And Racer barked, as if in agreement. Leda felt her cheeks redden. She supposed the old man was flirting with her and wondered why it had not occurred to her that old men would flirt at all.
It was their final year of school. Rachel met Leda by the hidden track to their private beach. They never saw another soul in all their afternoons together. As winter came in they crept into the caves at the far end of the beach, sheltering from rain and the scouring winds that whipped the sand up around their hips and made the animals jumpy, keen to run and bark and nip, exciting them. In the warm womb of the caves they felt protected. Sometimes they brought their homework with them and lay naked together, comparing answers, the furry warmth of a hound on each side.
‘What are you going to do when you finish?’ Rachel asked Leda, turning lazily towards her, her breasts lolling close to Leda’s hand.
They often lay together, touching each other, kissing, entering each other’s bodies with their fingers, prying open secret places, sniffing all the scents that were hidden there. They had learned this game from their animals and they knew how quickly the scent from their own hidden crevices could excite them.
‘I don’t know. My parents want me to do law, but I think I would like to work with animals.’
Rachel giggled, pushed her crotch onto Leda’s fingers, wriggled till she felt them part the folds of her flesh. She was almost ready to have sex again. The dogs could smell it; Paul became restless, snuffling at the small of Leda’s back.
‘I’m serious,’ said Leda. ‘I wouldn’t mind doing something like marine biology.’
‘Marine? I thought maybe you’d want to be a farm hand, like Richard.’
Paul snuffled up and over Leda’s body, licked Rachel’s hip, his rough tongue travelling down to Leda’s fingers. Leda tugged at his collar, pulling his head away from her friend, rising up into a crouch where Paul would be able to mount her more easily, but the dog stepped past her, his nose firmly snuffling at Rachel’s lightly furred crotch.
Leda watched his tongue snake out to lap at the juices that had formed there; she felt that same stabbing jealousy she had felt months ago on the farm. Paul was hers. She grabbed at his collar again and rolled on her back, pulling the dog onto her chest.
Paul licked her ears and snuffled into her neck but only for a moment. His attention was taken by the scent of Rachel. Leda sat up, feeling a rising wave of cold creep up from her loins, turning her cheeks pale. She watched as her partner, her love, buried his head between her friend’s legs, his penis engorged and slipping red and wet from its sheath.
When Rachel rolled over to let Paul mount her, Leda was turned to stone. She could not move to stop him or to even remove herself from the scene. Racer, excited by the actions of his companion, began to sniff at Leda’s breasts, licking them, hopping up to rest his paws on Leda’s shoulders, the bright slip of a penis hanging close to her face.
Perhaps if she had been alone she would have become aroused by this, but now all she could do was stare past him at
the sight of her Paul pumping his hips into Rachel’s loins, the flushed glow of Rachel’s cheeks as she took him into her for the first time. The little yips and growls from her loved one’s throat.
She noticed now, as if for the first time, how much smaller and tighter Rachel’s breasts were, how slim her hips. Perhaps slim hips meant a tighter orifice. Although she had slid her whole hand inside her friend’s vagina, and marvelled at how relaxed and open she could be, Leda knew how tight the flesh clamped around her wrist, Rachel’s orgasm threatening to suck her arm right inside her, the marvel of her body flooding with blood, turning pink with desire as the wave of climax overtook her.
Leda wondered if her own wide hips meant that her contractions had less force, wondered this as she saw Paul brace himself for his final thrust. The quick parting of their bodies, the slight tug as the knot in his penis pulled against that sensitive place inside.
Rachel collapsed onto her chest and her raised hips gave Leda the perfect vantage point to see Paul withdraw, the soft hang of his penis, the dripping of the white semen against Rachel’s dark pubic hair. The same sight had aroused her on so many occasions. Even the sight of Racer’s sperm thickening on Rachel’s distended lips would bring Leda to a sudden climax of her own. Now Leda, the statue, felt nothing but cement hardening in her veins.
