After (24 page)

Smith sits up, leans over Eva, naked, undefended. Just gazing up into his eyes.

He closes in, opens his mouth. Then retreats, silent. “I was going to say you can't be serious,” he finally tells her, “but I know you are.”

Another long silence.

“Why do you want to go to Jake?”

“Avery,” she says, her gentleness tinged dark around the edges. “You know how horribly he's been hurt.”

“Yes.”

“Think. How hurt, how alone he is. Think what it would be for him, to have someone be his friend. To be held.”

“And what it would mean to him to fuck you.”

Her gaze is steady, her voice is soft. “Yes.”

“Eva. It's a bad idea.”

“Why?”

“If he was victimized before, how do you think he'll be treated if the men catch on? Especially now. John, fine. He won the lottery. The men might be bitter, but they at least believe it could have been them. That it still might be them, next time. But now, they know about Riggs. I'm sure they suspect as much of me. It's one thing for them to be wishing they'd been the lucky one. But every time they learn someone else has been with you, they'll feel more and more left out. Like, if Riggs is so lucky, if I'm so lucky, then they should be so lucky, too.”

“Maybe they should.”

“What?”

She smiles.

“Be so lucky.”

“You're not serious. Eva. Really, you can't be.”

“Avery,” she says, quiet, slow, “we know what's going to happen after I have this baby. Unless we happen across a survivor population in the meantime, I need to get pregnant again. And that means another three men. And for a third pregnancy, another three. Where's the sense of letting the men's resentments, frustrations, their loneliness fester until their turn for a shot at fatherhood comes up?”

Eva goes quiet. Avery sinks down into the bed, beside her.

“What's the point?” he sighs. “There's a big difference between being paired up with someone for a few weeks while you're trying to get pregnant, and...subjecting yourself to...to that, with all of them...what? What will it be? One of them every day? Two a day? What sort of schedule do you have in mind for sating the needs of twenty men?”

“I don't know,” she says, fear threading her voice.

After a long quiet she goes on.

“This is about more than getting the men off. Like you said, once, they're more complex than that. I think it will do good, them just having someone they can touch, someone who'll put their arms around them, someone they can let see them weak and sad and scared. Maybe I won't be able to. But I think I can. I managed, with Riggs. And they can't all be like Riggs.”

“No. A couple of them are worse.”

“Well. They can think about whether they want to be crossed off the list, and stuck watching old tapes of me and John while the others get to enjoy my company now and then.”

“You need to be thinking about the baby. Taking care of this pregnancy.”

“Of course, Avery. But I could only do this now, while I'm pregnant, when paternity's not an issue. Where's the danger? I'm having sex, anyway. With you. With John.”

“Yes. And we're gentle with you.”

“Gentle? Really?” she teases Smith.

“Eva. There's rough sex, and then there's rough sex. If one of them hurts you—“

“We'll work something out so I'm not alone with them. I was never alone with Riggs, you know.”

Smith lies on his back, staring up at the ceiling in silence for a long time. Eva is quiet, too.

“You—“ he starts, then starts again. “I don't want you to, Eva,” he says, his voice soft. A lover's voice. Not a commander's voice.

“I know. But you not wanting me to won't stop me.”

“I won't let you,” he says in the other voice.

“It's not for you to decide.”

“I'm not telling you as your lover.”

“No. I know.”

“I'm still in charge of the base, Eva. I hate for things to come to me giving you orders, but I'm in charge of you, too.”

“Avery. I'll listen to anything you have to say. But I won't take orders from you on this.”

“God, Eva. Don't do this.”

“Did you mean it, Avery, when you said it was wrong of you to give me to John?

That it was wrong of you to make us perform for the cameras?”

“Yes.”

“Telling me who I can't fuck is as bad as telling me who I have to fuck. It's the flip side of sexual slavery.”

“Christ, Eva. Don't exaggerate.”

“I'm not exaggerating,” she says, calm, soft. “The only person who has a right to my body is me. If you keep me locked away, if you control who has access to my cunt, you turn my cunt into a piece of property. It doesn't much matter if it belongs to you, Avery, my lover, or to the state, Major Smith.”

* * * *

The next day, John takes Eva to Riggs, and she tells him that she's pregnant.

That he and Smith and John are going to be fathers. He is blank as she tells him.

“Are you unhappy?” she asks.

