hair, spider-walked among the tufts and she felt as if a wind was blowing between her legs. That settled into her, the idea of being touched by wind, and as he brushed her pubic hair she began to wish he'd touch her more deeply. What if he did nothing more than this? She pushed her pelvis out to meet his fingers, and when he withdrew them she was briefly angry. Who was he, this quiet unspectacular boy grown to middle age? Who did he think she was? She cleared her throat. He smiled up at her and began kissing his way down her belly. He was making a sound, a faint whistle and moan. She lay quietly, watching his ears and his thinning hair, unsure of what she wanted or didn't want. She watched him trace a line of kisses along her belly and then she realized what he intended to do. Todd had never done that; he'd never ventured there with his mouth. She didn't want it, she'd feel too exposed, but Joel kissed the insides of her thighs and she didn't ask him to stop. She waited. She was full of fear and a new kind of queasy excitement. She regretted having done this. She wanted to be alone in her kitchen, brewing a fresh pot of coffee, watering the plants. He worked his face between her legs. He touched her there with his tongue. The feeling was electric, slightly sickening, a hot moist sensation that shot through her. She moaned, though she hadn't meant to. He lapped at her with his tongue, spread the flesh with his thumbs and then he found it. He found the spot, and he knew. At first she thought he'd just grazed it, men didn't know about that, but he worked his tongue around it in circles and he knew, he knew, he'd found it and he knew to touch her there. She was moaning now, she didn't want to stop. She put her hands on his head, the coarse thinning bristles of his hair, and held on because she was afraid he'd quit. She was afraid he'd lose what he seemed to know. “Oh, god,” she said. This was something else moving through her blood, She'd felt the opening, the high quivering expansion, but this was going someplace different. She was used to a rise and fall, a quickness. A warm red shadow that flicked past, left the memory of heat behind. This wasn't stopping. His tongue was relentless, it kept finding her, and she writhed, half hoping she'd elude the tongue but she didn't, it found her and found her and she was crying out, “Oh oh oh, oh god, oh.” It kept opening inside her, the ragged immensity. She couldn't stand it, it couldn't open any wider, it was gushing all through her. He found her and found her and found her and she went up and over. It rushed up at her and filled her and she was tumbling, she didn't care, she was inside herself and the flood didn't stop, the hot wet pulses, they didn't stop, and then, finally, they did.
He lifted his face, smiled at her. She watched him with a certain incomprehension, a small embarrassment that was already starting to grow. She saw that she was covered in a thin film of sweat. Tenderly, he kissed the crook of her knee. He brushed a strand of hair from her forehead.
And then she began crying. She didn't expect it. The crying started sofly, nothing more than a stinging wetness in her eyes, but as she looked at Joel's capable face the crying continued on its own, not loud but deep, punctuated by soft ragged intakes of breath. She let herself cry. She was filled with sorrow and relief, as if she'd escaped simple happiness and entered something larger, more complex and promising. Joel stroked her hair.
'There, there,” he whispered, and she imagined he spoke that way to the trees as he sat among their branches, sawing away their afflicted parts.
When she was through crying they both put their clothes back on and walked down the hall together, past the closed door of the third bedroom, which was reserved as a nursery. Susan was slightly disoriented, as if she'd awoken at night in a new house that seemed strange at first and then revealed itself to be the place she in fact belonged. Here was the striped wallpaper she'd chosen, here was the antique mirror hanging