Chapter 5
Jim looked at his ex-wife and wanted her in bed. His real feelings for women had been too coiled up and hidden away, too distorted by Arlene. Now, seeing Maria in her thin uniform, he remembered vividly what her body felt like. He could sense the hot, wet impact of it, and he wanted to fight Arlene's slimy activities. And he knew he couldn't do it alone. He needed Maria's help, but Maria seemed emptied of feeling. Her face was strained. Little ridges at the corners of her eyes drew tautly.
The palms of his hands got hotter and hotter, and sweat collected between them and the counter-top. Everything was hot, and he had to talk to her, but he couldn't.
She had turned away. She was preparing menus, setting up two tables.
He wanted sex.
It crawled through his head like a rain of hot sparks as he visualized how it had once been. She had been lying on a table in the kitchen. He had stood at the end close to the sink.
She liked it that way, and he had been with her for a long time-as if it would never end.
"Maria..."
She kept on brushing off the table, kept her back turned to him, but she answered. "Yeah?"
"Remember the first time?"
"The first time what, Jim?"
The matter-of-factness of her voice emptied him of desire. He had to start thinking about something else. He couldn't stay that way. He had better get out of there, better get back to Arlene and get her out of town while there was still time.
"Nothing."
She did look around then, and she walked up to him. She held her hands at her waist as if she didn't know what to do with them. "I'm sorry, Jim. I do remember. I've always tried to forget, but I never could."
She sketched a quick gesture at him, and he grabbed her hands. She didn't yank them away. He felt the hard band of her ring, the soft moisture of her palms. His own were still sweating.
"Maria... do you still want me that way?"
She opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. She didn't speak, but her breath made a sharp, abrupt sound, something between a groan and a sigh.
"You were the best of all, Maria. Nobody ever beat you."
"And her?"
"We never have sex."
"What do you do then?"
In spite of himself, he couldn't control the strong flood of color into his face. He knew he must be redder than a beet. "I couldn't tell you."
"I see."
She stepped away abruptly, left him sitting there, and it wasn't until she got clear around the counter that he got up himself and forced himself to follow her.
She watched him come. "What do you want?"
He felt a huge pressure scratching inside him, but he had to touch her, feel her, pull her to him.
"I want to kiss you."
Through all the years, never really kissing anybody, never really knowing what it was like anymore, he had somehow kept the memory of Maria's lips. He knew instinctively that if he had been blindfolded and had to kiss a thousand lips, he would have still have found Maria's every time. Their warm, soft roundness and their quick response thrilled through him.
"Maria?"
"Yeah, Jim..."
"Can I come home with you tonight, after you get done?"
"I want you to."
He spun the rest of the day out in foolishness. He sat in a back booth, and watched her work. The mayor and Jerry Williams came back. Polite, neat residents came in. All day long, he shoved Arlene out of his head, and he knew she was in the motel room waiting, just sitting there and waiting, not reading, not smoking, not drinking, just sitting there and waiting...
Once he had seen her in a similar situation. He had come in the back door of their house back in Massachusetts and walked up to the bedroom silently. She had sat there, waiting. Her attitude, her face, were like those of some creature far beyond any human feeling. Her eyes projected strange intensity into empty space, her hands were folded into twisted tentacles. They looked like an octopus waiting to strike.
He had crept out again, and gone around to come in noisily, in his usual fashion, through the front door.
The rest of the afternoon, he did not talk much with Maria, but they exchanged glances which held much significant meaning. She understood what he wanted, and he knew she wanted it, too. He felt, in that soft silent time, with the slow drift of sunlight coming in through the windows, that he could succeed in escaping from Arlene. He had a chance. He had to use it.
At four, Mrs. Karin Karster showed up, and the friendly proprietor of the shop insisted Maria should take off for an extra hour. She could handle it all herself. "Why there's nothing to it, Sue, go on and take your friend out. Get away from this hot box. Have yourself a good time."
The kindly German face smiled at Jim. "She doesn't get out enough. A good girl like her, and what does she do, she just stays home all the time. She should have a big family, lots of kids, a big fine house!"
He almost expected her to add some German phrase, but she didn't go that far.
He stood at the door, waiting for Maria to change into her street clothes. The sinking sun bothered him more than ever. Twilight lurked just offstage over the tall green trees with a significant leer. It seemed to be filled with too much sullen heat, as if there might be a storm or some sudden wind.
