“Sweeney,” he whispered. “Oh, Sweeney…”
We made love there, the tree wound about with ivy that tangled with Dylan’s hair and fingers, my skirt torn and scattered with bark as Dylan moved against me until he cried out and the two of us slid down, gasping, into the carpet of myrtle that blanketed the earth.
Nothing had changed. The night was soft and darkly golden as before. In its secret haven the mockingbird still sang. Overhead the sky was starless, but I could hear the first far-off stirrings of morning, subway cars moving into Union Station, the rush of distant wheels.
“We should go in,” I said at last. I smoothed my ruined skirt, tried to stand, and slid down again helplessly, my legs were so weak. “Jesus! Where’d you learn to do that?”
Dylan pulled me up, grinning. “You liked it?”
I laughed and plucked a bit of vine from his hair. “It was okay,” I said, and taking his hand started back toward the carriage house.
“Just okay?” His voice was plaintive. “Then maybe we should practice some more…”
And we did.
That was how Dylan missed his dinner with Dr. Dvorkin, as well as breakfast and any invitations for lunch that might have come to him. The next morning I called in sick, for the first time in almost two years. When Dylan wondered, somewhat nervously, if he should call in as well, I just laughed.
“Who do you think you’d call? I’m your boss, and I think you need to spend the day in bed…”
We made love until I ached all over, until I couldn’t tell where my body ended and the damp warmth of the sheets and air and Dylan’s skin began. He was so beautiful, I really did weep, watching him as he slept late that morning, his snores vying with the soft roar of a neighbor’s lawn mower. I lay beside him and still couldn’t keep my hands from him: his skin so warm and smooth it was like marble fitting into the curve of my palm, the swell of his narrow hips where I pressed my mouth so that I could feel the bone jutting beneath my tongue. I wanted to devour him, feel his soft skin break under my teeth like a pear’s and my mouth fill with juice, sweet and hot. When I took him in my mouth again he groaned, his fingers pulled at my hair and once more we tangled together as he came, warmth spurting onto my breasts as he clutched me and cried my name aloud.
“I guess it’s true,” I said when we finally had both slept, and awakened to find ourselves bruised and soaked with sweat and wrapped in each other’s arms. A fan moved lazily back and forth in front of a window, sending a faint coolness through the room.
“What?” Dylan mumbled.
“About guys reaching their sexual peak at nineteen.”
“Yeah? Then you have something to look forward to.” He rolled over and hugged me. “My birthday’s not till August first.”
“You’re only eighteen ?”
He sat up, grinning. “Yup. Wanna know something else?”
I fanned myself with yesterday’s Post. “I don’t know if my heart can stand any more.”
“This is the first time I did it.”
“Did what?”
“You know.” He looked at me sheepishly, and I suddenly noticed he was blushing. “It.”
“It?” I dropped the newspaper, shocked. “You mean, you’re a—”
“A lot of people are,” Dylan said defensively. “I mean, people my age. And—well, I never really wanted to before. Not much,” he ended lamely, and stared out the window.
“Holy cow,” I said, and collapsed onto a heap of pillows. “I think I need a drink.”
I got up, padded downstairs, and got a nearly full bottle of chardonnay from the refrigerator. I found two wineglasses and some fruit that I put into a basket—a bunch of black grapes, a rather wizened orange, a couple of figs that I’d bought impulsively and at an outrageous price at Eastern Market a few days before.
“Here,” I announced when I got back upstairs. I put the basket on the bed beside Dylan and poured some wine. “Nectar of the gods.”
We lay next to each other and drank and ate. The sunlight didn’t slant through the windows so much as flow, ripe with the carrion scents of wisteria and gingko fruit, burning charcoal and magnolia blossom and car exhaust: the sooty green smell that is summer in D.C.
“I love figs,” said Dylan. He bit into one, exposing the tender pink flesh beneath the dark husk. “We had fig trees at Keftiu—my father always said they were the real fruit in the Bible—you know, with Adam and Eve. But my mother said it was pomegranates.”
“Mmm,” I said, sipping my wine. “So. You never had a girlfriend, huh?”
He finished his fig and tossed the gnarled remnant out the window. “Not really. I went away to school a lot—prep schools, you didn’t really have a chance to meet girls. At least I never did, not in the States. Here I was like, Eurotrash, and over there I was the ugly American. And there was always my mother, you know?” He sighed and reached for his wineglass, stared into it for a long moment before going on. “My mother made me kind of paranoid about stuff.”
“Stuff? You mean—uh, sex?” I caught myself. Angelica preaching abstinence? Anger warmed me along with the wine, but I bit my tongue and nodded. “How interesting.”
“Yeah. I guess because I’m her only child. And AIDS, of course. And in Italy it’s a little different from here. All those Catholics—”
A pang shot through me. It had been so long, and what with the tej, and the night—I hadn’t even thought about AIDS. Or birth control. Or anything.
“Jesus, Dylan, you’re not, uh—”
He looked at me with those brilliantly guileless blue eyes. “No. I never got tested for AIDS. I didn’t need to.”
“Me neither.” I laughed, embarrassed, tried to cover for it by grabbing a handful of grapes. “I guess it’s different now, huh?”
Dylan yawned. “I guess. But my mother always made such a big deal about my being pure. About saving myself. For some crazy sacred marriage.” He stretched, his long lean body glistening with sweat, his hairless chest taut with muscle. I found my mouth getting dry, despite the grapes, and hastily drank some more wine.
“Saving yourself,” I repeated stupidly. The idea was ludicrous. A child of Angelica’s, saving himself for marriage?
“Not anymore.” He leaned over and kissed me, then buried his face against my breasts. “Oh god, you smell so good—”
We kissed, too happily exhausted to do more, and then Dylan adjusted the fan so that its scant breeze coursed over us.
“I’m sorry—I’m probably the only person in D.C. who doesn’t have air-conditioning.”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t bother me. It reminds me of—”
I laughed. “I know—Keftiu.”
“I was going to say Venice. Crete is much hotter than this. Drier, too.” He frowned and, with a swooping motion, pushed the hair from his face—a gesture that suddenly, heartbreakingly, made me think of Oliver. “Does it bother you? Talking about my mother?”
“No.” The truth was, I’d somehow managed to forget about Angelica until he’d mentioned her—Oliver, too, until that moment. And it was strange, because being with Dylan suddenly made Oliver seem both more alive and more distant from me than he ever had. “No, it doesn’t. It just seems weird. I never would have thought Angelica would consider—well, that she’d think marriage was sacred.”