“What do you mean, we're all three going to be fathers?”

“I mean, I hope that all of you will help to take care of the baby. Hold her. Or him.

Talk to her. Teach her to walk. Play with her. Help keep her safe. Love her.”

Riggs looks over at John for a minute. Then looks at Eva. A rare, lingering moment of eye contact.

“For a daddy to your baby. You really want me?” he asks, his voice low and ragged.

“Yes. But only if you really want to. No one's going to make you, if you don't want to.”

“I didn't think I'd ever get to be a dad,” he says. “You know, after the dying.”

* * * *

Eva raises her fist, but pulls back her hand before her knuckles strike the dark, varnished wood. She hesitates, then calls out, in a soft voice, too quiet at first to penetrate the door. Then just a little louder.

“Jake?”

There's no need to announce herself. Who else sounds like that? Hers is the only female voice.

Behind the door, footsteps. Then silence. It's almost a minute before there's a sound of a lock clicking, the knob turning. Between the mahogany door and its frame, a darkness appears and widens. Only the pale light from the hall reveals the face of a man in the shadows.

“Hi,” she says, back to her quietest voice. When he stays silent, when the aperture into his room stays fixed at the few inches he's opened it, she asks, “Can I come in for a minute?”

He stares at her for a while, then opens the door barely enough for her to slip through, and shuts and locks it behind her as soon as she is inside. He does not turn on a light. Only the residual glow from a lantern outside his window makes edges and curves visible.

“I've been wanting to see you,” she says, “talk to you. But I haven't had the chance.”

If one works at picking past the shadows, Jake is standing, looking at Eva, his arms crossed tight over his chest.

“I hope it's okay, me coming here. I realize it's kind of strange. But I don't have many people to talk to. And I figure you probably don't, either.”

Jake is still. Silent.

“But I'll go, if you'd rather be alone right now.” Jake still doesn't say anything. Eva gives him a sympathetic smile. “I'll go,” she says, and moves toward the door.

“Stay,” he says in the dark.

There's a long quiet, the two of them standing there, a few feet apart, facing each other in the dark.

“I know a little about what's happened to you. From John.”

Jake doesn't move. Doesn't say a word.

“It must be hard, awful, being alone, here. No one to talk to. You can talk to me.

About anything. If you want to.” When she reaches to touch his hand he slips out of reach, retreats further into the darkness. “I know I've been lucky, compared to you,” she says. “But... Well, you were there, that night in the mess hall. And I'm sure you heard about the orchard. So, the things you've been through. I'll understand. If you feel like talking about those things.”

From within the dusky folds of night there is a wet, choked sound. Eva drifts toward Jake's shadowy form. This time he stays still and her fingers touch the back of his hand. It's clutching his bicep, making a shield of his forearm, but he lets her draw him into her arms, and moments later his body is shaking and he is sobbing. She holds him close, stroking his back. When he finally lowers his defensive shield and puts his arms around her, his embrace is a desperate, crushing circle. Eva just tightens her own hold on him, holding on as he melts against her.

He goes soft, then softer. By the time he's out of tears he is limp. Eva holds him, gets him to bed. Lays him down, covers him with a heavy quilted bedspread from a bygone era.

“You'll be okay, Jake,” she whispers, caressing his hair. “Goodnight.” She straightens and turns toward the door.

“Eva,” he calls out like he's scared she's already gone.

“What, Jake? I'm right here.”

“Please don't go.”

She sits. Lets him lay his head in her lap. Like a mother with a frightened child she strokes his hair.

“Every time I hear a sound,” he whispers, his voice wet and choked, “a floorboard, a branch scraping the widow or the wall outside, a door slamming somewhere, I think they're coming for me. All of them. Like the first night. I'm so scared.

All the time, I'm so scared.”

His body is rigid, and now and then, he shivers convulsively as Eva goes on holding and petting him. When he goes soft and still, she rises, strips off her boots and socks and pants and over-shirt and gets into Jake's bed. She lies down on her back and pulls him to her, cradling his head on her chest, stroking his cheek, his hair, his arm, until the heavy even sound of his breathing confirms he has fallen asleep.

In the middle of the night Eva wakes. The room, the building, the compound are still and quiet. In sleep their bodies have shifted; Jake is curled against her, his chest pressed to her back, his knees tucked in behind hers. His warm breath gathering in her hair isn't steady and rough with sleep. It's jagged and hitches every few breaths, then speeds to catch up with itself again. His hand is under her tank, pressed flat and soft against the hot skin of her belly.