She watched as Racer, disappointed by Leda’s rejection, sniffed around the raised rump, licking the combined
juices of Rachel and Paul. He began to hop in his excitement and, when Rachel showed no sign of complaint, prepared to mount. A second coupling, then, and this was how it should be: Racer was for Rachel. Paul was for her. She watched as the collie quickly came to his own pleasure, the same hard thrust to demonstrate an end to the thing, the same pause before the disengagement.
Rachel seemed completely spent, almost asleep with the drug of her ebbing desire. The pale fluid seeped in abundance from the still-twitching lips of her vagina. Rachel crawled towards her, and Leda struggled not to flinch as the girl rested her head on her lap.
‘Paul is so much bigger than Racer, you know, but Racer is fast. Speed Racer, like Mr Simmons said. He does it harder. They have a different rhythm. You haven’t tried Racer yet, in all these months. It’s crazy, isn’t it? Next time I’ll get you to try both of them, one after the other. I’ll hold off. I’ll stop myself. I’ve been too spoiled today. Tomorrow it will be all for you.’
But there was no tomorrow. Leda stayed back during her lunch break to speak with her science teacher. ‘About marine biology,’ she told Rachel, and by the time the bell rang for the final period Leda had all the information she needed about the courses she would have to apply for.
‘Your marks are good enough. I thought you might want to do law.’
‘I want to work with animals,’ Leda told him and he laughed.
‘Yeah, that’s why you probably should do law,’ he said.
After school she took Rachel aside.
‘Not today,’ she said. ‘I really have to fill out all these forms. It’s for the marine biology course, a primer over the summer break.’
‘But I thought we would go to the farm over summer. My uncle’s going skiing in Europe this season. I’ll be all lonely out in the barn by myself.’
Rachel was laughing and Leda tried to smile.
‘We should get serious about study now.’
‘You don’t need to study, Leda. You get amazing grades.’
‘Because I study.’
Rachel winked, straightened her collar seductively with her fingertips. ‘We study pretty hard together don’t you think?’
‘You take Racer. I just have to do this stuff. Another day.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘No, but soon. When all these applications are done.’
‘Okay. But I can take Paul too if you like. He needs to be walked, and if you are too busy…’
‘No.’ Rachel looked surprised by the sharp tone of her voice; she softened it, tried to smile at the girl who, until recently, had been her only friend. ‘I can’t concentrate without Paul lying on my feet. We can go later. Just take Racer. Mr Simmons will be really pleased.’
‘Do you think he knows? Old Simmo?’
‘I’m sure he’s noticed how excited Racer is to see you.’ Leda knew that this time her grin was genuine. ‘Do you see the way he looks us up and down? And when we drop Racer back he lets the dog lick him on the lips.’
‘I wonder if he can taste me when he does that. Do you think he can?’
Leda shrugged. ‘Let the man have his moment of pleasure. He can barely get up out of his chair anymore.’
Rachel’s hug took Leda by surprise. After a moment’s hesitation she found she was hugging her back.
‘Wherever we end up, Leda, don’t ever forget our first night in the barn.’
‘As if.’ Leda broke away from the hug. It felt like a goodbye. There was relief in it, but also a certain kind of sadness. She wondered if she would ever again be able to be so open with another member of the human race.
Paul tracked circles around the loungeroom. He whined and scratched, refusing to settle, and it broke Leda’s heart to see her puppy so distressed. If you love something set it free, she thought. An old cliché, but no less true for all that. If Paul had tired of her, if he had fallen in love with Rachel after their only coupling, then she should step aside and let him go for walks on the beach with Rachel. She should learn to love and lose, just as the romantic novels suggested. Letting go, with dignity and grace.
That night she curled up in her bed without calling Paul up onto the blankets. He curled instead by the door. Loved and lost, she thought to herself. She closed her eyes and refused to give in to the tears that threatened to overwhelm her.
When Paul leapt up onto the bed it startled her. She heard the little shriek that escaped her and prayed that her parents wouldn’t have heard the sound from further down the hall.
Paul licked at the salt of her tears. She loved the way he seemed to grin when he was happy, the excited wag of his tail, and yes, the little groaning noise as he began to hop from foot to foot, the dance of desire, so familiar to her now, the way he pushed his hips against her knees under the covers.
‘Okay, sweetheart,’ she whispered. ‘All right.’
