He put his hand on her knee, squeezed. The disorientation of the marijuana high had abated now. He was still stoned, but in a way that did not interfere with linear thought. He just felt very good, very happy, utterly relaxed.
He said, “Do you remember when I was stuck on the book and then in the middle of a conversation with you I went in there and started writing like a maniac?”
“Of course I remember. I brought you coffee and you didn’t even know I was there.”
“Well, that same day I typed out the dedication page. You gave me the help I needed. I don’t even remember what it was you said, what we were talking about, but before then the book was all from the wife’s viewpoint.”
“And you got the idea from me of bringing in the daughter?”
“She would have been a character anyway. But now it’s a whole different book.” He explained to her some of the ways the book had developed. “I shouldn’t be telling you all this,” he added.
“You mean like trade secrets?”
“Hardly. No, I mean a reader should be able to think that a book happened in one particular way because it couldn’t have happened in any other way.”
“It couldn’t have.”
He had just been thinking that himself. In this book, more than any other he had written, the characters had insisted upon speaking their own lines.
“So that’s why you dedicated it to me. I was wondering.”
“Why did you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“It would have wound up dedicated to you anyway. The way it turned out.”
“It’s about me, isn’t it?”
“Did you feel that?”
“Only on every fucking page. It was almost scary.”
“She’s not precisely you.”
“An awful lot of her is. To me, anyway.”
“Yes, a great deal of her. The relationship.”
“Right.”
“Having you here has taught me a lot about fathers and daughters, Karen. Any honest book has to grow out of what a man knows.”
“I was so proud of her.”
“Were you? So was I.”
“I was so proud that you, that you felt, that the way you think of me — I don’t know how to say it.”
He put his arm around her. Her head settled on his shoulder.
At one point he stacked some, records on the record player. At another point he went into the-kitchen and came back with bottles of scotch and soda and a bowl of ice cubes. “It’s the running around that gets to you,” he said then. “A person can stand a long night of drinking, but all that walking back and forth is bad for the legs.”
And it was shaping up as a long night of drinking. They were talking less now that the music was playing, frequently lapsing into long silences with her head on his shoulder and his arm around her. He would think now and then that it was late, that they had already done more than enough drinking, that they ought to go to sleep. But it was too perfect a night to end, and neither of them ever suggested ending it.
Eventually they were talking again about the book. He said that he would have to proofread it soon, and how he hated proofreading. She offered to do it for him.
“I’ll have to do it myself,” he said. “So I can see what has to be revised.”
“Nothing has to be revised.”
“Well, I’ll have to go through it anyway and make sure.”
“But I’ll proofread the galleys,” she said.
“Oh, that won’t be for almost a year. That’s a long ways off.” She stiffened. “Kitten? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Did I say something?”
“No,” she said. But her face was troubled. “I just—”
“Tell me.”
“You mean I won’t be here then.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“But I won’t, will I?”
“Where are you off to?”
“Do you mean I can stay?”
“Of course you can stay. This is—”
“I’m not in the way?” There were tears in her eyes. “I just don’t want to go anywhere,” she said. “I just feel so good here. I feel guilty about it.”
“Guilty?”
“I just love being with you,” she said. “I don’t ever want to go away.”
“Oh, kitten.”
“Look at me, I’m shaking. I’m all funny inside. Oh, please hold me.” He said, “Easy, baby. Easy now.” He held her close and stroked her hair while she wept against his shirt. “Easy,” he said, touching her hair, rubbing the back of her neck. “Oh, stay forever,” he said. “Don’t ever go. Don’t ever leave me.”
“Oh—”
He tipped up her chin and kissed her. He kissed her, and she was his daughter, his flesh, and he loved her. He kissed her and she was every woman he had ever wanted, all he had ever wanted, and her arms were around his neck and her lips were parted and he was kissing her now with his heart pounding and his tongue in her mouth and his hands on her back, feeling her, caressing her, and her flesh trembled in response, and—
He broke the kiss. He stared at her and saw himself reflected in her eyes. Her eyes bored into his for a long moment during which he was conscious of nothing else. Then, without breaking the stare, she nodded her head.
He could not move.
“Yes,” she said.
He could not close his eyes. He could not move.
“Yes.”
It was very like a dream. He had the sort of awareness one has in dreams when one wants to change his course but is powerless to do so. He took her clothes off piece by piece. He kissed her and stroked her body. He removed his own clothing and lay full length on the couch with her and felt her flesh against his own.
He seemed to know her body. His hands knew how and where to touch her, and he sensed what her responses would be before she could make them. As if this were not merely a dream but one he had dreamed before.
When he entered her, she reached orgasm immediately. Her parts rippled in climax before he was fully inside of her. Her eyes were closed at that moment, but then she opened them and did not close them again.
He moved in and out of her slowly, lazily, entering her and leaving her in long liquid strokes, as if to make this last forever as he had wished to make the night last forever. He was lost, lost, drowned in her eyes, her mouth, her young warmth.
Until at last he came, and all his being spurted into all of hers.
Walking, pacing, his hand a vise on his forehead, pacing back and forth.
How? How?
“Daddy!”
How could this have happened? How could he have allowed this to happen?
“Daddy—”
How could he have done this to her?
“Daddy, look at me. Daddy, please, look at me.”
But he couldn’t. He felt her hands on his arm and he stopped but could not make himself look down at her. She put her arms around his waist and hugged him and his body went cold and stiff.
“Daddy, don’t hate me.”
He stared at her.
“Please,” she said.
“Hate you?”
“Please don’t.”
He stood there.
“I was the one who wanted it. I said yes.”
“Karen—”
“I knew what I was saying. I said it twice. Don’t you understand? I wanted it to happen.”
A wave of dizziness struck him. He got to a chair and collapsed into it. She stood at the side of the chair looking down at him and all he could think of was how beautiful she was. He had never seen her look so beautiful. He had never seen anyone look so beautiful.
“Daddy, I wanted this to happen. Oh, God. Not just tonight. I’ve always wanted it. I didn’t know it. I swear I didn’t know it. It was in my mind and I didn’t know it was there. It was out there on—” her voice broke — “on the edge of thought.”