her arm from beneath the sheet and laid the palm of her hand against my chest. My heart, she must have heard it knocking away. Touched it out of wonder. Or perhaps to silence it.
I knew, obscurely, that her saying I could be anyone was something that could hurt me. Been meant to, possibly. But it slid past me. Her ambivalence seemed to matter so little. A mere problem of the mind…How to compare it to the soft dry heat of her hand on my chest?
My fingers bent at the knuckle and opened out again, moving further onto her shoulder, touching her collarbone. Her hand on my chest stiffened and then relaxed.
One of our legs moved. I felt the loose cold satin of her pajamas. Withdrawn.
I rolled to her. My hands on her shoulders, not pulling her toward me but clearly about to.
She moved her face nearer to me. A blurred darkness rifled by the noise of her breath.
Her knee touched mine. Withdrew. Touched again.
Then her hand left my chest and was on my cheek. A kind of sadness in her touch. An undercurrent of farewell. I gripped her harder, holding on. Her forehead was against mine, the bridges of our noses. Lips coming forward but stopping short of a kiss.
And then the kiss: light, shy, brief. Swimmers with one toe in the ocean, etc. We leaned away from each other. It was so hard to see and, I think, hard to want to. The closeness not only blocked the room’s diffuse light but it encouraged us toward a kind of voluntary blindness. We had seen enough to take us this far. Like pilgrims who have to pass through countless rooms and withstand the most puzzling trials, we found ourselves now in the chamber of deep physical urgency and truth itself seemed of lesser importance, something that could wait. We kissed again. Our mouths were hot and slippery; our teeth climbed. My hand was on my underpants, starting to pull them down. Instinctually. I stopped myself, wrapped my arms around Jade, crushed myself against her.
“David, David,” she said. An incantation. And proving to herself it was really me. Forcing herself to
A sigh. Hers or mine? Its edge of impatience told me it was Jade’s. She wanted whatever was going to happen to declare itself.
“I’ve wanted you so badly,” I said. “And all the time.”
“I’ll never sleep,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter.” I was still holding her tight, looking out across to the wavy gray window.
Her breath caught.
“I want to make love,” she said.
I loosened my hold on her. I wanted to look into her face. But she held me fast.
“No,” she said. “I don’t. I don’t. We can’t make love and it’s not really what I want. I want to come. I want to have…”
I placed my leg between her legs.
“Will you help me?” she whispered. “Will you like you used to? First me, then you. We can do that.” She slid down a few inches, so the top of my knee was flush against her. She moved back and forth two times and then a third, grinding, precise. “I want to come,” she whispered. “Help me. Please.” There was something wild and a little cruel in her voice, like an escaped prisoner asking for water.
I pressed my leg higher, harder, felt her give way a little and then bear down on me. A breathy sound in her throat, like a ball rolling down a flight of stairs.
In one motion, I tore the sheet and blanket off of us. They hovered at the end of the bed for a moment and then sank onto the floor. Jade’s toes were pointed, her foot tensed and arched like a ballerina’s. I put my hand into her pajamas, covering her breast. The skin around the nipples puckered like fingertips left to soak in hot water. Nipples themselves had grown, though the breasts remained adolescent. She’d once been nearly hysterical with shame about her breasts: I’d several times put my fingers into her vagina before she finally allowed me to share the secret of her naked breasts, the revealed artifice of the padded bra. “Bee stings, right?” she’d said, folding her arms over her chest. Now she offered them freely, arching her back as I cupped my hand and then squeezed.
Her shirt was unbuttoned, folded itself into shadows along the line of her ribcage. She was flat on her back now and I was at her side, over her, dropped on one elbow. I touched her belly, slipped my hand beneath the elastic waistband. I suppose my heart was pounding; I suppose my mouth was dry.
“I told you,” she said, as soon as I touched her underwear. Lined with a huge gauzy sanitary pad.
