In the morning, she was afraid to open her eyes—the presence beside her undeniable. For several minutes she lay there paralyzed, a plank of wood over a bottomless pit. But then she looked and saw that she was still in her clothing. The same went for Nathan. Surely nothing had happened. Still, it was embarrassing to see him lying on his side, as if he’d fallen asleep looking at her. He slumbered on, his breathing slow and easy, unlike Honey’s.
She slipped from the bed and soft-stepped into the bathroom, where another surprise awaited her. In the mirror her face was unforgivably bloomy, flooded with color. The whites of her eyes were clear, as if they too had nothing to repent. Her black turtleneck, though, was despicably wrinkled and covered with lint, white specks that made her think of insects. She closed the bathroom door and removed the sweater, after which she donned the terrycloth robe hanging near the tub. The thing was pink and fluffy, with scalloped cuffs. Honey hoped it was sufficiently old-ladyish to frighten the young man, or at least knock some sense into him.
Or perhaps it was she who needed to be knocked.
Since there was no possibility of risking a shower, she only washed her face and brushed her teeth, did a bit of damage control on her hair. She applied no makeup. Her plan was to go back into the bedroom and wake the painter. She’d make up an excuse, some emergency that required her to leave the house immediately. The last thing she wanted was a fuss or some dreadful postmortem. The night was over, and they’d be wise to leave it behind them.
But when she returned to the bedroom, she paused. Dawn was creeping in, a terrible elixir of light whose tiny streams touched not only the painter’s brow but the bedside table beside him. The paradox was troubling—the boy sleeping peacefully, while only inches away, in a drawer, lay a loaded gun.
Honey stood there, staring—and as the seconds passed, it was less at the drawer, and more at the boy. The man. The clever light had found his wrinkles, especially those around his eyes and mouth. They were not unlovely; the blade of time had not yet cut too deeply. Besides, it was different for men, whose wrinkles were often judged as war paint, while a woman’s were judged as scars.
Honey dared to move a little closer, since the painter seemed nowhere near to waking. From his mouth a sound like tiny waves crashing upon a shore. She could see now that his eyes were moving under the lids, a shuttle weaving dreams. She took in the pretty lashes, long and dark. And the lips, like something carved from stone, with a subtle upturn at the corners that was almost feline.
Beauty was often said to be relative, or subjective—but really, it wasn’t. There was clearly a hierarchy, and Honey placed Nathan somewhere near the top, a place she’d once lived. His adorable hair was mussed, sticking up on one side like a horn, and as the sun forced more reality into the room she could see a touch of gray just above his left ear. Honey felt grateful for that—less like a monster.
She knew she had to wake the painter and ask him to leave, but she stole another moment. Because when would she have this again? Another soul breathing in her room. A warm body in her bed.
What was terrible to admit was that she was attracted to this man—that even at her age, birds of desire still nested in her belly. Ridiculous, to have this kind of hunger, at eighty-two. Did other women her age feel this way? None of them ever spoke of it. Perhaps they’d learned to hide such feelings. Honey’s mother, other female relatives too—all of them at a certain point had ceased to be sexual. By their sixties, the clothes went drab, the body shop was closed. Often they padded on the calories—a way, it seemed, to protect themselves, to keep the men away. At the same time, the men in her family—her father, her uncle Vinch—had stayed slim and dapper, continued, even in their later years, to have steady goomahs, not to mention the occasional prostitute in Atlantic City.
It was a disheartening dilemma, possibly a disgusting one. Honey escaped it by forcing her mind back to Corrado. Back to Michael. Deciding what to do about the two of them was where she needed to put her energies, not in reveries about sexual politics. Though, of course, the two subjects were related.
She touched the painter’s shoulder and gently shook it. He seemed unwilling to rise from his dream. She shook him again, harder, and this time he rolled onto his back and opened his eyes.
“Ilaria,” he said, blinking, startled—a look of cosmic wonder, as if he’d just been born.