Still Waters

Thirty-nine

Standing in the kitchen, Resnick seated at the table in front of her, Hannah vigorously toweled his hair dry. “Why is it,” she asked, “I feel like I’m in a short story by D. H. Lawrence? Seeing to my man after a hard day at the pit face. All it needs is the coal in the bath to be perfect.”

“Or me in the bath,” Resnick suggested.

Hannah dipped her head to kiss the back of his neck. “We’ll get to that later.”

After dinner, they sat in the front room with the lights out and watched a video of Woody Allen’s September. Brittle, rich people with money enough to indulge their own small hurts. And in its midst a writer whom half the women seem unfathomably to be in love with. He was, Resnick thought, as manipulative and self-obsessed as he supposed writers might be.

“Switch it off, Charlie, for heaven’s sake!” Hannah exclaimed as, yet again, Resnick let out a groan at the behavior of one or other character on the screen. “Or else stop complaining.”

But there was one thing that kept him watching-or listening: the album Art Tatum once made with Ben Webster was forever on the record player. People danced to it, listened in the dark to it, kissed and quarreled to it, exclaimed how wonderful it was.

Which was true. Almost the only truth Resnick could divine from the whole charade.

“You know what it reminded me of?” Hannah said, once the end titles had come up, switching the remote to rewind. “You remember the first time we went to Broadway, that film we saw based on the Chekhov play?”

Resnick could recall the occasion very well; about the film he was less certain. He reached up to switch on the light. It was still not eleven o’clock. “The thing that got me,” he said, pausing on his way to the kitchen, “wanting us to believe that twerp of a writer with the morals of an alley cat would have the nous to choose Tatum and Webster as his favorite record.”

Hannah looked at him, smiling. “Morality, Charlie, is that what it’s about?”

And Resnick looked right back at her, as if not believing what she had just said.

Candlelight flickering across walls and ceiling, and only a light rain now falling, they lay and stared up through the skylight at the midnight sky.

“After things went wrong between you and Jim,” Resnick said suddenly, “how long did it take you to come to terms? Yourself, I mean. You know, feel okay again.”

Hannah turned lightly onto her side, facing him. “What made you ask that?”

“Do you mind?”

“No. It’s just that you’ve never asked before. About that or anything much else.” She was stroking her fingers down along the inside of his arm.

“I suppose I always figured it’s your life.”

“Not wanting to interrogate me, eh, Charlie?”

“Something like that.”

“And now?” She raised one knee so that he could slide his leg between hers.

“It was watching the film, I suppose. Mia what’s-her-name, taking two years off in the country to get over some bloke who’s dumped her.”

“She could afford to, that’s all.”

“And you?”

“All I could afford was a week in France, visiting my dad and his doxy.”

“Doxy?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?”

Her breasts were pressed against his chest and when she moved only slightly along his thigh, he could feel that she was already wet.

“So how long did it take?” Resnick asked, his mouth close to her ear.

“Getting over Jim?”

“Uh-huh.” Difficult to speak when she was kissing him.

“About two years,” Hannah said some moments later. “If, that is, you ever really do.”

She slid herself over him and, though he wasn’t quite ready, deftly took him inside her. Leaning forward, she teased his nipples with her tongue and then, knees fast against his side, arched back, arms wide, and hung there, her voice arousing, enthusing, attacking, and imploring.

Resnick raised a hand toward her face and, broadly smiling, she took his fingers in her mouth and languorously started licking them, but that was not what he had meant. He moved his hand again till it was behind her neck and gently brought her down and round until once again she lay facing him.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed. “I don’t know …”

“Charlie, Charlie, shush. It doesn’t matter. The earth doesn’t have to move every time.” And then she threw back her head and laughed. “Sleep with an English teacher, Charlie, and that’s what you get. Literary references the whole evening.” And continued to laugh, rocking on her hip until she spilled him out.