Wilderness

CHAPTER 33.

When Newman woke up he could smell food. He felt the sudden tingle of saliva in his mouth at the thought of it. The room was warm and half lit with the moving gleam of the fire. He sat up. His right thigh hurt where Karl had kneed him, trying for the groin. His neck was sore. His forearms and the high muscles behind his shoulders were sore. He swung his feet to the floor.

Across the room by the fire, in a chair, he saw Janet. She wore no clothes. She sipped very small sips from a large glass full of ice and bourbon. She held the glass with both hands and didn't sip often. She looked at him as he sat up.

He said, "Hello." She said, "Hello." He said, "You don't seem to be wearing any clothes."

She said, "I washed our stuff and took a shower. There was nothing to put on." He said, "I smell food." She said, "I put some beans in the oven, and there's steak."

"Haven't you eaten?"

"I had some beans. I waited to eat the steak with you."

He still sat on the couch, looking at her. "You don't usually sit around with your clothes off," he said.

"There's beer in the refrigerator," she said. "You want any?" He said, "Yes."

She said, "I'll get it for you, but take a shower first. You smell like a porcupine."

"How the hell do you know what a porcupine smells like?"

She giggled. "It smells just like you," she said. "That's how I know." "For cris sake he said, "you're half zonked." There was pleasure in his voice.

"Go take your shower, porcupine breath," she said.

"You're sitting around bare-ass and half zonked."

"There's a towel on the kitchen floor," she said and took another tiny sip of bourbon.

The soap stung the scratches on his face, but he washed his face carefully anyway, rubbing the lather into the scratches to get them clean. The wounded arm stung but he washed that too, tightening against the pain. He washed and rinsed and lathered and rinsed again and shampooed his hair twice. There was no toothbrush but he rubbed his teeth with salt on the ball of his forefinger and rinsed his mouth in the shower's stream, gargling and spitting. When he got out of the shower and toweled off he looked at himself in the mirror. He was much slimmer. The roll of fat around his middle was gone. His stomach lay flat between his hip bones. Great diet, he thought. A few days in the wilderness and all baby fat is gone.

He hung the towel on the back of the bathroom door and walked to the living room. She handed him a beer. He popped open the can and drank a sip. It was cold and it felt clean as it coursed through him. He hadn't had a drink for days. Janet got the first-aid kit and rebandaged his arm. Then she sat back in her chair with the big lowball glass held in both hands, clinking the ice and looking into the fire. It was night. The fire was the only light in the room. She sipped the bourbon. He drank from his can of beer. A spark popped from the fire out onto the hearth, and sputtered and faded out.

She looked up at him across the rim of the glass. He sipped the rest of the beer and put the can on the mantel. She put the half-drunk glass of bourbon on the floor and stood up. They both stood still five feet apart. She swayed very slightly.

"I don't want you to think this means more than it does," she said. She took two steps toward him and put her arms around his neck and raised her face to his. Her mouth was slightly open. Her lips were wet from bourbon and ice and it made them shiny. He put his arms around her waist, his hands one on top of the other in the small of her back.

"This doesn't mean that I'm going to be different," she said. Her speech slurred very slightly. He pressed her against him and put his head down and kissed her open mouth. Under his lips it opened wider.

Her body arched back, her arms tightened around his neck. He put his tongue into her mouth. She touched the tip of it with hers and opened her mouth wider. Her body loosened and relaxed, she went limp against his arms, pulling him toward the floor with her weight. Her arms fell away and she seemed boneless. He raised his head slightly to look at her. She lay back against his arms, limp, her mouth open, her eyes half closed. Her breathing was short and shallow. She ran the tip of her tongue along the inner edge of her lower lip. Carefully he eased her to the floor. She was without volition. When she was on the floor she let her legs fall open, her hands nearly by her sides, looking up at him still with half-closed eyes. Her breath was even shorter and there was a faint sound to it, a murmur. He rested on his right elbow beside her, lying on his side, close to her. She turned her head toward him but made no other movement. He kissed her again. Her mouth was loose. He put his left hand against her cheek and moved it down along her neck to her breast. He moved his hand on her breast. He rubbed the nipple softly with the ball of his forefinger. The murmur in her breath became a soft groan. She shifted slightly and closed her eyes entirely, her hands still lying motionless beside her, palms up, fingers slightly curled. He put his mouth to her breast. She tipped her head back slightly and put her right hand up and rested it gently on the back of his head. She groaned softly. He moved his left hand down her body across her stomach. She arched her pelvis up at him and pushed his head more firmly against her breast. He slipped his right hand beneath her shoulders and moved his left hand between her thighs.

