charged signals that ranged the continuum from onanistic to downright orgiastic.
'You know me,' he had said to her, only half jokingly, 'your friendly neighborhood pervert.' He nudged himself at his willingness to pick up anything that looked like kiss-me vibes from this lady. Fires simmered within her, he assured himself continually. Then with a dollop of guilt adding to himself that such a response was typical to all of us macho-type clods. We're ready to think that of anybody with female plumbing, be she diesel dyke, nympho, fridge, or mud-wrestling kinkorama queen from the planet Uranus.
Eichord pondered the meaning of it all, his lonesome semen continued to solidify into cementitious mucilage in the toes of discarded socks, grossing him out not a little, and doing zip for the old demon ego as he felt himself falling deeper and deeper into some kind of a pit with high, slippery walls. It bothered him. Not enough to stop, you understand, but guilt can be a weird thing.
He was on his way north from Chicago, nine hours of very boring and fruitless paperwork behind him, and he'd been down at work since dawn. It was late afternoon and the day, and the job, and the strange new love affair, and the serial killings—the whole schmear just collapsed in on him as he drove, and when he found an open, overgrown field he pulled his car off onto the somewhat muddy shoulder and got out, mindful of a new pair of shoes, and started aimlessly down the pathway that bordered the field, taking in the air in big, deep lungfuls.
It took him almost ten minutes to amble across to the end of the field, but he was in no hurry. He wanted to think, to air out the cobwebs a little. He had never felt so many things going down at the same time, important things, that is, and he knew that even as he walked, somewhere out there a mad serial killer was about to take another life. That was on one level. On another level he couldn't stop thinking about this Edie. What a woman. He was falling in love with her. And he didn't care about the other stuff right now.
He felt better and was walking back to the vehicle when something nudged at him the way things often did to Jack. Something he'd seen. A loose, out-of-place detail, some fact that sat up and waved a red flag at his subconscious and said, hey . . . look over this way. It was a small thing. The cardinal shrub that he'd seen there by the overgrown field. A small piece of paper, burned to black ash, caught up in the branches of the shrub. It was black, roughly the size of a softball but a strange irregular shape that nagged at him. One of those things you see and it suggests something like a psychiatrist's inkblot test. What did it remind him of?
He was in the front seat and putting his key into the ignition when it hit him and the realization washed over his soul like an icy wave. The shape of the ash, just a fragment of paper from someone's burnt trash floating across a field to catch and hang suspended in some branches, the fragment was the shape of that Buddhist's heart in Saigon, the one who had set himself on fire. They had saved the heart, a charred cinder about the size of a baseball, a hard, black reminder of cruelty and injustice. And the words banged around in his mind just as he pulled back out into traffic—self-immolation.
But that night was the night it finally came together for them and that was their first night from then on. It began as it usually began, with Jack holding Edie and feeling that soft, lovely and pliant body mold into him, and laying her gently back against the bed and kissing and feeling that same kind of surprising rush whenever their bodies pressed together, and running his fingers into her long hair, and feeling her touch him first on his rib cage, and then up and around, but then instead of him rolling over beside her she was helping him pull her closer, pulling him into her and before he knew what they were doing he was inside Edie and they were lovers for the first time and it was like being burnt by a flicker that suddenly caught fire and threatened to engulf them.
She went wild and surprising both of them equally it was genuine fire. He tried to kiss her and she tried to kiss him, really kiss him, and it was like for the first time. Everything was the first time and as they came closer together with the hard, rocking movement their lips barely brushed and the fire was so hot,
Jack knew he was dead. No way could he move. He was drained. Never anything like it in the history of the fucking world. Never. Not with anybody, anywhere, at any moment in time. He was empty. And in sweetest agony he rolled over slightly and looked at her for the first time and she was brand-new and in their intimacy he saw her for the first time then and she was new for him and he looked at that body of hers. Oh, he thought, I'll never doubt you again, oh Heavenly Father. No, Lord. Because you made trees, and flowers, and streams, and rainbows, and snowflakes, and oh, my. You did a job on her too, let me tell you, he thought. What a woman.
It was a prayer of a kind that he thought as he rolled over and looked at this miracle beside him. Lord, anybody who can turn out one of these can't be all bad. What a lady. He saw those legs for the first time, the dazzling curve that became a flatness of stomach and rolling upward into a magnificently formed chest that met a perfect throat and then she rolled over and moaned and Eichord saw the most beautiful ass he'd ever seen and he thought of himself as a connoisseur of female butts, a heinie epicurean, a derriere gourmet. He told her as much, his voice cracking with the effort of verbalizing speech.
'You know something?'
'Hmm?'
'You've got—the loveliest—oh, yes, the loveliest rear end—in the world. Did you know that?'
'I'm glad
'You mean, seriously, guys haven't always told you that you had a fabulous ass,' he said, without thinking.
'Well. No. I mean, I guess I knew I had an okay rear end, but—' she trailed off.
'Uh-huh. An okay rear end, is that what you think you have?'
'Yeah. Okay. Nothing special. Nothing to get that excited about. It's just adequate. An okay rear end.' She smiled.
'If that's an okay rear end,' he said hoarsely, 'the 1959 Eldorado had an okay rear end. I mean we are talkin' Hall of Fame classics here, lady.'
'Oh, sir, you make me blush,' she murmured, still on her stomach.
'Yes. I can definitely see that.' He lay there transfixed. 'I know where I want to have dinner tonight, beautiful,' he said.
'Where?'
'Ummmmmmmm,' he replied, rolling her over on her back again. And soon she was making those sounds. Doing it again. Making those hot little whimpering noises that turned him on like crazy, and it all caught fire again and the embers that he thought had finally gone out were fanned into a burning flame once more, and he was rock hard and inside and they were both slick with sweat and love juice and bodily fluids in a wild, white-hot heat of the moment.
Neither of them could quite believe it. He was totally immobilized again. Not just drained. His crank-case was empty, folks. Bone dry. He was exsanguinated. Dead and buried. Motionless as she traced outlines up and down with those hot fingertips and Jack knew Edie was smiling as she ran those fiery fingers across him, playing with him, and it made him laugh and they were in each other's arms and enjoying their discovery so much.
The humor of it was just ineffable and illogical and they both felt giddy, hysterical, a little confused, mindfucked, spent. They came apart and just looked at each other, sweat drying on their bodies, and just glued themselves to the sheets, too blown to even smoke. And he felt some
