Love—?
He was smiling too. He could feel it. She was beautiful. Her hair was a tawny red color, streaked with shiny gold, but with a hint of deeper brown. She lowered her eyes uncertainly. His steady gaze was almost disconcerting.
She looked up. He was still looking, still smiling. A swallow to work up her courage, a cough to clear her throat. “Want to talk?” she asked.
“What about?”
“Us.”
“Um,” he said. He finished his drink; he did it to cover his hesitation. “What about us?”
“Am I pushing too hard?”
“Huh?”
“Lately, David, I’ve had the feeling that, except for business reasons, you’ve been avoiding me.”
“Now that’s—”
“Well, not avoiding,” she said quickly. “That’s the wrong word to use. Let’s just say I’ve had the feeling you’re holding back. And that makes me feel like I’m forcing myself on you.”
“That’s silly,” he managed to say.
“Is it?”
He thought about it. “Well, I have been caught up in this Board of Directors thing, you know.”
“I know — maybe I’m just reading meanings—” She got up from the table and went to the stove to take the vegetables out of the water. She dropped the hot plastic bag on the counter.
“You know,” she said, coming back, then pausing over her drink, “I remember something I learned in school once — not in class, but from some friends. It’s the reason there’s more hate in the world than love.”
“It’s easier?” he offered.
“Sort of. Let me explain. It takes two people to make a love relationship. It’s a positive thing; both have to work at it. But it takes only one person to start a negative relationship. It takes only one person to hate or dislike.”
He considered it. “Hm. Okay. So what does that have to do with us?”
“Well.” She paused. “Is our thing one-sided, or are we both working to make it work?”
He didn’t answer right away, just looked at her instead. “You mean — do I care for you as much as you care for me?”
She returned his gaze. “Yes. You can put it that way.”
He broke the contact first. He looked at his hands. “I can’t answer that — I mean, not in the way you want.” He looked around. “Is my briefcase here?”
“You left it in the car.”
“Damn. I’ll go get it.” He started to rise. Her startled face stopped him. Reaching over, he grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze. “There’s something I have to show you. Wait.”
It took only a moment, but it seemed to take forever. The apartment elevator was slower than ever to arrive. Its doors opened with a lackadaisical sigh. The trip down to the garage went at a snail’s pace.
He was out the doors with a bound, half-running to his car. He banged his leg on a fender in his eagerness. He pulled the case out of the back seat and headed back for the elevator. Again he had to wait, and again it seemed to be deliberately taunting him with its lethargy.
When he got back to the apartment, he was breathless. She had just finished cutting the meat into thin red slices. She looked up with a curious frown. “You didn’t have to run.”
“I didn’t,” he gasped and sank into a chair. He held the case on his lap and flipped it open. Hastily he paged through the sheafs of printouts, looking for the one he wanted. He separated it from the rest, then dropped the case to the floor. “Here,” he said. “Read this.”
“Now?” she asked. She was putting the tray of meat on the table.
He looked at her, at the meat, at the printout in his hand, and finally at her again. Abruptly he burst out laughing. She did too. “Here we’ve been waiting for over an hour for dinner,” he said, “and just as it’s ready, the first thing I want to do is talk about HARLIE. And I promised I wasn’t going to do that.”
She took the printout from him, placed it carefully to one side. “I never asked you to promise that. I like HARLIE.”
That surprised him. “You do?”
“Uh huh. I want to read it.” She picked up his briefcase and put it out of the way.
“But you don’t even know what it is.”
“You want me to read it,” she said. “That makes it important. Now, eat.” She smiled at him.
He pulled his chair around to the table and smiled across at her. He waited till she was through with the bleu cheese dressing, then poured a liberal dollop of it onto his salad and spread it around. He took a forkful, then paused, hand in mid-air. She was still looking at him.
Her eyes were glowing. Shining.
Slowly, he lowered his fork.
He was glowing too.
Sharing food is an intimacy. Eating together in a restaurant is a sign of one level of trust, a public level of mutual acceptance. Hamburgers shared at a drive-in are even more intimate; the food is being shared in a car — part of the personal territory of one of the participants. Even more intimate than that is the cooking and serving of a meal in one’s own home — it’s a sharing of the inner self, and you can’t get any more intimate than that.
They were in his apartment. His territory. His personal environment.
She had come into it willingly. He had allowed her — no, wanted her to enter.
He had provided the food; she had prepared it.
A sharing. An intimacy.
In the unspoken language that human beings use to communicate with each other in the absence of words, she had just said, “I love you, David.”
And now he looked back at her and said, “I love you too, Annie.” Only, he used words.
He reached across and took her hand. “I can answer your question now, Annie. I don’t need HARLIE. I just — Annie, darling, dear sweet baby — I love you. I — I’m just realizing it now — I — I—” He stopped; he had to swallow, but he couldn’t. It poured out in a rush. “Don’t you see? I’ve been wondering too if you cared for me in the same way or what — I — I haven’t been sure what love is, so I haven’t — Dammit, I still don’t know what it is, but—”
The glow was golden now. It filled the apartment. The walls reflected it back at them, warm and shining. She was beautiful in it. “Oh, love — lover—”
“I feel like I’m bursting — there aren’t any words for this, are there?”
She couldn’t answer. She couldn’t speak either.
How they finished dinner, he was never able to say. And yet, at the same time, it was a meal he would never forget.
They were in bed and he was poised over her. And still their eyes were locked. And shining and glowing. The bed was full of gasps. And sighs. And giggles.
There was such an overflowing inside of him, such a surge of tension released. All this time, all this time, he had been wanting, wanting, it had been building, gathering like water impatient behind a dam. Somewhere in his past he had known this joy, somewhere in the dim recesses of his mind that he refused to accept. But it was there and it was part of him — the sheer animal delight in the joyous experience of sex and love — all tumbled together and laughing in the sheets.
They paused to rest, to breathe, to share a kiss, to giggle together, to shift slightly, to kiss again. He bent down suddenly and kissed her eyes, first one, then the other.
She looked at him as if seeing him for the first time, and her arms were tight around him. And tighter, her hands were grasping. “Oh, David—”
He held her and he held her and he held her and still he couldn’t hold her enough. He was exploding in joy; he could neither contain nor control it. Her little soft gasps were sobs, and he knew why she was crying. He had to wipe at his eyes too.
“Oh—” she said, and kissed him. “Oh, David — I — I—” She kissed him again. “Have you ever seen anyone crying with happiness?”
He wanted to laugh, but he was crying at the same time, sobbing with joy and melting down into her. He was a chip of flesh tossed on a splashing sea of laughter and wet eyes and love. A pink sea, with foamy waves and giggling billows. Red nipple-topped pink seas. “Oh, Annie, Annie, I can’t let go of you, I can’t—”