THEY WERE MAKING LOVE. BUT THEY HADN’T QUITE STARTED YET. She was being a little cool. Not cold or rigid, or playing rigid like the other one, the snoot, but just cool, almost absent-minded, as if her mind was temporarily at a distance. She was sitting on the edge of the bed with her long legs spread out in a V, like one of the back-up singers for Billy Joel, and he was kissing her shoulders. But he relaxed. She had great shoulders, feminine, sloping, but not too diminutive.
“You would just as soon not make love right now?” he asked her, not with his mouth against her ear, she had great ears too, but standing. The little girl was swinging in his pants. He stretched his back, shaking his head, and ran one hand lazily across his chest. He didn’t want to get upset about nothing.
“No, of course I do, stupid,” she said. With affection to him. “I’m just not clicking for a minute.”
He told her he was sorry, that he shouldn’t have put it in the negative like that. Then he said, “Is it okay if I go to the kitchen for something? I just feel right now like something wet and sweet.”
She had nothing on except blue jeans. She was sitting on the edge of his bed with all this gorgeous black hair in corn braids and these long soft sloping shoulders catching the afternoon light from his bedroom window. She said, “Sure that’s okay.”
“Can I get you something?” The glossy hardwood floor in his bedroom looked as if it had been created, sometime way back in 1910 or so, what people referred to as 1st World War years, just for the purpose, or could you perhaps say the honour, of framing her long slender feet. She was barefoot, and she had dark hunter-green polish on her nails. The same colour as the Jag that he liked.
He went out to the kitchen in his briefs. That’s all he had on, white, those ribbed cotton briefs that HOM make. The apartment was cluttered. He was living by himself for the moment. The kitchen was full of light, the geraniums out on the back deck looked like gobs of bright perfect China-red paint. He got a tangerine from the kitchen table. There was always a small row or sometimes a pile on the table, off to one side of the middle. Of tangerines, maybe one big fat lemon, 2 or 3 limes perhaps. So he picked up one of the tangerines, juicy and sweet, it was a big one. That gorgeous faintly-weathered, fine brown lines deep orange just a bit, a splash of pale green. He liked the shape of the tangerines, they were round and sort of elliptical at the same time. And they were juicy and sweet.
When he went back to the bedroom she was sitting almost exactly as she had been when he left. Her hands were clasped and relaxed and resting between her knees. She was looking at the floor. She glanced up as he walked into the room and smiled at him, a lovely slow lazy smile. The bulge in his cotton briefs had diminished a bit, so he looked respectable. He had the tangerine in one hand, half-peeled, 2 or 3 sections sweet in his mouth.
“Sure you don’t want some?” He proffered the half-eaten tangerine.
“No. I want your tongue in my mouth. I’m just not quite ready yet.”
She put her hand palm flat against his chest, it felt very warm and smooth to her, in such a way that her elbow was brushing slightly against the bulge in his cotton briefs, the kind that HOM make. The bulge increased. It felt good, he was in love with her, not always sure of exactly what she thought, but it didn’t seem to matter.
“What do you believe?” she said. She took a small piece of the tangerine peel, playing with it with her thumb and 2 fingers.
“About what? About women?” He thought maybe she was talking about love, or the destinies of 2 people, or something like that. It was natural for him to say that. He was always thinking about women. His friend Jack understood that about Tom. He said to their mutual friend Henry one night sitting around at Pauper’s, “Tom’s a terrific guy. I like Tom. But he’s just the way some guys are about alcohol or being busy all the time. He’s no good without a woman.”
“No, silly,” she said. “We’re not the only thing that’s happening in our lives. I mean,” she said, drawing herself up, pulling one foot up on the bed and resting her head against her knee, “what do you believe about things in general?” She studied him. She said, “You know, you read a lot more than I do. I know a lot about music. I read magazines because I’m interested in clothes. I don’t read books very much. But I have beliefs,” she said.
