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He put his hand around the back of my neck and pulled me up. I knew that the thing I had feared most and tried to push away had grown over time, and was now about to devour me. I could never have imagined that something I had been so frightened of for so long would be so sweet, and I sobbed at my defeat. I had been terrified of the power in the sound I f his piano-playing, but now I was being invaded by its melody.

“You’d like to try to escape, wouldn’t you, Ruiko?”

His voice was calm.

“You’d like to run away, back to your slaves, wouldn’t you? So they can look after you, lick your wounds, and kiss your hurts away? Well, I’m telling you now, this is just a fuck. It means nothing to me. So if you want to run, you’d better do it now.”

But he had already driven the stake through my heart. What good would it do to try to run away? Leroy coming back had been a miracle.

And now he had become the same guy who had made love to me by the piano. Another miracle. But unless I got a third miracle, a miracle of my own, there was really no point in trying to run away—there was no chance of escape.

“What for? What would change if I ran? Everything already has changed.”

A thin smile appeared on his face. Apparently I was cleverer than he’d thought.

“You wouldn’t believe how much more they still can change.”

“You want to despise me, right? If you think fucking me will work, go ahead and try. I’m just about to come, you know. If you think by being able to make me come you can despise me, go ahead and try. But you’d better hurry.”

Leroy shot sperm out over my body, like he was spitting out mouthfuls of saliva. The only difference was that when I had spat on Leroy, he had enjoyed it. There was no pleasure in this for me.

He put his arm under my back and lifted me up so that we were face-to-face. We stared closely at each other, looking for battle scars, both of us hoping to see signs of defeat in the other’s eyes. I frowned and lowered my eyes first; I was the loser.

Leroy placed his tuxedo jacket around my shoulders to cover my naked body. I shivered as the cool, silky lining touched my skin. Then he put his arm around me and pulled me close, the tattered remnants of his bow tie hanging lifeless around his neck, tapping my shoulder lightly like a black, silk pendulum. Over his shoulder I could see the window misted up with condensation.

“Would you turn off the heater?”

He turned it off and switched on the radio. An old O.V. Wright tune was playing. He was singing about how his lover was always on his mind, and that if she ever stopped loving him, he couldn’t go on living.

I wiped my tears on his shoulder and reached out my hand to write on the misty glass. But then I let it fall again.

“What were you going to write?” Leroy asked.

“P-A-S-T.”

“The past means nothing,” he told me.

“I’d like to believe that.”

Dawn began to break. It was still raining. It was probably going to rain all day. It felt cold for June, and Leroy’s body no longer warmed mine. Things were different now. But he would still keep playing the piano. That’s all he ever did. Even when there was no piano in front of him.

I put a thermometer in my mouth to check my temperature. I had a I fever. I had got out of Leroy’s car partway home and walked the I rest of the way in the rain, so now I had a cold. When I opened the door of the apartment, D.C. was dumbfounded to see me standing there with my hair dripping wet. I stared back, but my gaze went straight through him.

He wrapped me in a towel and guided me to the bedroom, then went to the kitchen to open a can and make hot soup for me. I wanted a cigarette but mine were too damp to light, so D.C. offered me the one he was smoking. I was grateful for his kindness.

“I love you.” I smiled.

I made it a rule never to tell lies to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, and it felt the same as when I pretended I wanted to fuck even though I really didn’t. D.C. stared at me in surprise, pinching himself to make sure he wasn’t hearing things. He didn’t even notice the soup pan boiling over.

And of course, he didn’t hear me apologizing silently to him in my heart.

I pretended to be much worse than I really was and spent the whole day on my back, trying to think of anything but Leroy. But he was hiding behind my eyelids, and as soon as I closed my eyes his face appeared, enveloping my mind as if he had been waiting for me, so I had to keep my eyes open to avoid him. I found I could shut him out by concentrating on D.C.’s smile and the things in the room around me, but little by litde my concentration would lapse until I could hear the name Leroy screaming out from every pore of my body, and my mind was swamped by a flood of memories of the touch of his hands, his feet, his tongue, and his dick. Then, when I tried to escape into sleep, his fingers would seize my body, tickling me and confusing me. When I woke, my whole body would be drenched in a sweet, passion-soaked sweat, an ironic sort of wet dream.

D.C. was sincerely concerned because I wasn’t pushing him around the way I usually did.

“You’re freaking me out. I’ve never seen you like this before. Why aren’t you drinking the juice I made you?”

“Leave me alone. I can’t even look at that juice unless I’m starving.”

D.C. tried cooking dishes made with liver and kidney to give me vitamins and iron, but just looking at them made me feel sick. I only wanted one thing. I felt like a young girl again. My whole lovesick body was weeping quietly to itself.

“You really don’t give a shit about me, do you?”

Apparently D.C. had been talking about the weather and I hadn’t replied. The weather? That was the last thing on my mind.

“Goddamn it, D.C.! Why do I have to talk about the fucking weather with you?”

“You said you loved me. But I can tell you don’t.”

I was too fed up for words.

“So if I listen to you go on about the weather, that proves I love you?”

“Yeah,” said D.C., breaking down in tears.

It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a man cry, so I wasn’t particularly moved.

“All right,” I said, “come over here and hold me. That’ll make you feel better.”

It was the easiest way to stop his crying. Anybody would start complaining if he couldn’t touch the person he loved. I used to purposely push my boyfriends away whenever they’d get like this, but I didn’t have the energy right now.

As I lay in his arms, I tried to pretend it was actually Leroy who was making love to me. But my imagination wouldn’t stretch that far. I knew Leroy’s touch far too well to fool my senses into thinking it was him.

Leroy and I crossed paths a few times after that rainy night. He was always with a beautiful young woman and I was always with D.C. or some of my friends, but when I caught sight of him I’d prick up my ears like a rabbit and strain, hoping to hear what he was saying from a distance. My friends didn’t talk about him anymore and they didn’t realize that I was completely focused on him instead of them.

But Leroy no longer looked over at me in that way that excited me and made my nipples hard: his attention was focused on his new girlfriend, his smoldering eyes so deep and passionate that from time to time she blushed. I had to try hard to conceal the anger building up inside me, but I couldn’t help wondering if she had ever been in Leroy’s car and whether she could smell me there on the backseat.

Girl, you don’t know anything about me and Leroy. He fucked me out of pure contempt in the backseat of that car. You could never be that close to him. My heart pounded, beating with a strange sense of superiority.