After the First Death

18

THE CHANGE WAS INSTANTLY VISIBLE WHEN SHE RETURNED, IT was much more than a matter of pupil dilation. Her face, nervous and animated before she fixed, was now profoundly relaxed. She walked slowly, as if with cushioned feet, and her shoulders drooped. She sat on the couch, her feet out in front of her, and said, “Too bright, too bright,” and I went around turning off lights.

After awhile she said, “I was off for a whole year. I wasn’t working. There was this man. He lived in Scarsdale. Do you know where that is?”

“Yes.”

“I was never there. Is it nice?”

“Yes.”

“He was married. He paid for my apartment and gave me money, and I didn’t see anybody else. I saw him during the day, or sometimes he would stay over.” She closed her eyes. Her cigarette burned down, and I took it from between her fingers and put it out. Then she opened her eyes and looked at me. “I was in love with him,” she said.

Her voice was very soft and she spoke slowly, levelly. Only her lips moved. Before she had talked with her hands, but now they remained still in her lap.

“An hour here, an hour there. And during the summer he always took his wife to Europe for two months. He would send the children to a camp in New England and take his wife to Europe, every summer. So this one summer, when we were seeing each other, he was going to give me a trip. He would let me buy a new wardrobe and he would arrange a trip for me to Puerto Rico. He would take care of the hotel and the airplane ticket and everything, you know?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I was very excited about this. Are you from New York, Alex?”

“No.”

“Where?”

“Ohio.”

“Is it nice there?”

“Not especially.”

“Oh. But I’m from New York, see, and I was never anyplace. Always here in New York. So I was very excited about the trip, and I started shopping for clothes, and then this man explained to me that his business was bad and he couldn’t afford to pay for the trip. He could give me some money, but not enough for the trip.” The eyes closed again. I smoked half a cigarette, and then, eyes still shut, she said, “He could still send his kids to that camp and take his wife to Europe, but he couldn’t afford the trip for me. See?”

“I see.”

“So I was very hurt, Alex, and when he came back from Europe I didn’t live there any more. I started working again, tricking, and I started using stuff again, and I stopped being in love with him, and when he came back I didn’t live there any more.”

She fell silent again. I looked at her and wanted to touch her face.

She said, “Everybody needs a crutch, that’s all Everybody has his own hang-up.” She opened her eyes. “Here I’m telling you things I don’t ever tell anybody. Alex? How come you picked me up?”

“I wanted to find out if-”

“No no no. I saw you on the street, you know, back and forth, back and forth. There were a lot of girls out tonight What made you pick me?”

“You were the prettiest.”

She opened her eyes very wide and turned a little toward me. Truth is perhaps contagious; I had not meant to tell her that had tried to avoid telling it to myself, but it had come out. She studied my eyes very closely.

“You’re a very nice person, Alex.”

I looked at her and didn’t know what to do.

“Yes,” she said, very softly, to the question I had not asked. “I would like it very much, Alex.”

So I kissed her.

She kissed greedily, eagerly, like a yearning schoolgirl in a parked car. She kissed warm and wet and tightened her arms around my neck. She kissed sweet and soft, and I rubbed the back of her neck and stroked her like a frightened kitten.

We walked drunkenly to her little bedroom and stopped to kiss in the doorway. She sighed, and murmured my name. We entered the bedroom and left the lights out. We undressed. She drew down the bedclothing and we lay down on the bed together.

“Well, it took awhile, but here we are. Who would of guessed?”

“Shhhh.”

“Alex-”

We kissed, and she clung to me, and I felt the awesome softness of her. Every bit of her was soft and smooth. I could not stop touching her. I touched her breasts, her belly, her back, her bottom, her legs. I loved the way she felt.

She lay quite still, eyes closed, body at peace, in the sweet inertia of heroin, while I wrote song lyrics on all the delights of her flesh. I stroked her and kissed her, and at length her body began to make sweet abbreviated movements, and her breathing matched these movements in rhythm. She made small noises, sweet dim sounds. I ceased to think, I lost myself utterly in the smell taste touch of her. And at length she said, suddenly urgent, “Now, darling, now.”

I threw myself down upon that small soft body, and her hand clutched me and tucked me home. She worked and strained in sweet agony beneath me. I brought her there. I heard her cry out and felt her quiver, and then I melted at last inside her in unutterable delight.

She came back from the bathroom. I had not moved or opened my eyes. She slipped into bed beside me and said, “I’m not sick, you don’t have to worry.”

“I wasn’t worried.”

“You must of been.”

“No.”

“I had the clap three times. The other, never.” Her voice was flat. “I been everything, I had everything. I wish to hell I was somebody else.”

“I don’t.”

“I’ll wake up and you’ll be gone.”

“No.”

“In your little soldier suit.”

“No.”

“Hold onto me, Alex, I feel all shaky.”

She was small and soft in my arms. I kissed her. She opened her eyes for a moment, then closed them again and relaxed. I let my own eyes slip shut and discovered how exhausted I was. There was a curtain ready to come down and I wasn’t going to fight it.

She said, “The watch and the wallet. And Robin’s purse.”

“Huh?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I don’t follow you.”

She spoke with an effort, dragging the words up one by one. “The man who killed them. I just had an idea. Tomorrow. First sleep.”

We fell asleep holding each other.