'Then good.'
The room was crowded, and there was a box on my usual chair, so I perched on the old kitchen table under the bare light with the green shade.
'Ellen, are you maybe a little drunk?'
She raised her finger in warning. 'One thing, James. Promise me. Okay?'
'Okay. What?'
'Don't ask me what's wrong tonight, okay? Just don't ask. And if I try to tell you, tell me to shut up.'
She was serious. She was more than serious. She was hurt.
'Okay,' I said. 'I didn't mean to pry.'
Her eyes softened, seeing she'd hurt me. 'It's okay,' she said with a sigh. She unscrewed the bottle and poured another splash into her glass. 'As for your question: No, I'm not drunk. But we can get drunk together if you like. Want to get drunk with me?'
'I don't know if Eric would approve,' I said.
It was a joke, but apparently the wrong one. I saw the brief flash of lightning in her eyes.
'Well fuck him, then,' she said with exaggerated sweetness. She took a quick sip and made the same sour face. I didn't know whether it was for Eric or for the whiskey.
'I don't really want to get drunk anyhow,' she said, setting the glass down on the table. 'I just wanted you to think I was.'
I looked at her in confusion, and she waved her hand dismissively. 'Don't mind me. Go ahead and put something on.'
I'd brought a shopping bag with me, and I dug through it ’til I found some old jazz.
Ellen liked old jazz. The old stuff had a wicked, primitive kind of nasty sensuality that appealed to her. I put the record on and lowered the needle. As the music started to 11
play, I went to the fridge where they kept their juice and water. I found a can of diet ginger ale and poured it into her whiskey.
'Try that. That's what we used to give the girls in college to get them loaded.'
Ellen tasted it and raised her eyebrows in approval. 'You really didn't do things like that in college, did you, James?'
'How would you know?'
'Because you're too decent. You're the most decent person I know.'
I laughed, but she’d wounded me. She was right, but I didn't see it as a positive.
To me it often felt like cowardice, and I wasn't proud of it. I would have been making a better living if I hadn't been so decent.
We listened to the record in silence, and when it stopped I saw that Ellen had finished her drink and was mixing another.
I got down and turned the record over. It was the Mississippi Sheiks, and this side was 'K.C. Moan', a railroad song about losing your woman on a Kansas-bound train. Because it was about a woman leaving, I didn't think she'd mind.
'Were you ever on a train, James? A real train, I mean, with an engine and whistle, where you sleep overnight?'
I nodded.
'What's it like? Is it as romantic as it seems?'
'Yeah. It really was beautiful. They're great to sleep on. The train keeps rocking back and forth like a cradle, and the wheels click over the tracks in a way that's really hypnotizing. We were going down to Florida, and I was just a kid. When we got into bed I just lay there for hours staring out the window and watching the night go by, the little houses with their lights, the farms, the railroad crossings with the lights flashing.'
'Would you take me on a train like that sometime? I'd love to see it.'
'I'd love to take you. But I don't think they have trains like that anymore. It's all airplanes now.'
I realized the song had ended and Ellen was looking at me. The needle hissed as it ran in useless circles in the groove.
'You're so amazing,' she said. 'I wish I'd been one of those girls you gave whiskey to in college.'
I laughed. 'I do too, Ellen.'
She got up and walked over to me, put her drink down on the table and took my face in her hands. I just had time to look into her eyes and then she raised her face and kissed me, a soft, lingering kiss, achingly tender, going on forever. When it stopped, our lips clung together, as if reluctant to part.
She opened her eyes and looked at my lips, as if she would see a mark there.
'That's how I would have kissed you,' she said. 'Would that have been all right?'
I looked into her eyes and knew what she wanted, and I was frightened. I took her hand and moved it away from my face.
'Ellen, don't.'
'Why not?' she whispered. 'Everyone else does it. Everyone.'
I shook my head, trying to convince myself that she was wrong, that the whole idea was wrong. I didn't know whether it was decency or fear, but I knew it was wrong, and I wanted her to kiss me again and make it so I didn't care.
'If you were younger? Is that it? Because that doesn't matter at all, you know that. I'm all grown up, James. I know what I'm doing.'
'No. Of course not. That's not it.' I said it as if I knew what I was talking about.
'Then what? You certainly don't owe him any loyalty. He doesn't deserve it.'
She was still standing close to me, close enough to kiss, her thighs resting on the edge of the table between my knees. She gently took her wrist from my hand and lowered her hands, laying her warm palms on the tops of my thighs and squeezing softly. I was already semi-erect from her kiss, and now this.
'You're so much better than he'll ever be,' she said. 'The way you feel things, the things you say. It's not fair that people like him get everything. We deserve something too.'
For once I had nothing to tell her. Her hands were on the tops of my thighs, slowly caressing them, her thumbs sliding along the insides. Her full breasts were hanging like ripe fruit behind that exquisite dress, just waiting to be plucked, and her mouth, her face, her whole body was leaning towards me, aching to be kissed.
Like night over day my lips came down on hers. There was a brief moment of electrical contact as we touched, and then I felt as though I left some dark and heavy world behind and I seemed to soar into space with her. She melted into me as we kissed, her mouth going soft and passive, expectant and pleading. It was that melting, that total loss of resistance that did it. In an instant it seemed like she'd become part of me, and then we were kissing hungrily, aware of nothing else.
'The light,' I said, breaking away to gasp for breath. 'Someone might see.'
14
The windows behind us were covered with burglar bars with boxes stacked in front of them, but still I worried. Ellen reached up and switched off the light, so that only the barest illumination remained, seeping in from the front of the store and from the lighted face of the record player.
She took my hand and put it on her breast. It was soft, and heavy, and the thought struck me that she wasn't wearing a bra. I could feel the weight and the yielding warmth right through the fabric of her dress, and then all rational thought stopped as she raised her arms and put them around my neck, entrusting her breasts to my hands as her lips sought mine out again.
I broke off the kiss. 'Get the record,' I said. It was still spinning on the turntable, hissing in the groove. It didn't matter, but I was nervous and stalling for time.
She took the needle off, and then came back to me like a bride comes to her husband, and this time I just lost it. She wanted me, and that was more than I could resist, more than I could stand. I grabbed her arms and pulled her to me, shoved my tongue into her welcoming mouth and kissed her deep, tasting the intoxicating trace of the whiskey on her breath. Her nails scratched at my thighs. She bit my lip and pressed her hand against my cock.
'Oh Christ, Ellen! We shouldn't do this! We can't!'
'God, you're so hard!' she gasped, shuddering in my embrace. 'You poor man.
