turn the key and start my car; my vision was blurred and a dull nausea churned in the back of my head. My body petitioned that my actions made no sense—everything I wanted, stripped down and clearly ready, was right there in wait, yet I was driving away in the opposite direction, an oxygen-deprived climber traveling farther up the mountain instead of making a descent. My feet were too heavy on the pedals; I pictured Janet’s swollen feet grafted onto my ankles, the prosthetic hooflike shoes she wore tangling on the clutch and brake; at the first stoplight I arrived at, I stalled out. It was several minutes before I realized I’d left his subdivision through an alternate exit. Getting home would require many corrective turns. For a harried moment, with the fluorescent lights of the road and the strip-mall business swirling around me, I wondered if I could find my way home at all. Supposedly I knew exactly where I was—these were roads I drove daily. But there was a confusing pressure at the base of my skull and it was pulsing a blood rhythm not unlike the sound and speed of riot police striking their shields with their batons; it was a sound that thought and memory seemed to find threatening. Reason had evacuated my body. I felt like nothing more than a bomb with a steady timer attached, my heart counting down to an unknown hour of disaster.
When I finally found my street, I parked sideways in the driveway and stumbled in the door. My clothes felt like scratchy wool; I disrobed and stood in the dark, leaning against the cool drywall, panting. Moments or hours later when I heard Ford arrive home—the slam of his car door, a frustrated expletive because he had to park on the street due to my vehicle’s position—I fell to my kneesin the dark, squatting down like a dog in the hallway with my ass facing the door.
There was an incoming flood of light, then the hurried slamming of the door’s screen.
“Celeste, Jesus,
hello
! Good thing I didn’t bring Scottie back for a beer …” The sound of his locking the doorknob and dead bolt, drawing the chain.
“Can you turn the light back out?” I asked softly. Darkness. The sound of his belt being undone, his weapons coming off. My view as he took me from behind was the glass patio doors, through which I could see the full moon hanging in the sky, reflecting off our pool as if it was its point of origin. I stared up at it imagining not the brutish strength of Ford thrusting inside me but the inquisitive determination of Jack’s body exploring the instinct of touch. The moment Ford finished I began to crawl away to the patio door, his semen dripping down my thighs like blood from an injury. Wordlessly, I jumped into the pool and sank to the very bottom, blowing every ounce of air in my body out with all the force of my lungs. The moon seemed to take up over half of the sky. I continued to stare as my lungs began to twinge with panic, my abdominal muscles struggling not to heave in for air, until a naked Ford, one hand cupping his genitals for fear of a nosy neighbor peeking over the fence, eclipsed the view, his mouth overenunciating. “What the hell are you doing?” read his lips. Then I slowly glided up the pool’s slanted floor to the shallow end and surfaced.
I went back to Jack’s house again Sunday night. Hoping for a repeat performance, I took great pains to leave the house at exactly the same time, park in the same spot. I fought the superstition that nagged me to wear dirty clothes I’d worn just the night before, stepback into the doubtlessly hardened crotch of the terry-cloth pants I’d had on when I’d seen the erect and glistening tip of Jack’s penis, his budding chest and arms in the full motions of exertion and his mouth parted to channel additional oxygen.
But he wasn’t there; his window was closed. All I could see of his bedroom was a long, draped curtain, fallen as if to announce the show was over.
chapter six
Monday morning the sky was
When I finally found my street, I parked sideways in the driveway and stumbled in the door. My clothes felt like scratchy wool; I disrobed and stood in the dark, leaning against the cool drywall, panting. Moments or hours later when I heard Ford arrive home—the slam of his car door, a frustrated expletive because he had to park on the street due to my vehicle’s position—I fell to my kneesin the dark, squatting down like a dog in the hallway with my ass facing the door.
There was an incoming flood of light, then the hurried slamming of the door’s screen.
“Celeste, Jesus,
hello
! Good thing I didn’t bring Scottie back for a beer …” The sound of his locking the doorknob and dead bolt, drawing the chain.
“Can you turn the light back out?” I asked softly. Darkness. The sound of his belt being undone, his weapons coming off. My view as he took me from behind was the glass patio doors, through which I could see the full moon hanging in the sky, reflecting off our pool as if it was its point of origin. I stared up at it imagining not the brutish strength of Ford thrusting inside me but the inquisitive determination of Jack’s body exploring the instinct of touch. The moment Ford finished I began to crawl away to the patio door, his semen dripping down my thighs like blood from an injury. Wordlessly, I jumped into the pool and sank to the very bottom, blowing every ounce of air in my body out with all the force of my lungs. The moon seemed to take up over half of the sky. I continued to stare as my lungs began to twinge with panic, my abdominal muscles struggling not to heave in for air, until a naked Ford, one hand cupping his genitals for fear of a nosy neighbor peeking over the fence, eclipsed the view, his mouth overenunciating. “What the hell are you doing?” read his lips. Then I slowly glided up the pool’s slanted floor to the shallow end and surfaced.
I went back to Jack’s house again Sunday night. Hoping for a repeat performance, I took great pains to leave the house at exactly the same time, park in the same spot. I fought the superstition that nagged me to wear dirty clothes I’d worn just the night before, stepback into the doubtlessly hardened crotch of the terry-cloth pants I’d had on when I’d seen the erect and glistening tip of Jack’s penis, his budding chest and arms in the full motions of exertion and his mouth parted to channel additional oxygen.
But he wasn’t there; his window was closed. All I could see of his bedroom was a long, draped curtain, fallen as if to announce the show was over.
chapter six
Monday morning the sky was
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