She peeled back the covers and slipped onto the floor and he was barely a second behind her, panting his excitement, almost unable to control himself while she pulled down her pyjamas.
Leda saw the comparisons. The differences between herself and Rachel rose like a ghost outline, drawn against their own bodies. Surely Paul would not be imagining, comparing them in this way, and yet she found it impossible not to wonder. If Rachel were here beside her, crouched down as she was with her bare hips raised in the air…
Which one of them would Paul choose? Or would he move between them, find it impossible to pick one girl over
the other? She felt the final thrusts of Paul’s hips, heard her friend’s words echoing through her head, distracting her from the moment.
Paul is bigger than Racer. Racer is faster.
Paul pushed his hips hard against her. She felt the little shivery spasms, the swelling of the knot at the end of his penis. Some pleasure from it, true, but she was too distracted to lose herself completely. She lay down without bringing herself to climax. Paul nestled against her and Leda hugged him tight. She was filled with a strange mix of love and sadness. An ending of sorts. She had known when she hugged Rachel in her front yard that it was a goodbye. It would never be the same between them again.
When Paul died Leda thought it would be the end of her. University had not been easy. She had struggled for the first year; the biology was hard, but the maths was particularly difficult. She buried herself in work, finding it impossible to make friends. When she lost Paul, Leda almost failed a whole semester of work.
Even now, a year later, she could barely concentrate. Her assignment was to study the individual octopuses that lived in the rock pools near her house. She bent over one particular pool, dipping her hand into the cold dark, watching the flicker of light deep in its recesses. An aquatic glow, some phosphorescent sea creature lurking in the depths. She was suddenly overwhelmed by tears as she remembered the deep sea firefly that was there at the beginning of things. The moment when
she and Paul had moved from childish play into something more real and enduring.
Here, now, the same greenish glow, but Paul was gone. Would never again be at her side, peering down into the water, panting and grinning and yipping a little, as if his
voice
could summon the green glow from the depths. Leda wondered if she would ever be released from the memory, the images that replayed like a looping video.
A late return home. The joyous face of the magnificent animal excited to see her at last. The great leap over the fence. The power and grace of his sheer physicality, frozen in mid-air. It was as if as if the video camera of her memory wanted the scene replayed in slow motion, like a perfect goal or a photo finish.
In the movie, Leda holds out her arms. Perhaps if she had not, Paul would have remembered to stop at the roadside; to glance towards the traffic as he had been trained to do. But she held out her arms, the universal gesture of love, loving him more, in this moment, than ever before. Or at least that was how her memory captured it. This moment, pinned at the forefront of her mind in all its beauty and its horror. The lopsided smile, the tongue lolling with joy, the bounding step. Blind love.
He raced towards her in trusting delight. Then the sound of the car crashing into his body, the sound of that body breaking. A regular repetition in her head like the heartbeat of her thoughts. The screech of tyres, the fleshy thud, the
crashing of glass as the window shattered into the car and onto the road.
Paul, landing in the passenger seat. Lying curled there as if he had jumped into the car and fallen asleep in the bright warm sunshine. Sleeping, not dead. Not dead.
She had been numb for a week, staring sleeplessly into the lonely nights. Waking in the darkness and knowing, slowly, that it was still true. She had closed her eyes tight and tried to drown out the unbearable sound of the collision with her mantra.
Not dead, not dead, not dead.
Leda peered again into the rock pool, squinting for the little green light at the bottom. She put her hand down into the water and the coldness was a delight. She felt it almost with a shock. She was touching the world. She had been removed from it by the dull unreality of grief and now the little green light seemed to be guiding her once more towards the forgotten reality of life around her.
She undressed and slipped into the rock pool. Cupped her hands and washed the tears from her eyes in the salty ocean. The chill of the water calmed her and she ducked her head under for a moment, smoothed the damp hair away from her face. Looked out to where it had started all those years ago, there on the beach beside this very pool. It was good, she realised for the first time. Even if it made her sad, it was good to remember. She bobbed up and down in the pool, clutching at the volcanic rock, feeling the sharp
shells of the barnacles clinging there.