Margaret stood just inside the door and looked at the bed.
“I wish...”
“What?” he asked. He took her coat and draped it over one of the chairs, and then threw his own over it unceremoniously.
“I wish it wasn’t the first thing you saw,” she said, staring at the bed.
“We can still leave,” he said. “Or we can stay and just talk.”
“No. It’s all right.” She went to the bed and sat on the edge of it. There was a peculiar resignation in her eyes. She sighed and then reluctantly lay back. Pulling her legs up onto the bed, she closed her eyes and said, “This is what you want, isn’t it?”
“Doesn’t what you want count at all?” He sat down beside her. He did not touch her. He sat watching her. She opened her eyes and looked at him with mild surprise, as if first discovering him and the room they were in.
“Take off your lipstick,” he said.
She shook her head.
“Take it off.”
“No, if you want to kiss me, kiss me.”
He brought his face very close to hers. Her eyes remained open, wide and brown, never leaving his face. He could smell the scent of her hair, the faint trace of perfume. He kept watching the cushion of her mouth, but he did not kiss her.
“You’re very lovely,” he said.
“Are you going to kiss me?”
He kissed her, and his lips clung to hers, clung to the adhesive lipstick for just a moment. And then he moved back from her and looked at her mouth, puzzled. “You don’t know how to kiss,” he said.
She shook her head.
“But...”
“Teach me,” she said, and he wondered if this were the same gag she’d pulled with the drink and the holding of the glass. He kissed her again, lightly. She kept her lips firmly together, her mouth unmoving, accepting his kiss the way a mother or a sister would.
“Take off your lipstick” he said again.
“Why?”
“Because I’m going to kiss you hard, and I have to go home tonight.”
She did not move. She stared at him in silent defiance. He reached for her bag, opened it, took out two tissues, and said, “Shall I do it?”
“No.” She pulled the tissues from his hand and wiped her mouth. She rubbed the lipstick off most fiercely, and then she snapped her bag shut and lay back again.
“Now teach me,” she said.
He took her chin in his hand. He leaned over her, his mouth an inch from her lips. “Open your mouth,” he said.
She parted her lips. He kissed her and then said, “Suck in your breath. Give me something to kiss.”
“Like this?” she asked, and pulled his mouth to hers.
“That’s better.”
“Again,” she said. Her voice was very low. He kissed her again, and then drew away.
“You’re doing much—”
“Kiss me,” she said.
He kissed her again.
“Kiss me. Don’t stop kissing me.”
He pulled her to him, his mouth hard, his arms hard, feeling a sudden spasm of desire as her body moved in against his. She was incredibly soft and pliant, and she moved into the closeness of his arms as if she had been there many times before, as if she knew every angle of his body and moved now to adjust her own body so that the bones, the warm flesh, the willing muscles clicked, locked into place with his, fit into place like the last piece of a long, long puzzle.
“Larry,” she said.
“What?”
“You’re getting me hot.”
He had never heard a woman use that expression, and he felt something wildly alien stir within him. He seized her roughly, fiercely catching her mouth with his own. His hands found the zipper at the back of her dress and as the zipper lowered she said, “No,” and then “No” again, and then he slid the dress from her shoulders and she wriggled to help him as he lowered it to her waist saying, “No, no,” all the while. He unclasped her brassiere and the globes of her breasts were free, and she said, “No, please, no,” and he kissed her, and the flow of words stopped until his hands were on her breasts and then she said, “Oh, please, please, no, please, no,” under his fingers, and suddenly her back arched and she pulled his head to her breasts and her hand tightened at the back of his neck, and he kissed her nipples and her throat, his hands covering her body, her body arching to every quivering touch of his hands, and she kept saying, “No, no,” and then they were naked, their bodies still locked as if they had always been together, locked, and he was dizzy with the scent of her and the sight of her and the touch of her, and she said, “Do you have... I don’t want a baby,” and he said, “Yes, Maggie,” and she said, “Yes, yes, yes,” and then she sighed, “Oh, Larry.”
And for him there was nothing in the world but her, nothing but the warmth of her surrounding him, gently cradling him, nothing else but the woman beneath him moaning; he was senseless, bodiless, mindless, soulless, she was all, she was everything, and he took her, took her with both hands, took her with honey overflowing both hands.
And for her there was nothing in the world but him, nothing but the warm thrust of invasion, penetration, deep, deep, nothing else but the man above her moaning; she was senseless, bodiless, mindless, soulless, he was all, he was everything, and she accepted, surrendered, gave, gave, with all, captured at last, held at last, overflowing.
They did not put it into the formal words until they had seen each other for a total of four times. He called her often between meetings, but they did not exchange the formal words until a cold night in December.
And then, spent, lying side by side in the room, watching the coals of their cigarettes in the darkness, listening to the music from the pay-radio and the howl of the wind outside, he said simply, “I love you, Maggie.”
And she said, “I love you.”
And the words had been spoken, and now there was no return.
Book Two
14
She wore the topaz earrings for the first time in January.
The earrings had belonged to her grandmother, who’d died long before Margaret was born. Her grandfather had kept the earrings and given them to Margaret several weeks before his own death. She had never worn them before. Up until the time he’d died, she had taken them out of their box almost every day, standing before the mirror and holding them to her ears, a saucy gleam in her brown eyes, just waiting for the day when she’d be old enough to wear them.
And then, with his death, all joy seemed to go out of the teardrop-shaped earrings. She wrapped them carefully and put them away. They had been pressed into her hand by the man she called “Papa,” and now Papa was dead, and suddenly the earrings had gone lifeless and she’d had no desire to wear them ever.
She wore them in January.
She wore black slacks, and a black sweater, and a short red car coat, the collar high against her cheek. And she wore the topaz earrings, and she hustled Patrick out of the house twenty minutes before the bus was scheduled to arrive. The weekend had been a very long one, and she looked forward to seeing Larry this morning, and she wanted to look very pretty. She told herself she was behaving like a silly adolescent girl, but nonetheless she hurried to the bus stop, and she was annoyed because she could not see his house, from there.
“It’s cold, Mummy,” Patrick said.
“Yes,” she answered absently.
“Why’d we have to come so early?”
“The fresh air will do us good,” she said.
“Mum?”
“Yes?”
“Do you love me?”
Startled, she looked down at her son. “Why...” It had never occurred to her that he wondered such things. She stared at him in slow understanding. “I love you very much, sweetheart,” she said.