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Page 63.
 She crawled close on her elbows and wrapped her hands around his shoulders. “Something of us together has to stay someplace deep inside.”
He took her hands, squeezing them between his, and she gently reclined on the mossy stone under him. “I don’t understand. Every pore of your skin makes me dizzy. Why is it when I don’t have any right to you that I feel I could squeeze you close and never let you go?”
She smiled, her blue eyes sparking in the mossy half-light. The laugh welling up from her diaphragm was a husky, mature one. “Do you think I don’t feel the same way? But would you let me own you?”
He made a wry face. Inside, though, he thought, You already own me, Emma. My woman. My girl. My love. My sweet hot pussy. My eternity. “Then again, we could get married.”
She didn’t laugh, but looked as if it were a possibility to consider. “I love you enough. I would marry you if I were free.” She grasped the hairs peering over his shirt top and pulled him close. “I could devour you. I could hold you in the palms of my hands like a butterfly. But eventually I know I’ll have to let you go. Did you ever have a pet like that?”
He rolled back laughing. “You’re sending me back farther than I’d suspected. I’ve loved and lost but…oh God, who knows, maybe once a long time ago I think it was an ant farm, and the neighbor came home weaving drunkenly in his car and ran over it where I’d left it in the driveway. I never looked him in the eye again. I was heartbroken for weeks.”
She nodded seriously. “You are a sensitive type.”
“Aren’t you?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Uh-uh. Not like you.”
“You have probed my weaknesses?”
She broke into a sunburst smile. “And found them very, very appealing. Oh Marc, can’t you see, I wasn’t looking for an affair, but I’m happy I met you. You’re no Valentino…but then I think usually those men gamble and drink. They are vain, something you’re not. Oh sure, Léopold Montblé is the best poet this side of…this side of…Montparnasse, but that’s different. That’s a righteous kind of pride, has to do with paying witness to your talent, I do so respect and honor your talent and you are so sincere…” She finished by sweeping him into a kiss that brought them down together onto the moss.
He pulled up harshly. “Don’t make me feel you think I’m so perfect and sincere.”
Eyes half-closed, she sought him with weak fingertips. He took the fingertips of her left hand in the palm of his hand and squeezed.
“Ouch!” she exclaimed and looked at him terrified. “Let go!”
He released her fingers and threw himself on his back.
She hovered by him, her elegant features pale. “I was just…I wanted to possess you for a moment.”
“Was that it?” He spoke sharply, then closed his eyes and placed his arms behind his head, hating himself for whatever she stirred in him.
Her fingertips played at a patch of moss on a rock, like picking a scab. “I think someday you are going to hate me.”
“Sometimes I think you babble bullyshilly from that nutso colony in Fairfield.”
She stared. So it was class warfare now.
He rose onto one elbow. “Look, I’m sorry. I don’t care what those hyenas do or say. As a teenager I remember we used to pass through the rich town…whenever they had a block dance for you spoiled brats…they used to throw us out on sight. Créteil kids. Blauugghh!”
“What’s gotten into you?”
“Poetry! That’s what! Can’t you see? I’m not sure Léopold Montblé is going to make it out of the slum. He’ll write poetry, yes, and maybe publish a few things in tiny editions without pay, just to see his name in a byline, but ten years from now will he still be picking his nose while you and Mr. Kangaroo Bones are sipping cocktails in some high falootin congress of archeologists?”
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