As the music ended, she said, “You mind if we sit down?”
The restaurant was small, dark, and filled with people who seemed to be quite earnest about having a good time. There was a lot of empty laughter and a lot of drunken kidding with the waitresses and a lot of middle-aged dry-humping on the dance floor whenever a ballad was played.
She said, “I don’t think I’d better have any more alcohol.”
“Yeah, I noticed you staggering around on the dance floor.”
“I overheat is the problem. My body temperature goes up. I feel like I have the flu or something.”
“All right. Next round I’ll order milk.”
She smiled and said, “Are we going back to your place?”
“If you want to.”
“A part of me wants to.”
“Which part is that?”
“You know what I mean.”
“You mean,” I said, “you’re not sure if you want to go back to my place or not. Whether things are moving too fast. Whether you’re ready.
Whether I’m ready. And that’s very natural.”
“Oh, it is, doctor? And how did you come by all this medical knowledge?”
“I went to the library and read up on breast cancer.”
“Are you serious?”
“Spent an hour there.”
“God, Sam.”
“And part of what I read was that you’d just naturally be uneasy about-”
“You really went to the library?”
I was trying to tell if she was amused or angry. I couldn’t.
She said, “Were there pictures?”
“Photographs, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Uh-huh. There were.”
“Of-af surgery?”
“Of after surgery.”
“I don’t know if I like that, Sam.”
“I’ll tell you what. Let’s dance again.”
“Now?”
“Nat “King” Cole. C’mon.”
We danced. In fact, we danced to the next three records, all ballads. And said not a word. She didn’t hold me quite so tightly now.
And when I accidentally stepped on her foot, she didn’t make any kind of smart remark.
She said, “I wish you hadn’t done that.”
“Gone to the library?”
“Yes.”
“But I was just-”
“I know what you were trying to do, Sam. And it’s sweet, it really is. To care about me that much. But I don’t want you to see me as some kind of freak you need to read up on.”
Then she put her head on my shoulder and held me very tight indeed and when I started to say something, she said, “Please don’t say anything, Sam.
Please don’t.”
“I’m drunk already,” she said as she stood up. And she was, in fact, a tad wobbly as she headed for the second time to the john. “I must have a bladder the size of a pea.”
We’d come back to my apartment and despite her earlier resolution to forsake the bottle, she’d been matching me drink for drink. That sounds more impressive than it is, given the fact that I’m a terrible drinker. We’d had two more drinks was all. She went into the john and while I waited for her, I put my head back and tried to remember what it was like the first time I ever got drunk. Either it was when I snuck a quart of Hamms from the refrigerator and slept out in a tent with Mike Totter when we were fourteen; or it was the time Dodie McKay invited me over-I was fifteen-when her folks were out of town. The thing with the quart of beer was that I was also smoking cigarettes and the combination made me really giddy for a long time and then made me vomit. I’m not sure I was drunk, I think I just tested the limits of my stomach. With Dodie, I got drunk enough that I told her how much I loved the beautiful Pamela Forrest and would always love the beautiful Pamela Forrest and if there was an afterlife I would love the beautiful Pamela Forrest then, too. None of which Dodie wanted to hear. She’d invited me over to see if I wanted to go to the freshman dance, an invitation she took back by the end of the evening when she put me on the street to wobble my way home.
It was like a first drunk tonight, that was the best way to describe it. New and novel and giggly as hell.
When Linda came out of the bathroom, she headed straight for my chair. “Okay if I turn all the lights out?”
“What if I’m afraid of the dark?”
“Tough.”
So she went around and turned the lights out and then came over and sat in my lap. It was great there in the dark with her, the feel and smell and womanness and girliness of her, the feel of her hose and the perfect length of neck and the toothpaste scent fresh from my bathroom, a little squeeze of my Colgate no doubt.
“I used to sit in my Dad’s lap when I was little and comb his hair all forward. And then I’d laugh and laugh.”
“Do you want to comb my hair all forward?”
She reached up and clipped off the lamp on the end table next to the armchair we sat in. And that was when she kissed me.
The moonlight cast everything into silver and shadow relief. The apartment had never looked better.
I let her slide back on me and then I slipped my arm around her back. I didn’t realize she had shorn herself of bra until my hand reached the middle of her spine.
She did it quickly, deftly, while she was still kissing me, unbuttoned her blouse. My hand found its way to her breast and touched it with a kind of lusty fondness or fond lustiness. Take your choice.
She sighed deeply, tilted her head back.
“That feels so good.”
“I’m used to seeing you fishing off that deserted railroad bridge in the summer,” I said. “You always wore white Tshirts without a bra. I always wanted you to stand at an angle to the sun so I could get a glimpse of your breasts.”
“Why didn’t you ever ask me out, Sam?”
She took my hand and kissed it and then placed it on her breast again.
“I was too busy with the Queen of Sheba.”
“The beautiful Pamela Forrest.”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“You really think you’re over her?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
“That’s good enough for me.”
She tilted my face up and kissed me again.
“I’m really getting into the mood now. I wasn’t sure I could.”
“Yeah, so am I.”
This time, I kissed her. Teenage lust did wonderful and urgent things to my crotch. There’s nothing like good old teenage lust when you’re in your twenties. Long may it last.
I knew the rules for tonight. The skirt wouldn’t come off let alone the slip and the panties.
Nice and slow and easy. With an emphasis on slow.
But we sure found a lot of things to do within the limits of the rules, let me tell you. You reach a point in foreplay when you think you just may need to be committed to a mental hospital, you’re that goofy.
And then the moment was there. I don’t know why it was the moment-there hadn’t been anything said, she hadn’t urged my hand in any particular direction -but it was the moment and it was time to do it.
I wanted to do it when we were in the depths of a kiss that was making us thrusting gasping maniacs, because then it would be natural.
And it was natural. I just slipped my hand over. The nerve endings on my palm registered data with my brain-the shock of feeling the thin coarse patterns of the scarring where her breast had been. I wanted to tell myself-tell her-t everything was just fine, that it was just a little scarring was all. No big deal.
But of course it was a big deal. It would take some getting used to. As would looking at it in the light sometime.
But then I thought of what this moment must be like for her. How much she’d dreaded it, yet had wanted to get it over with. And how, based on my reading at the library, her future was perilous. The recovery rate for her kind of breast cancer was not good.