“I was thinking again about that woman,” she said, peering down into the wine in her glass. “You know, the one who sent that man to talk to you at Smitty’s?” She pretended to search her mind for the name. “Was it June? Yes, that’s right, isn’t it? June Singer. What was it that she wanted?”
He had already had to fib the day after the man first appeared and tell Dora that June was just someone he’d met in the war and later worked for, doing odd jobs and chores, which is what she had asked him to do again.
“She won’t come around,” he told her now. “I said I wasn’t i nterested.”
“Seems like she could get anybody to do odd jobs. Why should she ask you?”
“I don’t know,” he said, which he didn’t, though it was only because he had refused to let any part of his mind alight on her. There were entire worlds of reasons for her to have sought him out, the most immense of which was what finally happened at the orphanage, and with Sylvie Tanner. But there was nothing but blackness to go over again. Of course he had been with June even afterward, a very brief and strange period that led to his bringing her over, as his legal bride, though once landed they had just as quickly separated, neither in the least inclined during the past twenty-six years to do anything but wholly forget the other existed.
“You must have been important to her somehow,” Dora said. “A woman wouldn’t send somebody otherwise. She would have found somebody else. But if you don’t want to talk about it, I understand.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
She finished what was left in her wineglass and then filled it up again. “It doesn’t matter to me. You don’t have to say any more. I don’t care how many women you’ve had in your life. Past or present.”
“Present?”
“I’m just telling you I don’t care at all.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Well, I’m just telling you. You’re not the only one with options, you know. I work with lots of people at the furniture store. Most of them are men.”
“I’m sure they are.”
“The manager even asked me out the other day, right out of the blue. I’ve worked with him for years. He said I was looking ‘vivacious’ these days. He’s okay, I guess, but to be polite I said I had to think about it. What do you think about that?”
“I guess you ought to do what you want.”
“That’s the question for us, isn’t it?”
When he didn’t say anything Dora got up and asked him if he would like another slice of pie.
“Sure,” he said. “But I’ll go get it.”
“I’m going inside anyway, for my shawl. It’s suddenly getting cooler. Like a storm is coming.”
“I’ll move everything back inside.”
“No, I like the air. Let’s stay out here as long as we can. Okay?”
“Okay.”
As she passed him he hooked her thigh with his hand and drew her close, a brackish-sweet air from their earlier exertions filtering through the thin muslin fabric of her skirt. The scent of them was heavy and he breathed it in deep, to let it etherize him, though it worked the opposite effect. He cupped her broad bottom and she responded by pressing his face into her belly, pinching the roots of his dark thick hair between her fingers.
“I want to stay here with you,” he said. “Nothing else.”
“You don’t have to say that. I’m a big girl.”
“I’m not saying anything I don’t want to.”
She leaned down and pecked him lightly and he kissed her back with a force and fullness that seemed to draw off all her blood and then fill her up again, her cheeks and neck flushed, dewy. His mouth peppered the patches of color on her pale skin, taking in her ear and then her throat, gliding down to the soft flesh above her breastbone and resting there while he guided her leg until she sat straddling him in the rickety chair, which creaked loudly and sharply.
“We’re going to break it,” Dora said, backing off slightly.
“You can fall on me.”
“Aren’t those children still around?”
“They all went inside,” he said, but only because there were no more reports of their play. She didn’t look around, either. Her long skirt tented their legs and while kissing him she reached beneath and unbuttoned his trousers and raised herself just enough to shift them down. Her own underclothing was in the way and he tugged at it and she simply pulled it to the side, clearing a way, recalling to him again what he liked best about her, her plain good sense and lack of put-on shame and fundamental ease with her body.
“Can I tell you something?” she said.
“Uh-oh.”
“I don’t have to. I can shut up.”
“Go ahead.”
“Did you know you are a very good-looking man? It’s hard to see it because you don’t wear it easily. But, honestly, you’re the most handsome man I’ve ever seen, much less known. Only the funny-looking ones have ever gone for me. I guess poor Sloan was the last example. And there you were, every night at Smitty’s, with no one to appreciate you. You don’t know any of this, do you?”
He didn’t answer, because it was always easier not to say that he did know it, and had known so all his life, how he was sorry for the specific misery his appearance had brought him and others, and for what? For the great sum of nothing.
“Now I’ve killed the mood.”
“No, you haven’t,” he said, pulling her closer.
“You like it out in the open air, don’t you, mister?” she whispered, hovering above the now high-angling press of him.
“Must be your fault.”
“Mm-hmm,” she said, teasing him, slowly spanning him, like a blind, knowing snail.
“You’re ready yourself,” he said.
“I was going in for more pie.”
“You can go.”
“I will.”
But she didn’t, nor did Hector stir a hair, both of them content to linger in the half-light. They could not know that their pose from any distance appeared to be as chastely still as sculpture. Desire in Middle Life. And it was in this marble calm that Dora took on a sudden shine, her skin and hair lustrously abloom with the wondrous feed of stopped time, her heart as well as her mind momentarily unburdened of their accreted regrets, self-lashings, those long-ingrained gravities, so that it seemed to Hector that she was thusly gliding above him at a tiny but still measurable remove, which was in fact a blessing; he could handle her quite near, though much closer and he might panic, maybe cut and run. And he didn’t wish anymore to do that.
Afterward, while Dora slept in the bedroom, he found himself cleaning up the apartment. They had started early and it wasn’t even dark yet, just past eight o’clock. She always dozed a little after sex. Plus, she’d had a whole bottle of wine, and the better half of a second. He’d drunk plenty himself but as usual he remained more lucid than he preferred to be, the beer more like coffee to his system, arresting nothing useful (like memory), and blotting only his already paltry need for sleep.
He quietly washed the soiled dishes and pots they’d left in their haste to get to the bed, then swept the floors and polished the counters and the stovetop. From his job he had all the supplies one might need, but since living here he had never once bothered to clean the place thoroughly. Once or twice a month he’d make a cursory pass with a sponge and broom. No one had ever visited before, and he wouldn’t have cared anyway, but mostly the apartment was messy because he no longer registered the layers of grime and dust. For if you suspected you were immortal, if you were afraid you might never be extinguished, the evidence of which had accrued enough over the years to convince him to almost believe its truth-the way his wounds, even the seemingly grave ones he’d suffered during the war, healed with a magical swiftness; that he had aged in a way that appeared to the eye as if there were no other time except this one, no prior or future state-the concern for something like cleanliness, strangely enough, receded.