him, her eyes squinting shut and lips drawn back in a grimace of anticipated pain, and the discomfort of her plaited hair crushed against the back of her head and against the floor, or maybe each heard their friend’s footfall approaching, Adam’s raised, amused voice What the hell are you doing, Marina? Roger? I haven’t been dead twenty-four hours yet, and you’re fucking in my house? Almost at once, Roger’s erection faded; he muttered what sounded like “I can’t. I’m sorry.” Marina struck the man with both fists. She was wild, uncontrollable; she kicked at him, and raised her knee into his groin; afterward she would recall her frenzied behavior with deep shame; at the moment, she took a savage joy in it, clawing at the man, drawing blood on his face and beneath his ear. His face, contorted with alarm! She had to laugh. He grabbed at her wrists
J C O
and held her still; he bit at her shoulder where her shirt had been torn away, and he bit at her breasts; he was panting, furious; his penis had gone limp as a deflated balloon, mashed against Marina’s crinkly red swath of pubic hair.
Abruptly then it was over. The madness had passed through them, and from them. A summer squall, blown into the air. They lay together on the floor of Adam Berendt’s studio, spared the need to look at each other, for a long time, exhausted and defeated.
O M W:
T C
T hrough the walls ofthe stately old Colonial house,through hardwood floors and layers of thick carpet, distended as if by Time, came the sound of a woman sobbing .
Her heart was broken, and not for him .
O together on Old Mill Way north of the Village of Salthill-on-Hudson, in a meticulously restored eighteenth-century Colonial house on a hillside, a man and a woman of youthful middle age who’d been married so long (“Half our lifetimes at least”) they no longer saw each other, like moles in a burrow.
There was a distinct comfort in this, and the satisfactions of custom.
For this man and this woman were the offspring of families of Custom.
(Meaning good breeding and good money, though not a showy excess of money, on both sides of the marriage.)
Strange!—that the burrow, the house, was spacious and much admired and very expensive on four acres of prime Rockland County real estate, and yet remained a burrow. Strange that it was so confining and airless, though the present owners as well as previous owners had expanded it, and refurbished it, and spent a good deal of money on making it a showcase.
(“It’s like a dream, living here. Sometimes I worry I’ll wake up suddenly—
and all this happiness will have gone .”)
J C O
The oldest part of the house, made of wood, was kept freshly painted, oyster-white shingles that glowed like radium in early dusk. And there was fieldstone, and there was faded red brick so aged it looked as if it might crumple at the touch, and there was practical white stucco like exposed bone. So many windows upstairs and down, but the windows were small and narrow, Colonial-style; the glass was so old it looked wavy. In the festive holiday season, which in Salthill-on-Hudson was taken up with Christian exuberance, each window visible from Old Mill Way was lighted with an electric candle, and strings of chastely white, glittering lights twined across the facade of the house and wrapped like cobwebs in adjacent trees. The shutters were dark green, a familiar patriot hue, and the sturdy front door was old oak, adorned with a brass American eagle knocker forged in colonial times. Through the summer, clay pots of bright red geraniums were placed on the front steps, and through the autumn, clay pots of chrysanthemums were placed on the front steps; the pots were carefully roughened with sandpaper, for a “countrified” look.
“It’s hard to believe,
J C O
and held her still; he bit at her shoulder where her shirt had been torn away, and he bit at her breasts; he was panting, furious; his penis had gone limp as a deflated balloon, mashed against Marina’s crinkly red swath of pubic hair.
Abruptly then it was over. The madness had passed through them, and from them. A summer squall, blown into the air. They lay together on the floor of Adam Berendt’s studio, spared the need to look at each other, for a long time, exhausted and defeated.
O M W:
T C
T hrough the walls ofthe stately old Colonial house,through hardwood floors and layers of thick carpet, distended as if by Time, came the sound of a woman sobbing .
Her heart was broken, and not for him .
O together on Old Mill Way north of the Village of Salthill-on-Hudson, in a meticulously restored eighteenth-century Colonial house on a hillside, a man and a woman of youthful middle age who’d been married so long (“Half our lifetimes at least”) they no longer saw each other, like moles in a burrow.
There was a distinct comfort in this, and the satisfactions of custom.
For this man and this woman were the offspring of families of Custom.
(Meaning good breeding and good money, though not a showy excess of money, on both sides of the marriage.)
Strange!—that the burrow, the house, was spacious and much admired and very expensive on four acres of prime Rockland County real estate, and yet remained a burrow. Strange that it was so confining and airless, though the present owners as well as previous owners had expanded it, and refurbished it, and spent a good deal of money on making it a showcase.
(“It’s like a dream, living here. Sometimes I worry I’ll wake up suddenly—
and all this happiness will have gone .”)
J C O
The oldest part of the house, made of wood, was kept freshly painted, oyster-white shingles that glowed like radium in early dusk. And there was fieldstone, and there was faded red brick so aged it looked as if it might crumple at the touch, and there was practical white stucco like exposed bone. So many windows upstairs and down, but the windows were small and narrow, Colonial-style; the glass was so old it looked wavy. In the festive holiday season, which in Salthill-on-Hudson was taken up with Christian exuberance, each window visible from Old Mill Way was lighted with an electric candle, and strings of chastely white, glittering lights twined across the facade of the house and wrapped like cobwebs in adjacent trees. The shutters were dark green, a familiar patriot hue, and the sturdy front door was old oak, adorned with a brass American eagle knocker forged in colonial times. Through the summer, clay pots of bright red geraniums were placed on the front steps, and through the autumn, clay pots of chrysanthemums were placed on the front steps; the pots were carefully roughened with sandpaper, for a “countrified” look.
“It’s hard to believe,
Similar Books
