In the movie house Cindy snuggles close. Midway through the flick I take the hint. A big bold move: slipping my arm around her shoulders. She wriggles so that my hand slides down through her armpit and comes to rest grasping her right breast. My cheeks blaze. I do as if to pull back, as if I’ve touched a hot stove, but she clamps her arm over my forearm. Trapped. I explore her yielding flesh. No padding there, just authentic Cindy. She’s so eager and easy that it terrifies me. Afterward we go for sodas. In the shop she turns on the body language something frightening—gleaming eyes, suggestive smiles, little steamy twistings of her shoulders. I feel like telling her not to be so obvious about it. It’s like living one of my own wet dreams.
Back to her place, now. It starts to rain. We stand outside, in the very spot where I stood when I polted her the last time. I can write the script effortlessly. “Why don’t you come inside for a while, Harry?” “I’d love to.” “Here, dry your feet on the doormat. Would you like some hot chocolate?” “Whatever you’re having, Cindy.” “No, whatever you’d like to have.” “Hot chocolate would be fine, then.” Her parents aren’t home. Her older brother is fornicating in Scarsdale. The rain hammers at the windows. The house is big, expensive-looking, thick carpets, fancy draperies. Cindy in the kitchen, puttering at the stove. Harry in the living room, fidgeting at the bookshelves. Then Cindy and Harry, Harry and Cindy, warm and cozy, together on the couch. Hot chocolate: two sips apiece. Her lips near mine. Silently begging me. Come on, dope, bend forward. Be a mencsh. We kiss. We’ve kissed before, but this time it’s with tongues. Christ. Christ. I don’t believe this. Suave old Casanova Blaufeld swinging into action like a well-oiled seducing machine. Her perfume in my nostrils, my tongue in her mouth, my hand on her sweater, and then, unexpectedly, my hand is under her sweater, and then, astonishingly, my other hand is on her knee, and up under her skirt, and her thigh is satiny and cool, and I sit there having this weird two-dimensional feeling that I’m not an autonomous human being but just somebody on the screen in a movie rated X, aware that thousands of people out there in the audience are watching me with held breath, and I don’t dare let them down. I continue, not letting myself pause to examine what’s happening, not thinking at all, turning off my mind completely, just going forward step by step. I know that if I ever halt and back off to ask myself if this is real, it’ll all blow up in my face. She’s helping me. She knows much more about this than I do. Murmuring softly. Encouraging me. My fingers scrabbling at our under garments. “Don’t rush it,” she whispers. “We’ve got all the time in the world.” My body pressing urgently against hers. Somehow now I’m not puzzled by the mechanics of the thing. So this is how it happens. What a miracle of evolution that we’re designed to fit together this way! “Be gentle,” she says, the way girls always say in the novels, and I want to be gentle, but how can I be gentle when I’m riding a runaway chariot? I push, not with my mind but with my body, and suddenly I feel this wondrous velvety softness enfolding me, and I begin to move fast, unable to hold back, and she moves too and we clasp each other and I’m swept helter-skelter along into a whirlpool. Down and down and down. “Harry!” she gasps and I explode uncontrollably and I know it’s over. Hardly begun, and it’s over. Is that it? That’s it. That’s all there is to it, the moving, the clasping, the gasping, the explosion. It felt good, but not that good, not as good as in my feverish virginal hallucinations I hoped it would be, and a backwash of let-down rips through me at the realization that it isn’t trans cendental after all, it isn’t a mystic thing, it’s just a body thing that starts and continues and ends. Abruptly I want to pull away and be alone to think. But I know I mustn’t, I have to be tender and grateful now, I hold her in my arms, I whisper soft things to her, I tell her how good it was, she tells me how good it was. We’re both lying, but so what? It was good. In retrospect it’s starting to seem fantastic, overwhelming, all the things I wanted it to be. The idea of what we’ve done blows my mind. If only it hadn’t been over so fast. No matter. Next time will be better. We’ve crossed a frontier; we’re in unfamiliar territory now.
Much later she says, “I’d like to know how you make things move without touching them.”
I shrug. “Why do you want to know?”
“It fascinates me. You fascinate me. I thought for a long time you were just another fellow, you know, kind of clumsy, kind of immature. But then this gift of yours. It’s ESP, isn’t it, Harry? I’ve read a lot about it. I know. The moment you knocked me down, I knew what it must have been. Wasn’t it?”
Why be coy with her?
“Yes,” I say, proud in my new manhood. “As a matter of fact, it’s a classic poltergeist manifestation. When I gave you that shove, it was the first I knew I had the power. But I’ve been developing it. You wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve been able to do lately.” My voice is deep; my manner is assured. I have graduated into my own fantasy self tonight.
“Show me,” she says. “Poltergeist something, Harry!”
“Anything. You name it.”
“That chair.”
“Of course.” I survey the chair. I reach for the power. It does not come. The chair stays where it is. What about the saucer, then? No. The spoon? No. “Cindy, I don’t understand it, but—it doesn’t seem to be working right now…”
“You must be tired.”
“Yes. That’s it. Tired. A good night’s sleep and I’ll have it again. I’ll phone you in the morning and give you a real demonstration.” Hastily buttoning my shirt. Looking for my shoes. Her parents will walk in any minute. Her brother. “Listen, a wonderful evening, unforgettable, tremendous—”
“Stay a little longer.”
“I really can’t.”
Out into the rain.
Home. Stunned. I push…and the shoe sits there. I look up at the light fixture. Nothing. The bulb will not turn. The power is gone. What will become of me now? Commander Blaufeld, space hero! No. No. Nothing. I will drop back into the ordinary rut of mankind. I will be…a husband. I will be…an employee. And push no more. And push no more. Can I even lift my shirt and flip it to the floor? No. No. Gone. Every shred, gone. I pull the covers over my head. I put my hands to my deflowered maleness. That alone responds. There alone am I still potent. Like all the rest. Just one of the common herd, now. Let’s face it: I’ll push no more. I’m ordinary again. Fighting off tears, I coil tight against myself in the darkness, and, sweating, moaning a little, working hard, I descend numbly into the quicksand, into the first moments of the long colorless years ahead.