Vida (13 page)

“Right. It drives me crazy. It’s so … deentsy. I’m always stabbing myself

“That’s what thimbles are for.” He took the pants from her. “It’ll show through. Want me to do it for you?”

“Absolutely!” she said. “My sister can sew. I used to start projects I wanted done, like trying to re-cover cushions on a bench—this is when I had a gorgeous apartment in New York—knowing that Natalie would take them away from me. I’d be doing such a rotten job she couldn’t stand it, just like you. Whereas if I’d asked her, she’d have said she was too busy to do it, but she’d teach me. You see?”

“I thought you came from Chicago.”

“Natalie moved to New York before I did. After my first marriage broke up, I came there partly because she was there already.”

“You’ve been married?”

“Twice. You’ve never been married?”

“I lived with a girl for almost two years, before I had to skip. Out in Sacramento. She politicized me. And Kiley and I well, we had some kind of thing for nearly two years … Two years must be my sticking point—or unsticking point, when everything comes unstuck.”

Small items of data were cautiously given and greedily considered. Probably neither of them was lying, which was without doubt unusual. But they were talking less. “No more” she said when he lifted the bourbon. He did not take more either. The fire was dying to coals. How long could they sit yawning? How long could she wait up for nothing to happen? She stifled a yawn, maneuvering a glance at her watch. Midnight.

”Why don’t we turn out the lights and just have the fire?”

“Fine” Then she’d doze off waiting. Just fine. She must not appear to pressure him, because they had to survive this week and any awkwardness could loom immense.

He turned off the lamp, stood over the fire looking into it for a long time. She stuck out her tongue at his turned back. Finally he cleared his throat. She waited. He did not say anything. Instead, he sat down on the settee at the same distance with a small sigh—of contentment? Anguish? Fatigue? “What are you thinking?” she ventured.

“Nothing much.”

This was getting sillier. The hell with it. “I guess we, I, should go to bed. It’s past twelve … “ She did not move.

“Yeah … Well, would you like company? It’s stone cold.”

“Yes, it’s cold. Yes, I mean I’d like company.”

Tentatively he put his arm around her shoulders. Then he laughed. “We’re both so stiff. Feels like those awful parties in seventh grade when you begin necking, and all you can think is, are you doing it all wrong?”

She laughed too, gratefully. “How is either of us supposed to mind-read? When nobody’s being piggy or pushing, it’s hard to read through the politeness.”

“I do want to go to bed with you … I wanted to when we danced together two years ago, that time you don’t even remember.”

“That isn’t true, Joel. It came back to me today from watching you” She did have a vague memory now, too generalized to be reliable. She would not have been open to anybody then; besides, looking at his face in the firelight, she suspected that he was a man becoming more attractive as the softness of adolescence wore through. Confidence had to replace diffidence before he could carry his finely modeled face boldly.

His hand was surer on her shoulder as they turned to kiss. His mouth was soft but knowledgeable on hers, his tongue touching hers in small darts as if beginning to taste her. She felt relaxed, committed, curious. No more decisions. When they got up, she would put in her diaphragm. It was in her pack, in the inner pocket with a new tube of jelly she had bought for Leigh. Who, after all, was with Susannah.

The bathroom felt cold as she put in the diaphragm, and the bed was too cold. They both undressed like a speeded-up old movie, tearing off clothes, flinging them, not from passion but from chill. On the slab of glacial sheets, their bodies met seeking comfort. Sleek, his skin, fine-grained and sleek. After Leigh’s body she noticed his lack of hair. As her hands moved over him, she kept wanting to see him, but that would have in wait. He felt good, his body compact, muscular, beautifully proportioned no more than five feet seven but built to last. Strong thighs, strong shoulders, strong arms, all with a satiny surface resilient as the flanks of a horse. Against her he was erect, making her breath catch.

Shyly he nuzzled her breasts. “Do you like that?”

