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Page 15.
 She hasn’t been domesticated.
Still wild and coltish, she slid in along the bench, quick to be beside him again. He reached impulsively and put his hand on hers. She laid her other hand on his. Their bones and skins were dry but mortised together in a sensuous tension. In planetary gravity, they were the architecture of circumstance: skillfully engineered canals laced through intricate chambers of cartilage, muscle, and flesh.
She might be complex, but she was not deep. She inclined her head slightly away and gave him a questioning look—a friendly but pained contraction about the mouth and eyes. “What are you thinking?”
We are accomplices now—spies or assassins—or at least thieves in the night, a well-matched pair who can telegraph each other’s brain waves; fight or flight.
He took both of her hands in his, taking charge.
She let him hold her hands resting on the table, her fingers pliably relaxed but unhelpful.
How to say or ask this? “You’re not troubled by existential questions?”
She made the faintest motion of shaking her head.
No such logo on any sweater at the golf or tennis club gift shop.
Her teeth were still white but the smile was gone, replaced by distance and indifference. She said, “Are we going to discuss what is reality?”
In a Great Gatsby mode: We’re in an East Egg roadster, doing ninety in a forty zone with the top down and our hair flying behind us.
He released her hands and put his hands in his lap. “I was hoping we wouldn’t.”
“Then let’s not,” she said a bit sharply. She gave him a long, beautiful, sexy look. Her eyes darkened, and her wide, glossy lips took on a deeper shade of Merlot, with a smart, cutting laugh. Or was that Harlot? She wrapped her arm through his and pulled him close to her firm, warm side. “We aren’t going to, are we?”
“What?” He feigned innocence.
She looked at him mockingly. She was in, and the game was on.
Talk about why the sky is blue and stuff. Who gives a riff?
She shook her head and said in a throaty voice, “Nothing complicated.” She added: “Please.”
“Of course. Whatever that means, I don’t have it in me.” He said ruefully, “You are more experienced.” He had to resist moments of class warfare. You have money. Or, Jérôme has money and he has you—rich bitch.
She brought her hands together and made a gun of them, aimed at his heart. “I enjoyed what you said back in the break room at the college.”
“What did I say?”
Devilment glinted in her eyes. “About success. What a declaration! All I want is to write poetry. I want to mow lawns, conquer grass…”
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