Chapter 40
Darlene’s matted auburn hair had fallen partly across Gregory Sullivan’s face but mostly across his heaving torso. Outside it was a cold morning after a rainy, blowy night; inside the second floor ‘studio’ — a room just big enough to accommodate a slightly larger than standard single bed, a sink and an ancient cooker cum stove with a iron hob bolted atop it and a few rickety cupboards, adjoining a ‘bathroom’ which comprised a toilet and a claustrophobic, mostly frigid shower within it behind a canvas screen — seemed warm, almost humid.
As the man’s totally scattered wits began to coalesce into something a little more like sentience he blew some of the strands of his lover’s crazily spread hair from his mouth and nose, and hugged her breathless, quivering torso close to his body as if he was terrified she would go away. They were lying in a puddle of perspiration, wet everywhere and virtually incapable of moving, she impaled upon him, he pinned deliciously by her weight in the confusion of sheets and blankets. His attempt to stretch beneath her produced a satisfied, complacent gurgling whimper of pleasure.
Presently, Darlene propped herself on her forearms, resting on his chest. She tried to sweep back her mane of dark hair and peered at him, oddly self-conscious in exactly the way she had not been at any time after she had slipped out of her clothes and he had turned out the lights the previous evening. They had made love four, maybe five times but for the moment she could not organise her recollections in such as way as to confirm, with any degree of confidence that this morning’s coupling had been the fourth or the fifth. She had awakened aching to be fucked one more time and been surprised in the nicest possible way when it had quickly become evident that Gregory felt the same shameless lust.
She met his gaze, instantly lowered her eyes.
“Why, Miss Lefebure,” Gregory grinned, saner now that his heart had stopped trying to explode out of his chest, “fancy meeting you here this morning!”
Darlene giggled and could not stop giggling.
Or at least she could not stop until her bladder brought her down to earth with a rudely urgent jolt. She rolled off the bed and scurried the three paces to the ‘bathroom’.
The ‘bathroom’ did not actually have a door but Gregory Sullivan was too much of a gentleman to watch. He waited until she returned to the bed, loudly pursued by the clanking and banging of what passed for the building’s plumbing as the water closet cistern noisily refilled.
Gregory swung his legs over the side of the bed.
Darlene planted herself on his lap, reminding the man that there was absolutely nothing he did not completely adore about Miss Darlene Lefebure. From the top of her head to the soles of her feet she was perfect, her lazy southern drawl with its elongated vowels and marvellously melodic rhythms, her minutely turned up nose, the laughter that so often flickered in her eyes, her pale, pert warm, soft nakedness was…perfect. There was no other word, only ‘perfect’ got close and even that seemed vaguely inadequate in the heat of their love making.
However, after a while they became aware that they were both very sweaty, and well, a little rank and that they ought to make an effort to wash and brush up before they went out. This was the third night Darlene had ‘slept over’ in Sausalito; last night they had surpassed themselves, every time they made love they seemed to fit together better.
Darlene was a little giddy with it.
Every time her life had threatened to touch happiness before meeting Gregory Sullivan something had always gone wrong and Greg was far too good to be true. She brushed his face with the back of her right hand; just to make sure he was flesh and blood, that this was not some kind of weird and cruel dream that was going to be snatched away from her in the blink of an eye.
They nuzzled foreheads for a second.
Kissed slowly, moistly.
He had said he loved her last night but that did not count; but likewise, she had whispered back his words.
It was after ten o’clock by the time they left the house and walked the short distance down to Bridgeway Drive, the road that ran along the Sausalito shore all the way past Marin County before it crossed Route 101, the road over the Golden Gate Bridge. This morning the lovers had no intention of walking that far along the eastern shore of Richardson Bay; or not at least on empty stomachs after their exhaustingly strenuous mutual endeavours of the last few hours. They dived into a diner as a squall of wintery rain began to drift over the hills behind the town, and squirmed onto the benches either side of a table in the window with an unobstructed view out across the misty waters.
“I should ring Aunt Molly,” Darlene declared. “She’ll worry.”
“I think they’ve got a pay phone in the corner. It’s usually working in this place,” the man told her, digging in his jacket pocket for loose change as the waitress, an older woman with greying hair who had seen Gregory around before and knew he taught at the school three blocks away, came over to the couple smiling a maternally warming smile.
The badge on the woman’s lapel said ‘Rosie’.
Gregory asked for coffees, a glass of milk for Darlene — he remembered she liked to drink a glass of milk for breakfast because she had dropped the information in conversation on their first date — and feeling like a million dollars ordered the sort of meal a starving Grizzly Bear, or a three hundred pound a Hell’s Angel who had been the road one stop ahead of the law for a week, or two long-distance truckers about to run a consignment of guns down to the Mexican border would have demanded. Darlene politely suggested they forego some of the extras, to which he acceded, reality dawning just before it was too late.
Rosie smiled benignly, mostly at Darlene and departed. She returned to pour coffee, brought Darlene’s glass of milk and a variety of eating utensils, a fresh salt cellar and two napkins, obviously marking down the two polite young people in the window as the sort of couple who appreciated such things.
“I’ll make that call?” Darlene suggested, a little daunted by the prospect of attempting to innocently explain away yet another night on the tiles. “What time should I say I’ll be back in San Francisco?”
Gregory thought about it.
“Never?”
Darlene gave him a momentarily vexed look before she translated what he had just said to her.
“Never?”
Gregory shrugged, suddenly tongue-tied.
Darlene pursed her lips in thought.
“I can’t say that to Aunt Molly…”
“No,” Gregory agreed. “We should be together when we say it to her,” he quirked a lopsided grin. “And to Uncle Harvey and all the other people we need to tell.”
Darlene giggled, lowered her gaze.
“We’ll go back over the Golden Gate in time for dinner tonight if Aunt Molly will have us,” Gregory decided tentatively. His Aunt and Uncle did not know about him and Darlene, not yet. They had been very secretive and he did not think Miranda would have ‘blabbed’ about that time she had come over to Sausalito and Darlene had opened the door. “This time we’ll arrive together. If that’s okay with you, Miss Lefebure?”
It was completely okay with her. She had done her best not to lie to Aunt Molly but she felt bad not telling her the truth even if it might cause problems with Gregory’s Ma and Pa. Gregory had wanted to drop all pretence a week ago; then she had hesitated and he had backed off. That had been a mistake and she did not plan to repeat it. Just because Gregory was too good to be true did not mean the way she felt about him was not true.