Bone Deep

21

Tee was resolved and feeling strong about what he had to do until he saw her eyes, those incredible wolflike pale blue eyes peering at him from under the red headband.

"You're looking awfully glum, General," she said, putting her hands on her hips and swaggering slightly, mocking him. The day was brutally hot, even in early morning, and sweat coursed down her bare arms.

Tee started to speak, but she ducked as if anticipating a blow and stepped forward, grabbing his belt. "Don't," she said. "Not yet. I had the most horrible fight with my husband this morning-let me just hold on to you for a minute." She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face against his chest. He could smell the grapy scent of her hair.

"You're so dependable," she said, her lips against the cloth of his shirt. "So uncomplicated. Tommy is like a nest of snakes. Some days you just can't step anywhere without stirring him up. He's so sensitive-that's his 'artistic' termperament, you know. I don't care how much women are carrying on these days about wanting a sensitive man, I'm here to tell you that you can have too much of a good thing. Give me your typical American male who doesn't necessarily know when he's being wounded because he's too busy being stoic. They're a whole lot easier to live with, believe me. All these women swooning over sensitivity, they just make me sick. Let them spend a week with Tommy Leigh and see how they like it. That'll cure them real quick."

"Is that how you see me?" Tee asked. "Some kind of insensitive brute?"

She unbuttoned his shirt and pressed her cheek to the skin of his chest.

"You're so cool," she said. "How can you be so cool on such a hot day?"

Her hands fluttered across the skin of his back and Tee sighed with pleasure.

"I've been here long enough to cool down," he said. He had been atop the rock a half hour earlier than usual, rehearsing what he intended to say. "There's a nice breeze."

"Well, Lord, give it to me," she cried, releasing him and standing by the edge of the cliff. She pulled her arms from her sleeves and the Lycra top fell to her waist. She stood on the rocks, her arms outstretched, half naked, her back to Tee. The wind came up and ruffled her hair.

"Oh Lord, that's so good," she said. "It's like standing in front of the refrigerator. Take off your clothes and see."

Tee had planned to tell her before they had sex, but when she turned to him, her arms still outstretched but now beckoning him, her nipples as taut and puckered as if they had been touched with ice, he pulled at his shirt and kicked off his shoes.

They made love standing up, her legs wrapped around the backs of his thighs, her hands grasping his shoulders. Even as he worried about his balance and his strengt an the possibility that his back might go into spasm or that he might lurch and send them both tumbling down the hill, Tee reveled in the giddy daring of standing naked atop the highest point in town and fucking. He felt at once both exposed and invulnerable, bold and alarmed by the lunacy that possessed him when he was with her.

Young, he thought, she makes me feel still young enough to fuck the whole world.

She rubbed against him frantically, impassioned by their audacity. Tee was all but immobilized by a lack of leverage but she was free to move and thrust wildly. For the first time ever she came before he did, her head thrown back, her mouth open as grunt after grunt burst forth in a rising crescendo of entreaty until she concluded at last with a snarl and grinding teeth. Tee came almost immediately from the excitement of watching her. When she pulled away from him he sank to his knees, laughing.

"My God," he cried. "My God." His body was racked with laughter and he fell to all fours. She sat on his back. He could feel her pubic hair slide across his skin, which was now soaked with sweat.

"Was that just me?" she asked.

"No." Tee swung his head back and forth. "No, no."

"Because…"

"I never… I don't think I've ever..

She stretched out and lay atop his back as if he were a horse, her arms wrapped around his chest, her legs bent so that her feet faced the sky.

"I've never done that with Tommy. He would be scandalized."

He started to say that doing it that way with Marge would break his back, but he stopped out of loyalty. "I know," he said.

"You're so good for me, Tee, you really are. I don't know how I'd make it through the week without you."

It was more of a confession of feeling than he had ever heard from her and it was as uncomfortable for her as it was surprising to him.

"I feel that way too," he said. "I've said too much already," she said, sliding off him.

"No, tell me," Tee said.

"It's better not to talk about these things." She reached for her clothes.

"I need to know," he said.

"Oh, you know," she replied. "Tell me," he said. "Tell me what you feel."

"The-se things are better left unsaid," she said. She pulled on her jogging outfit, dancing slightly to get it into place. "We have to go on living our lives, you know. There's no point in making it any harder." He knew she would not change her mind, she was unbendable when she decided something. He wanted to pick her up again and shake her until her teeth rattled.

"You're so awfully white," she said, studying him as if noticing his body for the first time. "You ought to get some sunlight, General."

There was an unexpected bite to her tone, a whiff of disgust.

The euphoria and the affection were gone as swiftly and easily as a cloud masks the sun. He felt like strangling her.

"I can't see you anymore," he said flatly. She stared at him in silence.

"It's no good. It's hurting my marriage." He paused, waiting for a reply, something to respond to. She said nothing but continued to stare at him as if he were something inexplicable that happened to be in her way. Tee suddenly felt very self-conscious in his nakedness. He scrambled into his underwear, unable to cover himself fast enough.

"I'm sorry," he said, when it was clear that she would not answer. "I didn't want to just say it like this, but-"

"No," she said, her voice so low that he was not sure he heard her at first.

"I'm sorry."

"It's not up to you," she said.

"What?"

