over to my side of the driver's seat and pulled up the lever until my seat shot back. Neither of us spoke. We grappled with the awkwardness of the stick shift and steering wheel, but our persistence was united and thorough. I knew there was no way I was leaving that spot on the hill until Hamish and I were satisfied in our separate vacuums. It was sex of determination and will, sex of mountain climbing and straining and checking a goal off on a list made only moments before. The passion came from a limited supply of air and time and an obvious illicitness.
When we reached a place we both sought—two feverish patients chasing an itch—I was halfway into the backseat with my head at an almost right angle. Hamish had used his arms to keep his full weight off me, and looking forward, I could see only the warm, moist margin between our abdomens as his head moved upward toward the roof of the car. I closed my eyes and met the slamming of his hips. I would not leave the car or the moment.
I would chase the animal that had wanted to murder my mother since my earliest age. Until today, I realized, it had been an innocent urge I carried inside me like a spleen, optional but always present, in some way part of the whole.
Between Hamish's collarbone and his left biceps, there was a tattoo I had never noticed. I thought tattoos were highly stupid—a way, like ordering an upside-down Frappuccino, that people lacking direction claimed identity in the world. I stared at it now as a wave of nausea and hilarity rose in my gut. It was a circular tattoo, very suburban-mall "oriental" in look and no
[8 6]
The Almost Moon
doubt inked at Thad's Parlor next to the auto-body shop. You could pick out in the minimal blue the tail of a dragon, and if you followed it, you swiftly arrived at the head, biting that tail.
"Jesus, Hell," Hamish breathed beside me. "Fuck."
"Thank you, Hamish," I said.
"You're most awesomely welcome."
"I should get home," I said.
Hamish moved to glance at his watch and sat up. I thought only then of Natalie. I pictured her out on her date with the contractor from Downingtown. I remembered her quoting, when we were girls, from an Emily Dickinson poem. "Because I could not stop for Death—/ He kindly stopped for me." She had been en pointe in her despised toe shoes, and at the end of each line, she spun in a circle until, dizzy and slightly drunk from the brandy we had stolen from her mother, she fell into my arms on her bed.
"Death?" she queried, looking up at me.
"Nice to meet you, sister," I said in a warbling baritone.
In the scattered moments after dropping Hamish off, I didn't know whether to congratulate myself or break out the ice packs.
It had been two decades plus since I'd had sex in a car with a man who hadn't yet reached an age when he coughed or spit or groaned when he woke up. We had agreed, vaguely, to see each other again, and his eyes had focused on me with what I can only call a Vaseline-on-the-lens acuity. He saw sex and experience.
Through my own clouded perceptions, I saw, when I looked his way, the last vestiges of grace.
It was deep night. Clouds covered the moon, and in my neighborhood, unlike Natalie's, outdoor lighting had not become a competitive sport of motion sensors and solar-powered path spotlights. There was the occasional faux carriage lamp, and the Mulovitches at the end of the block kept a bare bulb on over
[87]
Alice Sebold
their front door that was bright enough to interrogate their pothead son by, but my lawn and the lawns surrounding it were pitch-black.
My father and Mr. Forrest had found a home for me in the very neighborhood where my father had once looked when I was a teenager. On move-in day, he had driven the three of us over in his car and snapped photos as the Realtor handed me the key.
When I walked inside, I was able to ignore the walls that needed to be painted and the floors that needed to be cleaned because my father had come the day before and had
When we reached a place we both sought—two feverish patients chasing an itch—I was halfway into the backseat with my head at an almost right angle. Hamish had used his arms to keep his full weight off me, and looking forward, I could see only the warm, moist margin between our abdomens as his head moved upward toward the roof of the car. I closed my eyes and met the slamming of his hips. I would not leave the car or the moment.
I would chase the animal that had wanted to murder my mother since my earliest age. Until today, I realized, it had been an innocent urge I carried inside me like a spleen, optional but always present, in some way part of the whole.
Between Hamish's collarbone and his left biceps, there was a tattoo I had never noticed. I thought tattoos were highly stupid—a way, like ordering an upside-down Frappuccino, that people lacking direction claimed identity in the world. I stared at it now as a wave of nausea and hilarity rose in my gut. It was a circular tattoo, very suburban-mall "oriental" in look and no
[8 6]
The Almost Moon
doubt inked at Thad's Parlor next to the auto-body shop. You could pick out in the minimal blue the tail of a dragon, and if you followed it, you swiftly arrived at the head, biting that tail.
"Jesus, Hell," Hamish breathed beside me. "Fuck."
"Thank you, Hamish," I said.
"You're most awesomely welcome."
"I should get home," I said.
Hamish moved to glance at his watch and sat up. I thought only then of Natalie. I pictured her out on her date with the contractor from Downingtown. I remembered her quoting, when we were girls, from an Emily Dickinson poem. "Because I could not stop for Death—/ He kindly stopped for me." She had been en pointe in her despised toe shoes, and at the end of each line, she spun in a circle until, dizzy and slightly drunk from the brandy we had stolen from her mother, she fell into my arms on her bed.
"Death?" she queried, looking up at me.
"Nice to meet you, sister," I said in a warbling baritone.
In the scattered moments after dropping Hamish off, I didn't know whether to congratulate myself or break out the ice packs.
It had been two decades plus since I'd had sex in a car with a man who hadn't yet reached an age when he coughed or spit or groaned when he woke up. We had agreed, vaguely, to see each other again, and his eyes had focused on me with what I can only call a Vaseline-on-the-lens acuity. He saw sex and experience.
Through my own clouded perceptions, I saw, when I looked his way, the last vestiges of grace.
It was deep night. Clouds covered the moon, and in my neighborhood, unlike Natalie's, outdoor lighting had not become a competitive sport of motion sensors and solar-powered path spotlights. There was the occasional faux carriage lamp, and the Mulovitches at the end of the block kept a bare bulb on over
[87]
Alice Sebold
their front door that was bright enough to interrogate their pothead son by, but my lawn and the lawns surrounding it were pitch-black.
My father and Mr. Forrest had found a home for me in the very neighborhood where my father had once looked when I was a teenager. On move-in day, he had driven the three of us over in his car and snapped photos as the Realtor handed me the key.
When I walked inside, I was able to ignore the walls that needed to be painted and the floors that needed to be cleaned because my father had come the day before and had
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