کتاب 01-06

6

The night of the hospital fire, Jakob led her through the house, and she yawned over and over, like a child up past her bedtime. She felt lightly sedated, awake but thoughtless, so that she never knew what was going to happen to her next, even when what was going to happen next was entirely predictable. He walked her down to the bedroom, holding her little hand. That was all right. She was tired and the bedroom seemed like the right place to go. Then he peeled her out of her nurse greens while she stood there and let him. She had on pale pink old-lady underwear that came to her belly button. He tugged those down as well. She yawned hugely and put her hand over her mouth and he laughed because he had been leaning in to kiss her. She laughed, too. It was funny, yawning in his face that way.

The night of the hospital fire, he drew her a bath in the deep claw-footed tub that she loved so. She didn’t know when he walked away from her to do it, because it seemed he never left her side, but when he led her in there, the tub was already full. The lights were off, but there were candles. She was happy to see the bath because she smelled like smoke and sweat and the hospital, but mostly smoke, and she had ash on her, and some of that ash was probably dead bodies.

The night of the hospital fire, Jakob laved water over her back with a washcloth. He scrubbed her neck and ears, and then collected her hair on the top of her head and dunked her. She came up laughing. Then he told her to get up, and she stood in the tub while he lathered her in soap. He soaped her breasts and the small of her back and her neck and then he smacked her bum and told her to get back into the tub and she obediently sat.

The night of the hospital fire, Jakob said, “It’s so fucking cheap when people say I love you. It’s a name to stick on a surge of hormones, with a little hint of loyalty thrown in. I’ve never liked saying it. Here’s what I say: We’re together, now and until the end. You have everything I need to be happy. You make me feel right.”

He squeezed out the washcloth and hot water rained down her neck. She shut her eyes, but saw the red light of the candle flame through her eyelids.

He went on, “I don’t know how much time we have left. Could be fifty years. Could be one more week. But I do know that we’re not going to get cheated out of one second of being together. We’re going to share everything and feel everything together. And I am going to let you know, in the way I touch you, and the way I kiss you”—as he said it, he touched her, and kissed her—“that you are the best thing in my life. And I’m a selfish man, and I want every inch of you, and every minute of your life I can have. There’s no my life anymore. And no your life. Just our life, and we’re going to have it our way. I want birthday cake every day and you naked in bed every night. And when it’s time to be done, we’ll have that our way, too. We’ll open that bottle of wine we bought in France and listen to our favorite music and have some laughs and take some happy pills and go to sleep. Die pretty after the party is over, instead of going down screaming like those sad, desperate people who lined up to die in the hospital.”

It was like hearing his wedding vows all over again, just as yearning and sweet and intense. So that was all right.

Except it wasn’t, not entirely. There was something wrong about calling the people who came to the hospital sad and desperate. There was something immoral about mocking them. Renée Gilmonton had not been sad and desperate. Renée Gilmonton had organized story hour for the kids in the ward.

But Jakob had the gift of confession, could talk about how he wanted to touch her and be with her, with all the daring and athletic skill he brought to riding a unicycle or walking on a tightrope. He was small and compact and muscular, and also intellectually muscular, mentally something of an acrobat. Sometimes she felt that those intellectual acrobatics were a bit tiring; at those times she felt less as if they were feeling everything together, more as if she were simply his audience, someone to applaud his latest leap through the burning hoop of existentialism and his backflip onto the trampoline of nonconformity. But then she was opening her legs to him, because his hands knew how to do things she needed to feel. And anyway, all his talk just meant that he wanted her and she made him happy. She had to kiss him again, and she did, twisting in the bathtub and flattening her breasts against the cold porcelain, and holding the back of his head so he couldn’t get away until she had a good long taste of him. Then she broke free and yawned once more and he laughed and that was all right.

The night of the hospital fire, she rose from the water, and he handed her a glass of red wine and then wrapped a hot towel around her. He helped her out of the tub. He walked her into the bedroom, where there were more candles burning. He dried her and guided her to the bed and she climbed across it on all fours, wanting him to pull off his clothes and push himself into her, but he put a hand on the small of her back and made her lie flat. He liked to make her wait; to be honest, she liked to be made to wait, liked him to be in charge. He had strawberry-scented cream and he rubbed it into her. He was naked beside her, his body dusky and fit in the low light, his chest matted with black fur.

And when he rolled her over and got inside her, she made a sobbing sound of pleasure, because it was so sudden, and he was so intent about it. He had hardly started when the condom slipped off. He stopped his motion for a moment, frowning, but she reached down and flung it aside, and then took his ass and pushed him down on her again. Her nurse greens were on the floor, stinking of smoke. She would never wear them again. A hundred square miles of French wine country were on fire and more than two million people had burned to death in Calcutta, and all she wanted was to feel him inside her. She wanted to see his face when he finished. She thought there was a good chance they’d be dead by the end of the year anyway, and he had never been inside her this way before.

On the night of the hospital fire, they made love by candlelight, and, later, a baby began.