It’s a kerchief.” She got in front of my chair with her back to me. “Look.” Like a wife whose dress is about to be zipped by her husband, she bent her neck forward and lifted her hair out of the way. I drew back the fuzzy neckline of her sweater.
“Whoa. That’s definitely not a checkered flag.”
“No,” she laughed. “It isn’t. You like it? ”
“Is it wrong if I say I do? ”
“I think it would be wrong if you said you didn’t.”
“Then I like it.”
It was a full-body profile of a kneeling, naked pinup girl. Something slightly more X-rated than what you might see painted on a World War II fighter plane. The checkerboard kerchief in her blond hair gave the impression that she was a good all-American girl who enjoyed a good all-American screwing after a secluded picnic lunch.
“I have her twin on the other side.” Marie reached over her opposite shoulder and guided me to the spot. She left her hand on mine. My heart started pounding. She pulled my hand around her and parked it on her right breast. “Is this okay? ” she asked. We were both stone-cold sober.
“I think so.” My left hand found her other breast. I automatically handled her the way Jocelyn liked to be handled. I kissed her exposed back. She started to laugh. “Should I stop? ” I asked.
“No, please don’t. Just do everything a bit harder.”
I did. She started grinding her ass against me. I grabbed her by the hip bones and pulled.
“Tell me one thing,” she said between breaths.
“Mmm,” I said with my mouth against her back.
“And I want the truth.”
“Mmm.”
“Did you really not fuck me last time? ”
“No,” I said.
“I think this time you should.”
AFTERWARD WE LAY on our backs in the dark without talking. I felt surprisingly okay about the whole thing, except for not knowing what Marie was thinking. I cleared my throat just to let her know I was still there. I tapped a galloping, four-fingered beat on the mattress that would have driven Jocelyn nuts. Marie didn’t make a peep. Her silence grew too uncomfortably big to ignore.
“Are you freaked out?” I finally asked. She didn’t answer. “You are, aren’t you? ”
“Hmm? ”
I sat up. “Are you asleep?” I asked at louder-than-bedroom volume.
“Was.”
“Jesus.”
“Sorry.”
I laughed. “Don’t be sorry.”
“So tired.”
“Do you always zonk out after sex . . . like a guy? ”
She let out a short, closemouthed laugh. “You offended? ” She would rather have been sleeping. I knew that feeling.
“God, no.” My tone was unmistakably revelatory.
She stroked my shin once with her foot, then shifted into the fetal position. Her knees were touching my thigh.
“You weren’t talking,” I said. “I figured . . .”
“You, either.”
I thought about that for a bit. “I wasn’t, was I? ”
She didn’t answer. I let her go. Within seconds, her breathing was even and automatic.
I WOKE UP in the middle of the night without the terrifying sensation of not knowing where I was. Woke without lying perfectly still for fear of falling from the Empire State Building; without the anxiety of having strolled into a classroom after months of truancy, only to learn the final exam was that day; without thinking all of my teeth had just mysteriously fallen out.
I did wake with the very real sensation of having to take a massive shit. I could tell it was going to be an embarrassing, conspicuous, and hostile parting. Marie was still curled up, but facing the other way. I decided to get dressed and split back to my sister’s. Then I thought that would be a ridiculous thing to do. Marie’s Eleanor Roosevelt quote went through my head.
Fuck it. I tiptoed naked to the kitchen, found my cigarettes, then—as quietly as I could—destroyed her bathroom.
On my way back to the bedroom, I stopped at Sidney’s open door. My eyes skipped over the dark, kaleidoscopic clutter of his room, and rested on two moons beyond the sliding glass doors: One glowed still. The other was indiscriminately pulled apart and put back together by the undulating surface of Opal Cove.
I took a few steps into the room, but stopped abruptly when I kicked a small toy that lit up in flashing red and played that tune about the kids on the bus going up and down all through the town. I managed to shut the fucking thing off by the third or fourth refrain. I carefully put the toy down and got out of Sidney’s room.
I sneaked back into Marie’s