She laughed breathily. “Of course”

“Some women don’t.” He tongued her nipple.

“This woman does. My breasts are very sensitive.”

“Am I doing it too hard?”

“Not sensitive
bad.”
When she got excited, she liked having her breasts squeezed, but she was hardly about to set out presenting him with a set of instructions as if she were a mechanical squirrel-resistant bird feeder to be assembled. “Sensitive for pleasure.”

Then he slid his hand between her thighs; he touched her well. He was paying attention. She was struck by that. It was more like Eva touching her, a man who had been trained to pay attention to exactly what excited a particular woman, who was aware of the differences, the nuances, who listened for them as he touched. He made her feel almost clumsy taking his prick in her hand, because she felt less sure what he liked. She was beginning to feel an excitement that verged on aching. “Come in,” she said huskily into his throat. “Come in, now.”

“You want me to come inside you?” He sounded almost surprised.

“Please, now.” She guided him in.

Again, the way he moved was good. No mindless thumping. He was trying out various strokes and angles and carefully monitoring her responses. The trouble with him is going to be getting him to relax, she thought, to flow. A little too much the careful handyman. Very complete training but wants passion. She tried working on his back in various high and low ways, across the neck muscles, kneading the buttocks, circling in the small of his back, but he seemed to think her pressures were hand signals to go faster, which she actually did not want.

“Gently,” she said.

Suddenly he reached between them and began to touch her clitoris as they were fucking, and she came in several moderate waves of electric pleasure.

“I’ve come” she said. “Now your turn”

“Did you really?” He sounded suspicious. “Take your time”

”I came. Really and fully. Now you come.”

Suddenly he was soft in her. Yet she knew he had not climaxed “What’s wrong, Joel?” She cradled him against her.

“Nothing. I don’t think I can come.”

A man not going to come? This was a new one. “Why not? Let me excite you.”

“No,” he said. “Really, it’s all right. Coming doesn’t mean that much to me.”

Where have I heard that one? she thought. Me being polite.

His relaxed penis slid from her, and they curled side by side. “You didn’t really come, did you?” he said sulkily.

“Sure I did.”

“But it was so fast.”

“Fast?” They must have been fucking for five or six minutes by then. “I didn’t think I was fast. I wouldn’t have come right then if you hadn’t touched me that way, but that did it.”

“Oh, you liked that? I wasn’t sure … But you really came, just from that?”

“Why not? … What are you used to?”

“I didn’t think women came from fucking.”

“If it lasts long enough and if I’m excited first. A lot of women come more easily from being touched or eaten—but you’re not in bed with most women, just with me … Don’t you give me a hard time about that, too. There have been times when other women have made me feel like a fink, like a completely male-identified counterrevolutionary sellout, because I have orgasms from fucking.”

He laughed. “Kiley told me fucking was oppressive to women.”

“Well, it has been a lot. Men call the shots. Their shots. A lot of times you get into bed with a man and it’s like he’s fitting you into how he wants it. He wants to fuck in position A-4 or B-12 and you’re to put your legs up around him whether you like it or not and he wants you to do X and not Y and say certain words. Then he’ll go on for as long as he needs to come, which may be about ten seconds. That is oppressive. Also dull.”

“Did I do that?”

“Oh, Joel, not even slightly. My problem with you is that I came and you didn’t. That’s no more satisfying for me than it would be for you. I want you to have pleasure too.” It all sounded so exotic she felt like laughing and hugged him closer. Sex role reversal, all right, and she found it delightful. “What do you need to come?”

“Nothing special. Just to be less nervous with you.” He grasped her tightly. In a short while his breathing began to open into sleep. She lay tangled with his strange pleasing body and smiled at the invisible ceiling. She felt as if she had come upon a truly new breed of human being, a man untouched by old macho roles, vulnerable and open, gentle and emotional as a woman. How dear he was, she thought, and stretched out relaxed under the weight of his thigh dropped across her, thick and substantial as a log.

