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Page 19.

“Yes.” She whacked him on the back alternately with each of her palms.

He felt her kick her ankles asprawl, felt her muscles and flesh quiver as she did so.

As he took her, he knew she was taking him, and he delved between her long sprawling legs oblivious of all commitments to the contrary.

She bawled again, with her pink mouth wide open but no tears this time from her eyes squeezed shut. “I want you in me, I love you, forever, Jonathan Egeny Poetry Fuck, I don’t want anyone to take you away from me, I love you so much.”

I am going to lose myself in you, the orgasm of life and death, as if I throw myself into that pond and drown, and you will be my last thought in this universe, I want you so much.

They clawed at one another, relishing the moment and the glory, turning anger into sexual energy while the afternoon sun began to glare straight down and irradiate the pond so its fronds and slimy surface became dimly visible. That sun was the driver of all life, the engine of existence for carbon-based DNA complexity, replicative and iterative processes of complex organic reaction chains and other explosive realities, like the intersection of Jon and Merile.

This is life: a love affair; something beautiful growing in a place it isn’t meant to, a doomed lovely flower we could cry over as it’s meant to wilt and die just when it is so beautiful and filled with life.

Crickets shrilled in the prickly bushes. Flies and other insects began a milling flight pattern more complex than that of an international airport. Bubbles fermented to the surface of the pond, and spider-legged insects walked on the surface in search of prey. A bullfrog chirruped mournfully in some shady glen of leaves.

Jon and Merile sagged sweatily at the exhaustion of their sex. Their skin stuck together in the heat. They rolled apart to let air between their steamy bodies.

Some brief thrashing noise in the forest startled her. He had not heard it, but she sat up, pulling her dress down to her knees. “You’d better put on your clothes,” she whispered.

He rolled lazily into a sitting position, listening into the forest, but could hear nothing. Clothing was scattered around them on the warm rocks.

She reached far to retrieve her panties, which she used to dry herself. He dried himself with his own and then dressed, feeling drained and finished and lethargic. The tension was not gone between them. Like the unmoving air, it hung between them. On a far ledge, he spotted a copperhead snake sleeping in noon sunlight.

I could start again, and take you, and again, and you would welcome me with open arms and legs. I would lose myself in you and never regret it for a moment. Except this is not ours to give or take. We are playthings as fate decrees.

He led her up the hill and down the other side, in the shadowy but hot woods, holding out a hand which she accepted wordlessly to help her down. As they approached the car, she stuffed her damp panties into his backpack. The secret of her nakedness under the skirt still excited him as it had during their ascent.

“Maybe they had the same idea,” she said listlessly, pointing to a small white car pulled in among the woods some distance up the road. “Are you hungry?”

They shared sodas and baloney sandwiches, a lunch he had insisted on, kiddish and traditional. She grimaced at the taste of mustard and warm baloney.

The raspberry-chemical drink burned his throat.

She said, “I could have packed ham sandwiches and wine.”

“I’m sorry. It was a dumb idea.”

“It was the rule for picnics as you see them.” She shrugged and grinned. “I went along with it, though.”

“Live and learn,” he admitted contritely while she made that vulnerable, sultry, wounded face. He saw that distant look, and imagined her gaze was directed far away at Mr. Cigar and what she must endure. “I’ll make it better.”

She looked up, suddenly sunshine, as if he had promised to be a better husband.

Summer heat softened slightly in its intensity as he pulled the car out onto the oozing tarry road surface. A breeze bringing with it smells of hot tar and lukewarm leaf juice rattled softly under the tattered cloth top of the faltering car. The car seemed to find its own way back toward New Haven. They rode in an engorged silence. “Shall we go to a movie?” he offered, but his voice sounded unconvincing even to him.

She shook her head and said “I’d rather not, I think. I’m sort of tired and in a mood to take a long soak in the tub.”

About five minutes later they entered the outskirts of New Haven. She touched his arm. “Jon, I don’t want you to be mad, but I don’t want to see you for a while. I’m not saying never again, though maybe I should. I don’t want our lives to get any more tangled.”

He submitted with a mix of reluctance and relief. “We get too dramatic together.”

She shook him by the shoulders. “It’s all okay. We’ve known each other for such a short time, and it’s been so intense—I’ve been wondering when we’d have some sort of blow-up.”

