“Didn’t want to wake you,” he said now. “You were sleeping so well.”
“What time is it.”
“After ten.”
“I did sleep. But I woke up and thought I was still in Jamaica. Then I was awake for a long time.”
“What happened in Jamaica?” he said suddenly.
She could say nothing for a moment. “I — you know. I was stranded, and I couldn’t get through to you. I thought you were dead.” The tears came to her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “But we’re safe. It’s over now. We’re home. Together.”
“Yes.” She ran the back of one hand across her cheek.
“Let’s just concentrate on each other,” he said. “Let’s try to forget it a little, and stop dwelling on it all the time.”
“I’m not dwelling on it.”
“I am, a little. Let’s not. I wasn’t — I didn’t mean just you.” As he spoke the words, he believed them, even as part of him recoiled at the falsity of it: he had indeed been talking only about her.
“I want to never talk about it or think about it ever again,” she said.
“All right.”
He stood to pour her some coffee and saw out of the corner of his eye that she had picked up the paper. Something in him wanted her not to look at it, not to see the horrors there. But then he decided to stop worrying so much about her reactions; she was a grown woman.
“They think it might be as many as six thousand people,” she said, settling into the chair.
“God.”
He set the coffeepot back in its place on the stove.
“You talked in your sleep,” she said.
“What did I say?”
“You said ‘No.’ It was like you were giving orders to someone.”
“I can’t imagine who.”
“You do that. Talk in your sleep.”
“Yeah.”
“It felt like the sweetest discovery the first time I noticed it.”
“You’re so sweet.” He put the cup of coffee down for her and sat across the table. They said nothing for a moment. She sipped the coffee. He saw the frown of concentration in her features. “The fires are still burning,” he said. “And — and apparently one Saudi didn’t get on board one of the flights and took a train west.”
She did not look up.
“Imagine,” he said. “Nineteen men committing suicide. Planning it and then carrying it out. For murder. Twenty people committed to it, and one decided it wasn’t something he would do.”
“They haven’t found him? The other one?”
“Guess not. And there may be others. If you can get nineteen, I guess you can get others.”
“Oh, I really don’t want to think about it.” She put the paper down. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” He took part of the rest of it. “Right.”
She watched him turn the pages. Here were his wrists, the muscles of his forearms, and she felt, with the same shock of those first moments at the airport, the sense of his physical presence as unnerving, even threatening — the solidness of him, the size of him. His very maleness. A part of her marked the reaction as if it were a separate thing, a phenomenon to be studied: why should this about the man she loved, the curve of his wrists and the rippling tendons and musculature of his forearms, make her feel so queasy? He was the gentlest man, the kindest and most considerate person. She liked him, along with being in love with him.
Having realized that she was staring at him, he put the paper down and said, “Want to try again?”
She did not want to, and the fact struck through her. Against the rush of it, she leaned forward a little. “Oh,” she said. “Let’s.”
He rose and took her hand, and they crossed into the bedroom and lay down. She kissed him, moving with him, the worry about everything lodged at the back of her mind like the knowledge of death.
For him, it was exquisite, uncomplicated. He lay on top of her, breathing the faint honey odor of her hair, kissing her neck, murmuring the words of his love.
“Oh, darling,” she said, feeling as though she were performing, as she experienced again the pain of him inside her. Wrapping her arms tightly around him, she moved her hips with him.
“I’m going to come,” he said, breathless.
“Do, baby.” She felt the small spasms and was far away from him, turning in her soul to look at the thing itself, this ludicrous animal act, this grossness, all flesh and need; and those other spasms, the ones she had felt inside her on that Jamaican beach, after the ripping and hurting and the sand blinding her, and the choking — the quivering that let her know the awful thing was ending at last — that was all part of the same brute thing. The same helpless little stutter of being. It appalled her.
He lay back and sighed, looking at the ceiling, and felt the rushing of his blood slowing down. She was quiet. He put his hand on her thigh. “God.”
“So good,” she murmured.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
“Why?”
“You seemed — well, you — I felt you being a little, I don’t know—” he said.
“What? Tell me.”
“Elsewhere?”
She said nothing. She had an impulse to be sharp with him, tell him to stop thinking of himself so much. But here he was, with his sad eyes, wanting so badly for the two of them to be as they had been before all this. It wasn’t such a selfish thing, wanting love back. She reached over and touched his cheek.
“Are you all right?” he said.
“I–I can’t get those images out of my head. I wish I hadn’t looked at the paper. I’ll do better, I promise.”
“No, no,” he told her. “It was wonderful. Don’t get me wrong. I just want it to be as good for you, you know.”
“But it was. Really. I only want to be close to you now. I need it so much now. I thought you were — you’d been — I couldn’t believe you were all right.”
He kissed her cheek, putting his arm across her middle, deciding not to press it. Something was not right, and he could not persuade himself it was solely the attacks on the cities. How could that affect a thing like their intimacy? He murmured the word “sweetheart,” attempting to clear his mind of everything but this moment’s warmth, all a man had the right to hope for in a world where people killed themselves in order to murder thousands of others. This tenderness was the only thing anyone really possessed in order to defeat that hatred. He believed this, even as he recognized it as being at the level of a homily he might write. A second later, he remembered that he was no longer required to think that way. He gave another sigh and sat up. “I’ve got to find a place for storage before the truck gets here. I never seem to get organized.”
“You’re beautiful,” she said, and looking back at her he saw tears in her eyes.
“Baby, what is it.”
“I’m just happy to be here. Glad, and relieved and scared to believe it.” As she spoke these words, she felt the truth of them slip away in a self-accusatory surge of doubt, the sense of having deceived him. It is not. I did. I did think so. I did think I’d lost him.
He lay down and wanted to begin again, kissing her. It went on for a few moments, but she couldn’t do it, finally. She stiffened and pulled back. “Iris might walk over.”