6

Waking, they got up, padded to the kitchen. She laid a fire in the wood stove as he made coffee and juice. Then they retreated to bed with mugs, to lie there until the kitchen defrosted. “I love breakfast in bed” he mused. “Always had to drag myself out at home soon as my old man did. He sure did hate people being in bed when he was up. It had to do with him resenting having to support us all.”

“What did your father do?”

“He failed” Joel’s teeth glinted over the mug. “In textiles. A little shit executive. First in New Jersey. Then in Roanoke. Now he runs a carpet store in Fair Oaks—outside Sacramento. There’s one man who’s sure he’s been screwed, but he never looked up for the cause. His wife nags. His kids are ungrateful bums. The Blacks are greedy. The white trash whine and cause trouble. The unions are breaking business. The cheats on welfare raise taxes. All that talk about brown lung is ruining the textile industry.”

Perhaps she had not realized how beautiful he was because she had not stared at him. Suddenly she realized his eyes were no longer that hard green, but a rich dark brown. “Your eyes!”

He dropped his gaze. “Forgot to put my lenses back in. Guess I hoped you wouldn’t notice.”

“You wear tinted contact lenses?” He nodded, rubbing his chin. “Got them when I was with Jimmy and things were hot and heavy … I like the way I look with green eyes. But you fell for that because your eyes really are the color of grass and you don’t even need those social worker glasses you left in the bathroom yesterday”“

“Oh! I forgot them. Where are they?”

“I stuck them in a drawer. So you wouldn’t wear them again till we leave. They’re stupid.”

“But … you act as if I should care what color your eyes are. You look fine with brown eyes.”

“Really? You don’t feel taken advantage of?”

She laughed. “I only wish my brown hair was a wig and I could pull it off and underneath would be my own red hair”

He shrugged. “Eh. I’m not crazy about red hair.”

“You’d be about mine.”

He grimaced mockingly at her. “I’m no hair freak. What I’m attracted to is your face and your body, but much more to you. Who you are. How you talk and laugh, what you say. You can’t fuck hair.”

They walked the road behind the last dune, sand tracks with bleached grasses and maroon leaves of poison ivy growing in the shaggy middle. The tracks dipped into hollows that cupped the warmth of the sun, rose onto the dunes and into the wind, now and then giving them a dazzling cobalt ocean that soared way up the paler sky. A crisp breeze slapped them as they stood gazing on the empty beach far below where the long serpentine lines of breakers slithered in.

How depressed she had been in Oyster Bay, and now she felt marve-lously restored. A little lovemaking, a good night’s sleep and a few days to play house. Her toes wiggled in her tennis shoes, her spine was fluid as the waves, her long legs pranced. A pretty boy, nothing more, nothing to roar about—but nice.

“But if you hate Kevin, you’re still tied to him. Hating’s as passionate as loving,” he was saying, head down, glaring at the sand.

“You make me feel I’ve got used to living in shorthand. As if I don’t have relationships any longer where people really call me out personally. The friends I’ve been living with the last couple of years, they’re nice women, but not articulate that way. With Leigh, with Natalie, I always have to … had to explain myself. They don’t either of them let you off the hook. But nobody else listens that carefully.”

“Why would they?” he asked scornfully.

“Why would you?”

“What weapons do I have but knowing how to listen and psych people out?”

“Don’t I do the same thing?”

He shook his head. “You’re brighter than I am. Yes, you are—don’t pretend at me. You’re an intellectual. I never read a book even. You figure out what to do from facts or theories. But I pay sharp attention to people … Likely nobody’s been as interested in you as me … Leigh is your ex-husband. Who’s Natalie?”

“My sister. Also my best friend.”

”Still? I’m not asking any questions. I might as well be dead to my family. A nice tombstone you can visit on Memorial Day. Our son. Run over by the government. Or a box shipped back from Nam. That would’ve been dandy.”