The image of love-making with Adrian became more and more vivid as time went by—and Herb began to be aware that quite a bit of it was going by. He looked at Adrian. She really seemed to be in a trance -- eyes closed, lips parted, completely motionless. He didn’t want to break the spell, but they couldn’t stay this way forever, could they?
“Adrian,” he said softly, “don’t you think it’s time we took a break?”
She seemed to come back from a long way away. “Oh, my,” she said, “did you feel it? Did you feel my spirit at one with yours? Oh, it’s positively orgiastic! The rapport! To be spiritually at one like that -- it does things to me. It amuses me and makes me want physical unity as well. Don’t you feel that way?”
“In spades!” Herb told her happily. This was it. He started to get up.
His scream was a gem of vocalized pain!
“What’s the matter?” Adrian unwound herself easily and went over to him.
“I can’t get up.” Herb’s voice was panicky.
“Here, let me help you.” Adrian took hold of a shoulder andl a toe.
The scream this time was supersonic, setting dogs to whining blocks away.
Adrian let go hastily and stood back to look at him. It was the kind of puzzled look one bestows upon a wet shoelace knot. “I never put you in that position,” she said positively. “You must have squirmed.”
“I did not squirm!”
“You must have! I can tell! Only a squirm could have gotten you into this fix!”
“All right! So I squirmed!" The sweat was pouring ofi Herb now. “What’s the difference? The question is, how do I get up?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, great. What am I supposed to do, spend the rest of my natural life this way?”
“Well, I don’t see what I can do about it.”
“Please! You’ve got to think of something.” Herb’s voice was pleading.
“Wait!” Adrian snapped her fingers. “I’ve got it. There's a chiropractor down the street. He’ll know what to do. I’ll be right back,” she called over her shoulder as she went out the door. “Just don’t do anything in the meantime.”
Like what, Herb wondered. Just what do pretzels do to pass the time? He couldn’t think of anything, so he just tried not to panic, and waited.
Finally, Adrian was back. With her was a husky, gray-haired man carrying a black bag. He set the bag down and walked around Herb slowly and silently. Then he shook his head and walked back around him the other way. He shook his head again and repeated the routine. Then-—
“Ahal” he said.
He poised directly over Herb and pulled back the sleeve on his right arm. The arm hovered over the center of the contorted mass and then plunged.
Glassware in the suburbs was shattered by this scream! But as its echo was dying out, Herb found that he was able to get to his feet and even move around a little bit without any pain.
“That’ll be five dollars,” the chiropractor told him.
Herb paid him gratefully.
Adrian saw him out the door and came back to Herb. “How do you feel?” she asked solicitously.
Herb moved this way and that, bent over a few times and then sat down. “I feel just fine,” he told her, a note of surprise in his voice. “I am embarrassed, though.”
“Don’t be. It’s my fault. After all, you’re still a novice. I should have watched you more carefully . . . But you did feel that oneness of your spirit and mine, didn’t you? Wasn’t it just wonderful?”
“Just wonderful,” Herb lied.
“Spiritual oneness is only complete when it’s followed by physical oneness. I mean, you’ve no idea how wonderful it can be.” Adrian’s breath was coming quickly. “Just because we’ve had a little mishap, I see no reason to deny ourselves the experience, do you?” Her fingertips danced insinuatingly over the back of his neck.
“None at all.” Herb slid his arm around her and kissed her.
It was like grabbing hold of a tigress in the mating season. Her hands ran wildly over his body, tearing at buttons, clawing at zippers. Her sharp teeth bit urgently at his ear, his neck, his shoulder. Her body undulated and arched in a frenzy of desire. She grabbed the back of his head, pressing his face to her breasts, guiding his mouth over them and moaning with passion. Then she abruptly got up and led him to the bedroom, shedding her clothes behind her like a pigeon-fancier scattering peanuts.
She threw herself to the bed, naked now, her hips rotating hungrily. Herb looked at her a moment, feeling his body respond to her need, letting desire build inside him until he was taut as a coiled spring. He sprang. Onto the bed, on top of the eagerly waiting girl.
“Now!” she panted. “Oh, yes! Now, now, now!"
Herb thrust his body to meet her demand and—-
Banshees give prizes for shrieks such as that one was; no other human voice-box could have duplicated it.
Herb collapsed in an agonized heap to the sheets.
“What is it? What is it?” Adrian was having difficulty adjusting to the turn of events.
“My back! I can’t move. I think something’s broken.”
“I’ll get the chiropractor again.” Adrian ran to the closet, threw on a coat, and was out the door.
Slowly, the pain subsided, but Herb still couldn’t move. His position was the same, his body still clothesless, when the chiropractor came through the door. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, the practitioner studied the situation. Then he reached under Herb, manipulated a spinal disc between his fingers for a moment, and said, “Try moving now.”
Herb moved. “Okay now,” he said. Then, just noticing-—“Where’s Adrian?”
“She said to tell you she wouldn’t be back. She hopes you’ll understand. Something about physical unity having to follow spiritual unity closely and she just couldn’t wait, so she was going to see a Yoga Third Class she knew. I don’t understand it, but then I don’t understand anything that’s going on around here. Just as a matter of curiosity, would you tell me how you managed to do this to your self?’
Herb told him.
The chiropractor’s laugh was suspiciously like the dentist’s laugh which had been haunting him all these years. True, he was older now, but it rang in his ears just as traumatically. He kept hearing it as he sat on the edge of the bed and wearily began to dress. It made him recall the whole series of fiascos which had marked his adult attempts to have sex with a woman.
Like the time he was on vacation and he and a local farmer’s daughter had been romping in the haymow. The girl had been a tease, but after a half-hour of passionate petting in the haystack, her teasing had made her as excited as he was. She had wriggled out of her jeans, angled her legs at 6:15, and urged him to deliver the goods. As eager as she, Herb had burrowed deep into the hay and was just about to make the final move when a field hand had plunged his pitchfork into the hay—and into Herb’s bare, poised rump. He still had the marks of the stitches . . .
Or the time some friends of his had touted him onto the neighborhood nympho. Anybody could make out with her, they’d assured Herb. She wanted her sex when she wanted it, and guys had been known to succeed with her in telephone booths, on crowded subways, in swimming pools, in the backs of cars—everywhere and anywhere. She was just a natural-born roundheels and there was nothing to it. So he went up to her apartment one night and, sure enough, they hadn’t been snowing him. She was out of her clothes before they'd finished their second drink. But the first one had gotten to her. “Say,” she said, “did you ever do it in the shower?” Herb admitted that he never had. “Let’s,” she giggled. So he’d stripped off his clothes and followed her into the stall shower, where she’d braced her legs, arched her pelvis, and told him she was ready. Herb was also ready and he lunged eagerly. It was an unfortunate move. His shoulder clipped the hot water faucet and their passion was drowned in a scalding downpour. Herb still had the sears from that one too—as well as the memory of paying her doctor bill . . .