— Because you could couldn't you! and her hand was gone. — Write wonderful things I mean, couldn't you. Because your hands… she'd seized the one nearest, — I've watched them. They've done so many things… and she held it up before him.
— Yes, I've seen it he said, sinking back.
— Because haven't you ever wanted to? write I mean? I mean all the places you've been and all the romantic, all the things you talked about last night sitting in front of the fire, about finding gold that first time in Africa when you were so young and they thought you were crazy? and all these places you've been? I mean like Maracaibo they just sound so, they all sound so mysterious and… she broke off, intent examining his hand, splaying its fingers. He'd never been there he told her, that phone call? It was just a job, he'd been looking for work there. — Oh. Because I thought… She'd isolated the thumb, bringing its blackened nail closer, examining it — what happened. What happened… He'd slammed it in a car door he said, three or four years ago, just damned lucky not to lose the nail when the phone rang and she sprawled across the bed for it, — hello…? No it's not no, you've called before I told you she's been gone for two years, I don't even…
— Here give me that! and he had it, — Brian? is that you? What do you… You were just told weren't you? she's been gone for two years? She's not… good, fine, you've been gone for a long time too, I don't… Brian listen, I'm not interested in your trip to Yucatan. I don't want to hear about you living with the Indians. Nothing about you interests… No and I don't want your address to give her when I see her! I don't know where she is can you get that through your head? Just stop calling here, can you get that through your… and he held the dead phone a moment longer before he handed it over, out flat on his back for her hand back from hanging it up to run open down the flat of his belly and back, and back where the surge she'd raised hot in its grasp lay drained at its search, at its seizure dwindling further, — that damned idiot…
— Was that somebody you…
— Nobody! just a, he was just a damned kid who used to, stringy beard and sandals sitting on the floor in there talking about building a houseboat, about Easter Island, about peyote and her eyes just glowed listening to it, that whole superior damned, pour a whisky light a cigarette you're treated like a pariah while he rolls a joint they pass back and forth and she pours the wine no, no he didn't mean any harm but she, neither did she really but I, but jealousy gets you through the night when you wake up alone there. Turn on the light, pour a drink and wander around an empty house at least you've got that, at least you've got somebody you see yourself ripping his beard out, kicking his face in, standing over them both naked in bed with a smoking gun in your hand while she's really probably somewhere alone washing a dish wondering what in hell tomorrow will do no, no that's what jealousy's for. It's like cauterizing a wound, even when it's finally clear there was nothing to it but your own rage it's what's got you through.
— I never knew what it was like she said, — I mean it was always just something in books or the movies because, because I never knew what it would feel like because I never had anybody to be jealous of until, I mean you don't think she'd just come here do you? Right now I mean? just suddenly be down at the front door and just walk in? Because she, because all her lovely things down there, as if as long as it all stays just like she left it she could just walk in and you wouldn't even have missed her… her hand running over his calf where she'd come down pinning his arm with a knee. — You could write about that… fingertips tending his ankle — I mean, you could write about that.
— Could I? Dance, talk, dress and undress; wise men have pretended The summer insects enviable…
— What's that about.
— The breed of the grasshopper shrills, "What does the future Matter, we shall be dead?" Ah, grasshoppers, Death's a fierce meadowlark…
— Yes that's lovely, I mean did you write it?
— Well I… his head reared to look down his own naked length for hers tumbling its torrent of red at his feet, — not really no, no in fact it's a poem by…
— I mean have you ever seen them mating? Grasshoppers, praying mantises something like that they were so, they were so precise… her fingers tracing along the bone, — you have such lovely ankles don't you, where there's no hair just so clear and smooth till way up here… over his calf, past the knee foraging higher, coming over him taking the upper hand where her fingers rose hoarding the roothairs of the surge filling their encirclement — when I saw them on television once and they were so, just so elegant… her hand in its rise and fall, rise and fall like the leafbroken sunlight climbing her shoulder, falling away as she came down, rising and falling away, her fingertip tracing the vein engorged up that stiffening rise to the crown cleft fierce where the very tip of her tongue came to lead a glint of beading off caught in the sunlight over her shoulder pausing, holding it off as though getting in focus — what's this… and, for the tip of her tongue, the plucking edge of her nail — look, this little place, it's like there was a little scab on the…
— Then that's what it is! Good God I don't know what it is, it's a battle scar, laid out here like one of your grasshoppers pinned on a board what's this, what's that, examine every damned…
— But I didn't mean… and her hand closed tight, its prey swollen the colour of rage, she came up catching balance, reaching out for the phone — Who, hello…? She swallowed and cleared her throat. — Yes who, who… the breath gone out of her, — what…? Well I did! I tried to talk to him but he… Twenty five dollars marked full and final payment yes, that's… No now stop, stop! you, you have no right to call like this and, to call and harass me like this Mister Stumpp, I tried to talk to Doctor Schak about my condition about his nurse about that consultation he wouldn't even listen, he just said my bill why haven't you paid my… Well all right then all right! Tell him that tell him take his fucking bill and she slammed it down, knees drawn up and her face buried there, getting breath.
— Glad I'm not Mister Stumpp.
— It's not funny! She pulled the sheet round her shoulders and a shiver sent breath through her — a, a doctor a stupid doctor… and she got out the iniquities she'd borne at the hands of Doctor Schak and his staff, his — nasty nurse screaming at me when I was right in the middle of a spasm and, and… still having trouble, now, getting breath, her face pressed against her knees, the comprehensive consultation he'd sent to the wrong man the wrong doctor if he'd sent it at all and her records they said they'd sent and they hadn't and this detailed, — what he called this detailed medical history I hardly saw him for five minutes he was leaving for Palm Springs, to play golf in Palm Springs and then this Mister Stumpp, this bill collector Mister Stumpp he's turning it over to Doctor Schak's attorney Mister Lopots if I don't make a deal and send them a hundred dollars I'll hear from Mister Lopots and he'll, it's not funny it's not! And small as her hand was she managed a fist with it and hit him on the shoulder, hit him again with the heel of it.
— No no no, Mister Stumpp? Mister Lo…
— Stop it! She'd gone down with her face in the pillow, both hands drawn in fists — no! for his breath at her shoulder, on the glints of perspiration beading the white of her neck and his hand down her back spreading the rift wide, his weight coming over when that suddenly she turned seizing him with her arms to bring him in, head thrown back and the full swell of her throat rising in the hollowed arch of her jaw surging to meet him with choked bleats of sound for as long as it lasted until he came down, fighting desperate for breath himself, lying still there beside her when he got it and when, minutes later, he slipped off the edge of the bed gathering up trousers, socks, pulling on his shirt he stopped, looking down at her. She lay with her head on her right shoulder, eyes drawn and her mouth hung open with no betrayal of life but the uneven trembling of her lower lip sucked in with each effort at breathing and then falling away spilling the stilled tip of her tongue and he stood there, looking down at her as though she were no one he'd ever seen, as though years and her very identity had fled taking with them any intelligence or the hope of it and surely any beauty, or the claim to it, legs flung wide and her arms loose beside her, her thumbs still crushed into the palms of her hands and as he leaned down to pull the sheet over her, as it sank between her breasts and between her knees lifting again at the tips of her toes, all at once her chest heaved rapidly, her tongue came out licking the perspiration free of her upper lip and the sound in her throat getting breath grew louder, and then with a great sigh she turned on her side and was still, and he stooped to pick up his shoes and hurried from the room.