"You can't stop," she said, her voice now loud and angry. "Not until I say so."

"Well, I'm sorry..

"Stop saying that. Stop being sorry."

There was a wildness to her tone that frightened him. Tee continued to dress in a hurry.

"I'm not through with you," she said.

"I've thought it all through," he said, yanking on his pants and forcing his feet into his shoes. "We knew it had to end sometime..

She launched herself at him, screaming something that he did not understand. Tee was standing close to the edge and he caught her in his arms, teetering backward perilously close to the edge. She struck at him, pounding his chest, and he was powerless to do anything but press her to him while trying to compensate his balance against her motions.

For a moment he thought he would surely fall, but he managed to lean to the side and then to drag them both away from the edge.

"I'll tell her! I'll tell your wife about us," Mrs. Leigh said.

Tee reacted as if she had slapped him. "No you won't," he said.

"You don't leave me," she spit. "You don't leave me. I'll tell you when it's over."

"You won't say a fucking word to my wife. Not now. Not ever."

"I will if I have to," she said. "First I'll tell your wife, then I'll tell the rest of the town."

'No."

"Oh, yes, oh, yes."

He stared at her, his arms trembling at his sides. Her face was twisted and ugly with vengeful triumph.

'No," he repeated, looking away from her, down at her feet, then out over the cliff to the glistening water of the reservoir. Once again a hawk was riding the morning thermals, up and up in its search for prey.

"We don't have to get to that," she said, her tone changing. But it was too late to mollify him. Tee grabbed her under the armpits. The adrenaline that coursed through his body turned to rage. He held her at arm's length and thought of hurling her over the cliff. It would be a solution of sorts. -He knew it would bring him a kind of peace, at least in one area of his life. Tee shook her hard, feeling her body quiver as her feet dangled over the void.

It took him a moment to comprehend that she was whimpering, pleading with him now, promising him whatever he wanted and begging for her life.

He realized with amazement what he was doing and snatched her back, pulling her into him.

"Oh God," he moaned, "I would never, I would never…" But in his heart he knew that he could, that he almost had. He held her fast to his body, not wanting her to see the confusion in his eyes, the fear mixed with a strange elation. It had been so close, he had but to open his fingers and she was gone. Tee was not certain if the significant fact was that he had come so close to killing her, or that he had not done it.

"I can't let you hurt my wife," he said at last, as if that explained his actions.

"I wouldn't," she said quickly. "I never would do that, Tee. I was just so hurt, I didn't know what I was saying. I didn't want to lose you."

Tee heard the same fulsome sincerity that came from every apprehended felon. Frightened, desperate people did not lie convincingly.

When he released her she hurried away from him, scampering down the hillside path like a frightened deer. Tee sat for a long time alone, shaken by the experience. He did not think that he had been that angry.

He was annoyed by her attitude, and still shaken, still frightened, as a result of nearly toppling over the edge himself, but neither of those factors accounted for what he had done. I must have been bluffing, he thought, I must have known all along that I wouldn't do it. But he had no visceral memory of anything like that. He could recall only the spontaneous impulse to grab her, to thrust her over the void, and then the nearly irresistible urge to let her fall. Nearly irresistible, for he had ultimately resisted. And that was the difference, he told himself. That was the difference between himself and Johnny Appleseed.

That was even the difference between himself and John Becker. They all had the opportunity to kill, the other two did and Tee did not… But if it happened again, he wondered. If it had been safer, if it had been legal-if it had been someone else in his grasp… He remembered the trembling of his muscles, the urge to let her go and watch her tumbling, cart-wheeling into space, to see the final flicker of terror in her eyes before she plummeted away from him… Had it really been just to see it? His rage was not that compelling, her threat to him surely not great enough to warrant death. Had it really been just the power to do it that had made him shake with temptation? He did not know if he believed that of himself, but then he had to believe what he had just done. In the past half hour he had done two things he would not have thought likely: first the astonishing, bravura sex, casting aside all sense of propriety and caution, and then the near homicide. It was one hell of an age to start discovering what he was capable of, Tee thought. He was not at all sure that he wanted to know any more.

When he reached the bottom of the hill at last he walked past his car and kept going until he reached the bank of the reservoir. Scarcely bothering to look to see if he was observed, he took off his clothes for the second time that day and walked into the water until it was up to his neck, feeling as if some other power were driving him, as if he were no longer responsible for his actions, not even to himself.

He could hear cars driving past on the other side of the screen of trees, even hear when some of them automatically slowed at the sight of a police car, but his eyes and his mind were out over the water, away from civilization, skimming the surface of the water; sailing up to the heavens as birds caught his eye; flitting to the forest on the far shore, where he could barely discern the movements of muskrats puttering around the edge of the lake and then pushing off at last into the water, their furry heads breaking the surface and leaving a long, serpentine wake behind them as they swam slowly in his direction. His mind drifted, trying to calm itself, trying to focus on the innocence of nature's diurnal life, wincing and recoiling when it looked back on the past hour's work, yearning to soar as concentrated but thoughtless as the hawk, which still wheeled over the reservoir.

When he had regained enough composure to feel thormughly silly standing neck-deep in a lake, he rose at last from the reservoir, scraped the water from himself with the side of his hand as if cleaning a windshield, dressed, and drove slowly to work.