Walking up the street, I noticed the blue minivan parked across the way from the inn. I approached from the rear and rapped hard on the passenger side window. The campus security guy nearly coughed up his glazed doughnut.
“Just checking in,” I screamed through the rolled-up window. “Got back from downstate sooner than I thought.”
He tried, and failed, to look unfazed by my abrupt return. It’s tough to act cool with a chewed doughnut hanging out of your mouth. His partner in the driver’s seat was considerably less worried about my opinion of things and gave me the finger. I respected that. He and doughnut-boy had more than likely gotten reamed for losing me. As a gesture of goodwill, I showed them the bottle of Korbel and left it on the sidewalk.
Once inside the Old Watermill, I continued acting like a smug jerk. I found my pal at the front desk. He put down his spy novel and gave me a knowing smile. But what did he know, I wondered? There were no messages for me.
“Listen, buddy,” I whispered, “she’s coming over tonight. Do me a favor and send her right up when she gets here, okay?”
“Sure thing, Mr. Klein.”
“Anybody come in here today looking for me?”
“Nobody,” he said, giving the boy scout salute.
I handed him the champagne. “You think you can have this chilled for me and have it sent up when my date gets here?”
“No problem.”
I didn’t give him a tip. He’d made all the money off me he was going to make.
The room was different somehow. I can’t explain it. Hotel rooms aren’t like your own place. I couldn’t vouch for where I had put my dirty socks or what page the paper was turned to when I put it down before sleep. I didn’t know what bugs hung out in the corners of the ceiling. I didn’t know the smells or the sounds. And there was a cleaning service that came in every day to pick up after me, to make the bed, to fold the end of the toilet paper into a point. Even so, I could not shake the feeling that someone who did not belong had been in my room. But I also thought we’d have a colony on the moon by now.
The Day the Earth Stood Still
As promised, he sent her right up. Even called me to let me know she was coming. I was glad to see Jeffrey’s five hundred dollars hadn’t gone totally to waste. Hey, for another hundred, maybe he would have escorted Kira to my room.
I was obviously grinning like an idiot when I opened the door.
“What?”
“You’re what,” I said, pulling her into my room by the wrist and kicking the door shut behind her.
I proceeded to kiss her until the air she breathed out was the air I breathed in, until I was drunk from it. Although I will likely remember that one kiss even after I’m dead, it wasn’t overtly sexual. It was a kiss of joy, of relief; a kiss that hinted at the absence of love in my life. And when we finally let our lips pull apart, Kira hung her head.
“What is it?” I nudged her chin up with my finger.
She was crying, silently. Glistening streams ran over her translucent skin into the edges of her mouth. The tip of her tongue moved from side to side licking at the tears. I did not need to ask what the tears were for. If I had had the courage, I would have been crying, too.
“I am falling in love with you, Uncle Dylan. And last night, I was afraid. I could feel a wall around you, built to keep me out.”
“There was a wall, but I didn’t build it.”
“I don’t understand.”
I told her everything. I had to. There was never a thought of holding back, though I realized she might’ve felt betrayed by my readiness to believe the worst of her. I explained that my disbelief in her said more about my life than hers. She did not flinch.
“Do you think he lied or just got it wrong?” Kira wanted to know.
“I’m not sure.”
Laughing, she said: “Professor Courteau must have fainted when you told her about wanting to use my drawings for your next book.”
“I had to call the paramedics.”
Kira slapped me playfully. I pulled her close again. We fell onto the bed. When we came up for air, she was smiling up at me with a glint of mischief in her black eyes.
“What now?” I asked.
“Would I have been worth the hundred and fifty dollars the desk clerk claimed they charged for me?”
“More.”
There was a knock on the door. It was room service with my chilled champagne. I shooed the waiter away with an overwhelming tip and a shove on the shoulder. I opened the champagne properly, holding the cork and twisting the bottle slowly. Kira had already helped herself to an empty flute which I filled with an inch of champagne and five inches of white foam. I didn’t bother with a glass myself and we clinked bottle to flute.
Coyly, she wondered, “How much more would I be worth?”
“Back to that again?” I tried unsuccessfully to sneer at her. “I don’t know, a buck and a quarter maybe.”
She punched me in the arm, less playfully this time.
“Ouch!” I rubbed it. “Okay, I’ll tell you how much more you’re worth. You’re worth the rest of my life. If I thought there was a chance you’d say yes, I’d ask you to marry me.”
Her face went utterly blank. She knew I wasn’t kidding.
“I’d like that,” she whispered, curling her arms and legs about me. “Ask me.”
“But I’m old enough-”
“-to make me happy.”
“What about school?”
“I suddenly don’t care much for Riversborough. Ask me, Dylan.”
“Will you marry me?”
“Yes.”
At that moment I wasn’t thinking of love and the future, children and white picket fences. I was thinking of a movie, The Day The Earth Stood Still. There’s this scene when Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal are trapped alone together in a darkened elevator as all the power in all the world is shut off for half an hour. And in that half hour, as the rest of the planet panics, Rennie and Neal, people literally from two different worlds, bond in a permanent, unspoken way. Even as a kid, before I understood anything about love and relationships, the power of their connection in that dark elevator got to me. I guess it’s funny what you think about.
“Where are you?” Kira caught me drifting.
“Trapped on an elevator.”
I never did get to explain that. Reaching back, she flicked off the lights. Taking a gulp of champagne, she kissed me, urging some of the wine into my mouth. I swallowed it. She kissed me again, softly, peeling back my denim shirt. She ran her tongue down along the hair of my chest. Kira cradled my left nipple between her lips, first sucking gently, then harder and harder still. I cupped the back of her head in my hand and pressed her lips against my chest. Sliding a petite hand along my abdomen, she undid my belt and button. With some persuasion, my pants and briefs fell to the floor.
Kira bit my nipple. She poured herself some more champagne, directly from the bottle this time, and dropped to her knees. She took me into her mouth. I got weak. The mixture of her hot breath and the cold wine against my skin was so overwhelming, my knees buckled. But I held back. I wanted to be inside her, holding her, not standing above her. My impending orgasm, however, would not afford me the leisure of taking it slow and easy. I pulled away and pulled her up, tearing at Kira’s black silk blouse. The buttons ricocheted off the walls and windows like so many BBs. There was no brassiere to tangle with.
Sucking on her breasts, I worked her pants loose. She kicked them free of her legs as I rolled her onto the bed. I kissed her mouth, her painted red lips were dry with the fever of the moment. Her tongue forced its way between my teeth. She reached below my waist and pulled me into her. Her vagina was incredibly wet with excitement, so wet that I felt I could slide my soul inside her. Kira’s back arched up. Her teeth took hold of my bottom lip and I tasted blood as I let go of forty years of aloneness in ten exquisite seconds.