She breezed out in a light blue cotton dress. Its simplicity suited her perfectly, and her body filled out the material in a warmly suggestive, seductive fashion. He wanted to feel her flesh moving softly beneath his hand as they walked-He wanted to know that she was there close beside him.
She smiled as she stepped out the door, and then, as they walked along the wide, clean sidewalk toward the bridge he had crossed early that morning, the whole day's warmth hit him. Suddenly he didn't dare touch her hand, and when she smiled up at him and asked if he wanted to go right home, he had to say, "Look, Maria, I'm too nervous. Let's go to some bar for an hour."
At first, she didn't answer. They crossed the gully and the bridge, and then she seemed to understand. "Okay, Jim, I don't like bars much, but we can have a couple of drinks if you like. How about the Black Panther? It's right over there beyond the old Muddy Oaks." She designated the huge white structure looming up on their right.
For some reason he was moved to question her about it. He said, "What happened to it? Why'd they fold?"
"Right after repeal. It was a big place for rich guys out of Chicago. Nobody ever goes in there now. But they tell me that inside they've got a huge inner ballroom called the Circus Room. They gave stag parties."
She didn't say anymore, and he didn't question her further about it. They had more than one drink at the bar, which was very dark and very quiet, and he watched the blue clock in the middle of the bar for an hour. By the time they got out, the day had bowed out of the top of the sky, and there was more than a hint of darkness in the streets of Hollyhock. The lights had not come on yet, but the town itself had slowed to a very slow crawl.
He walked her home through the almost deserted streets and stood looking up at her apartment, over the Hopper Shopper Supermarket. A big red sign came on as he watched, and when it did, he felt her grab his arm and squeeze.
"Ready, Jim?"
"Yeah."
He followed her up the narrow green stairs and stood beside her while she fumbled for her key. He could smell the provocative perfume that came from her hair, but he didn't touch her. He didn't touch her until the screen door slammed behind them. She reached past him to shut the inner door, but he grabbed her and pulled her tight.
Nothing stood between them. They were together, grabbing at each other, and he tasted the swift rise and fall of giant emotion. It moved between them like an eruption of the earth. She shoved her lips into his neck, and his hands held her body. He raised her up to him.
"Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't hurt me, Jim."
Her words opened the raw bleeding wound he had been trying to shove away, and he thought back to the hundreds of times, they had been together.
Tenderness...!
They had been tender. Each second had coated itself with a feeling of meaning far beyond the violence of the sex act. He had exploded deep, hard and rich inside her, and she had taken him, satisfied, lying there with a rich smile on her lips.
In those nights after their marriage, he had often lain awake, watching her face. Tender dreams seemed to sketch themselves across her forehead, seemed to toy sometimes with her eyebrows. Her blonde eyelashes would flutter with some hidden joy. She didn't wake up. He felt her naked body lying close, and he protected her soft flesh with his whole being.
He would lie back on the pillow and look at the soft play of light on the ceiling. He would be at peace with the night, and sometimes, when he felt just right, he would cup his hand softly over the center of her female being. He didn't even wake her up with his movement.
He felt the crisp blonde hairs moving under his fingers, and sometimes he would hear her sigh, and she would wake up just enough to reach down and adjust his hand so his fingertips spread the soft, delicate lips softly carefully. He thought she would wake up any second and roll over and want him, but she stayed that way in deep, tender sleep.
He felt his voice go panting out through the darkness in her room over the supermarket, and he thought all time would explode before they got ready for loving. He opened his eyes, and red neon shapes jumped erratically across her wall. He closed them and felt her lips. She pawed at him, and the roughness of her hands aroused him.
He had to be gentle, but there was no time. She tightened her mouth into a bite, and then he felt it opening wet and round into a tongue kiss. He slammed himself into her. He felt his hands pawing down across her body. He ripped through a row of buttons on her dress, and she didn't say a word.
He dug hastily into the tight opening over her bra. He saw his hands fan out her breasts. The soft white shapes dragged him down, and he sank his hand to them, and he moved his tongue over each nipple.
"Darling!" she panted, "I've missed you."
"Yes."
"Oh, Jim, do it. Do it, hurry up, and don't stop."