I withdrew, confused, startled. Then put my hand on her again, over her cotton underwear, and pressed uncertainly. She arched her back, took a deep breath, telling me that even this indirect contact would do.
I moved my hand back and forth. At one point I became aware I was losing the sensation in my right arm—the arm that supported all my weight as I leaned over Jade—but this awareness passed, along with the feeling. I rubbed her slowly, steadily, no variety of pace. She didn’t seem to want surprises. Simple. Direct. The comfort of it increased by the steadiness. The lack of play affirming that romance was kept at bay. The sanitary pad came loose and moved clumsily around. Jade reached into her underwear and removed it, quickly, tossing it overboard. I hooked my thumbs onto her waistband and pulled the pajama bottoms down. She lifted her ass, brought her legs together, made it easy. I turned around to throw them on a chair and she slipped out of her underwear.
“Come,” she said, pulling me next to her again, placing my hand on her vagina, moving it back and forth for me once and then letting go, closing her eyes, holding her breath in anticipation.
Her pubic hair was thicker than before. Also dry. Along with the sanitary napkin, she wore a Tampax and it absorbed the moisture.
She reached up and lightly touched my shoulder. Head turned on the pillow, eyes away from me. She was whispering something, but I couldn’t understand it. I leaned my ear closer to her but it upset the rhythm on my hand and her legs gave a flutter of impatience. I resumed my original position and pace and her thighs parted still wider. A low groan of encouragement. The whisper louder now: “I want to,” she said. My hand was on myself, my hardness, gripping it with imbecilic force. A drop of semen seeped out, quivering on the head of my cock like a drop of hot wax. Waves of hot and cold. A sense of phosphorescence, X-ray consciousness. I rubbed her mound. The lips opened at the pressure but very slightly. Her legs were open wider than seemed possible. Her willingness, her hunger—they terrified me.
“Want to,” she said, her chin up, her head all the way back, pressed against the wooden headboard.
I twisted the string of her Tampax around my finger and began to remove it.
“No,” she whispered, grabbing my hand. “Can’t. Too much blood.”
I nodded and continued to move my hand over her. I wanted to touch her everywhere but I didn’t dare leave her sex and my other hand supported my weight. I leaned over her, kissed her breasts.
Her teeth chattered. A wave of coldness came over me. I thought of the lights coming on in a city viewed from the air. Then the darkness again. Warm and dense. The sound of her breathing, rapid now, frayed at the edge. Her knees were raised, wagging back and forth. Her moisture seeping through, mixing with the perspiration. Her pubic hair slick, though nothing compared to what I remembered.
She put her arms over her head. There was hair in her armpits now. Long. Curled at the bottom like the toe of a Turkish slipper.
The last time it had been time to shave, she’d let me do it. I took at least an hour, working at the biscuit- colored stubble with a care made up of equal parts of caution and sensuality. “From now on,” I’d said, when it was over, “this is my job.”
“That’s it,” said Jade. Her hands were tight fists. Her mouth twisted, grim: not that spacey, surprised look. She gripped my hand and pressed it harder against her, lifted herself up toward me, sawed back and forth. She made a “mmmmnn,” sound, rising in pitch.
Her muscles were rigid and she held her breath. Ribcage turned into two parallel rollercoaster tracks. Rump puckered. You’re not supposed to hold your breath when you have an orgasm. Jade learned that in a book and taught it to me. “It’s living, not dying,” she said, then.
She held her frozen pose and then collapsed. A light film of moisture appeared on her skin; her breaths reappeared, heavy and slow. Her eyes were closed.
She rolled over on her side for a moment but then remembered her manners and rolled onto her back.
“That sort of sneaked up on me,” she said. “I thought I was further away.”
I let myself down onto the mattress without bringing my head up to the pillow. I was eye level with her belly, rising and falling. She’d left her legs wide open but now she slowly brought them together again. Her pubic hair was much coarser than it had been before. The triangle had swollen, increased its domain.
