The next day the heavens open. A driving rain all day, so that they cannot go out. The moist cold seeps in through the gaps in the cabin’s frame and settles in Aviva’s bones. She wears an oversized wool sweater of Seung’s, her hands balled inside the sleeves. She still doesn’t feel quite right. Her skin is a fragile covering; when she closes her eyes she sees cross-hatching, a faded and reduced symbol of the golden maze that almost had her trapped and lost forever. Her concentration is shot and she can’t even read a magazine. She wants to do nothing but sit by the fire and warm herself as best she can.
The rooms are still filled with the smell of the meal Seung made last night. Aviva couldn’t eat it, so Seung packed it up and they had it for breakfast at eight and again at noon. Seung plays cassette tapes he’s recorded for her: Jean-Luc Ponty, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Rachmaninoff’s Concerto Number 2.
He plays the concerto’s piano part on her back, and for the first time rouses in her a laugh. Their mouths meet. The continuous tropism of their hands toward each other. They break, woozily, watching the fire, and Seung draws a cougar for her with the short, thread-thin lines he favors. The eyes appear, like precision-cut jewels; the spots are distinct as puzzle pieces, no two exactly the same. He uses the sides of his colored pencils to shade in reds, mauves. He has captured something in this animal: it is not quite realistic, and yet it is alive, like an animal in a dream or a fable. Aviva can see it stir on the page. Its eyes are eyes to be frightened of. Seung signs his initials in the lower-right corner in tiny lettering, along with the date: 4-23-80.
The fire flickers low in the grate. Aviva’s palms fill with Seung’s smooth and taut places, her legs twine with his. He is very hard against her and she reaches down to wrap her fingers around him. He spasms in surprise and they quiver apart momentarily. They are too earnest to smile. Aviva sidles closer again. He moans from someplace deep inside that knows emptiness and expects never to be filled. His fingers move to her thighs; she parts them, suddenly afraid. The languid warm feeling drains away; she watches warily as he feeds himself into her. He cannot fail, she warns herself and him simultaneously. He won’t fail. She grows very still, waiting for him, absenting herself a little, in order to make this his work, his burden. She doesn’t want to be mocked again. She can’t let herself want this too much. Does Seung feel that slight withdrawal, that implicit challenge from
her? He nudges past the outer lips; his mass, his density, make her flesh feel dense in return: more real, more present. Whatever else she has felt in this field between her legs has been abstract by comparison: mere vibration, music, rather than solidity, sculpture. He pushes a little farther and she cries out in both arousal and anxiety. She had pictured this entry always as a sliding and a melting, a dissolve into pure sensation. It is duller and more physical than that. She does not know if there is pleasure in it. There is heat and a burning. It is happening, it is happening. But just as she is adjusting to these perceptions she feels him diminish; though he insists, he no longer advances. She pushes herself against him to help, at first energetically but soon without spirit, suspecting there is no point. And there is no point. She wants to shout at him to stop, not to shame himself by butting at her and prolonging the failure, but he goes on and on until she puts her hand against his chest and shoves him away. He does not even raise his head to look at her. He expresses no surprise. He curls up in fetal position, his fists hidden under his belly. Rage radiates from his hot skin.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” she lies, folding herself around him. He shakes violently; she can hear and feel his teeth chatter. He tries to speak to her but stutters so badly that she can’t understand what he is saying. Whatever cassette was last playing clicked off long ago; the rain thrashes heavily on the roof. Aviva’s arms ache, stretched across his broad back. She knows she should speak to him as he spoke to her when she was lost in her altered world: make soothing
noises, reassure him, stroke his back and shoulders. These are all things that a kind and good person would do. But she can only stomach the one brief lie. She is bound to her sense of honesty as if to a whipping post.
There is something within her, she is certain, that creates damage. The horror is that she cannot control it. And Seung too tells the truth, merely in a different way than she does. Just as she will not lie with her mouth he is unable to lie with his cock.
Seung’s mother does not greet him with a smile at the train station. They make the short trip home in silence. Seung’s father is not yet home from work, and the entire house seems to accuse Seung with its emptiness. As if, even though he has returned, he can no longer be resident here. He does not fill up its space.
