The Melting Season by Jami Attenberg Page A

nipples and the flesh around my hips and press his hands on my belly. The sticky sweet would start to churn inside me and then spread down and around me. I could even smell it, and so could Thomas, and he would get excited by the smell, his little nub would press up against my leg, like a skipping stone in a pocket. He would kiss all the parts of me he had just pinched and then he would keep on kissing, on the bones that stuck out of me, on the insides of my thighs. “Oh, I can smell you, you smell so good,” he would say, and he was frenzied then, and warm. The temperature on his hands shot up and I would wonder if he would leave behind burn marks on my skin, an imprint of his fingertips on my flesh forever. I would not mind that, as long as they were his.
    “Moonie, my moon,” he would say, and then he would dive into the wetness with his tongue, and it was electric. It did, it felt that way, like he had just plugged me into something. And then there were ripples of everything, every area he had pinched and licked on the outside came alive, like he had left a trail of dynamite behind my body, and with one lick, he could set it on fire. Me and Thomas, parts fitting together, moon and stars in one big sky. And by the time he was ready to slide his penis inside me, him letting out a long, satisfied sigh, the breath coming out blowing back my hair from my face, I did not care that I could not feel a thing. A slight pressure around the thighs, but that was just from the weight of him on top of me. But nothing else. I clenched, and then I was numb. And he knew it, too, that it was just numb in there. And I did not care, but he did.
    “Night, Timber,” I said.
    Timber slammed the lid shut on the garbage can. “You take care,” he said.
    Up above I could see the Milky Way. Inside, my husband rubbed his fingers against the lids of his eyes until he saw stars.
     
     
     
     
     
    DURING THE COMMERCIAL BREAK we watched an advertisement for the Helping Hand Centers, a chain of plastic surgery hospitals expanding that very moment to a city near you. Rio DeCarlo was their national spokesperson. I did not like the way the name made it sound like a charity. I was sure there was nothing free about it.
    “That Rio DeCarlo will do anything for a quick buck,” I said.
    At the end of the commercial a list of new branches flashed on the screen. “Please don’t let it be Omaha, please don’t let it be Omaha,” I silently prayed.
    “Moonie, look! Omaha!”
    It was a good thing we did not have any money, I thought. I worked part-time afternoons as a bookkeeper at a welding company with a sinking business supplying various parts to farms across the states. A lot of bigger farms had gobbled up the littler ones, so there was less need for the small-time parts companies. There was almost no point in the job—I made just enough to pay our rent—except I needed the benefits and could keep Thomas on my plan while he figured out what he wanted to do next. He had been working with his father on his farm but they had fallen out the previous year. Thomas’s father was a difficult man, neither a saint nor a sinner, just a crank who was never satisfied with anything his son did. Thomas worked the fields and worked them just as he was raised, but somehow it was never fast enough. Farmers were always rushing in the spring when it was time to plant, to make sure they got the crops in before the rain. And rushing in the fall during harvest, bringing in their crops to make their money for the year. I always laughed when I saw how fast Thomas drove during those seasons, and how he slowed down to a crawl during summer and winter. It was like he was two different men during the year, or two different drivers anyway. You could tell what time of year it was by how fast the cars moved on the road. I swear Thomas dropped forty miles an hour off his internal speed limit come November.
    That past September, something happened in the field between them.