I mustered a glib response, something about getting lucky, but kept it to myself – there was nothing playful in her face, no indication of banter in her delivery and, with desire thickening my voice, I told her I could use a little luck.
While our supper (chicken and saffron rice) grew cold, we went at it hard on the waterbed. Yara was energetic and inventive, alternately demanding and giving, but the sex was merely good, merely proficient, and not great. As sometimes happens there was an element of performance art to our little exercise that diminished its other qualities and hampered emotional involvement. Her moans and cries were sweet to hear, but I recognized that she was in part emoting. Not faking it, exactly. Just throwing in a few extras to make sure I knew that she was having a grand time, and my execution was the masculine equivalent of hers. What surprised me was that instead of the usual pillow talk we discussed this afterward, analyzing our lovemaking in terms of its authenticity.
‘When attractive people hook up,’ Yara said, ‘narcissism sometimes gets in the way of things.’
‘I don’t consider myself a narcissist,’ I said.
‘Be honest!’
‘Actually I’m more of a self-hater.’
She blew air through her lips, a disparaging puff. ‘You don’t think it’s possible to be a self-hating narcissist?’
‘I guess you could say self-hatred is an extreme form of narcissism.’
‘It’s the soul of narcissism. Self-love and self-hatred aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, one’s a precursor to the other.’
I clasped my hands behind my head – the play of light across the ceiling gave the bone a creamy, cheese-like appearance.
‘How old are you?’ I asked.
‘Seventeen. Did you think I was older?’
‘I didn’t think much about it, but yeah, maybe a couple of years.’
‘And now you think I’m too young for you? Is that it? I should hope not, because I’ve been with guys older than you. A lot older!’
It was a peculiar conversation and her part in it seemed sophisticated for someone so young, but this digression made me aware that her personality was mostly posture and an occasional blurt of teenage defensiveness. I told her age didn’t matter to me and that mollified her.
‘It’s strange,’ she said, returning to the topic at hand. ‘I think self-love is decaying into self-hate in your case. Usually it’s the other way around.’
‘I don’t know if that’s true. I’ve been afflicted with a mixture of the two ever since I was fifteen.’
‘Since the girls got interested, eh?’
‘Nah, it was when I began using them to get at their mommies . . . that’s when the self-hate kicked in.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘The girls I knew had some hot moms.’
‘You had sex with them?’
‘A few. Rene . . . my first mom. She came on to me while her daughter was out running errands. It made me a big deal in high school.’
‘You told your friends about it? What an asshole!’
‘I was fifteen, an idiot. And Rene told her friends. She even set me up with one of them. No one got hurt and I learned a few things.’
‘About sex?’
‘Sex . . . and women.’
Yara sighed – a sigh of forbearance, I figured. ‘The moms must have been bored with their husbands.’
‘I didn’t think about them. They were targets to me. I suppose they were bored. With their husbands, and themselves. But I don’t believe that’s what motivated them. It was the idea they were corrupting me that got them off. They needed that kind of excess in their lives. So I played the innocent and let myself be corrupted. It got to be a thing with me, bagging mothers and their daughters. When the moms found out their little Madisons and Brooks were fucking me, too, they were deeply pissed. But after they cooled down, a couple of them suggested threesomes.’
‘You must have thought you were a wicked boy.’
‘I was wicked.’
‘In an innocent way, maybe.’
Channeled through some complexity of bone, a warm breeze penetrated the chamber, producing a mournful whistle.
Yara turned onto her side, facing me. ‘I wasn’t interested in sex until last year.’
‘You got a late start, huh?’
‘Oh, I’ve had my share of experiences, but they were unpleasant. Most of them, anyway. I quit having sex when I moved out here. Then about a year ago I took a lover, but we didn’t communicate well in bed. We had chemistry, but it never came to much.’ She did a finger-walk across my stomach, coming to rest on my hip. ‘But you and I communicated very well. We understood each other’s signals.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Your time with the mommies must have taught you to be aware of a woman’s desires, because you knew what I wanted and when I wanted it. And I’m certain I knew what you wanted . . . which is unusual. I’ve never been adept at reading men.’
‘Give me an example.’
‘You remember what happened.’
‘Refresh my memory.’
‘You just want to hear me talk dirty.’
I smiled. ‘If you don’t mind.’
‘All right. At the end, when you were battering away at me, I knew you were close and I wanted you to finish in my mouth. And you did, without my having to tell you.’
‘It seemed like the thing to do.’
She peered at me. ‘Am I embarrassing you?’
‘No.’
‘I am, aren’t I? You’re embarrassed!’
‘No, really. I’m not. I just think it’s weird, talking like this.’
‘Why is it weird?’
‘People tend to be gentle with each other after they hook up. They whisper sweet nothings. They say stuff like, “When did you know?” and “The first time I saw you I was rocked.” Or they tease one another, they’re playful. They don’t start breaking shit down.’
‘That kind of talk is generally insincere on some level.’
‘Not always.’
‘No, not always.’
The wind had grown stronger. Wheezy flutings came with increasing frequency over the bone channels of the skull, like an old calliope giving up the ghost.
‘It’s good to get all this out in the open,’ Yara said. ‘It’ll rid us of unnecessary baggage.’
‘You think? It’s making me more self-conscious.’
‘Probably that’s how it’ll be at first, it’ll help in the long run.’
The notion that we might have a long run started me thinking about Ex. I saw her in the entryway of our house, taking off the old army coat she wore in winter, smiling at me over her shoulder, her glossy hair braided into a thick rope.
‘You know, until recently I’ve been living with someone,’ I said.
‘What of it?’
‘We’ve been together on and off for almost four years. I’m not sure it’s over.’
‘She won’t have anything to do with how things work out for us.’
‘That’s an arrogant thing to say.’
‘It’s not arrogance if you’re certain about something, and I’m certain about this.’
Yara dozed awhile, lying on her stomach, but I lay awake, highlights from the previous hour or so flaring up in my head. Bored, I propped myself on an elbow and kissed her shoulder, ran a hand along the slope of her back, and studied her tattoo. She stirred and made a pleased noise. I touched the middle scale of the diamond pattern and was astonished to find that it was hard and had a distinct convexity. Before I could examine it further, she swatted my hand away and sat up.
‘Don’t!’ she said angrily.
‘What is that? Some kind of implant?’
‘Yes, an implant. Leave it alone.’
‘How did they do it? I didn’t think it was possible to do something like this.’
I stretched out a hand and again she knocked it away from the tattoo, saying, ‘I don’t want you to touch me there!’