His mother retreats to the kitchen, to scour and bang. Eventually Seung is compelled to go out. He walks toward the main commercial street in town; maybe he’ll check out the five and dime. Or maybe he’ll keep on as far as the park, sit and watch the little kids on the slides and swings. There is a light, misty rain falling, not enough to keep the children away. It brushes pleasantly against his face. He sticks out his tongue to see if he can catch the drops.
When he gets to Jordan Avenue, all the shop doors seem to rebuff him. He isn’t wanted here, either. He walks until
the shops peter out and the streets turn residential again. The maples are fully leaved and there are tightly budded tulips beginning to show on the lawns. He recognizes the dog before he recognizes the girl. The dog’s name comes to him instantly: it’s Pebbles. Pebbles is a beagle, tan and white, with large soft eyes. The girl went to school with him at Jordan Middle. She was a big girl, with soft round shoulders, large breasts, a pleasant face, pretty but a bit heavy. A nice, friendly girl. Not in many of his classes, the top-tracked classes. Not stupid, but not in that tier. Jill—Seung has it now. She’s slimmed up some, lost the glasses; she looks easy in her big body, confident, matured.
She waves to him from down the block, calls his name. As he draws close he feels it—the vibration these home girls used to give off. Different somehow from the vibe that goes round at Auburn: a little more forthright, a little needier. Even back in middle school, when he was still Chinaboy, he got the vibe from plenty of girls. He was the kid who ran the 440, who could execute a complicated twist off the board at the town pool. The girls would gather in twos and threes, wanting to talk to him. Why did he never capitalize on this? He was fourteen, for chrissakes—that’s why. In the afternoons and evenings there were track practice, piano practice, and Mom and Dad wanting to see you hitting the books. But he’d known the vibration, the desire, was out there. He’d planned to claim it in time.
He remembers the dog because Jill used to walk it around the park while his team was having track practice. Now he
wonders if that merging of schedules was really just a coincidence. The dog would get inspired by the runners and charge along the lanes in pursuit, exhaust itself after a loop, and lie down whimpering like a diva in an extended death scene. Jill would stand with her hands on her hips and laugh at the poor thing, then scoop it up in her arms and scold it affectionately. The team called the pooch, a female, Jessie, for Jesse Owens.
Seung and Jill stand together in the drizzle, Pebbles yipping and jumping—like a pup, still—around Seung’s feet, tangling him in the leash.
Jill throws her arms around Seung in a hug, as if they’d been good friends in the way back when. “It’s great to see you,” she says, asking if he still goes to Auburn. She has a good memory, he tells her.
“Oh, no,” she says. “I mean . . . you were memorable.”
She is wearing a hooded windbreaker but the hood is not up. The rain sifts down on her nose and cheeks, her eyelids. There is thick mascara on her lashes and a hint of blue on her lids. The dog is very wet but does not seem to mind. Jill lets go of the leash to let it play in the puddles. It rolls in the cold water, waving its paws around frantically.
“Filthy dog,” she says.
Jill too is on vacation, she tells Seung. Or really she should say that it’s her parents who are on vacation. They went into the city, to stay at a hotel and take in some museums and theater. She stayed back to watch over Pebbles. She hates to board her. And really she doesn’t mind. She prefers the company of Pebbles to looking at bunches of old paintings.
“Do you want to come in for hot chocolate or something?”
Her house is not far. She disappears into a bathroom to peel off her wet clothes and emerges in a thick white bathrobe. The door to the bathroom remains open and he can see the soggy jeans she has discarded. She’s combed out her hair, and for some reason this stirs him: the smooth, even grooves running the length of the shaft. She’s wiped away her mascara and now looks fresher, younger—younger than Aviva, even though she’s not. Her generous breasts are visibly bare beneath the robe.
“We could make that hot chocolate,” she says.
“That’s okay,” he tells her.