He frowned in sunlight. “Charles Egeny hasn’t written a really powerful poem in weeks.”

“All this happiness makes you soft.” She looked out over the passing green lawns and elm trees. “You can’t let your own things go, you know.” She grinned and added, “Can’t let your friend the poet down.”

He turned the corner slowly onto her street. “I really need some time to take care of things I’ve neglected.”

“Like your buddies,” she said sympathetically and sensibly. “Your poetry. Your dreams.”

As he pulled up at the curb, she reached over the seat to gather her bag with picnic remains and various books and extra clothing.

He manfully removed the cooler and carried it to the house for her. They ascended the dark, cool stairway in silence. He waited for her familiar fumbling with keys.

Then the apartment door opened and he followed her into the dwelling. More than ever, he felt guilty and ungainly, an intruder, relishing the freshly painted and book-filled quiet and neatly ordered young/oldness of the apartment. Setting the cooler with its sloshing water and sliver-sized ice cubes in the sink, he walked into the living room with his hands in his pockets.

She emerged from the bedroom where she’d gone to put her unused sweater and book. She walked slowly, hands in the pockets of her skirt, kicking off her white deck shoes as she walked.

He was pointedly aware that she had nothing on underneath. “I’ll go home and take a shower,” he said.

“I hope Charles Egeny will write some poetry soon.” Her smile was pointed and wistful. Her eyes were not without tenderness, yet an unconditional something hovered in her gaze, directing what must be done.

He felt relieved that he’d be leaving her. “I think it’s long overdue.”

“I’m expecting a phone call from Bill,” she said. He called her every Saturday evening at five. As if she’d suddenly remembered, she sat dutifully on the couch beside the phone. She became insular and withdrawn.

Jon sat down on the couch about two feet away. “Look, I’m not going to kiss you goodbye, okay?”

She cast a minute glance in his direction. It was a dull, veiled, hurt look.

He said, “I’m realizing that I have no business kissing you goodbye. I mean we’ve shared our time. And all. I just. Oh, well, maybe you understand what I’m trying to say.” She was someone else’s wife into whose life he had briefly and ludicrously intruded.

Should he seal their dead-end relationship with a kiss or just turn his back? Somehow, it seemed, any gesture now would be to sanction a thing that should not have happened. A gesture would take away the thinly worn accidentalness with which they had both approached their liaison. It had been little more than a flirtation, a licentious thought, until that angry moment by the pond. Somehow things had gotten complicated at that very moment.

He started to rise, but with a swish of clothing she moved suddenly, putting her arms around his waist and resting her head in his lap…only briefly.

She sat up and took his hands between hers. “It’s meant something.” She whispered rapidly and her smile was only a half-smile, torn between emotions. “I wanted to push you out the door, but somehow I can’t do it alone. When you leave I’ll be glad you’re out. I know what you’re trying to say. I had a little forest pond to myself, before you plopped in like a big old rock and disturbed everything. Now the water is full of ripples and I’m almost dreading this phone call today. I think it would be best if you don’t come anymore. But I would like it if you would give me a kiss before you go.”

He kissed her cheek, but it wasn’t enough. Smelling her hair, seeing her eyes flutter shut and her lips open, breath bated, he hovered on the brink of sinking down on the couch with her. In that moment he respected her weakness and rose, pulling her to her feet. She moved readily as he directed, eyes still closed, hair tangled and fuzzy, lips slightly parted in an expression of exquisite want and hurt.

He took her hand as if she were a doll and led her to the door. She padded along, unknowing and confused. Her bare feet padded quietly on the cool, glossy wood floor.

At the door, she clung to him. He embraced her tightly, kissing her, and he ran his hand along her waist, down to her buttocks, feeling the material of her dress slide loosely over bare, electric skin.

She stiffened and pulled away.

He unlocked the door and started into the hallway.

Her hands reached for his arm, caught it briefly, then released it.

He plunged into the dark stairwell on wing-borne feet, giving a last spastic wave to her shocked and indistinct face hovering around a closing door, and then he was out on the porch, feet pounding on the hot wood, down on the concrete, in the car, struggling with a whining starter, and off in a screech of tires which he knew he shouldn’t as he pulled away down the sleeping street, turning the corner sharply to get away from its crinkling elm leaves and sad, knowing, owl-windowed houses.