Lightning That Lingers (18 page)

Ten

In the week that followed they spent mornings together, and called them undates. Memories collected in her mind like intimate postcards: Philip in the snowy woods kissing her brow under the tapping golden brown leaves that clung to an oak; Philip running through the genteelly fading opulence of a long hallway trailing a child’s pulltoy—Buzzy Bee—with Chaucer chasing excitedly. Philip drawing her back from a daydream by touching the glossy softness of an owl feather slowly under the curve of her bare knee.

A raft of rumpled stationery grew in her waste-basket, each with a few lines on it that read,

Or they read,

Sometimes she could laugh about it. Sometimes she could not. Her mind retreated from the thing he did when they were apart, shunning it like a bad neighbor. She deceived herself that she was tolerant. She had a constant heart-in-the-throat feeling, an elated teetering happiness. At moments, she felt the strong need to share the richness of it, the hidden burning problems with another human being, a wise objective source; but she wasn’t in the habit of making those sorts of confidences. It was difficult enough for her to divulge a single constrained statement to Annette. They were alone in the break room in Friday’s quiet, sipping coffee.

“I spent the weekend with Philip,” Jenny said suddenly, and waited.

Annette set down her mug and studied Jenny with fascination and empathy, and grinned. “You lucky duck. I’ll bet every moment was golden.”

“Most of them were.”

“Well, you know what? He’s a lucky duck, too.”

Jennifer was alone on Friday night, closing up the library, damping down the image of Philip at work. Muted shadows hung like soft shrouds from the stacks. Leaves from the green hanging plants gleamed in the iridescent varnish of the security lights.

She heard a knock at the back door and ran to answer it, wishing that some miracle had happened and it would be Philip. It had. It was. She was in his arms immediately, her warm body pleasantly
cooled by the wintry radiance from his jacket as his arms enfolded her. His mouth was soft, his cheeks windslapped and chilled, innocently rosy. Even on a winter night his hair carried the fragrance of sunshine. She tried to pull back to see him better, but he held her close, almost desperately so.

She sighed against his lips. “I’m sorry, sir, the library’s closed. You’ll have to use the after-hours depository.”

“I could,” he murmured, “but it just wouldn’t be the same.” His face nestled in her hair, moving from side to side, allowing it to polish his face. “This morning was a century away. Will you adopt me? Keep me in a box by your bed?”

“Anything.” As his fingers followed the ridge of her spine down, she moved restlessly.
“Anything
. I thought you had to work tonight?”

He drew back then, his muscles subtly tightening. “There was some kind of weird feedback in the sound system so they had to cancel the first show. I have to go in later.” One arm left her shoulder and he held up a gaily ribboned present. “I brought you something.”

She opened it there in the hall. It contained a child-sized overnight bag with the cheerful lettering “Going To Grandma’s!”

“Pack that when you stay the weekends with me and no one will suspect a thing,” he said. She made a wry face at him and began to laugh, flushing helplessly.

“It’s very elegant.”

“I shoplift only in the best departments.” A gentle finger tapped up her chin for another kiss. “Are you alone?”

“Except for Jinx.”

He slid an arm around her waist and began to walk with her back into the warm cavity of the library. “Yes? Let’s put him back down your blouse and see what we can come up with.” His arm squeezed her waist but the light tease was spoken almost absently. He released her and she watched him wander around the room, his hand straying over the walnut card catalogue, spinning the globe in the children’s section, his movements restive, unaware. Finally, he dropped his jacket onto the floor and lowered his body in an attractive way onto one of the sizable floor cushions in a secluded corner. “568—Dinosaurs. Right?”

She recognized the Dewey decimal number. “Right.” The careless, elegant drape of his body caught in her imagination. “You must have read dinosaur books voraciously as a kid.”

“Voraciously,” he said, his eyes coming alight in a way that sent burning signals through her nerves. “You have a wonderful occupation, passing on the wonderful classic books we read as kids, telling them about Winnie the Pooh—” He patted his lap invitingly.

Some part of her was beginning to sense an inner desperation under the play, and she stood paralyzed, trying to guess, to understand. But thought sank in her mind, as though the buoyance of her love was too ethereal to support fear. The air around her seemed thin and light, her limbs weightless, her heartbeat jumpy and volatile. She saw his lips curve into a smile and he came to her and drew her down beside him.

“I love you,” he said, gazing into the brown eyes that had grown solemn and misty. He stroked
back her bangs, uncovering her lovely brow, wanting suddenly to see her whole face. There wasn’t a way to tell her. The words would be unbearable said aloud—that the sea of faces, the eager mouths that weren’t hers had begun to strip some unarmored layer of his soul. The intangible cord that joined him to her neither numbed nor severed when he stepped on stage.

Needing her, attempting lightness, he let his hand slip up her sweater and watched her eyes widen and warm when he uncovered her breast. “What’s this—what’s your sweater made of?”

She swallowed hard. “Angora.”

“Angora.” He repeated the word as though it were some womanly mystery. “It’s soft. But not as soft as your mouth.” His lips dipped to hers and their pulses quickened together, their breathing beginning to race.

“I miss you when we’re apart.” He touched her upper lip with the tip of his tongue. “I’ve never needed anyone or anything this much. Promise you won’t disappear.…”

“Yes,” she said in a breathless whisper as his fingers laid gently over her nipple. “Philip—this is the library. We shouldn’t—”

The urgency of his kiss exploded her protests. His hand slid past her knee, yearned against her stockings, sending a frazzle of shivers through her, climbing upward on her thigh. She soothed her body closer, still trying to tell him no.

“Why not, Jenny? Would it be bad … shocking?”

She made an attempt to nod, her eyes sparkling with passion, her lips seductively parted and dewed from his kiss.

