“You’ve got hair on your chest,” she said. “I’m glad. I like it, Ted. I like the way it feels against me.”
I moved so that the hair on my chest brushed the tips of her breasts and she shook like a leaf. Her eyes were clenched shut and her lips were parted.
I took her breasts in my hands and stroked them. I never knew anything could be so soft, so smooth, so firm and so perfect. I ran my lips over each breast in turn, tasting the flavor of her, kissing the firm pink nipples that stood up like little toy soldiers.
And she was making noises now. Her breathing filled the whole room.
I unbuttoned her dungarees and worked them over her hips. They were tight on her and it was tough getting them off. I pulled off her tennis shoes without untying them and rolled down her socks, slipping them from her feet.
She was wearing white silk panties and I could see right through them.
Then she wasn’t wearing anything at all.
She was a goddess, a vision, a dream. She was the one perfect woman in the whole imperfect world and she was mine, all mine. I touched her belly and the insides of her full thighs. I stroked her buttocks and cupped them in my hands, squeezing them gently.
I touched her everywhere and she went completely wild.
“Now, Ted! I can’t wait another minute. Hurry up, Ted. Please!”
I got my clothes off and let them stay where they landed. I hurled myself upon her, my blood pounding in my ears, my heart beating at an impossible speed, my whole body pulsing and aching for her. The sensation of her body under my body was indescribable. I let the rapture of it wash over me like a scented bath.
When it began she let out a little gasp of pain and pleasure. Her arms were bands of steel now and her legs wound around me like creeping vines. Her body tossed in the rhythm of love and her moans gradually increased in volume until they drowned out everything else in the entire world. I thought I would go out of my mind and I didn’t care if I did.
It was raining outside but I couldn’t hear it. The bed was squealing like a stuck pig, unaccustomed to the workout it was getting. But I didn’t hear that either.
All I could hear was Cindy.
The world went black as night, then turned the color of white-hot lead. It was not day, not night, no point in time at all. It was a disc spinning in Limbo, a solar eclipse at high noon, the whole wonderful world standing on its ear and singing at the top of its sturdy young lungs. It was heaven and hell, night and day.
It kept going on, and it kept getting better and better and better, and there was a time when I thought we were both going to die just as we were, locked together for all time. They would have to bury us locked in the position of love because no force on earth could drag us apart. And that wouldn’t be half bad. There were lots worse ways of spending eternity.
When it happened it was a little like dying. There was a clap of thunder that came not from the heavens but from us, and there was the absolute ultimate in sensation and joy, and I felt like screaming at the top of my lungs. Maybe I did. I know Cindy did.
There was the peak, and it happened for both of us at once. Then there was the descent, slow and beautiful, quite perfect, with muscles going slack and mouths gulping air and bodies limp as noodles. There was sweat, a lot of it, and there was no tension at all anywhere in the world.
We lay together for a long time and then I left her, flopping flat on my back with my eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling. I could hear us breathing but that was all I could hear.
Several eternities later she reached out a hand to touch my face. I kissed the tips of her fingers, then said her name in a voice that did not sound like mine at all.
“Ted,” she whispered. “God, that was good. Oh, God. You have no idea how much I needed that. I would have died without it, I think. And it was so good. So wonderfully amazingly good.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have to. She had said it all.
I closed my eyes. I thought about the girl and the money and, strangely, of Dr. Strom. He didn’t know all the answers after all. This was the therapy I needed all along, the sure cure for anything under the sun. This was what I needed and now I had it.
Sleep came quickly.
We woke up a little after midnight. In theory it was time for me to go to work, but I had no intention of returning to Grace’s Lunch then or ever after, not even to pick up my pay. We had fifty thousand dollars between us. We didn’t have to work. I wasn’t going to pour any more coffee, not for a hell of a long while.
We lay there, warm and naked, and we talked about things. I don’t remember what we said. We babbled on about the little meaningless things that became very relevant to us in the sublime intimacy of love. She talked and I talked and I no longer recall a thing we said.
Then we made love.
It was different this time — not better, not worse, but different. Now it was the union of two bodies that knew one another, two bodies joining like a reunion of old army buddies, and it was slow and gentle, lazy and languorous, with a passion beneath it all that was almost terrifying in its potency. When it was over the glow lasted a long time and I felt better than I’d ever felt before in my life.
Then: “Ted?”
“Mmmmm?”
“I’m hungry. How about you?”
“Now that you mention it—”
“I’m starving. Let’s get a bite to eat.”
I thought about it. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know if I can get up.”
“Try.”
I tried.
“Come on, Ted.”
I sat up on the bed, then fell back down again. The next time I made it and we got dressed. When she was stepping into the underpants I gave her a little pinch in a very pinchable area and she purred again.
“Watch that,” she said. “You might be biting off more than you can chew.”
“I like the metaphor.”
“Stinker. You know what I mean.”
I knew what she meant.
I put on clean clothes and gave her one of my shirts in place of the man’s shirt she’d been wearing. It was loose on her, but I liked the way it looked when she moved around. I felt like tossing her back on the bed and ripping the shirt off her but I wasn’t sure I had the strength.
I opened a window to air the love-smell out of the room and we went downstairs and out of the building. The rain had given up and gone home to Jersey and the air was as clean as Cindy’s hair. The pavement was still damp but starting to dry up; the air was warm. I looked around from the doorway but I couldn’t see anybody anywhere and we took off down the street toward Broadway.
We found a coffee joint that was still open at that hour and got a booth near the back. The waitress was a tight-lipped old biddy who threw the silverware at us and got annoyed when we asked for menus. But the food was good and we were both starved.
Cindy had a plate of ham and eggs with a side of home fries and two cups of joe with plenty of cream and sugar. I settled on a stack of wheat cakes with a brace of little link sausages, drowned the mess in maple syrup and took my coffee black.
The food disappeared very quickly.
Then we talked. I lit cigarettes for both of us, got us each another cup of coffee, and got the ball rolling as soon as the waitress was out of earshot.
“Okay, Cindy. Where do we go from here?”
“I don’t know.”
“I suppose we’ve got to get out of town. If Reed knows you’re here it’s only a matter of time before he catches up with you. And there won’t be much you can do. You can’t turn to the police any more than he can.”
She nodded.
“The only question is where. Any ideas?”