“Yeah.” He rested one arm against her shoulder. He could feel the soft heat, subtler than the quick yellow Toronto summer heat outside, pulsing against his arm. “Like right and wrong. Basic stuff.”
“Umhuh,” she said slowly, “okay, sort of.” She ran her hand up and down his thigh. Her hand was the colour of pale chocolate. It stood out against his hand the way an image you might see on a computer colour-modelling screen might stand out against some other slightly more industrial colour.
“You have terrific legs,” she said, “strong.”
“Not half as great as yours. Nobody would pay very much attention to me if we were at the beach,” he laughed, he thought it was vaguely funny. “I have to put things between myself and the world, like books.”
“O yeah,” she said, drawing it out with her mouth, she was in love with him, no two ways about that, he was so bright and so dumb at the same time, how could you help loving him, she had said to her friend Susan at a place called Woodlands, a restaurant which is just down the street from Pauper’s, but on the north side. “You just pick it up and do it. I guess that’s how simple it is with us,” she had said. She lay back on the bed very long and perfect and amused and wrapped her legs around him at the ankles, with her hands under her head, and studied him.
“I don’t mean ideas,” she said.
“Oh.” He was very fond of ideas, and language, and books. He couldn’t play a note of music. Well, not much, just a bit of harmonica.
“I love you,” she said. She wasn’t sure if she had ever said this before. She flexed her strong ankles against the outside of his hip, brought the big toe of one delicate foot over and tickled his stomach, just above the wide elasticized band where it said HOM. “So, it’s important,” she said. “What do you really believe.”
“Like that guy the old man we saw outside of The Bay on Yonge Street,” she said, “grizzled.” She shook her head. The corn braids moved like dark butterflies. “The guy was on a little wooden platform, he didn’t have any legs, and he was selling pencils.” She had seen things like that before, and much worse things, but obviously she was disturbed by it. “What do you believe about things like that?” she said.
“Not much,” he said. The bulge in his cotton briefs, the ones that said HOM, had diminished slightly. Legless, on a wooden platform, with leather glove pushers, it was a bad thought.
“I believe in art,” he said. That was all he could say. “I believe in you.” There was a pause and he stroked her foot. “You always want something simple to put like a label on my shirt.” He became aware of the fact that he didn’t have a shirt. On. He tossed another piece of the tangerine peel to her and she caught it deftly with her free hand. “Tangerines,” he said, “you can put down, that I really believe in tangerines, like it’s an example, an essence, it’s challenging.”
She lifted one dark eyebrow. “That’s pretty general.”
“They are challenging,” he said. He held out the last perfect pale orange tangerine section with its fine white threads almost like a suspension for exact storage.
“No, I’m not hungry yet. My mouth’s fine, we can have supper afterwards.”
He tossed the handful of tangerine peel casually on the bed, put his free hand back on her foot, and looked at the last faintly glistening tangerine section in the afternoon light.
“No, it is challenging,” he said seriously. “Most people just don’t appreciate it. Gord Robertson over at Coach House Press understands it a bit. Matisse, you like Matisse, sure, Matisse felt the challenge but he didn’t respond to it. Maybe he would have had to turn to photography or something, but he didn’t respond to it.”
There was that moment in the afternoon air, they seemed to have talked about it. It didn’t seem to make any difference if he ate the last section of tangerine or not. His mouth felt rich, full of tart and sweetness at the same time. He swallowed. She had her long feet, one above the other, like dark birds climbing a tree in the early morning, some fancy northern residential backyard north of the Annex, resting comfortably on his stomach.
“Sure you don’t want this?” he said, shifting his weight and looking around for a clean piece of paper or something on the bedside table to set it down. After all, you don’t want to pick up a fresh tangerine section after making love and put it in your mouth with a little dust on it, or a speck of ash. They were both smokers, she just a few cigarettes, he quite a bit more.
“No,” she said, “let’s make love.” She snapped the large dome fastener at the top of her Klein fly.
“I was just a little sleepy,” she said, “I was just waking up after our nap. Don’t get ideas,” she said. “I always want you in me.”