— Who’s there! he rose slowly and pushed the light switch by the door. Nothing happened. — Who’s up there! he called loudly, raising the shovel, crouching again as light danced past the door above, then through it to the stairhead to break down on him between the eaves.
— Yes? Who is it?
The shovel came down slowly. — Who… is that!
— Oh it’s you Edward, watch where you step.
— You, who… who… The light caught his face square, then the smashed ink bottle flooding the carpeted stone toward the stairs.
— You look quite threatening with that shovel, I’m glad I…
— But the… Stella? What… She’d turned away with her light back into the hayloft as he mounted the stairs. — What’s happened!
She sat on an end of the bed dangling a flashlight. — What you see, she said, moving the light now over drawers jammed open at angles, a lampshade crushed, a spoon, a dresser scarf and Piston’s Harmony torn through the spine, sheet music and a player piano roll flung toward the opened window he walked past her to close and sink on the windowseat there, poking into its opened drawer.
— But what, what would anybody… he stared where her light fell on a Bach Wagner Program of Miss Isadora Duncan and Mister Walter Damrosch at Carnegie Hall Wednesday Afternoon February 15,19u, at 3 o’clock — why anybody would…
— No I opened that… her light swept over postal views of Cairo, — looking…
— But what looking for what! he was on his feet again — how did, where did you even come from!
— Just now? From the house, Edward… she sank back on an elbow, pulling her dress from a knee where the light caught it — those papers they want, a birth certificate just anything, Aunt Julia thought they must be there in the windowseat. Norman’s having some business problems he’s rather desperate to get things settled, we…
— Business look everything smashed broken the whole place torn up you’re sitting here in the middle of it with a flashlight like a, talking about Norman’s business problems all you want is some scrap of paper to prove I, that I’m…
— Oh Edward.
— What oh Edward what! you, you came out here once to make me look like I, I shouldn’t have told you… he stood over her where she’d come up from her elbow, where the light fell now on a souvenir menu from the Hamburg America Line still as her fallen shoulders — I should never have told you about that day seeing you that day up at, at, seeing you… and the flash of lightning that filled the skylight over them arrested her rising hand, arrested in detail strands of her pinned hair fallen loose on the defenseless slope of her back where he’d bent closer, where perspiration beaded her neck, where the balance of near dark left his hand’s tremble stilled in hers as Stella rose.
— It’s stifling, almost hot she said, — why don’t you open that again, that window… Again her light came up as if to search its casement out but held on him as he turned from it, opened, swept slowly down the desperate inquiry he posed, and then went out. Some sound of his come forward with him broke and left her sigh, so aspirate it seemed laid out there even when it was done, so heavy that it squared her shoulders turned from him so he ran on her elbow raised up against him in what light there was. — Can you undo this? little hook…? Hands suddenly in collision there he sought it but — no, she said, — I’ve got it, and left his hands hung shaping indecision for the instant till he caught her waist and caught his parting lips against the damp hair fallen at her temple. She turned and stepped away, not even looking, her hand behind her coursed the zipper down. — You can save that till we’re in bed, she said, inclined to draw the gray dress up and off, to steady a hand against a rafter and thrust one shoe away and then the other. — You don’t have to try to seduce me, Edward.
— I, Stella I… from there the tremor ran right through his fingertips tearing at laces, at his belt, a button, buttons, her shape a white slip bending forth to bring the torn spread into line before she raised it over her, lay back, and stared into the shadow of the beam in the eave’s drop above her head, unblinking for the flash that filled the skylight and as motionless for the thunder that came after.
— Well?
— I just… wanted to look he whispered, his voice like one long out of use gone in abrupt and shapeless fragments that might have framed apology or gratitude, or both, coming down, fighting a foot out of the spread’s tear as his shoulders came down to hers and lips delayed at her throat brushed up the scar there, moistened quickly before they sought her own. The opened window beyond was still enough but she turned her face from his so sharply toward it there might have been a light, some sound, some sudden movement from outside to leave his lips lodged at her ear so, filling its convolutions with his gasp of shock at how unseen beneath the spread her hand, unhesitating and without surprise, caress, or brush of exploration found and closed on him swelled to bursting and, silent, motionless, knees fallen wide, led him left thicketed there in dry abrasion as he swarmed over her and clinging headlong wrenched her shoulder in a plunge that left her open eyes fixed on a gap between the rafters where, even in this light, the points of shingle nails showed through in irregular rows, her only sound one that she might have made out of impatience jostled in a crowd, her only movement that sharp turn of her head away from the quaking rise of his, catching the threat of his lips and protest stifled in a bleat against her throat.
There half withdrawn from ambush lightning froze him seeking kneehold, poised upon the thrust to come, the thunder to come, the ease of the screen door below hung shaken twisted on one hinge, as wind might have shaken it, and then the crush of glass underfoot and the voice still to come, and loudly, — Stella? And then the thunder, sounding far away.
— Up here, she called unblinking past his shoulder, — we’re coming down… the instant’s twinge of her knees gone, limp as her hands spread wide beside them there palms up as though listlessly waiting to be filled.
— You’re what?
Her hands closed empty where he’d come down all weight and she gained an elbow bringing her shoulders up, dropping them with a sigh of movement no more than pushing a chair back leaving table. — Don’t try to come up without a light, she called again, one foot out to the floor, and the other — it’s quite a mess…
— But who is that!
— Just Norman… she stood steadying a hand to the rafter’s slant as she pressed into one shoe, then the other, bent to pick up that gray dress from the floor.