She followed in his embrace. He held her in the crook of his arm and played with her hair, stroking and pulling it gently. His hand explored the terrain of her face and he thought he saw something new in her familiar features.
Jim started to speak but Marta placed a finger on his lips. She kissed him again and took his right hand and placed it on her breast. “I will not make love with you today,” she whispered. “But I will give myself to you soon. I promise this to you.”
He bowed his head in fealty. He removed his hand and kissed her at the soft indentation where her collarbones met. “Te
Surely the infant Jim had laid his head on his mother’s breast. Surely she soothed and comforted him in a loving embrace. He would not have known how to be held and comforted without that experience. But whatever quotient of tenderness had been offered to the infant, he’d existed without it, and the sensation of intimacy with Marta was unfamiliar. They lay together on the blanket, unmoving save for fingers that caressed the outlines of each other’s forms. Marta traced his jawline and the soft skin of his neck and then rested her palms on his chest.
“Touch me again,” she urged and drew his hand up once more.
He kept her cradled in the crook of his left arm and ran his right hand over the contours of her body, exploring the flat of her stomach and the roll of her hip. She arched her back and pressed herself in closer as he ran his hand over the smooth curve of her buttocks. She breathed into his neck.
“Marta, I feel…funny. No, not funny, but, I don’t know…different. Is this what it feels like to be in love?”
She took his hand in hers, and placed both on the center of his chest.
“What does your heart say,
“I don’t know. This is all new.”
“Your heart knows. Haven’t you wanted to kiss me all year? No. No words. Tell me with your heart.”
So he kissed her again, now at the corners of her mouth, on each lip and then openmouthed and urgent. His thoughts stilled, replaced by the need to possess and be possessed, to draw her in, to find a calm surcease of anger.
Four days later Marta fulfilled her promise. She gave herself, took his strength in exchange, and passed into womanhood. Jim discovered a still place within himself where turmoil paid obeisance to the gentle parts of his being.
There was no school and the house would be his for the day. He spent the morning cleaning his room, checking for dog hair, pacing and then cleaning again. Marta arrived. She wandered through Jim’s home, looking at the photos on the refrigerator, the art on the walls. Ringer kept to her side. When Marta sat at a dining-room chair, Ringer placed her head on the girl’s lap. Jim smiled and said, “She beat me to it.”
They laughed and stood and embraced and kissed. Marta laid her head on his chest and held him close to her. Together, they swayed to an inaudible rhythm.
“Would you like to make love to me?” she asked.
Jim said nothing. He took her hand and kissed each of her fingers and then led her to his room. They undressed each other in self-conscious wonderment, and handled each piece of clothing with the reverence of a pilgrim touching a holy relic. Jim sank to his knees before her and pressed his head to her stomach. He breathed in deeply, and then sank lower to kiss the gnarled joints of her left leg. She gasped and started to pull away but Jim held her fast, as she had held him four days earlier. He pressed his cheek to her calf and then kissed her feet. She allowed herself to sink onto his bed. She reached to pull back the sheets. They might as well have been cemented in place, they were tucked in so tightly, and they laughed as they struggled to free the linens.
Jim grazed his hands along her legs and paused at the plain dark triangle that held such awe and mystery. He traced the concave line of her ribs, around her breasts and up to her face again, holding her head immobile while he kissed her again and again.
She lifted her legs and placed them on the bed. Jim supported himself above her and allowed her to caress his chest and hips. She reached down and took him in her hands. One moment he was above her, separate, and the next moment he was inside her. They were fused. They kept their eyes open and marveled at the sight of one another. Then they were engulfed in passion.
Later, they lay entwined. Each time Jim started to speak, Marta put her mouth over his mouth to stop him, although she did permit him to profess his love for her. Repeatedly.
Much later, Marta broke the silence. “Why did you wait so long?” she asked.
The next day at school, Eva stopped and looked first at Jim, then at Marta. Pain, then anger flashed across her eyes, almost too brief to notice. Then she grinned.
“About damned time,” she said, and lapsed into stony silence for the rest of the day. It was difficult to think when the din from the Voices at Table rose in deafening ridicule.
Throughout high school, Jim, Marta, and Eva, friends by exclusion as much as by attraction, were protective of one another even as they quarreled. Marta and Jim sometimes fought, always over Jim’s temper. His anger was hard for her. Eva’s insults were mingled with affection. She kept Marta close, but always at arm’s length, as if the act of embracing her would be painful.
Jim supplied the minimum effort to pass his classes and remain enrolled. He continued to study people, teasing out their secrets, a talent that often proved more curse than blessing, a gift that cleaved him from, rather than bound him to, members of his own species.
Eva and Marta, drawn to science since childhood, were accepted at Yale, Tufts, and Harvard. They chose Harvard College, for its medical school and its Center for Nanoscale Systems. The Hidden Scholar Foundation continued to fund their education.
And the three friends who shared different but difficult childhoods, three friends thrown together by chance, three who would share an orbit travelled to another part of the country and another chapter in their lives.
7
WALKING WITH JURICAN
BOSTON
OCTOBER. 2029
Okay, Jim thinks, she was old. She had cataracts. So what? She didn’t need to read a dataslate. Her hearing had largely faded. But she registered the clink of a spoon at mealtimes. She smelled bad… so what?
Ringer had been Jim’s friend and familiar. The move from southern California to Boston had been hard enough on Jim, but the freezing weather and endless grey skies seemed to drain life from Ringer. Her filmy eyes implored, a whine in her voice chided,
A boy and his dog. Ringer was eleven, and then—no more.
Tips from, “Coping With The Loss of Your Dog”
“God help me, Marta, I’m about to explode.”
“Shhh… querido. Just let me hold you for a while.”
“YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND DAMMIT THAT WAS RINGER.”
