Making Love

It’s somewhere in there, about day five. Like always, they’re in bed. She’s reaching across him to knock the ash off her cigarette, and he sees the pale range of scars on the inside of her arm. He’s never noticed it before, and his first instinct is that it’s new, some rash she picked up from the reef. It takes a moment for the odd translucence, and the shapes, like mock-veins, to sink in fully. Suicide, he thinks, with a lightning flash of excitement. He has the smug sense of finding her out: this explains her. The immediacy makes him catch her wrist, rough.

“What’s this?”

She twists her arm free, offended. “What?”

“The – it’s scars, right?”

“Oh.” She looks at her own arm, concentrating, as if called upon to explain some passage in a book. “Yes, old scars.”

“Well, Jesus. But, were you trying to kill yourself?”

“Oh, no.” She gives him a surprised, affronted look, her nostrils pinched. “No, it’s a sort of bullet wound.”

He catches his breath with an adrenal rush: bullet wounds. Before he speaks he has to think how to sound caring.

“God. How did you get shot? Who shot you?”

“A robbery,” she says, and that’s all she says. She looks at Eddie with the thing she’s not saying in her eyes, then suddenly smiles – insolent. She turns her arm over, putting the scars away.

His heart speeds with the craving to force it out of her, he is actually breathing hard. In the back of his head, he calculates the nagging required, the bullying, threats. There is the sexual twinge when he visualizes pinning her down and –

She says, in a flat, commanding voice like a hypnotist’s, “Don’t press this.”

Then he ducks to kiss her belly, wanting to call back the easy warmth. He doesn’t know how this fright happened, he doesn’t know how his delight has been so poisoned.

She strokes his head, crooning, “Oh, no, you don’t want to hear, he didn’t want to hear, Jack Moffat Junior didn’t want to know anything about her. No, he didn’t want to hear, no no no.” When he looks up, she’s smiling. She says, “I’m joking.”

He thinks, clearly and very distinctly from the enveloping love miasma, You have insect feelings. He stops and investigates her cool eyes. Then his thoughts absolutely get loose and he goes crazy, she can read his mind and when he’s sleeping she will tie him up and shoot him just shoot him, it’s a joke to her, but when she tries the magic horn will blow and the Benelia Lords will ride to his rescue, halloing on their dapper steeds and then the Insect Queen will sprout her real wings and buzz atrociously, but Eddie gets a grip. Her eyes are simply brown. She has crossed her arms, hiding the scarred patches: vulnerable. He takes a very very deep breath and croons, in a deep handsome voice he feels rising from some omniscient Jack self, prior and great:

“I really want to know. I care about you. Actually, I think I love you.” Tears come to his eyes and he feels triumph. It’s true.

And, as he’d known it must, her insect nature vanishes. She looks hurt, takes a harsh breath, laughs nervously. “No,” she says, “People don’t say those things to me, you know.”

He presses it, thrilled: “I love you. Don’t laugh at me.”

Her manner alters again and she kisses him on the lips. They shut their eyes into a shared long dark pang. When they separate, she takes his hand and vows, with a child’s naive seriousness, trying hard to mean it: “Okay, Jack – I’ll love you, too.”