Mingolla awakened from a dream of suffocation, unable to breathe the stale heated air inside the tent. He crawled out, stood and stretched. It had rained during the night, rinsing the sky of clouds, and the sun was fierce on the river, adding a shimmering glaze to its jade finish. Blue-and-silver fish were nudging pebbles along the bottom of the hot springs. It looked inviting. He could, he thought, get into nudging pebbles, hunting for tiny bugs in the silt. He stripped and waded in, quickstepping away from the scalding current that bubbled from the bank. The limestone bank extended about ten feet out, and at its edge the water was only inches deep over a smooth bottom. He kneeled, splashed himself, and tilted his face to the sun, his thoughts going with the race of the current. Something splashed near shore, and he turned toward the sound. Saw Debora standing in the water, undoing her blouse, her jeans folded on the bank. Water beads glistened on her thighs, in her black pubic brush. She shrugged off the blouse, held it crumpled in front of her, then tossed it next to the jeans. For a moment her body seemed inset into the greenery, a keyhole opening onto a tawny desert place.
His senses ran out of him, coiling around her. She was a little thick-waisted, her breasts so small in contrast to the fullness of her hips that they looked immature, and this gave her a sexy childlike allure. She kneeled facing him, her expression tentative, a dozen expressions trying to be one, and he thought he must look much the same, because now he was insecure, afraid of making mistakes with her.
‘I couldn’t…’ she said. ‘I had to.’
He wasn’t sure what specific uncertainty she was trying to put behind her, but to smooth over her confusion he kissed her, met her tongue, and slid a hand along her inner thigh. She eased into the touch, and his finger slipped between her legs, found her open; she shifted forward, letting his finger penetrate, and he understood that she didn’t want to wait, she wanted to rush past the beginning, to know everything. He lifted her astraddle him, and her head resting on his shoulder, her hair striping his vision, she guided him into place, worked herself down until he was all the way inside. To be held that way, her warmth enclosing him, gripping him, it was, Jesus! so good, so good, he was melting in her, dissolving in that perfect fit. He could feel a clean untroubled face breaking through his old mask of war and anger, the shards falling away into the flood of the sun, the daze of bright water. Everything was melting, the jungle and the river running together, slick with heat and brilliance, greens and blues washing into a unity of light that penetrated his eyelids. She began to tremble, her nails pricking his back, and just the trembling nearly brought him off.
He needed to move but they were angled wrong. Supporting her with one hand, he tipped her backward until her hair fanned across the water; he planted his free arm on the bottom to bear their weight. Her legs locked around his waist, inching him deeper, and he came, all the bad days, the longing, loosed in a heart-stopping pour that left him wobbly and gulping for breath. But he stayed hard, wanting her again. Sweat trickled down his back like molten cracks spreading; salt drops stung his eyes. His planted arm began to ache with the awkwardness of the position, but then as if it had connected with limestone muscles, the ache subsided. She worked her hips, grinding, pushing, building her moment. It was quick for her, too. Her belly tensed, she gave a sharp cry and clawed at his shoulders. Then she relaxed, mouth going slack, eyes closed against the glare. He pulled out, eased back in. So good, that silky muscle. Good like Jesus, like everything calm and sweet at once. A single word began sounding over and over in his head, Debora, Debora, Debora, but that wasn’t it, not her name, her name was only a translation of the real word, which meant much more, secret kingdoms of meaning, of mastery and giving. He looked down at her. At the tendrils of black hair floating on jade, the dreamy eastern face. He saw where they joined. He wished he could say something, tell her something, but he was leery of words… words spoken out loud had the weight of evidence, they could be held against you, and even though they’d become lovers, there was still distrust between them. But it was all right, all right for now. He gazed out past her head across the shimmering water toward the tree line, and as he moved again, as it became all right forever for a moment, he caught a flash of the way it had been after they’d mowed down the jungle around the Ant Farm: the full-bore immensity and silence of the light, the clear innocent air above palms blackened like matchsticks, the cracked red earth leaking steam, and how they’d walked through the dead land, crunching the scorched, brittle stalks underfoot, unafraid, because all the snakes in hiding were now just shadows in the cinders.
They lay on their sides in the warm flow of the springs, and looking at the far bank, at the diminutive crowns of the trees, Mingolla felt they had grown enormous, that they were two exhausted giants newly surfaced from a deep. Debora threw back her head, and at that precise instant something silver streaked across the top of the sky; a worry line creased her brow. He pulled her to him, but she drew back and said, ‘No… the tent. Let’s go in the tent.’ And coming to her feet with a splash, she outran him to the bank.
With the flap closed, sealing them into a confine of half-dark and air as still as a held breath, he felt more alone with her, strangely more alive. Her body was aglow with dampness, her eyes were gleams. He kneeled between her legs, bent lower and tasted her. Tasted her, exploring the folds of her cunt, lapping at her, imagining honey smearing his mouth. She hardly moved for a minute or so, but he could tell how she’d wanted this, how known and gloried in it made her feel. Her hips bucked, her legs clamped his head. Breath was knocked out of her in hoarse gasps. The muscles of her stomach bunched, and she wrapped her hands in his hair, holding him immobile, as if were he to take his mouth away or do anything more, she would break into pieces. Afterward he lay beside her, kissed her, and she said, ‘I can taste myself… I thought it’d be horrible to taste myself.’