their next date
MIRABELLE ENDS UP AT RAY’S house, where, fully clothed, they get on his bed and she sits on top of him and he unbuttons three buttons on her blouse and he finds the area above her breasts and confirms that it is her skin he had seen at La Ronde and not a flesh-colored underthing. That’s all they do, and he drives her home.
the conversation
THE CONVERSATION CONSISTS OF ONE involved party telling another involved party the limits of their interest. It is meant to be a warning to the second party that they may come only so close.
Again, Mr. Ray Porter takes Mirabelle to La Ronde. They sit at the same booth and have the same wine, and everything is done to replicate their first dinner, because Ray wants to pick up exactly where they left off, with not even a design change in a fork handle to break the continuum. Mirabelle is not sparkling tonight, because she works only in gears, and tonight she is in the wrong gear. Third gear is her scholarly, perspicacious, witty self; second gear is her happy, giddy, childish self; and first gear is her complaining, helpless, unmotivated self. Tonight she is somewhere midshift, between helpless and childish, but Ray doesn’t care. Ray doesn’t care because tonight is the night as far as he is concerned, the night where everything is going to come off her. And Ray feels compelled to have the Conversation. It is appropriate tonight because of Ray’s fairness doctrine: before the clothes come off, speeches must be made.
“I think I should tell you a few things. I don’t think I’m ready for a real relationship right now.” He says this not to Mirabelle but to the air, as though he is just discovering a truth about himself and accidentally speaking it aloud.
Mirabelle answers, “You had a rough time with your divorce.”
Understanding. For Ray Porter, that is good. She absolutely knows that this will never be long term. He goes on: “But I love seeing you and I want to keep seeing you.”
“I do too,” says Mirabelle. Mirabelle believes he has told her that he is bordering on falling in love with her, and Ray believes she understands that he isn’t going to be anybody’s boyfriend.
“I’m traveling too much right now,” he says. In this sentence, he serves notice that he would like to come into town, sleep with her, and leave. Mirabelle believes that he is expressing frustration at having to leave town and that he is trying to cut down on traveling.
“So what I’m saying is that we should be allowed to keep our options open, if that’s okay with you.”
At this point, Ray believes he has told her that in spite of what could be about to happen tonight, they are still going to see other people. Mirabelle believes that after he cuts down on his traveling, they will see if they should get married or just go steady.
So now they have had the Conversation. What neither of them understands is that these conversations are meaningless. They are meaningless to the sayer and they are meaningless to the hearer. The sayer believes they are heard, and the hearer believes they are never said. Men, women, dogs, and cats, these words are never heard.
They chat through dinner, and then Ray asks her if she would like to come to his house, and she says yes.
sexual intercourse
WITH ONES WITCH, THE LIGHTING in Ray’s house goes from post office to jazz nightclub. He starts fantasizing about events that are only moments away. His hours of being with Mirabelle and not having her are about to give way to unrestricted passage. The memory of her sitting on top of him, when he gave a slight squeeze of her breasts through layers of clothing, crystallizes his desire and causes it to crackle.
Ray is lured on not simply because he is a guy and she is a girl. It is just that Mirabelle’s body, as he will soon discover, is his absolute aphrodisiac. His intuition sensed it, led him to the fourth floor, and has been reinforced with every whiff and accidental touch. He deduced it from the sight of her, and from the density of her hair and the length of her fingers, and from the phosphorus underglow of her skin. And tonight, he will feel the beginning of an addiction that he cannot break, the endless push and pull of an intoxication that he suspects he should avoid but cannot resist.
He puts both hands on the sides of her neck, but she stiffens. She says it makes her nervous. This takes a bit of undoing, and he breaks from her, makes a few irrelevant comments, and resumes. They get on the bed and dally, a mesh of buttons and buckles and shoes clashing and gnashing. This time he buries his face in her neck and draws in his breath, inhaling her natural perfume. This gets the appropriate response. A few clothes are removed.
They are relaxed. They are not on a straight path to intercourse, as they take talking breaks, joking breaks, adjusting-the-music breaks. Things intensify, then ebb, then reheat. After a few minutes with Ray exploring the landscape of her bare stomach, he takes a bathroom break and disappears through a doorway.
Mirabelle stands up and methodically takes off all her clothes. Then she lies face down on the bed and smiles to herself. Because Mirabelle knows she is revealing her most secret and singular asset.
Mirabelle’s body is not extravagant. It does not flirt, or call out, and that causes men who care about drama to shop elsewhere. But, when viewed at the radius of a king-sized bed, or held in the hands, or manipulated for pleasure, it is a small spectacle of perfection.
Ray enters the bedroom and sees her. Her skin looks like it has faint micro lights under it, glowing from rose to white. Her breasts peek out from her sides as they are flattened against the sheets, and the line of her body rises and falls in gentle waves. He walks over and puts his hand on her lower back, lingers there, then rolls her over, kisses her neck, runs his hand down her legs and in between, then touches her breasts, then kisses her mouth while he cups her vagina until it opens, then he eats her, makes love to her, as safely as the moment allows. Again she thinks how different this is from Vermont. Then he faces her away from him and brings his body up next to hers. Mirabelle, fetal, curled up like a bug, receives the proximity of Ray Porter as though it were a nourishing stream. They wake in the morning on either side of the bed.
breakfast
AT BREAKFAST, EARLY BECAUSE SHE has to get to work, Mirabelle becomes age seven. She sits, waiting to be served. Ray Porter gets the juice, makes the coffee, sets the plates, toasts the bread, and pours the cereal. He gets the paper. Mirabelle is so dependent, she could have used a nanny to hold open her mouth and spoon-feed her the oat bran. She speaks in one-word sentences, which requires Ray to fill the silences with innocuous queries, like an adult trying to break through to a disinterested teenager. In this snapshot of their morning is hidden the definition of their coming relationship, which Ray Porter will come to understand almost two years later.
“You like your breakfast?” Ray decides to try a topic that is in both their immediate vision.
“Yeah.”
“What do you usually have for breakfast?”
“A bagel.”
“Where do you get bagels?”
“There’s a shop around the corner from me.”
Total dead end. He starts over.
“You’re in great shape.”
“Yoga,” she says.
“I love your body,” he says.