneath him was dotted with dampness and particularly lumpy in the region of his left shoulder. He lay there silently and watched her take and dampen a scrap of his torn shirt under the pump handle, then reach down between her legs to clean herself. He had never seen a woman do that before; he just assumed they took showers, some nondescript and utterly private ritual men weren’t allowed to witness. She blotted herself and rinsed the rag out, folded it over the sink edge, and shivered once before returning to the bed. Slowly, she edged in so as not to disturb him, but he turned and let her know he was awake.
“I was watching you.”
A gritty scream tore through the silence, and the dog let out a yip. Hank scrambled to his feet, his rekindled erection wobbling in front of him like a cardboard sword. “Jesus, what was that?”
She laughed and pointed to the window. In the branches, he could see the outline of the owl silhouetted in the tree and settling into familiar territory. Hank had the distinct impression it was looking directly at him.
Three hours of sleep gave the dawn a psychedelic sheen. The bare oak’s branches dripped dew, and the creek that sounded so loud in the night proved to be no more than ankle high when he walked down to inspect it. Her idea of breakfast? I think there’s an apple around here somewhere. She was businesslike as they worked to extricate his car, backing her truck up, checking the hitch twice. Hank felt like he’d camped out, though he knew that twenty minutes of driving would deliver him to his old world. He listened to the sucking sounds of wet mud reluctant to give up the grip on his bargain Kleber tires. Chloe hung her head out the window of the old Chevy truck and watched, rocking the Honda free inch by sluggish inch. It went so slowly that Hank was ready to give it up, hitch a ride into town with her, and call a towing service, but she wouldn’t hear of it, and soon enough the earth groaned and his Honda reemerged, looking as if it had been down in the trenches for an entire world war.
“Now!” she called, and he set the planking beneath the wheels before he unlatched the tow hitch.
“It’s done.”
She circled the truck around and yawned, then whistled for the dog. Hannah made a low noise in her throat—a warning—as she passed by Hank, then navigated the leap into the truck bed. He thought better of attempting to pet her. She’s letting me know who’s in charge, and how much she does not appreciate sleeping outdoors while a stranger sleeps in the warm bed. He watched them go down the road until they were out of sight—a white dog and a girl in an old truck. He was lightheaded with hunger, yet every cell in his body felt gratified.
Chloe waved. No words, just a gloved hand and the crooked smile he had already memorized. They hadn’t talked much this morning, hadn’t even decided on a ti
me to get together again. The wind hit his neck and he drew his collar up. She was gone, the highway had her.
Asa Carver made it into the office first for once. Hank performed a quick room check, but neither the new Mrs. Carver nor the old one was here, so that wasn’t the reason.
“Morning, Asa.” He smiled at his colleague and set his breakfast down on the desk top: fresh blueberry muffins from the bakery, a wedge of sharp cheddar from the deli next door, and an extra large cup of cocoa with marshmallows already melting into a sugary suspension on the surface. The cocoa he’d gotten downstairs in the snack shop from a sleepy cashier who’d undercharged him forty cents, and who said, “Well, la ti da,” when he told her so.
Carver smirked. “Powerful hunger, Oliver?”
“So?”
“Did I say anything?”
It was happening—that uncontrollable grin spreading over his face—and Asa Carver would take this to the mat. “Oh, hell,” Hank said. “I am hungry, hungrier than I’ve been in years.”
Carver reached across the desk and helped himself to a muffin. The blueberries were fat explosions driven into the risen dough. Carver broke open a muffin and deposited an entire pat of butter inside, then licked his fingertips, one by one. “Okay,” he said. “I want to hear every detail. Length. Duration. Her favorite position. Moaning, screaming, that stuff doesn’t interest me, but the rest does, you lucky bastard, and you’d better not leave anything out.”
The muffin Hank held warmed his hand just as her breath had. He thought for a moment how her hair spilled down into his face as she straddled him, with just that soap-and-water scent that would forever after remind him of her. He could taste the spicy tang of her skin from their collective exertions, and recall that moment when he was wonderfully confused as to where her skin left off and his own began. The hollow of her collarbone; why hadn’t he told her how superbly she was constructed? The cold water cat-bath they’d shared this morning that ended them up right where they’d begun, and made him feel weak and spent just remembering. He was determined to keep her to himself, Asa’s prurient interest be damned. “Well,” he said. “I don’t tell tales out of school, but I’ll give you a nibble. She drives a truck.”
Asa’s laughter echoed in the hallway. Hank liked the sound of it.
CHAPTER
11
Oh, the trouble with sex wasn’t that it made you lazy and thick tongued, though it did both those things all right. Chloe hung her apron on the deer horns above the pay phone after her shift and headed out to her truck before Kit could come by and catch her. No, it wasn’t anything quite so simple. What it did do that was truly dangerous was make you lose the necessary edge for survival. It made you nicer than it was safe to be, and preoccupied with the oily peacefulness spreading through your hips, slowing your life down to a mañana tempo. Worst of all, it opened that dreaming doorway to a hopeful future, and hadn’t she been wise and slammed that one shut after Fats died? An eight-hour shift and she’d screwed up six orders, one of them that lady mayor who’d lately taken a shine to Rich’s black bean soup—a new record. The mayor politely insisted it was fine, she liked the vegetable just as well, but after she left, Rich let Chloe have it in spades, and she did what she had to do—she stood there like a three-legged cow and took in his acid sermon because she needed his money more than she needed her pride.
“Read your contract, Morgan. Waitresses are not allowed to think. Just leave your brain in the back room and smile at the rich people. Now, you want to go back and ask table three one more fucking time whether it’s sunny side up or scrambled, or should I send Lita?” Lita, quaking behind the register like a kicked pup, would she even last the week?
