I woke in Ralph’s arms. Up above, he was huffing in my hair, it was damp and warm. When he saw me wake, he held still, did his stillness thing, was like a big oak holding still to let the children climb.
“Good morning,” he said, “Chrysalis Moffat.”
“Oh, yes. This is really wonderful.”
I shifted to touch his chest, finding his heartbeat. It was unequivocal and bass: he definitely was alive. Of course this was not a real concern. Aloud and more materially, I worried:
“Is sex a sin? I mean, to your sort of Buddhist?”
Ralph said, “Yes, we’re going to hell.”
“Okay, then: if you don’t want to tell me.” I peered up at him. To my gratified disquiet, his expression was doting. His pulse quickened under my palm.
He said, “You can see right through me, can’t you?”
“Yes,” I lied. “It’s very handy.”
Finally he took the first shower: I went down to make us coffee, putting on Ralph’s white shirt. It was already 8:15:
The Real World
at 9, I had the new accountant, Snake Johnson, coming to explain the tax-free religious status forms.
Nonetheless I scampered on the stairs, euphoric. I imagined leaping free of the steps to land, dead. Shot down by a duck hunter, at my life’s dizzy apex! Oh, I didn’t care what I looked like or anything! If Snake could tell and despised me, and called me “Ma’am,” sarcastically (he was from Oklahoma, and said “Shoot!” and “Freaking –”: I had reason to suppose Jesus Christ might be his personal savior)
I didn’t care! I didn’t care, today I didn’t care!
I did the little jink outside to come back in the kitchen, round the lurid purple ornamental cabbage which was my size, if I were balled up qua cabbage, and usually the vegetable intimidated me, but not today – today, I dared and was invincible; plunged in the door
walking smack into a chair. My leg sang with a bone feeling.
Eddie was sitting in the other chair at the table, adding Kahlua to a bowl of Cream of Wheat. A stitch poked coquettishly over his fat lip, looking like the leg of a beetle he was taking his time in eating.
“You look like shit,” he said. “Is Michaelson gone?”