The Gospel According to Luke (20 page)

‘Oh, Luke –'

‘But as you know,' he went on, looking away from her unruly curls and talking instead to the wall behind her, ‘I believe that physical intimacy should be reserved for people married before God, and that same belief system dictates that I cannot marry outside of my faith.'

She sighed. ‘I understand.'

‘No, you don't. I haven't finished.' Luke faced her. ‘I believe these things with all my heart, and still I want to be with you. It doesn't make any sense, I know, but there you have it. So nothing is sorted out, this time apart has increased my confusion and multiplied my doubts, but I've come here tonight to ask if you think you can love me anyway. I mean, knowing that I am so conflicted and selfish and wrong-headed and that anytime I could –'

‘Get inside,' she laughed, already sliding her hands under his shirt as she kicked the door closed behind them. ‘You don't want the whole neighbourhood to see your fall from grace.'

Pressed up against Aggie's front door, her tongue in his mouth, her fingertips on his belly and his hands in her hair, Luke could not think of a single reason to not kiss her. Her hands slid lower, and he kissed her harder than ever as she unbuttoned his jeans. When she took hold of his erection he nearly exploded; she released him immediately, moving her hands to his hips and working his jeans down.

‘Stop, I'm going to –'

‘Hang on, sweetie.' She wrenched his jeans and shorts down hard so he was naked from hip to midthigh.

‘Aggie, I can't wait any –'

‘I know.' She grabbed hold of his bare hips and forced him downwards until he was lying flat on the hardwood floor, the top of his head pressed into the door frame, his jeans tight around his thighs, and Aggie astride him.

‘I love you,' she said, lifting her hips, taking hold of his penis and pushing it inside her body. Her eyes were wide and bright; she smiled, red-faced and wildhaired, as he came. When he opened his eyes again she was smiling still and rubbing the outside of his thighs with firm soothing strokes.

‘I didn't . . .'

‘Didn't what, sweetie?'

‘I just didn't expect –' He choked on the words.

‘I thought it better to get it over with quickly. I thought you'd be too nervous if we drew it out too
long.' She leant forward and kissed his forehead, giving his now limp penis the opportunity to slip out of her.

‘Are you going to leave now?'

‘I don't know.

I don't know what to do now.'

She climbed off him, helped him with his shorts and jeans, then sat cross-legged by his side and stroked his face.

‘How about getting off this floor and letting me wash all that dust out of your hair?'

Luke caught his breath, ran his hands through his hair. ‘There's dust in my hair?'

‘A little. Mostly it's an excuse to get you in the shower with me.'

Luke woke up in Aggie's enormous bed. Her pale, freckled arm was flung over his chest, her knee stabbed his thigh and saliva dribbled from her open mouth onto his shoulder. ‘Aggie,' he whispered, tickling the soft skin of her forearm, smiling as she pulled away and rolled over. He sent up a small prayer of thanks.

Last night, under the fluorescent bathroom light, the skin she had revealed to him had been blotchy pink, red and white; then when she was laid out on the lounge room floor, illuminated by a single candle, she was pure gold; later, in her bedroom, with the moonlight streaming through the windows, she had been all shadowy shades of blue and grey; now, in the dawn's light her skin was as translucent as the finest bone china, but speckled with pale brown and gold freckles. It reminded
him of the shell from some exotic bird's egg.

‘Tickles,' she mumbled, swatting at him blindly.

‘Ah, you're finally awake.' Luke pressed himself to her.

‘It's barely six. Go back to sleep.'

‘I can't sleep when the sun is shining, the birds are singing and the most wonderful woman in the world is by my side.'

‘You're a dag, Luke. And I am tired and sore, so shut up and go back to –'

‘You're sore? I hurt you?'

‘No, it's just . . .' She took his arms and pulled them tighter around her middle. ‘You wore me out a bit. All that pent-up desire. You're not exhausted?'

‘I've never felt better.'

‘Typical. It's always the woman who suffers for illicit love.'

‘What about Peter Abelard.'

‘Who?'

‘Peter Abelard, my uncultured, uneducated heathen princess, was a brilliant French monk in the twelfth century. He'd been celibate all his life, but then, in his forties, he fell passionately in love with a young student named Heloise. She fell pregnant and her uncle had Peter castrated and exiled to a monastery. Heloise entered a convent, studied hard and ended up greatly respected throughout France, while her lover was physically, spiritually and socially ruined.'

Aggie was quiet for several seconds and then she
burst out laughing. ‘Okay,' she said, slapping Luke's arm, ‘so women always come off second best except that one time in medieval France.'

‘I suppose you have come off second best. I mean, I'm this inexperienced, clumsy, hopeless lump and you're this sexual superstar.'

‘Spare me.'

‘No, really. I had no idea what I was doing last night. I was a fumbling fool.'

‘I liked being on the receiving end of your fumbling. You're a really, really good fumbler. A natural.'

‘Well, I'm pleased,' Luke said, ‘that you enjoyed my fumblings, because I feel the urge to fumble some more.'

Aggie groaned, and rolled onto her back. ‘You're not going to let me go back to sleep, are you?'

Luke answered by covering her breasts with his hands. He had spent half the night squeezing, kissing, pulling, pinching, sucking and nuzzling them, and here this morning they were brand new again. The sunlight showed him pale blue veins radiating out from her nipples, and three tiny freckles on the underside of the left.

