Acts of Mercy

Twelve

In the night Augustine awoke and for a disoriented moment did not know where he was. Then he heard the smooth comforting rhythm of the train wheels, and the faint contrapuntal rhythm of the wind outside and of Claire’s breathing beside him, and the confusion passed and left him dully aware of his surroundings.

He shifted position on the berth so that he was lying on his back. What had awakened him? A dream, perhaps, although he could not remember dreaming; a sudden lurch as the Presidential Special negotiated a curve; a sound penetrating from somewhere in the night. Whatever it was, it was not important. What was important was recapturing sleep, the good deep sleep he had fallen into before Claire joined him and then again afterward. He reclosed his eyes, turned his cheek into the pillow.

But sleep did not come at all this time.

He waited a long while for it and it did not come.

He lay poised on the rim of consciousness, listening to the train, feeling the sway of it and its faint vibrations in the mattress beneath him. Gentle, insistent, throbbing. Throbbing. An assault both on the body and on the senses. Throb-and-sway. Throb-and sway…

It gave him an erection.

Not all at once but in small pulsing surges-and he lay still, expecting it to diminish and leave him flaccid again. Instead the surges increased until the erection was complete. A dim elation moved through him. His first full erection in weeks, and one as achingly rigid as any he had had in the viril days of his youth. The sensations in his groin were exquisite.

In careful movements he turned onto his side and put a hand on Claire’s warm hip. “Claire,” he whispered. “Claire?”

She moaned softly but did not wake up.

Augustine tugged his pajama bottoms down, freeing himself, and then drew Claire’s gown up over her buttocks. She stirred, lifting her body to help him, but in a reflexive way that told him she was still asleep. He rolled the gown over her stomach and above her breasts, moved close to her and raised her leg atop his thigh, turning and fitting her body tightly to his, pressing against the warmth of her abdomen.

He caressed her, kissed the pulsebeat in the hollow of her throat. The sensations grew demanding, and when he lowered a hand to touch her he felt that she, too, was ready. He said her name again-and entered her.

She made another moaning sound, one which seemed to him to be approving, but he could not see her face in the darkness, could not tell if her eyes had come open.

He began to move within her, consciously setting his rhythm to that of the train. Throb. Sway. Her hips answered his movements, matched them in perfect unity, and he heard the tempo of her breathing increase; when he said her name yet another time, though, she did not answer. He clutched at her breasts, traced his lips along the line of her jaw. Urgency spiraled inside him, and the thrust of his hips became more rapid, and all around him the train hummed and vibrated.

Throb, sway, throb sway, throbsway, throbsway throbsway throbswaythrobswaythrobsway…

Orgasm overtook him, intense and ecstatic, wringing soft cries from him and from Claire. It seemed to last a long time, so long that it approached the level of pain. When it finally ebbed his body spasmed once and went lax; he lay quiescent, they both lay quiescent, still joined, and he felt languor flowing through him in slow gentle sweeps.

Good, he thought fuzzily, it was really good again. Then the languor deepened and he began to drift on it and on the motion of the train, and after a while he slept. And dreamed about Briggs and a coffin being lowered into the ground in Arlington Cemetery amid a circle of laughing faces. The dream was unsettling, despite its lack of detail or cohesion; he withdrew from it in stages, like someone backing slowly out of a dark movie theater — until he was awake again.

There was no disorientation this time; he was immediately aware of where he was, and of the fact that he was once more lying on his back, no longer touching Claire. The darkness in the compartment was heavy, complete except for faint shadow images dancing on the walls: reflections of passing landscape filtered through the partially shaded windows. Augustine turned his head to look at Claire, saw her as a dim silhouette beneath the blankets. He reached out to touch her hip again, felt the sleek material of her gown instead of bare flesh, and then realized that his own pajama bottoms were snug around his waist.

He could not remember having pulled them up. Had Claire done that for him? On impulse, he put his face close to hers. She was also resting on her back, mouth open, making faint snoring sounds; the position of her body, Augustine thought, was almost exactly as it had been after she had come into the berth with him.

Looking at her, he felt a sudden unease. What if she had not, after all, come awake during the time he was making love to her? What if she failed in the morning to bear witness to his success, even questioned that it had happened at all? What if she considered it a kind of wish-fulfilling dream on his part?

What if she was right?

The thought was abrupt and jarring. He rejected it instantly-and yet, while he recalled the sensations of the act clearly, the physical details were blurred, as in a memory of something which took place long ago. As in a dream The sensations.

He slid a hand beneath the covers, touched the front of his pajamas. And felt dampness, a faint stickiness. No, he thought, not at my age, not after all those nights of failure.

But it was true and he knew it.

A dream. It had all been nothing more than a wet dream…