She groaned more loudly. She moved her legs farther apart. Both her arms were around him now, and they remained in that balance between tension and lassitude as the glow from the fire softened their movement and warmed them. In a while she shifted and helped him as he slid between her legs. She said, "Yes," once and raised her head and shoulders slightly to kiss him as their bodies moved in intuitive union.

When it was over and they were spent she looked up at him in the rose-tinged semidarkness and said, "I love you very much." "I love you," he said. There were tears on his face. Then he put his face down beside hers and they lay still on the floor in front of the fire with their arms around each other, still pressed together. A log shifted as the center burned through and the two halves slowly settled toward the center.

"Don't expect too much next time," she said. Her eyes were closed and she lay with her head resting on his right arm.

"I'll take what I can get," he said. His voice was hoarse.

She opened her eyes and looked at him without moving her head. Then she said, "The floor is quite hard."

"True."

"Let's get up and eat." "Okay," he said. "Let's get dressed before we eat, though. I'm freezing my ass off."

The clothes were still warm from the dryer when they put them on. His shirt had gone overboard with the knapsack. He wore the vest over his bare upper body. She sipped her bourbon while she set the table in front of the fire. He forked the half-thawed steak onto the swing-out grill in the fireplace. It began to sizzle almost at once as the flame touched it. The coals were thick on the fire bed now, and the fireplace was very hot. She brought him another can of beer. He drank from it. She put the casserole of beans on a hot pad on the table. They were bubbling softly. She put out the rye bread, some ketchup, some pickles, two dinner plates, knives and forks. He turned the steak on the grill, feeling the heat blistering his hand as he did. She finished setting the table and sat in one of the chairs and sipped her bourbon. The steak sizzled for three more minutes on the grill and then he put it on a plate and brought it to the table. He cut it in two pieces with his pocket knife, gave one half to her and put the other half on his own plate. Then he sat down and they ate.

They ate in silence. The food occupied them completely. And as they ate they thought of when they had eaten a granola bar for dinner.

"It's lovely to eat," she said.

He put some ketchup on his beans. "Yes," he said. "One of the great meals."

They finished eating and wiped the plate clean with the last of the bread. He went to the kitchen and brought out coffee in thick china mugs with pictures of vegetables on them.

"What do we do now?" Janet said.

Newman sipped the coffee. "We drive Chris's car home, time it to arrive at night, put it in his garage in the dark, go home to our house, and take up our lives again. There's nothing to connect us. The rent's paid in aavance on this place. When the week's up, we're gone. The owner will think nothing of it. Before we leave tomorrow I'll wipe the place for fingerprints."

"Everywhere? That's a big order." She sipped at her coffee, holding the mug at chin level and breathing in the steam.

"No, just refrigerator, chrome sink-handles, bathroom and toilet handles, that stuff. They can't pick anything up off fabric and floors and stuff."

"How do you know about fingerprints?" "It stands to reason," he said. "It's got to be something smooth that the oils of the fingertips will leave a trace on, right?"

She shook her head, "I have no idea about fingerprints," she said.

"I'll have to trust you. How's the arm? It looked clean when I bandaged it."

"Seems pretty good. I looked at it in the shower. I don't see any infection. It's not swollen or very red. We'll keep an eye on it. If it gets worse I'll go to some suburban hospital emergency room and give a phony name. Happens all the time."

"And how in hell do you know that?" "I asked Teddy Schroeder. He interned in the emergency room at United Hospital. I was doing a book where the question came up. He says that's no sweat. They report it to the police but it's routine, and they don't ask for ID or anything." She smiled. "You do know things. The shelter in the woods. I know you've never built a shelter before."

"Yeah, but I've carp entered I have built a lot of things. There's logic to things. You build one thing you learn the logic of building.

How else would you make a shelter there?"

"I don't know. But it worked. You made it work." "Thank you," he said.

"How do you feel?" she said.

"Physically? Or emotionally?"

"Both," she said. "You've had to do an awful thing and it was terrible and frightening and you did all of it. How does it make you feel?" He drank some of his coffee. "Strong," he said. "Strong and close-knit, and not very much thinking. You know. I don't want to think very much. I want to work on intuition and feeling and eat what tastes good and drink what's cold and do a lot of screwing and sleeping and wearing clean clothes."

They were quiet, drinking coffee, looking at the fire.

"I couldn't have gone into the woods without you," he said. "And I could never have gotten out." "We went together," she said. "And came out the same way." "More together," he said. "Much more together." "Don't do that," she said. "Don't start expecting too much." He smiled at her, the smile widening across his face as if it would distort. Even in the dimness of the firelight his eyes gleamed.

"I don't expect anything," he said. "I take what comes. And we make do."