He kissed his way over her ribs, down to her soft pale belly, paying attention to her belly button and then each jutting hip bone. She stroked his hair and face, whispering
oh Luke oh love
. He pressed his face to the thing he could not bring himself to call by any of the names he had heard used, scientific or slang. With Aggie's
quickening breath as encouragement, Luke explored it fully, thinking, as he had about every other bit of her, that it looked so different in daylight. Moving to lie flat on his stomach between her legs he began to make sense of the design in a way he had surely not done in the dark of night. Luke prodded and stroked and licked and sucked until he figured out which actions on which bits caused her to pull his hair the hardest. It took a while – much longer than it had taken her to bring him to ecstasy with her mouth – but eventually she said
that that that don't dare stop doing that exactly that oh oh THAT
and then he felt a million little muscles pulsing around his fingers and her pubic bone slammed into his nose.

He moved up, resting his head on her stomach, while he caught his breath and felt her catch hers. His jaw ached and his tongue was numb. His hand and half his face were soaked with her.

‘Jesus,' she said, after a little while. ‘You sure you haven't done that before?'

‘Barely knew it could be done. I had no idea women were so complicated down there. All those colours and textures and that dear little –'

‘Okay, don't need a description.'

‘It's just so beautiful. And I never guessed. To think you have a part that is perfectly designed so as to allow me to actually enter your body and to bring us both pleasure with all those nerve endings and soft folds of skin and oh –' Luke kissed her stomach all over, while his hands tried again to gain entrance to her body.
She giggled and wriggled, kept her legs clamped shut and eventually succeeded in throwing him off her altogether.

‘You're so sweet and strange,' Aggie said, settling again on to her side and drawing his arms around her waist. ‘I still can't believe you're here. Don't ever stay away for so long again, please?'

‘No. I couldn't. It felt like forever.'

‘Thirty-nine days, and every one of them felt like a week.'

He tightened his arms around her. ‘I love you, Agatha.'

‘I love you too, but if you call me that again I'll murder you.'

‘You don't like Agatha?'

She groaned, pushing back in to him with her hips. ‘I hate it. My mother's revenge on me for being born.'

‘I think it suits you.
Agathos
is Greek. It means good.'

‘How do you know this stuff?'

‘I came across the word when I was working on some scriptural translations. Of course, when I say “came across” I actually mean I looked up your name in every text I own and when I found it I sat in my room and re-read the entry until my vision blurred.' Luke felt tears springing up at the memory. ‘I found you in a Latin text, too. Do you know about Saint Agatha?'

‘There's a saint?'

‘A third-century martyr from Sicily. She spurned the advances of a Roman official who then tortured her, cut off her breasts and killed her.'

‘How gruesome. Was there a Saint Luke?'

‘Of course.'

‘Of course. What did he do?'

‘You heard of the Gospels, Ag?'

‘He wrote them?'

‘One of them. The most beautiful of them, in my opinion. Luke was a doctor and exceptionally compassionate for the time. He wrote of the Good Samaritan, the penitent thief, the healing of the lepers. His Jesus is the sinners' friend, a minister to outcasts and slaves. Luke's is the gospel of the underdog.'

‘Was he married?'

‘No.'

‘But he sounds so nice. Was he gay or something?'

‘Don't be ridiculous. He just happened to agree with Paul that a man should only marry if he is tempted to immorality by staying single.'

‘Who's Paul?'

Luke laughed. ‘Paul is only the most significant figure in Christianity besides Jesus himself.'

‘And it was his fault that poor Luke was celibate? Sounds like he wanted him all to himself, if you ask me.'

Luke closed his eyes. ‘Luke wasn't celibate because of Paul,' he said, pressing himself against her. ‘He just never found the right woman.'

Luke woke to find Aggie gone. He sat and took deep gulping breaths of stale, musty air. The bedroom stank of sex and sweat. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, but it was too high and his feet did not touch the ground. He sat there, legs swinging, doubled over, trying to calm the storm in his chest.

The floor in front of him was bare of the discarded towels and underwear which had littered it yesterday and the pale pink sheet that he had ripped from the bed sometime in the night when it became tangled in his feet.

‘Aggie?' he called, sliding off the bed and looking
around for something to cover himself with. ‘Ag? Where are you?'

She appeared in the doorway, dressed in blue jeans, a yellow shirt and brown boots. Her hair was gathered back behind a headband. ‘Hi, sleepyhead.'

‘You're going out?'

‘Duty calls, I'm afraid.'

‘You can't go to work.'

‘Just for a little while. Mal got back yesterday but he was jetlagged as hell. He promised he'd be in by twelve. Will you be here when I get back?'

Luke nodded.

Aggie came across the room and kissed him, slow and deep. ‘Stay right like this for me. All sleepy and naked and warm. I will be as fast as I possibly can. Okay, baby?'

He nodded again, unable to speak. She kissed him on the forehead and was gone.

Luke climbed back into her bed, pressing his face into her pillow and inhaling deeply. He could not smell her – the sour stench of his own body was everywhere. He got up again and ripped the coversheet from the bed. Stiff patches of dried fluid scraped past his fingers and made him gag.
Oh, Lord, what have I done?
He stripped the pillows of their cases and then climbed on the bed. He drew back the heavy velvet curtains and threw open the windows, the warm, fresh breeze instantly refreshing him.

The laundry was on the ground floor, out back near the kitchen. Aggie had put the dirty things from
the bedroom floor in the basket, so he added them to the machine with the linen and doused the lot with detergent. It was only after he had set the machine to SuperWash and was leaning against it heaving with fear that he realised he was stark naked.

He set off to find his clothes, retracing the route of the previous night's love-making. Underwear and socks were on the bathroom floor, wet; his jeans were in the hallway between the bathroom and living room and his belt and shoes were in the entrance hall. Searching for his shirt kept him occupied for almost half an hour before he remembered that Aggie had worn it while she made toasted cheese sandwiches late last night.