Eva stays still as Jake's soft palm inches over the soft curve below her navel, wandering up and back down again between her hip bones, circling that little swelling again and again, each lap requiring a minute or more. When his palm glides upward, his fingertips trace between her ribs, skirt the vulnerable hollow they outline. She keeps her breathing even and quiet as his touch comes up, as he fits the curve of his thumb and index finger under the curve of her breast. His hand is still for a long time, his body taut behind her, his abdomen shuddering irregularly against her back, maybe with the effort of smoothing and quieting his breathing. Then his thumb moves just half an inch or so, following the smooth curve of her breast up from her ribs, before it descends back down. She stays still. Except for his quiet struggle with his breath, he doesn't move again.

When she shifts and turns to face him in the thick velvet dark Jake sucks in his breath and pulls his hand away. Now he is panting hard and she says nothing. Just draws a gentle hand down his arm, finds his hand, presses it to her belly, holding it to her, and when, except for his trembling and panting he stays still, she draws his hand up, over her swelling-dipping-swelling-belly, and up against the full swell of her breast, up, until his palm is curved over the stiffening peak. Abandoning his hand, she pulls him gently to her. He stays still. With one finger she furrows into his fine, wavy hair, tracing faint abstract shapes over his scalp with her nail.

Gently, then, almost to the point of defying perception, Jake touches her; the curve of his palm and fingers follow her breast's curve, warming the surface so delicately there is no more impact on her flesh than if she'd draped a piece of silk over it. Then, like the brush of a feather, his fingertips move over her taut, velveteen skin, circumnavigating the base, gliding up the sleek warm slope. Tracing the outline of the responsive flesh at the summit. Eva kisses his smooth, hot forehead. Jake's fingertips gather to stroke and stiffen her nipple. Eva finds his other hand hidden shy and quiet on the mattress between them, and puts it to her other breast. Jake cups and caresses as she kisses and cradles him.

When she pulls the hem of her tank up, baring her breasts, he makes a soft warm sound, but doesn't put his mouth to her until she flexes and lifts her breast to his lips. He kisses her, at first, like an icon. Reverently. Tremulously. Like a supplicant, desperate for mercy and solace but afraid of tarnishing what his lips touch. But after a while, as she kisses and cradles his head, holding him to her, kissing and sighing against his hair, his mouth goes seeking, needful, like an infant after comfort and nourishment. His touch soft like the caress of draped silk goes firm; the curve of his hands tighten, swelling her soft flesh against his lips; his pious kiss goes hungry, he suckles greedily, needfully, as if his life depends on her sustenance.

Until now she has been soft and quiet, gently offering her tender warmth. But now that he is sucking, her breath is speeding and sounding; her warm, pliant body starts to flex and shudder as his tongue works over her hard, swelling nipples, her beatific expression contorts, her brow goes fretful, her serene smile fades as her lips part with frantic breath.

When she sinks down, onto her back, he follows her, never breaking contact.

When she pushes him gently from her, he lets out a broken little sob. But then he pushes himself up, off of her, goes still and silent for a moment before shifting himself away. Her hands arrest him, her knees rise to pen him in. Now, while he holds himself over her, she flexes and wiggles out of her underwear. Then, except for stroking his hair and kissing his brow, she is still.

At first he does nothing. Then, shaking, breathing hard, with one hand he undoes his belt and fly and gets his pants down low on his hips. He sinks against her body and for a moment he just lies there, cradled in her arms and softness and warmth. When he does go into her, he goes deep, then goes still. She combs fingers through his hair, runs her hand in slow trails down and up the length of his quivering back. Panting, he clings to her and starts to move, thrusting fitfully, sinking deep, then lingering, leaving the depth of her warmth only long enough to allow for the return thrust. When she comes, she only groans softly, but keeps her caress gentle and steady, keeps her body soft for him. And when he comes she wraps her arms around him, holding him close but not tight. He stays inside her, wrapped tight around her, clinging to her nurturing heat, his face burrowed in her thick ebony hair, in the curve of her neck, for more than a quarter of an hour. Then he slips down beside her and she holds him close until a long while later they slip back under the surface of their broken sleep.