Beverly adjusted the jalousie on the living room window in order to view Carl. Among his blond strands stood some conspicuous grays. The gray hairs were coarser, sturdier than the blond wisps which had carried him through his fifty years. He swept his callused hand through his locks and settled into his chair.
“Carl, do you want something to drink?”
Carl waited for Beverly to come to the porch door, then shook his head. Beverly, dressed only in her underwear, walked out onto the porch and sat at his feet. The cold wooden planks touched her thighs and caused her shoulders to shiver.
“Night is creeping up on us,” she said.
“I’ve got to go home.”
“Stay, Carl, please. I’ll make bouillabaisse and fresh garlic bread.”
Carl shook his head. She knew he could see the lake peeking out from behind the trees. His rowboat would be just on the edge of the lake. If he started rowing upstream now, he would be home before dark. He rubbed his hands together, then stretched his arms out wide. As he brought his hands down to his knees to rise, Beverly grabbed one hand.
“Do you love me?” she asked.
He looked at her without expression. With a free hand he reached into the pocket of his white trousers and pulled out a piece of paper. It was folded into a small square. Uninvited, she took the paper from his hand and unfolded it. There was her body, sketched out in pencil; her long legs, the slightly domed tummy with the public hair rising almost to her navel, the funnellike breasts peaking in dark swirls, and the slender nape reaching behind the earlobes. But it was the perfection of the facial features which gave her the confidence to smile up at him. He stood.
“Tomorrow?” she asked.
He shrugged and moved down the steps to the gravel path. She waved, but he never turned to see it. He probably would listen to some Mahler, she thought, and finish the book by Nietzsche, which they had discussed earlier that day. He’d have a light supper.
Most of the next day Beverly pecked at letters on her computer keyboard, forming words that ran into sentences. The sketch lay to the right of the board. She was sorry she hadn’t asked him to sign it, “Love, Carl.” Maybe tonight.
She had dinner late that night. She didn’t know whether to make it for one or two. Eventually she put single portions on the stove. At bedtime she plumped up some pillows along his side of the bed and threw her left leg across the bottom pillow.
The pillow was still buried between her thighs when she felt a hand slide up her buttocks. She looked at the clock. Seven a.m. The hand felt rough against her. It coursed her flesh like sandpaper leveling a rough board. His full lips touched her shoulder blades, then she felt the hair of his chest rest softly against her back. She could feel her wetness spreading across the pillowcase as her pelvis pushed into it.
Later at breakfast she noticed how dark Carl’s skin was, as if he had been working outdoors all the previous day. His blond hair had been whitened by the sun, almost camouflaging the gray. His hands were raw. Many calluses had broken open into wounds.
“You must have worked hard yesterday.”
He didn’t say anything.
“By the way, I’d like you to sign the sketch.”
He looked at her and shook his head. His handsome features were pensive. She saw a cruelty that had never been there before.
“Why not?”
“I shouldn’t have given it to you. I should have kept it for myself.”
She smiled.
“I’m sure you can duplicate it.” She started to remove her bathrobe. “I’ll even pose for it.”
Beverly dropped the robe over the back of the chair and stood.
“Let’s go back to the bedroom and see if we can manage a repeat performance.”
A few hours later there was a blank paper and pencil on the nightstand. On the bed Carl and Beverly lay entwined. She was awakened by the jolting movement of his body. Carl was trying to reach for the drawing material. Beverly moaned and Carl terminated his attempt, and instead lay still beneath her. His breath halted a second or two and then slowly gained its rhythm. She waited. Ten minutes, a half hour, a day later she didn’t know which, then she suckled his teat. Beverly spread her legs across his hips and sat atop his body; she smiled, satisfied but hungry. He picked up the pencil and paper. Immediately she stood up on the mattress and heaved her auburn hair up across her forearms. He sketched.
The drawing was not as perfect as the first. His hand was shaky and the lines were not following her body contours. This seemed to anger him.
“I think it’s good.” She pecked him on the cheek and got up to prepare lunch. As she left the bedroom she turned to look at Carl. His hands obviously ached for he grimaced as he opened and closed his fists. He stopped only to shred the paper and let the bits fall into the stained sheet.
Beverly retrieved her robe in the kitchen and prepared an elaborate lunch. After setting the table she found Carl dressed and in her office playing with the computer keyboard.
“You’ve got to turn it on if you want to produce anything,” she giggled from the doorway.
She saw Carl glance at the sketch that she had left next to the keyboard. Every curve, every shading was in place.
“Carl, come on. Lunch is on the table.”
She was already seated when Carl entered the dining room.
“Slow-poke,” she teased.
At the table Beverly kept staring at his hands.
“How do you get those things?” asked Beverly, a forkful of pasta poised in front of her lips.
Carl looked at his cut and calloused hands. “I bury things.”
“Bulbs?”
“What?”
“What do you bury? Are you planting a garden? God, it’s been, what, six months since I’ve been at your place. Remember, it was the day I signed the lease for this house.”
Carl nodded.
“Can you imagine? We’ve been neighbors now for six months and lovers for five of them.”
Carl smiled at her.
“And it’s been days since you smiled at me like that.”
“I’m sorry, Beverly. I’m under some stress right now.”
“That why you’ve been working so hard in the yard?”
Carl laughed. “As a matter of fact that’s exactly why I’ve been digging.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“No!”
Beverly looked down at her plate and realized she couldn’t finish the pasta.
“You’re a special person,” Carl said as he reached for her hands. He squeezed her hands tightly. “I have to go.”
“Please, Carl. You never wanted to leave in the past. You would spend as long as a week with me and go home reluctantly to check on your place. Now I can’t get you to spend a single day with me. Why?”
His eyes seemed to shimmer under salty tears that never fell. As he got up she watched his linen suit fall in wrinkles around his robust body. He still had the body of his youth and Beverly assumed it was due to his penchant for digging. She watched him walk to the threshold of the dining room and stop. His hands reached up and grasped the lintel. He hesitated. Beverly rushed from her seat and threw her arms around him. She could smell his body through the cloth, rich and heady stifling her breath.
“I love you, Beverly, but…”
She waited for the “I can’t make a commitment,” which never came. He merely reached down to his right trouser pocket, almost slid his hand in, but stopped. Instead he patted the pocket and pulled away from her.
She watched him walk down the gravel path until he was hidden by the fir trees. When she brought her hands up to her face to rub away the tension, she smelled the garlic embedded in her fingertips and remembered she had to clean the dining room after the half-eaten lunch.