Waitresses weren’t allowed to think, and that was a pretty good idea, because the longer you thought about a job like this, the less you could stand having to get up each morning and do it again. The truth was, last night was muddying up her judgment, so she couldn’t exactly tell Rich where to take his egg orders when it was her fault. A lovely aspect to hindsight, that; about as useful as getting gut shot and coming to the slow, painful understanding that you were going to die anyway, it was just a matter of time and place, and the circling birds’ welcoming committee.
She turned left onto the boulevard and was immediately swallowed up in a tangle of cars. No one was going faster than fifteen miles per hour, for the apparent reason that there were too many people on the planet, and while all of them wanted to live within bicycling distance of the beach, none of them actually wanted to be caught dead working the pedals.
It dogged her every day, the exhaust fumes and the million-dollar asphalt beneath expensive cars covering up honest dirt. Sometimes when the city crews were replacing pipes, they would cut down into the dirt, and the primary oxide both shocked and delighted her. Fossils were coffined in the road just eight inches beneath the blacktop, forgotten. Sometimes she found them in Hughville, broken remains of calcified clamshell, even that far inland. She wished she were back in the canyon, where a walk through rocks and cacti worked better than good dope for letting you forget a city existed, and sometimes netted you a potsherd in the process, a piece of dull brown clay that once held somebody’s breakfast.
A sleepy Hannah rode shotgun today, her chin resting on the open window as she surveyed the passing cars. Chloe eyed her sorrowful muzzle and gave her ruff a friendly scratch. “Bones Jones, old pal, how about a kiss for your friend in crime?”
The dog sighed and moved closer to the window. Jealous of Hank having spent the night, that’s what it was. She was getting old and wasn’t happy with a cold night in the wild. The silent treatment was most effective when she wanted to drive a point home. Chloe would stop and buy her some prime rib bones from her butcher friend in El Toro; that would ease her peevishness. Then they would take a sundown walk through the canyon, up past the creek and to the cliff side, sit and watch the sun collapse onto the hills, spilling its brief display of color before the blue dark took over, share a beer like the old days, the two of them alone, as well matched as a team of shires.
What of the slumber party guest? Chloe smiled to herself. He was something. Muscles ached with that rare pleasure of sexual exertion, the best kind of aches to have. Good sex made you foolish, toned up the muscles, but stunned the brainpan. Those small nuggets of memory gleamed in her consciousness. A college professor—good lord, she could hear Fats laughing from the grave at the very idea of it. And he was so polite, good-looking, too. Now that she had a firm grip on getting her life back in control, it would be a shame to ruin it over some guy. Still and yet. Earnest, upright, a solid, considerate lover. Last night took place in the dark, suffused with mood and intention long before they hit the sleeping bag. It had made her shiver, though the wood stove was stoked and ticking. Just stop. What they did wouldn’t survive examination in the light of day, would shrivel up what happened like an albino newt exposed to sunlight. No, good stuff was doomed to hide in the dark places. Such sweetness, likely never to be repeated. Better that way. She’d probably scared him off with her moves anyhow. Run back to that college, gotten himself an Rx for penicillin—just in case—wouldn’t go lending his clothes out any more, that’s for sure. But oh, those flashes—this morning, his body above hers, his face so focused the pleasure gave him a grimace. What if she saw him again—just supposing. Could she handle another complication?
Gabe would be the first to point out how foolish it was to entertain the idea. Lying in his arms in the back office all those months, he’d confided in her, treated her to his personal philosophy of wisdom when it came to the school of love. “Chloe, you aren’t like other women.”
“How’s that? I’ve got the same number of appendages and orifices.”
“That’s true, and let me go on record as saying they’re downright lovely. But trust me, you wouldn’t be happy tied down, milking yourself dry to feed the barnacles children all become, no matter how good you treat them. Or living off some guy’s paycheck. It’d drain you.
”
“Doesn’t seem to bother Cynthia.”
He shook his head. “Sister, you don’t know the half of it. That woman nets over thirty-five grand a year just in residuals from her trust fund. That’s her play money. If it wasn’t for that money and most of mine, I might add, she’d be out my door so fast scouting some other poor bastard with a Mercedes you’d think one of those Midwestern tornadoes had passed through. Just my luck she fancies horses. We leave each other alone except when it comes to raising those daughters we were foolish enough to conceive.”
He’d shown her their school pictures. They were beautiful girls—faces a little pouty, russet hair, and big, sleepy hazel eyes surrounded by thick lashes, eyes the same color as Gabe’s. “Nobody said I had to stop working or breed if I got myself a partner.”
He stroked her blond hair back and bared her neck, then spent a while dizzying her with those kisses that came close to art for all they lacked in heartfelt emotion. “Hell, I don’t know, you’re like the last honest one of the breed. I’ve convinced myself you were put on earth to walk alone, and now I’d hate to see anyone try and cage you.”
“Guess I’d better hightail it out of here then.”
A tug on her shirttail, followed by smooth fingers tallying every rib. “Doesn’t mean you can’t shower a lucky few along the way with attention.”
There was more than a certain amount of truth to what he said, sure, but she had been around the block before him, and loved Fats all Fats would allow. After he died, what it boiled down to was one lonely hike. Hannah helped. The horses, too. People could mesh lives. Didn’t have to be marriage necessarily, just togetherness. Maybe companionship was what it was all about. Maybe not. Maybe the kind of blindness brought on by multiple orgasm caused the whole institution to be invented in the first place, because something that powerful…it was natural to want to own it, recall it, press on it whenever you wanted to feel good. Fats used to say: “Darlin’, you can whip a mean horse into a cowering kind of obedience, but sometimes you take away more than the vice.”
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