Cloud Nine

Chapter 9

Did I really dread it as much as I thought? I can’t say, but I was so nervous I could hardly speak, as just being around her, to see her and hear her and touch her, excited me more than anything ever had. I watched as she took up kind of a survey, first of the kitchenette, which was at one side of the living room, with a chrome-steel sink, very pretty, and a little electric stove; then of the living room, of the bedroom, and of the bathroom, which was beyond the bedroom. She came back and said, “They’re in a row, all four rooms, the little ones on the ends, the big ones in the middle, with windows facing the ocean. I like it. Do you?”

I said I did, and then screwed up my nerve to talk of the night, and how we were going to spend it. I told her: “What we’ll do is you take the bedroom, and I’ll tuck away here, on one of these pull-down things.”

I reached for the turnbuckle that held up one of the beds, but suddenly she burst into tears. “Well what the hell?” I snapped. “What have I done, what is it?”

“I thought you loved me.”

“...Well, I guess I do, but—?”

But at that she just wailed like a banshee, with tears squirting out of her eyes, first rocking on her feet, then flopping into a chair, where she buried her face on her sleeve and went on with the crying jag. I snapped, “Hey, cool it! And answer me what I asked you: What have I done?”

“Putting me in by myself.”

“Well where do you think you should go?”

“With you, of course.”

“Are you nuts?”

“Listen, I’m going to be your wife!”

“But you can’t sleep with me now — not in your condition. You were the one that said it, it would just be messy. We have to wait till Tuesday.”

“I know it, but I could be with you!”

“I’d give my eye teeth to be with you, but—”

“And I could inhale how you smell.”

“That sets me nutsier than anything.”

“And me nutsiest of all — but I want it.”

She wept a bit more, then mentioned that the bedroom had twin beds, “Which won’t help much,” I said.

Then, wailing, she said: “But I was hoping you’d protect me.”

“From what? Nobody knows we’re here.”

“From what’s going to happen to me.”

“But nothing’s going to happen to you.”

“Oh yes, something is.”

What she was talking about I hadn’t the faintest idea, but I had a pretty good idea it wasn’t about anything — that it was just a bugaboo she’d made up, to make me say yes, that we’d stay in the bedroom together. By then I was kneeling beside her, first patting her, then giving her little slaps on the cheek, which she didn’t seem to mind. Then she rubbed her cheek against mine and smeared me with her tears. Then she kissed me. Then she took off the wig, unpinned the knot of hair on top of her head and let the curls fall on my face. Then she poked a hole in them with her finger and kissed me through the hole. Then she got up, put her bag on a chair, and said: “I put two nighties in, one fresh back from the laundry, the other, the one I slept in all week. Which one do you want me to wear?”

“The one you slept in all week.”

“I thought you would.”

She took both bags into the bedroom and undressed, so she was naked, but without turning on the light. Then she opened her bag and took out a nightie, holding it out to me. I smelled it and she put it on. She whispered: “I’m glad you like how I smell. I love how you smell, Mr. Kirby. Get undressed. But don’t put pajamas on yet. I want to smell under your arms.”

“Sonya, you’re making it tough.”

“I love you, that’s why.”

I undressed down to my underpants, and she came and sniffed my chest, sliding around to my armpit. I said: “That’ll do, that has to be all.” She stepped back and I got my pajamas out, peeling off price tags and labels. I slipped out of my underpants, then put them on. She stood watching, then turned down a bed and got in it. I turned down the other and got in it. She came over and slipped into bed beside me. I said: “Know what’s going to happen to you?”

“You’re kissing me nice, that’s what.”

“That’s right, and the—!”

I kissed her, doubled up my legs, put both feet on her bottom, and pushed her out on the floor. “Well that’s nice,” she said; “I’ll say it is, that’s nice.”

“You git! You git in your own bed.”

She knelt by her bed and bawled even louder than she had in the sitting room. I said: “You can howl your head off and you don’t get back in this bed. Keep it up and I’ll blister your backside.”

She kept it up.

I rolled out of bed and blistered her. She stopped howling, sniffled, and said: “Okay — now that I know you love me.” I don’t figure that one out.

We lay there some little time, she in her bed, I in mine, her hand occasionally finding my hand, where it lay outside the covers, and patting it. She excited me though, just having her there in the dark near me, and it seemed impossible I’d ever drop off. I must have, though, because suddenly I came wide awake, from some kind of scream in my ear. When it came again, I realized it was from her. Then I realized she was dreaming. I jumped up, shook her, and then shook her again. She woke up, saying: “Oh! Oh! Oh!”

I whispered: “Easy does it, you’re having a dream.”

“Oh!... I told you, didn’t I?”

“Is that what you were afraid of?”

“I have that dream every night, that same horrible one. I’m in Prince Georges General Hospital, in the delivery room, giving birth. I have awful pain, but the child comes at last — it’s over. Then the nurse is going to bring it, but I say I don’t want to see it. But she says I have to, it’s the rules. And then she brings it, squirming around and covered with blood. And it’s a gorilla.”

She called it goriller.

I told her: “Now, now, now! Calm down — it was only a dream, and I’m here. Go to sleep — there won’t be any gorilla, they’re taking it from you Tuesday. Then it’ll all be over. So, relax.”

“Okay, I’m trying to.”

“You’re a sweet, wonderful child.”

“Now we can go back to sleep.”

After a long time her breathing slowed, then got deeper, so I knew she’d fallen asleep. I went back to my bed, but didn’t sleep right away. I kept thinking about what it meant, in under her little jokes, about food, about her father’s dumbness, about the love my blistering proved, to have this thing inside her. And if I had been chosen, as the instrument of her deliverance, I felt I was consecrated, somehow.