“Then be bad for me, Jenny. I want you to
remember me here, when you’re being so good and helpful and conscientious. I want you to remember this—and this—and think about me.” Their kiss became wild, delicious, their hands searching each other with tender hunger. “Libraries … are magic places. Make magic happen for me, Jenny.…”

Later she walked into her apartment and thought, If anyone saw me like this, they’d know. She flumped down on her sofa, sinking into the cushions, the happy goofy smile still in place. And sighed contentedly.

“I love you, Philip Brooks,” she said aloud. After a moment she began to sort through her mail with limp, pleasure-weakened fingers, letting unwanted envelopes fall like withered leaves onto the carpet after a cursory glance at the return address.

The last was from her mother and she opened it and read it and the smile faded, forgotten, gone. She touched her fist agitatedly to her forehead, and then to her mouth.

Her mother had tried to phone during the week but never caught her at home. She planned to come to Emerald Lake on Friday night—tonight, oh, God, that was tonight—with a group of friends from work. They were coming to the Cougar Club on Jenny’s recommendation to see the handsomest man in the world take off his clothes. They probably wouldn’t make it until the third show; Jenny shouldn’t wait up. They could spend Saturday and Sunday together and wasn’t it going to be great.…

Jenny sat on the couch, staring into space, and
realized that at last she had met herself at the blind corner of her own contradictions.

Her mother wasn’t here yet.

The Cougar Club was crowded, smoky, and festive, nearing the end of the second show. Jenny sat in the shadow of a pillar, alone with her agony. Bloodless and inanimate, deaf to the ecstatic screams around her that were urging her lover to uncover his stunning body, she watched Philip strip.

He was dancing to a Sister Sledge song, the athletic grace of his body released in a sensuous flood that arrived dead-center inside each beat. His shining, light-rinsed hair moved and swirled with him. She knew intimately the precise relationship that body had with rhythm. She had learned its accuracy in love. She could feel it still, against her own.

He didn’t see her, and that was probably merciful for both of them. Several times he almost seemed to look right at her, but closer study warned her that it was only a well-conceived illusion. He made no direct eye contact while he danced, or while he kissed, or while neat fingers tucked folded dollars into his G-string.

It was, finally, the kisses that were the real exercise in masochism. Visually they made a beautiful, arousing picture, the women in a series coming into Philip’s arms, their clothes bright as butterflies against his golden flesh. She saw what she had missed on her first night here—how stylized these kisses were, how shorn of emotion. He smiled like an actor, the muscles accurately aligned,
the eyes polite, the soul absent. Knowing that helped nothing. This was her lover, her lover’s mouth, and every glamorous ritualistic kiss struck at her until she felt ill, violated, boiling in ugly inner emotion.

I must have been insane to come. Why am I here?

She jumped when firm fingers gripped her arm, and like an angry echo of her thoughts, she heard someone say,

“What are you doing here?”

She glanced up into Darrell’s dark liquid eyes. For once he was without his glasses. Knowing it was childish, not caring, she snapped, “It’s a free country.”

“The last thing he needs is to see you sitting here with that look on your face.”

She wondered indifferently what look was on her face. Stubborn in her trauma, she said, “I’ve paid fifteen dollars to see the show and I’m going to watch it to the end.”

Darrell whirled and left her, returning soon with a handful of bills, cramming them into her purse. “Okay. I’ve refunded your damned fifteen dollars. Go home, Jenny.”

“Sorry. I want to see the man’s body.”

“The man’ll drop his pants for you any time of the day or night and you know it.”

“For me and everyone else in the whole world with fifteen bucks.”

“Keep your voice down, will you? This is a public place and I can evict anyone creating a disturbance.”

“There isn’t any disturbance.”

“No,” he said grimly, “but there will be if he sees you here with your face full of tears.”

She hadn’t realized, and wiped them savagely away as he pulled her through the crowd, past the bold curious stares, out a door behind the bar into a bleak quiet hallway painted a strange pastel color.

“Is this your bed of nails?” he asked, his voice quite gentle. “Go home.”

“I have to talk to Philip.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tonight. Now. I mean, whenever he’s finished.”

“Look, he wouldn’t want you to see him like this. Do yourself and him a favor: go home. If you do, I’ll tell him to call you the minute he gets backstage, all right?”

She detected an extra inflection in his voice. “What do you mean, see him
like this
?”

“He’s been drinking,” Darrell said tightly. “It’s been hard for him to work since last weekend, and you know damn well why.”

She grew colder and colder, her blood receding to her extremities in the same way it had when she was wandering aimlessly, freezing, the process slow and violent.

Acknowledging defeat with an exasperated breath, Darrell opened a door for her and motioned her inside. She saw two chairs, a table, a shower, Philip’s clothes—the ones she’d seen leave his body when they made love in the library—a half empty bottle of Jim Beam beside a glass. On one wall was a poster of the earth, the picture taken from a satellite, a majestic deep-blue planet, cloud-hung and delicate, frighteningly reduced by distance.

A moment or two passed. Then Darrell said,

“Just remember that whatever you say tonight, you’re going to have to live with in the morning.”

He left. Jenny heard his footsteps stop in the hall, and his voice, speaking to someone she couldn’t see.

“Sorry, man,” Darrell said.

“What for?” Philip’s voice reached her, his words absent and distracted, and then he appeared in the doorway, wiping his face with a towel, clad only in zipped but unsnapped jeans, one thin gold chain glittering around his neck, another draped around his ankle. Seeing her made him halt there, the towel poised at his temple where his champagne-colored hair curled damply. His blue eyes seemed to burn like lasers. Beyond that, his high-boned face was stark, expressionless. It altered, beginning to fill with emotion, and he came toward her, tossing away the towel.