holding it—rits obstreperous thump—in her hands. Levon's body was blatant, unashamed, unmysterious. His only secret resided in his brain, where he kept a tight little knot of Levonness, strange griefs and needs that nothing, no comfort or sex, no ceremony, could touch.
“Levon,” she said, and she was glad he didn't respond. What did she mean to tell him? That she loved him so much she wanted to dismantle him, organ by organ, and hold each part reverently as the sun rose over the tenements. That she wanted to fuck him right there, on the fire escape, to be blotted out and sung to and moved around until she was something else, another shape in the changing world.
He finished the song in his own time. While she waited, running her open hands over the ropy surface of his back, Zoe knew what it was like to be a sea captain's widow, out on the walk with her husband's ghost who was wailing her the news an hour before the messenger arrived. She knew the shock, the echo, and the windy, hollow satisfaction. Mourning was straightforward, a simple anguish. From now on, your life would be easier. No more wondering if he was safe. No more worrying that his love had started to ravel and fade.
“Levon,” she said, one more time, just to see the shape his name cut out of the air.
“Mmm.” His voice was always soft and guarded. Anyone could be listening, taking notes, plotting a future in which Levon counted less.
“Baby, it's daytime. Better come in, you could get arrested/'
He nodded. The cords of his shoulders shifted, thin lazy snakes warming in the sun. He stood, considering, as if getting arrested might be a good idea. A purgative, something harsh but redeeming. Then he turned to face her. His erection bumped against her hip and she thought, 'He's been standing out here singing a hymn with a hard-on.' He held her. From upstairs, the hooker screamed for the police.
Zoe didn't remember going inside. It happened; they were outside and then they were in. They were back on the mattress, fucking, sending moans and small moist suction sounds into the room. This acid wouldn't quit. Zoe felt his cock inside her and she felt the colors it shot through her blood, the hot oranges and yellows, liquid and jangly, like spurts of electrified water. She felt herself with her legs slung over Levon's shoulders, whimpering, and she felt the room, the old furniture draped in sheets and bedspreads, the pictures in their chipped gilt frames. She saw that it was a storage room, made only of waiting. As she fucked she lost track of herself. She floated out. She began to see that she and Levon were fucking in a dead room in a building full of hookers and drug people and ancient, mortified women. Someone in another room boiled an egg. Someone searched in the gray light for a vein. Traffic rumbled up Second Avenue, and a bus driver sighed over the thin pleasures of the night before. The present stretched until it bled over into the past and the future. Shadows of immigrants and sailors and merchants threaded their way among the drowsy living, and there was Levon on the fire escape, with his song and a hard-on, putting out music for the shade of Crazy Annie, who'd decided that the violent ecstasy of the long drop and the shimmering, oil-black water was better than another day of wondering. Here was Levon, fucking with silent, sweaty absorption. Fucking was a tunneling process; he had to dig his way out of jail with a teaspoon. Oh, she loved him. She loved his patience and his disregard, his habit of disappearing before he'd left the room. She loved him and in sopie way she could not quite name she wished him dead. She saw the future, in which Levon would leave her without explanation, with mournful, deliberate reverence, the same way he sang his hymns.
Then the fuck was over, and the hot colors cooled to blue. Levon sighed, rolled away from her. She could never come on acid; she didn't think about it. Coming would have been too much. It would have blown her up like a firecracker inside a melon. It would have opened her too wide. Her body was cooling and she put her head on Levon's sweaty chest, inhaling his sharp citrus smell. She played with his limp, wet cock. He was different from other men, not