“Peter? Are you saying that Peter cares for me? Peter cares for nobody.”
“You’re his last chance.”
“I don’t believe anybody is anybody’s last chance.” She opened her bag and brought out her cigarettes and her lighter.
“I remember that.”
“What do you remember?”
“The way you’re looking now. Your eyes. Your mouth.”
She lit her cigarette and kept the lighter in her hand. He went to the shelves and took the heavy, round ash tray, bubbles in the blue-tinted glass, and put it on the glass-topped table. He stood above her and she could see up the short sleeves of his loose Mao shirt to his armpits. Her eyes went moist. He sat on the furry arm of her chair; her smoking gestures became smaller, constricted.
He said, “I was frightened of what I saw.”
“Why were you frightened?” She touched the tip of her cigarette, as yet without ash, on the thick rim of the ash tray.
“It always happens like that. I knew I would be involved with you. I knew you were going to come back.” He whispered, “You told massa?”
She looked at him. Her moist eyes were full of irritation, alarm.
He looked at the lighter in her cigarette hand and said, “I remember that. From the Sahara.”
She held out the cigarette to the ash tray; she was about to swallow. He squeezed her hand hard over the ash tray; and her face moved to his, her mouth open, the cigarette falling from her fingers, the lighter hurting in her palm. Her mouth opened wide and pressed against his, and her lips and tongue began to work.
He took his mouth away and said, “Be calm. You’re too greedy. You give yourself away when you kiss like that. A woman’s whole life is in her kiss.”
He released her hand; the lighter fell on the glass-topped table. Her head remained thrown back on the chair; when he went to her mouth again he found her lips barely parted, her tongue withdrawn. He said, “That’s better.” Very lightly, he ran the tip of his tongue between her lips, then on the inside of her lower lip. Then, still lightly, he sucked her lower lip. He took his mouth away and looked at her. Her eyes were still closed. She said, “That was lovely.” He held her face between his hands, jammed the heels of his palms on the corners of her mouth, covering her almost vanished period spots, distending her lips. He covered her mouth with his; her lips widened and she made a strangled sound; and then he spat in her mouth. She swallowed and he let her face go. She opened her eyes and said, “That was lovely.” He put his hands below her wet armpits and began to lift her. But she stood up of her own accord.
She said, “Your eyes are shining.”
“Your eyes are screaming still.”
He touched her with the tips of his fingers in the small of her back, and casually, like old lovers, they walked into the bedroom.
She saw the bare ocher-washed walls, the shiny brown fitted wardrobe, and, through the high wide window, the pale sky. The bathroom door was ajar: she saw the low tiled wall around the shower area, the dry concrete floor. Standing separate from one another, they began, without haste, to undress. The bed was unmade, the mattress showing at the top, the middle of the rumpled sheet brushed smooth and brown from use and spotted with stiff stains. The yellow candlewick bedspread hung over the end of the bed and rested on the maroon carpet.
Jane, unbuttoning her blouse, smiled and said, “Your candle-wick bedspread.”
“So you remember it. You didn’t seem to care for it the last time.”
She nodded slowly, once, and gave her mischievous smile. She took off her blouse and threw it on the brown chest of drawers. Against the rest of her the red, aged skin below her neck looked like a rash; the little folds of flesh in her shaved armpits were wet. She let the Moroccan necklaces fall, with a little ripple of metallic sound, on the chest of drawers. She didn’t take off her brassiere: her breasts were smalclass="underline" he noted that shyness. She stepped out of her shoes and was at once small. She didn’t step out of her trousers, but lifted one leg after the other, in an athletic movement, and pulled the trousers off: a rough, masculine sound. Suddenly, then, her pants a shrunken, wrinkled roll on the carpet, she was on the unmade bed, sighing, smiling at him, her head on the oily pillow; and she looked big again. She opened her legs, put her hand there, and drew her fingers upward through moist flesh and hair. The wanton’s gesture: he noted it, and he seemed to say, “Hm.”
She said, “I hate that shirt.”
“I am taking it off.” His voice was soft.
When, looking very big, he moved toward her, she closed her eyes. She said, “Kiss me, Jimmy,” and waited with lips open, tongue withdrawn. Crouching beside her, he jammed his palms against the corners of her mouth. She made the strangled sound and he covered her mouth with his. He made her swallow, and she rested her hands on his back and said, “Love, love.”
She felt the pressure of his hands on her shoulders, and suddenly she was turned over on her belly and he was squatting on her, her hips and legs squeezed between his knees, thighs, and feet. He said, “It’s going to be different today, Jane. We’re doing it the other way.” She made as if to rise, but he held her down between the shoulder blades with his left hand, and opened her up with his right. She began to beat her hands on the bed. As soon as, moving down from the base of her spine he touched her where she was smaller, she cried out, “No!” And when he entered, squatting on her, driving in, his ankles pressed against her hips, she began to wail, a dry, scraping, deliberate sound. He said, as though speaking to a child, “But you’re a virgin, Jane. Isn’t it a good thing you came to see me today?” She shouted with real pain, “Take it out, take it out.” She began to wail again. He said, “A big girl like you, and a virgin, Jane? It’s hard. I know it’s hard. But you didn’t bring your Vaseline, you see. A big girl like you should always take her own Vaseline when she goes visiting.” She said, “Oh my God, oh my God.” He said, “It’s better like this, Jane. You didn’t know that? You mean they never told you it was better with your legs closed? Aren’t you glad you came? It’s always better with your legs closed, whatever way you do it.” He drove deeper and deeper, until he was almost sitting upright on her. He said, “We’re breaking you in today, Jane.” He began to withdraw; sweat from his face and chest dripped on her back; she sighed; but he drove in hard and she shrieked. Her hands stopped beating on the bed; her inflamed face was pressed on one side on the pillow. She stopped wailing; she took her right hand to her mouth and began to bite on her thumb; real tears came. Sobbing, biting her thumb, she began to plead, now with a suppressed scream, now with a whisper, “Take it out, take it out.” Her body went soft; she was sweating all over. He withdrew and said, “There now.” She said, “Have you taken it out?” He said, “Yes, Jane. You’ve lost your virginity.”
She remained just as he had left her, her face on the pillow, the tears running down her nose; her untanned buttocks together, spreading slightly, wet with sweat where he had been sitting on her, the fine hairs there flattened in the sweat and showing more clearly. She sobbed and snuffled.
When he was off her, and beside her, not touching her, she said, like a child, “You made me cry! You made me cry!” Her face was red and wet with tears; but she was oddly calm.
He said, “I knew this about you as soon as I saw you that day. As soon as I saw your eyes and the shape of your mouth.”
“My ‘bedroom eyes.’ ”
He said, very softly, “You are rotten meat.”
It was his tone, rather than the words, that alarmed her. When she turned over to look at him she saw that his eyes were very bright and appeared sightless, the pupils mere points of glitter. He was still erect and looked very big.