She’ll be feeling this as though it’s already happening, knowing absolutely that it will, because every cell is alive and crying out, Fill me, love me, cherish me, be tender, but, oh God, be sure. She wants you to want her. And when her pupils expand like that, as though you have dropped black ink into a saucer of cool blue water, and her head tips just a little, as though she’s gone blind or has had a terrible shock or maybe just too much to drink, to her she is crying in a great voice, Fuck me, right here, right now against the kitchen counter, because I want you wrist-deep inside me. I hunger, I burn, I need.
It doesn’t matter if you are tired, or unsure, if your stomach is hard with dread at not being forgiven. If you allow yourself one moment’s distraction— a microsecond’s break in eye contact, a slight shift in weight—she knows, and that knowledge is a punch in the gut. She will back up a step and search your face, and you’ll try to recover but she’ll know, and she’ll feel embarrassed—a fool or a whore—at offering so blatantly what you’re not interested in, and her fine sense of being queen of the world will shiver and break like a glass shield hit by a mace, and fall around her in dust. Oh, it will still sparkle, because sex is magic, but she will be standing there naked, and you will be a monster, and the next time she feels her womb quiver and clench she’ll hesitate, which will confuse you, even on a day when there is no dread, no uncertainty, and that singing sureness between you will dissolve and very slowly begin to sicken and die.
The body knows. I listened to the deep message—but carefully, because at some point the deep message also must be a conscious message. Active, not just passive, agreement. I took her hand and guided the wok back down to the gas burner. Yes, her body still said, yes. I turned off the gas, but slowly, and now she reached for me. I pushed the chopping board to one side, lifted her onto the counter, and slid my hand beneath her waistband.
She was hot and swollen and I held her close, her face against my neck and she groaned. The singer pleaded to his baby to not sing yet, but before the track was over she kissed me in triumph, slid off the counter, pulled her trousers the rest of the way off, planted her feet on the floor and her palms on the top of the stove, laughed that shimmery glad laugh, and said, “More.”
After a while, I remembered that the door was open, but I didn’t care.
And a while after that, when I was lying on the floor smiling at the ceiling, she finished cooking the stirfry, and we ate it, properly clothed, at the dining room table. The windows were open but there was no breeze.
“That song you were playing when I got here—”
“Salomé.”
“Interesting words.”
She looked puzzled, then stared up at the ceiling as people do when they rerun lyrics or conversations in their head, and laughed. “All that stuff about dancing beneath the cherry tree. Poor Aud. Did you think I’d chosen it especially?”
“The subconscious can play interesting games.” I put my fork down, took a breath. “I am sorry about your tree. It was wrong of me.”
“It pissed me off so much, that beautiful tree. Baobab the Bold.”
“Baobab?”
“Better than Fred.”
It was a tree. But this time I kept my mouth shut.
“She was beautiful. Oh, I knew she was going to have to come down, but she was my tree. My tree, my decision.”
“I was trying to help. I really am sorry.”
“You weren’t yesterday. You stood there like you were glad you were cutting down something pretty in my garden, like you wished it was me they were cutting up with a saw. I thought maybe you were trying to hurt me because I’d, well, because of my behavior the night before.”
“The subconscious can play interesting games,” I said again.
“Yes. And I’m sorry for mine, too.”
We nodded at each other, and held hands, and let our palms talk to each other. They seemed to be better at it than our brains. Her hand was cool. I lifted it, kissed her fingertips. The garlic and ginger made the mucous membrane of my inner lips tingle pleasantly.
“I’m glad you hadn’t been cutting chilis.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“I don’t… Are you blushing?”
“No. It’s hot in here. I’m flushing. It’s different.”
“If you say so,” but she was grinning, and I didn’t care, because I wanted to make her grin every day. So unlike last night’s twisted, self-hating smile. My hand faltered in its conversation.
She felt it, and understood, and her breathing ratcheted up as the tension between us rose. It was like stepping into a static electricity field. The hairs on my forearms lifted. My scalp tightened.
“Kick.” I cradled her hand between both of mine. “Help me understand what happened last night.”
“Oh, I drank too much.” I waited. She sighed. “You talked about perfection. It—I didn’t like that.”
“No.”
“I’m not perfect.”
“No one is.” She didn’t say anything. I stroked the soft, thin skin over the tendons on the back of her hand.
“I’m like the tree.” Now I was thoroughly confused. She pulled her hand free. “Don’t you get it?”
“No.”
“I’m sick.”
When I was fifteen I had gone running along the beach in Whitby. It had been a sunny March day after more than two weeks of rain and fog, and I was warm and happy. In a moment of sheer joy I’d stripped off my jeans and dived headfirst into a breaker—and thought I had dived into a wall. The near-freezing water paralyzed my chest muscles and cut off my oxygen as effectively as a sheet of glass sliding through my neck. I thrashed in the churning breakers, but no one noticed. Last year, I had been shot and had to dive into a glacier lake to escape the gunman. I had understood, this time, about freezing water, thought I had been prepared, but the cold still stopped my breath.
“Are you dying?”
“What? No, of course not.”
When that first flood of air hits your lungs again, nothing matters but the rush of oxygen. It doesn’t matter if the air is smutty with smoke, or stinging with rain; it only matters that you’ll live. I stared at my plate, at the jewel-like vegetables, and savored the tangy aftertaste of lime, the bite of garlic, the hiss of ginger on my tongue. Dead people couldn’t do that. I looked at her. “Good. Don’t die. I need you.”
Her eyes filmed. One tear spilled down her right cheek. I ran the back of my finger up her skin and caught it.
“Is it cancer?”
She shook her head.
“Then what?”
She scrubbed at her cheeks with the back of her free hand. “Something. I don’t know. I had an appointment.” I nodded. “An MRI, but the pictures weren’t very clear, my doctor says. But it’s something.”
“When will they know?”
“He’s getting another doctor to read it tomorrow. Or the day after.”
“You should get it done now.”
“I don’t think there’s a rush.”
“But you don’t know. You said yourself. You should get it done today. He ought to—” I shut up. Her hand had gone passive in mine and she was studying it impersonally, as though already separating herself from her body, from life, from our conversation. “If it’s a question of money...” She drifted farther away. “What kind of doctor?”
“Neurologist.”
“And they’re sure it’s not your hip? Those pins?”
“They took the pins out more than a year ago.” She smiled gently. “Couldn’t have had an MRI otherwise.”
A neurologist. None of it made sense. She looked so good, so alive. Her skin was firm, her muscles dense, her eyes bright. “You’re so strong.”