As she ran, she tried to establish a smooth easy stride, as Tom had taught her. “Run within yourself,” he always, urged. Jennifer had never been strong enough to run with his ease and speed. But Kathy Dart had upset her, and she wanted to bum off her anxiety.
She kept up the pace. She was well beyond Georgetown, running alongside the Parkway, and had outrun the other joggers on the path and even several dozen bikers.
She should go back to the hotel, she finally decided; it was getting dark, and she wasn’t familiar with the canal this far beyond Georgetown. She slowed her pace and gradually eased to a walk on the running path. Now she felt the pain, and when she saw the marker beside the running path, she leaned over to read it:
Jennifer glanced at her watch. It was after five. She had been running for an hour and a half.
“What did you do then?” Tom asked. He turned on his side in the bed to look at Jennifer.
“Well, I tried to run back, but I couldn’t, I was in too much pain. I came up out of the canal—there was a tollgate there—and I went onto the Parkway and hitched a ride from some woman. She took me here to the hotel. She was terrific. I mean, not like a New Yorker.” With a groan, Jennifer moved to face Tom.
“I can’t believe you jogged that far,” Tom said. He had pulled himself up on his elbows. “You’ve never run more than three miles, right?”
Jennifer nodded. “I just felt like running, I guess, and also I was so tensed up by that channel woman.”
“What?”
“You don’t want to hear about her.” Jennifer moved again with great effort, favoring her sore right leg, and stretched out on her stomach. “I thought making love was supposed to relax you.”
“It does. But you’ve got to do it repeatedly.” He nuzzled down next to her.
“Easy,” she said.
“It’s your legs that are sore, darling.”
“Everything’s sore.” She cuddled close, wanting to be held.
He had been waiting for her when she came back from the long run, and they had taken a shower together and then made love standing under the spray, their bodies lathered with soap! She had wanted to wait until they were in bed, but he couldn’t wait, wouldn’t wait, and she let him have his way.
He came at once, before she was ready for him, and then he picked her up, and she slipped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. He carried her back to the wide bed, where they soaked the sheets and blankets with their wet bodies and made love again, and this time she did come, a long rolling orgasm that drained all the strength from her limbs. The intensity made her cry, and when he came, she had a second climax just as violent and wrenching as the first, and she wouldn’t let him slip out of her. She held him tight, as if he were a secret prize she wanted to keep hidden forever inside her.
They had fallen asleep then, still wrapped in each other’s arms, and when she woke, Jennifer felt the pain in her legs and thighs and told Tom what had happened.
“What do you want to do?” he asked, whispering in her ear.
“I don’t want to do anything. I just want to lie in your arms for the rest of my life.” And she meant it. She didn’t ever want to move. She felt happy when she was in Tom’s arms, when he was holding her and she had nowhere to go and nothing to do. But she sensed the reason for his question. Tom never asked anything directly; he was always trying to position her so that he could do what he wanted.
“I’ve got a dinner meeting,” he told her.
“Damnit!” She moved to look at him directly. His dark eyes, intense even in the dim light of the room, had always affected Jennifer strongly. She could not see his face. “Now tell me again,” she said.
“Honey, I didn’t know myself until forty minutes ago. I had a message waiting when I got back to the hotel. The DA wants me to interview a new person down here who they’re thinking of hiring. Look, it’s only dinner. I’ll be free by nine, and we can come back and do some more of this.” He moved against her so she could feel his erection.
“Don’t,” she asked, but she knew there was no authority in her objection, and she knew that he wouldn’t stop. She, too, wanted to make love. She couldn’t get enough of him this afternoon, and her desire pleased her. In New York they were always in a hurry, rushing to make love in the brief moments that they could spare from their work.
“Turn over,” he told her, and when she heard the edge in his voice, her nipples grew hard. “This way,” he said, instructing her, and she let him pull her up by the waist. He was already kneeling on the bed.
“No, honey, that hurts.”
Tom didn’t answer her. His hands had seized her waist, and when she tried to pull away, he wouldn’t let her. Jennifer never liked it when he entered from behind so she couldn’t see his face, and it was only because he was so demanding that she let him.
“Honey,” she whispered, but he didn’t answer. She knew he wouldn’t; he never spoke when they made love. She wondered then if all men were the same. Did they all have sex like animals, silent and purposeful, without words of endearment? Or was it her? Did she somehow make men behave in a certain way?
She gasped. He was inside her, and she fell forward onto the wet sheets of the hotel bed. Her face was pressed against the hard mattress, and she grabbed its edges as he came, driving her down. It was not the way she wanted, but as he seized her by the shoulders, drove deep into her, she felt her own orgasm in a dizzying rush. It grew and grew, took her breath away, and she gasped with pain as her body shook and quaked, and then she came again and again, in wave after wave of sweet pleasure.
She awoke in the silence of the big house and heard the rooms speak to her, whispering. Her teddy bear and Raggedy Ann listened, too, and kept her safe. She pulled them both close to her and slipped farther down beneath the warm blankets. Through the window she could see the moon, and the moon’s shadow, as ghostly as her dreams, seeping across the rug.
She loved her room, it was safe and cozy, and full of her toys, and she spent hour after hour in it, playing with Barbara Ann, and Sally, and ail her dolls. She would make tea and sandwiches and have parties, just herself and her doll friends. And she’d have parties for Sam when he came home from boarding school. They would lock the door, and she would sit on his lap and pretend that there was no war in Europe, pretend that they were all alone in the big house, with Mommy and Daddy far, far away.
But at night, after everyone went to bed, she was afraid to be alone. Afraid of the ghosts and goblins, bats and little lizards that lived in the comers of her room. They waited for her beneath the stairs, too, and in the rafters of the attic and behind the sofa in the living room, and they darted from sight whenever anyone entered, and they came out at night to hunt down all the humans. Sam told her as much, whispering in her ear, and she didn’t want to believe it, but she knew it was true, and she wanted to be held by Sam in his arms, protected by his embrace.
Sam had first told her about the flying lizards and the ghosts when they spent a warm summer afternoon up in the attic, lying together in piles of their mother’s old clothes. Sam was looking for his football pads. That was the summer he turned fourteen, and he wanted to take them with him to prep school. They had rummaged together through the trunks, and Sam had told her to take off her white skirt and summer shorts and try on Mommy’s clothes. Okay, she had grinned. She liked the idea of taking off her clothes. It was hot in the attic, with the sun pouring through the small windows, and Sam had seen her without clothes before, wrapped up in a towel after her bath. But it was different now. She had breasts, tiny little breasts, and her mommy had already told her she’d need a brassiere before school started.