In response she seats herself on the bed, waiting, and he realizes that she means to watch him undress. With Aviva, he is always pressed up so close that he cannot see himself, his own nakedness. They are always touching or so close to touching that there is no space for looking. Seung quickly removes his shirt, then unzips his jeans more slowly. Jill scoots back against the headboard and unties her robe. She spreads the folds back to reveal herself fully. When Aviva does let him look, she turns her eyes away, as if to remove herself from her vulnerability. And he cannot remember ever having the sensation that she has looked at him entirely, complete, not in pieces: an arm, his chest, his cock. He feels weak in the knees, in this room of Jill’s with posters of Cheap Trick and Blondie and the stuffed animals propped on her dresser and nightstand. In a moment, he is on top of
her. It goes so fast. He can’t help himself. Perhaps he kisses her once or twice, maybe his hands graze her breasts. He is inside her before he knows it. She inhales sharply. He knows it’s all wrong, he’s come into her too soon. It’s boorish, inelegant. He can’t help it, can’t help it. He tries to compensate by brushing his hand against her hair, pressing quick kisses against her forehead, but it’s too late. He groans, pushing frantically, and comes in several long spasms that seem to last longer than everything that has come before. He is wet from head to toe with sweat and excitement. He stays inside her for a long time, silently thanking her, praising her, apologizing to her. Perhaps she will not despise him, if he lies here like this and holds her for a while.
After a while she wriggles beneath him, signaling that his weight has become too much. She sits up. “Well,” she says.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “That was . . . I just lost my head.”
She shrugs, tips her head to one side. A beautiful, forgiving girl. An angel. “Again,” she says. “Just let me go put in more goop.”
She slips into the bathroom. There’s the sound of a drawer opening, a short blast of water.
This time he slides in slowly, gently, only after kissing and stroking her breasts and thighs, the soft hollow of her collarbone, murmuring sincere endearments about her hair, her lips, the way she feels. She sighs and shifts to bring him in deeper. He is amazed at the grace they achieve, the way they pass pleasure back and forth between them like the intake and outflow of breath. Her exhales grow longer,
deeper, louder, and then she clutches him tightly, her nails pricking him, and he can actually feel the muscles inside her spasm around his cock. He has been languid and cool this time around, but now he suddenly seizes and spills into her. He shouts out without knowing it.
They shower together and, as grateful as he is to her, as happy as she seems, he can hardly bear the minutes until he can dress and leave. Her nakedness now seems too much, a feast that has gone on too long, a picture of excess. He is afraid he will try to take her again in this stall, the door smeared with steam. The hot water floods down on them in endless eruptions. He fucked her the first time for his honor, the second time for her pleasure. The third time would be the crime.
As he slips on the wet shoes he left at her front door, the loafers he wears when he comes home from Auburn so that his mother will not ask,
What do they teach you up there, to wear dirty sneakers?,
he reminds himself that the whole time he hardly gave Jill his mouth, nor took hers. That would have been a greater betrayal of Aviva than his cock inside this girl has been. Jill’s cunt could never feel as dark to him, as mysterious, as Aviva’s mouth when she opens it to him. He could never fall as deeply inside.
Jill takes her coat from the coatrack and puts a hand on his sleeve. “Let’s go out and get something to eat,” she says.
He is a gentleman. They go to the diner, order hamburgers, root beer. He listens to her talk about the girls’ soccer team, the tickets she has to a Fleetwood Mac concert. He pays the bill and walks her home.
Aviva can see the difference that just four months have made. The tide of money that always washed in without pause, without even being noted, has permanently withdrawn. The maid, Dotty, no longer lives in. Mrs. Rossner says she comes twice a week; it was necessary to cut back. There are dishes in the sink waiting for a scrubbing. The grout in the tiled kitchen countertop is sticky and discolored. The cookies in the cookie bin taste stale, as if her mother has felt it too much of an indulgence to replace them, although her economies could hardly extend this far. Mrs. Rossner mentions that she’s given up the box at the symphony. “I called the box office and gave it back before your father could get it in the settlement,” she says. “There’s a wait list of ten, twelve years for one of those now. My one small act of revenge.” She smiles her wintry smile.