Other people

Thirty-eight Thomassy

I put my briefcase against the leg of my chair so it would be sure to fall over when I got up. I didn't want to forget it. I couldn't tell you what I ordered or ate or heard as I watched the talk ping-ponging back and forth from Francine to her father, her father to Francine, meaning, really, I watched how Francine's lips moved when she talked, the way she touched them with the edge of the cloth napkin, the way her hair swayed when she tossed her head. All I'd had was a Campari and soda before lunch and I was sailing, floating, except it wasn't a casual high, easygoing or passive. I was being swept along weightlessly in space under the influence of the most potent hallucinogen in the world, the thrall of being in love.

Every once in a while Widmer would turn to me and say something. I'd nod or shake my head, possessed, not knowing what I was agreeing to! Francine, intuiting that a mad obsession had taken hold, covered for me, keeping the conversation bobbing amidst the noise of the restaurant. I felt as if she and me, me and she were the only ones mattering, stripped of all other things in life except each other. And the tremendous energy that came with it! Sitting still I felt like leaping up, whirling about, dancing like a Nijinsky even though I've never danced solo in my life. It's the omnipotence, the feeling I can do anything, I am in love.

At last father and daughter were through. We stood for the ceremony of his leaving. He pecked Francine's cheek, a cheek that I wanted to lick with my tongue like a cat. I shook Widmer's hand, hoping mine, its skin prickling with nerve endings, didn't feel as hot to him as it felt to me. My face felt flushed, too. The nerve endings on my arms and elsewhere cried out to be touched by you know who.

"Goodbye," he said.

Tra-la, I wanted to say.

"I suppose you two have things to talk about," he said.

I suppose, you suppose, he supposes. We suppose, they suppose.

He vanished into the crowd after a last little wave at his daughter and glance at me, and the two of us were alone in that crowd. I put my hands on the table and she covered them with her own.

"It's unbearable," I said.

"I know," she said.

Could another person feel energy bouncing around for release, the total, total, total overwhelming joy of it all? Perhaps she felt a bit of it, too?

"More than a bit," she said. Was she reading my thoughts or was I talking out loud and not knowing it?

"I've got to get back to the city," she said. "The stuff on my desk is crying out for my attention."

"I am crying out for your attentions," I said, and I knew she could hear me, because I could hear myself now talking out loud instead of inside my head.

"Listen," I said, "this is urgent."

"What?"

"This." I moved my hands under her hands. "I'd be dangerous in the courtroom," I said. "To my client. To myself." I moved my face across the table and she moved hers to meet it. From four inches away from her lips, I said, "I've gone insane."

Francine laughed, got up. "Let's walk it off," she said.

"Terrific," I said, standing, my briefcase falling over to remind me.

I walked as if my feet were hydrofoils. Like a guardsman on parade, I swung her hand in my hand all the way forward, then all the way back.

"We must look nuts," I said.

"Nuts we look," she said.

"There it is," I pointed. Holiday Inn.

"This is crazy," she said.

I swung my briefcase. "Crazy is as crazy does," I said.

I signed as in as Mr. and Mrs. Archibald Haig, in honor of our respective fathers. Looking over my shoulder, Francine laughed. The man at the reception desk smiled.

"I'll show you the way," he said, taking my briefcase.

Oh the absurdity of the man carrying my lone briefcase ahead of us, switching on the room lights, showing us the bath, the closet (for what?), the TV set, everything except the bed. I thanked him two dollars' worth, ridiculous, and double-locked the door. My arms went around her, clasping her close enough to meld us cheekbone to hip, deliciously hurting. She pushed us asunder, and then woosh, no two people in the history of the universe ever flung their clothes off as fast as we did, and there I stood, my heart pounding, my rod pointing, and she touched it, just barely touched it around the head, then dropped to her knees, taking it into her mouth in a way it had never been taken by anyone before, as if it were hers.

"No, no," I said, motioning her over to the bed, but she shook her head, fiercely in charge of my organ, which I was now moving to the rhythm of her mouth. Of course dozens of times in the past with others I had felt the mechanics of it. Jane used to hold it apprehensively just below the head as if afraid I'd suddenly lunge too far, but now Francine was alternately licking and kissing and enveloping it in a way that electrified its entire surface, and I moaned — first time in my life I ever did that — moaned with the excruciating pleasure of it, as the throb started, and she somehow cupped her hand around my balls without breaking the rhythm, and her eyes glanced up at me for a second, and then like a great pulse of energy, I started to come and come and come, and finally slipped, exhausted to the floor beside her, our arms around each other, rocking.

I remember the fantastic look of accomplishment in her eyes. She knew how good she had been for me.

"What hath the mouth that the vagina hath not?" I whispered in the curlicues of her ear.

"A tongue," she answered, laughing, and I remember we kissed in a kiss that seemed to last for all time until we broke to breathe again.

"Turning you on turns me on," she said in my ear.

"I don't believe."

"Proof," she said, holding her breasts. Her nipples were obtruding and hard. I licked one with the tip of my tongue. She turned slightly so that I could lick at the other.

I remember her taking my head in her hands and moving me down to the triangle of her once-blond hair and below, where her lips seemed to part in slow motion to reveal a pinkness where I busied my tongue, and in an instant her hips were moving to a savage rhythm on the carpeted floor. Suddenly she stopped, pulled my head up to her. I didn't know I was erect again, but somehow she knew and took it with her fingers and placed it where my mouth had been, and then we rocked in that same impatient insistent demanding rhythm of hers until she was saying now now now and we were both senselessly kissing and coming and kissing and coming.

We must have dozed. When we awoke, I felt drained, rag doll limp, euphoric. I kissed the end of her nose. We untangled, stretched, somehow got to our feet. I felt as if I would stumble. We held each other for support.

We dressed. I know we dressed but I don't remember it. I only remember our looking around the motel room making sure we had everything including my briefcase, and then noticing that at the center of the scene of our lust stood the fully made, unrumpled bed we had not needed.

We laughed like kids, then closed the door behind us.