hands on her face, then her neck and shoulders, then runs them down her arms. She is tense as a bulldog, he thinks, and just as strong. She's trembling. Over him, her weight shifts and he feels the loop of his belt pulled up, then a long strong yank that frees hole from shaft, then strap from buckle. But when she tries to pull it free it sticks from its own friction and she only manages to turn him half onto his side.
'Uh, Val, it's kind of stuck. I can-
'No.'
He feels her weight vanish. Then she's standing over him with a half-stricken expression, smoothing her dress with her hands, her eyes riveted on the ground, face red as a Christmas tree bulb.
'I thought you just… I'm awfully sorry. It's my mistake, John. Just forget it.'
'Come back.'
'Oh, no. Really, it's not… I shouldn't be-'
'You don't have to.'
'Goddamnit.'
He laughs.
'Do not laugh at me.'
'You're funny.'
'This isn't funny.'
'It should be. You almost tore that belt in half, you know.'
She still won't look at him. 'I'm trying to…'
'I know what you're trying to do.'
'Ah shit, John, I don't know how you do this.'
'I know you don't.'
Finally she looks at him, just a glance. Then she shakes her head. 'I'm such a spaz.'
'Come here. You don't have to do everything. You don't have to do anything. Just come here and lie down with me and be quiet. Okay?'
Her face is still ablaze and her eyes are flittering everywhere again, like birds looking for somewhere to land. 'You know I'm pretty good at just about everything. I can shoot and cook and think and get into vet-'
'Can you lie down and shut up?'
Eyes still on the ground in front of her, she moves toward the blanket, then lies down. Her back is to him.
'No reason to pout, you know.'
She says nothing, so he props up on an elbow and strokes her hair. 'It's even worse when you're a guy, because you can feel it being over with before you're even really started.'
'Can't you fight it?'
'Not very successfully.'
'It's just… kind of embarrassing, John.'
'Well, don't be embarrassed. It's kind of funny, anyway.'
'It is?'
'If you picture what you're doing, or if you watched it on a screen, I think you might find yourself laughing.'
'I watched a dirty movie once, and laughed.'
'Then there you have it.'
'What do we do?'
'Why don't we just wait until it happens?'
'I want it to happen now.' She backs her rump and shoulders into him. 'Found what I wanted. Had my heart set on it.'
When she turns around to face him, her eyes are shiny and the pupils are big and her forehead beaded with sweat.
He moves on top and her legs part around his weight. He lifts them and the dress falls over her brown smooth knees.
'Don't stare.' Her eyes are closed.
But he does stare while he sits back to work his pants down because she's naked underneath the dress and he just can't believe how good she looks. He scoots back into position and begins to see himself as a comic figure, not necessarily a good sign, he feels. But she's got him in one hand, stroking him hard, trying to pull him inside herself.
'Uh, easy does it, sweetness,' he says.
'All right.'
In the next whirling moments John's thoughts explode in rapid succession, like a line of bottles pierced by a single bullet. None stay whole long enough to name. They are shattered, derationalized, lost. He follows her adamant guidance, moving inside until he feels the threadlike sinuous resistance, then the quick gasp of her breath against his ear.
'Thought you were kidding, Val.'
'No.'
She uses her hands on his flanks to control him. She shudders and withdraws, opens and accepts. The increments of pleasure build and drop in John, whose thoughts careen back and forth between immensities of chaos and hyperfocus. He is a hawk streaking through blue. Does it hurt? He glides beneath a black tonnage of water. Does it actually tear? He is a thousand silver butterflies netted in skin. Are we smashing her hat?
'OH!'
'Sorry.'
Her hands draw him deeper.
'Ooohr
'Go slow…'
But he knows he is past it. She shivers and tightens around him-all of her-hands and fingers, arms and stomach, legs and mouth. He tries to be still but she forces him hard up inside her and John imagines the wash of dark red blood. Thinks it's imagination anyway. She's still shuddering and holding him tightly and he's aware for the first time of the nails jammed into the twin peaks of his ass and the cool-wet pain around them, of the groans vibrating from her throat into his, of the hissing of her nostrils tight against his face, and of the power of her legs clamped hard at his sides. All he can think to do is just wait, locked here like this. So he waits while her arms close around his shoulders and head, and the inside of her is jerking and he hasn't got clue one whether this is pain or pleasure until he looks down at her wide open eyes and the look of surprise on her face and the little lines at the edges of her mouth that suggest a smile. He tries to hold still but suddenly here comes a wholly unpostponable surge of effervescence that feels like a long fizzing string being drawn out of him. Out it goes. Then the riotous discharge of voltage, all the mixed up thoughts, the sweet shakes.
Time does pass.
'Oh,' he finally says.
'Oh.'
'Oh.'
'Oh, my!'
CHAPTER 34
When they wake up it is almost two. During their sleep someone has brought the sides of the blanket over them against the afternoon breeze, but John can't remember doing it and Valerie can't either. John's neck is stiff from the ground. Valerie's hat has blown up on its side against a toyon tree and stayed there. Her dress, which twenty-three years ago protected Carolyn as Carolyn protected her, is now wrinkled everywhere and spotted with blood. She stands in the clearing, twisting the stained part around so she can see it, and looks down at the material. John packs up the basket in a heavy silence that seems to him breakable only by meaningful discourse.
