“Where’s your key?”
“On the dresser there. Near my wallet.”
“Are we really going to ski with them tomorrow?”
“Not with her,” Sandy said.
“You suppose she’s a good skier?” David asked, and came out of the bathroom.
“She’s very good. I saw her one morning.”
“You still here?”
“Why don’t you go get your own pajamas?”
“I’m barefoot.”
“So am I.”
“Is this anything?” Sandy asked, and showed David the bruise.
“Go ask Dr. Foderman.”
“Why didn’t he pull up his pants?” I asked.
“Maybe he likes them half-mast,” David said.
“Did you dig those shorts of his?”
“My father wears shorts like that,” I said.
“I’m surprised he wasn’t wearing garters.”
“Garters cause varicose veins.”
“Who told you that?”
“Scientific fact,” David said, and took off his pants. “Anybody mind if I open the window a little?”
“I thought you were worried about the tundra.”
“It’s unhealthy to sleep without a window open.”
“Is that another scientific fact?” Sandy said.
“Talk about shorts,” I said.
“Why? What’s the matter?” David asked, and looked down at himself.
“Are those silk?” Sandy said.
“No, they’re cotton and dacron. What’s the matter with them?”
“Very sexy,” I said.
“They look like silk,” Sandy said.
“They’re just plain undershorts,” David said.
“Just your regular garden variety undershorts,” Sandy said.
“I also like the color,” I said. “What color is that, David?”
“Blue.”
“Looks more like turquoise to me,” Sandy said.
Mincing, David put one hand on his hip, sashayed across the room, said, “I think they’re adorable shorts,” and then took them off and tossed them over the lampshade.
“Positively cunning little shorts,” Sandy said.
“Listen,” David said, “I can’t open this window until I get my pajamas.”
“Why don’t you sleep in your cunning little shorts?” Sandy said.
“Peter, go get my pajamas, will you?”
“Go get your own pajamas.”
“How can I? I’m naked.”
“Give him a robe, Sandy.”
“There’s one in the closet.”
“It won’t fit me,” David said.
“So go to bed and shut up,” I said.
“Will you open the window?”
“I’ll open the window.”
“After I’m in bed.”
“After, after,” I said.
“Okay,” David said, and pulled back the covers, and got into bed, and then tucked quilt and sheet up under his chin.
“Need your teddy?” Sandy asked, and took off her slacks, and went to the closet for a hanger. She folded the slacks carefully, draped them over the bar of the hanger, and was putting them into the closet when David said, “Close the door.”
“What?” she said, turning.
“The closet door,” David said.
“I think he does need his teddy,” Sandy said, and closed the door.
“Don’t want to let all them hairy things out of the closet,” I said.
“I just like the closet door closed,” David said.
“Closet door closed, window open,” I said, and went to the window and pulled it down about two inches from the top. “Anything else, sir?”
Sandy took off her panties, idly scratched her crotch, looked around the room as though trying to decide whether she’d forgotten anything, and then crossed to the bed and climbed in beside David.
“Anybody remember to put out the cat?” I asked, and took off my shirt.
“Note for the milkman?” David said.
“Porch light on for the kids?”
I hung the shirt over the straight-backed chair at the desk, and then took off my pants and undershorts. “It’s too cold in here with that window open,” I said.
“Leave it open!” David warned.
“Get the bathroom light,” Sandy said.
I went into the bathroom, turned off the light, decided I was thirsty, turned on the light again, and ran a cold glass of water from the sink faucet. “Anybody want water?” I asked.
“Milk and cookies,” David said.
I turned out the bathroom light, walked to the floor lamp where David had hung his adorable cunning turquoise shorts, turned that out as well, and then stumbled in the dark toward the bed, climbing in on the other side of Sandy.
“Mmm,” Sandy said.
“First time I’ve felt relaxed all damn day,” David said, and sighed.
“Careful,” Sandy told him “That’s where the bruise is.”
“Here?”
“Mmm. Yes. Be careful.”
“How’d you get that, anyway?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t take any falls, did you?”
“One. But I landed on my hip.”
“You think Seymour can manage the north face?”
“Hell with Seymour,” David said.
“Hell with them all,” Sandy said.
Now entertain conjecture of a time when creeping murmur and the poring dark fills the wide vessel of the universe. From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night, twin mercenaries skulk in quest of spoils on each small hill. Rosebuds blatantly explode beneath our stealthy finger treads. (It is sore, she whispers; gently, it is sore.) Soaring purple columns rise on either of her flanks; she climbs these spires with her hands, descends again, besieges and encircles them. Relentlessly she strokes with counterpoint precision, urging surrender, promising release, till sudden knowledge of pleasure postponed invites her to abrupt cessation. The wind rides hoarsely in, piercing the night’s dull ear, assaulting the now-abandoned field. So recently addressed, so hotly pressed to yield our hoarded lodes, we stand in blind rigidity and search the unreceptive dark, eager for engagement. Between us on the plain below, spread indifferently and loose, a passive white and golden mass invites our plunder. In tandem spearhead, we storm the waiting weald. Fire answers fire, and through the paly flames all metaphor expires. Now are military allusions consumed in triple holocaust. In the dark, in the silence, we play out our sextina.
It is David who presses lips to lips. Much lower, my hand explores her tangled isosceles. Her back arching, her crotch to David, buttocks to me, she opens all interiors. Mouth and vault are wet seducers, crying mutely to the blood.
For now, we are partners. It is my blood that echoes the pulse of her nether lips, stiffens and engorges me. She is wet at my urging alone. David’s tangled hold on her mouth, jaw gripped, only opens her to new exploration of her crotch.
It is here, at this tempestuous crotch, that Sandy reaffirms the secret blood oath we took five summers past, and opens wide remembrance, while promising lips swear allegiance to David and tangled memories twist on tortured sheets grown wet.
She turns her face to me, her mouth still wet with David’s kisses, my hand on her crotch where David stiffly probes. His thrust tangled in my fingers, I can feel the wild blood coursing through his gliding flesh. Her lips strike winter dead. The sun’s hot eye opens.
Acrobatically, she twists and opens her thighs to accept me from behind. Wet, unresistant, she proffers me her lips and I plunge deep inside her tilted crotch. David waits for her, stiff with his own blood. She lowers her mouth, hair and teeth tangled.
Our triple alliance is tangled, tender and fierce, gently cruel. It opens for us wide viaducts through which the blood can secretly flow, red and rich and wet. It joins us irrevocably — one crotch, one male member, one pair of thirsting lips.