— And your throat? those can’t help it…
— All I’ve got, I thought you’d bought some in that little bag you came out with.
— Those were cough drops I got for you, where did you find these?
— In that raincoat, must have cultivated cancer to keep down his waistline, he said unfastening it, sitting back, — snappy dresser wasn’t he.
— Oh he just wanted so to, he must have had forty pairs of awful socks he’d got in France those really short ones, little designs and elastic at the top and all that dead white skin showing when he crossed his knees but there was no way to tell him, I had to pretend they were getting lost in the laundry and it took me months to get rid of them. It was always a game he had to win, playing against him and helping him win.
— Thought that’s what every woman knows.
— No but I was so young, and he did try hard but he had such ideas of himself, of what he thought my family thought he should be and they never quite matched, Jack please don’t…
— Well what… his hand dropped of its own weight, — tell you the story about the lady who has her portrait done by the Italian who scarcely speaks English? When she sees it she says it lacks sympathy, that’s a word he doesn’t know so he finds the dictionary says it means fellow feeling in bosom and the next time he shows her the port…
— I don’t like that kind of story.
— Oh.
— Well you needn’t be…
— What, old Lucien didn’t like fellows feeling in bosom?
But she just sat there away from him, her head back and the wavers of light on her throat, twisting a strand of hair until she said — No, no he wasn’t jealous really, when he sent back low necks I’d bought it wasn’t for what anyone might do if I wore one, it was what they might think, of him, I was his wife and what they might think of him but he’d always point out décolletage to me at parties or a girl in a top her nipples showed through and I never really knew what he, I even bought a cigar once and almost made myself sick smoking it half way down and put it out right there in that ashtray where he’d see it when he came in, and he didn’t say a word… She drew the twisted strand across her lips in the last flareup of the candle — and it all, it just wasn’t fun anymore…
— You don’t have music here do you.
— No we, we simply never did, we’d go to concerts and things but we never did… Her hand closed in his between them, closer until their shoulders touched and he brushed the warmth of her throat, lips lingered at her ear and she turned her face to his in the dark. Suddenly he was bolt upright. — Was that like kissing a man?
— Amy what in, wait…! he was up, after her where lights came on down the hall — damn it Amy…? The bathroom door came closed against him, left him to turn to the bedroom for the light between the beds, shed the jacket in a heap to the floor.
— Look it does, doesn’t it! She was there in the doorway yellow robe pulled open where she held up the strand of hair across her lip, — look like a mustache?
His eyes dropped, he cleared his throat, — Yes and stop it or I’ll, I’ll come tousle the beard…
— Jack… she pulled the robe closed but paused again, turned to the glass — it does doesn’t it!
— Yes and stop it!
— It must be strange, she said turning, coming between the beds holding the robe loosely, sitting across from him, lying back as he fought off those trousers — for a man, kissing a man, wouldn’t it be embarrassing?
— I’m sure it would.
— But not as much as a woman with a woman… and she caught her breast away from him crowding beside her, brushing the warmth of her throat, lips lingering at her ear and then his tongue abruptly tracing its details, hand gone from breast to breast under the robe until they went crushed under her as he came to one elbow to sweep its yellow from all the whiteness of her back. From his her own hand came, measuring down firmness of bone brushed past its prey to stroke at distances, to climb back still more slowly, fingertips gone in hollows, fingers paused weighing shapes that slipped from their inquiry before they rose confirming where already they could not envelop but simply cling there fleshing end to end, until their reach was gone with him coming up to a knee, to his knees over her back, hands running to the spill of hair over her face in the pillow and down to declivities and down, cleaving where his breath came suddenly close enough to find its warmth reflected, tongue to pierce puckered heat lingering on to depths coming wide to its promise, rising wide to the streak of its touch, gorging its stabs of entrance aswim to its passage rising still further to threats of its loss suddenly real, left high agape to the mere onslaught of his gaze knees locked to knees thrust deep in that full symmetry surged back against him, surges his hands on either side bit deep as though in their possession all her eloquent blood spoke in her cheeks till he came down full weight upon her, face gone over her shoulder seeking hers in the pillow’s muffling sounds of wonder until they both went still, until a slow turn to her side she gave him up and ran raised lips on the wet surface of his mouth.
He reached a knee, and scratched. — Think you’ve got fleas here.
— Don’t be silly. You don’t really do you?
— They like empty places, nice thick carpet, he said turned from her the moment it took to catch the curl of a single hair from his lips.
— Jack you, no please, she held his hand away, — you didn’t see one? I can’t imagine how, what could we do?
— Round them up and train them, start a little circus.
— No they don’t really have those. Do they?
— Have what, flea circuses? Never heard of a flea circus?
— Of course I’ve heard of them that’s what I mean, it’s just a story isn’t it. Do you have to scratch so?
He looked down his arm’s length where his scratching stopped, pink glistening dark to purple squeezed up between his fingers — make you feel like Lawrence’s old warrior Auda…
— I think it’s dear… her head come over on his chest, breast crushed against him as though yearning toward the defeated enemy to trace its withered ridges with a nail, course the quiescent color of a vein all for a moment taken by lips and tongue gone undefined with wetness and as abruptly up pressed back against his shoulder before he could move, until she whispered — can you reach the light?
— Thought I might have a cigarette, he said reaching to turn it off.
— You don’t need one, she reached across to hold his shoulder, — Jack? Have you ever seen one? really?
— A cigarette?
— A flea circus, they don’t really dress them up in little clothes and train them to pull carts and things? Why would, who would do that?
— Just somebody who… he cleared his throat in the dark, — maybe just somebody afraid of failing at something worth doing…
— But if they really do it they must think it’s worth doing, she turned on her face away from him, — the only bad failure’s at something you knew wasn’t worth doing in the first place. Isn’t it?
And whatever he whispered was gone, turned to her on his side to move his hand down where it rose to rest that night as it might have on a lectern, along the creviced margin between those white slopes opened to the lesson where congregation thronged a dream.
— Jack?
Up on one elbow he brushed sunlight from his face, brought hers in shadow. — How long have you been awake?
— Do you want coffee? Jack no please, let me get up and…
— Most elegant throat I’ve ever seen…
— Yes and yours are you taking that penicillin? It sounds…
— Not talking about mucosa damn it, Amy…?
— In the living room? where we’ll have more sun…? and there, when she came with the tray — who are you calling? And Jack do you know the seat of those shorts is quite gone?