Katherine Carlyle by Rupert Thomson

pulls me to my feet, then embraces me awkwardly, his face buried in my hair. I see him reflected in theplate-glass window, enormous and dark and stooping over me. One person devouring another.
    Straightening up again, he leads me past the gray painting, across the hall, and down the corridor. I have already seen his bedroom. I explored the entire apartment on my first day, while he was out at work. I have even used his bath, which is round and deep, like a Jacuzzi or a well, and covered with tiny turquoise tiles. I know that his sheets and duvet are maroon, and that he keeps his boxer shorts on shelves, in neat ironed piles. He drains his drink in a single hurried gulp as he follows me into the room.
    I put my glass down next to a book on Fabergé and lie back on the bed. Sitting at my feet, he removes one boot, then the other. He handles them as if they’re objects of great value, like the jeweled eggs he has been reading about. Why am I thinking of sleeping with him? No, wait. That’s the wrong way round. If I
don’t
sleep with him, there will be a sense of incompleteness. This tenuous, artificial relationship, which I have fabricated out of nothing, seems to require it of me. It’s partly my desire to see it through to its conclusion — going to bed with Klaus is an end, not a beginning — and partly the need to clear the way for whatever might come next.
    He places his glasses in their case, then closes the case with a crisp snap. At that moment I have the feeling I won’t be able to go through with it. He isn’t the kind of man I’m used to or have ever thought of sleeping with. When he turns away to hang his jacket on the back of the door I take off my tights and skirt and slide beneath the covers. He strips down to his boxer shorts, his body larger and whiter than I imagined it would be. The maroon sheets don’t help.
    After it’s over, I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling, my pubic bone bruised from where he ground himself against me, trying to force an erection. The fact that he couldn’t get it up doesn’t bother me. In a way it’s a blessing. Since I wasn’t excited to start with I’m not left feeling frustrated. I sense possible orgasms, but they glide far below the surface like fish in deep water, incurious, unruffled.
    “Sometimes, the first time,” he says in a low voice, “if a person’s very beautiful —”
    “It doesn’t work?”
    “Yes.” He grimaces. “It doesn’t work.”
    “I didn’t know that.”
    “I’m sorry. Maybe tomorrow …”
    If what he says is true I suppose his failure is a compliment. I wonder if it also happened with Valentina. The first time.
    He asks whether he can read to me. I can hardly refuse him. Putting on his glasses, he reaches for a book. “Do you know Heinrich Heine’s work?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    He reads a poem about love being more precious than the pearls in the sea, and another poem about a man cutting his soul into pieces. He reads a poem about a girl with a frozen heart beneath white branches. After fifteen or twenty minutes he looks at me and asks if I’m all right.
    “That was lovely,” I say, “but I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll go back to my room now.”
    “Of course.” All of a sudden he sounds serene, as if I have returned him to ground that is familiar and safe. It occurs to me that he might be relieved. “Here.” He passes me a black silk kimono.
    “Thanks.” It feels cold and slippery, and I shiver as I put it on.
    Back in my room I remember reaching between his legs and trying to make him hard, but his penis was small and slack and rubbery like the bit left over when you’ve tied a knot in a balloon. Even when I took it in my mouth it wouldn’t stiffen.
    “What would you like me to do?” I asked. “Is there something special?”
    His eyes were closed, and his face twisted in a kind of agony. “Nothing. It’s all right.”
    He turned over in the bed and began to run his hands over my body. Though