ONE AFTERNOON VISITING THE source of the Marne, or perhaps it’s at Azay-le-Rideau, nothing is certain, they stroll in the mild sunlight and talk of the ways to love, the sweet variety.
“What are they?” she wants to know.
Dean begins casually, arranging as he does a bouquet of alternatives to conceal the one he really desires. He has said it a hundred times to himself, rehearsing, but still his heart skips. She listens impassively. They walk slowly, looking at the ground. They seem, from afar, like schoolmates discussing, perhaps, an exam.
“It must hurt,” she says.
“No,” he says. Then, very naturally, “if it does, we stop.
“We can try it,” he adds.
There is no reply, but she seems to agree. Yes. Sometime. He feels a moment of dizziness, as if he has run from a theft. He begins to explain it further, to fashion a derivation, to make it rare, common, whatever seems right. She understands only a little of what he is saying. Dean is talking deliriously. Finally he recognizes it and forces himself to stop. They have come to the car. He opens the door for her and then walks around to the driver’s side. He gets in himself, becomes busy with the keys. Why, she asks, has he waited so long to tell her about this. He cannot think of what to answer.
“I don’t know,” he says. “All in good time.”
“Comment?”
She’s very matter of fact. He shakes his head—nothing. She looks at him, and he feels nervous. She has thrown him into despair.
Then, in that great car that exists for me in dreams, like the Flying Dutchman, like Roland’s horn, that ghosts along the empty roads of France, its headlights faded, its elegance a little shabby; in that blue Delage with doors that open backwards, knees touching, deep in the seats they drive towards home. The villages are fading, the rivers turning dark. She undoes his clothing and brings forth his prick, erect, pale as a heron in the dusk, both of them looking ahead at the road like any couple. Her fingers form a ring which she gently slips onto it and then causes, cool, to descend. Her slim fingers. She turns to see what she is doing. Dean sits like a chauffeur. He is barely breathing.
“I like your profil,” she says. “How do you say that?”
“Profile.” His voice seems lost.
“I like your profile. No, I love your profile. Like is nothing.”
She is in a good mood. She is very playful. As they enter her building she becomes the secretary. They are going to dictate some letters. Oh, yes? She lives alone, she admits, turning on the stairs. Is that so, the boss says. Oui. In the room they undress independently, like Russians sharing a train compartment. Then they turn face to face.
“Ah,” she murmurs.
“What?”
“It’s a big machine à écrire.”
She is so wet by the time he has the pillows under her gleaming stomach that he goes right into her in one long, delicious move. They begin slowly. When he is close to coming he pulls his prick out and lets it cool. Then he starts again, guiding it with one hand, feeding it in like line. She begins to roll her hips, to cry out. It’s like ministering to a lunatic. Finally he takes it out again. As he waits, tranquil, deliberate, his eye keeps falling on lubricants—her face cream, bottles in the armoire. They distract him. Their presence seems frightening, like evidence. They begin once more and this time do not stop until she cries out and he feels himself come in long, trembling runs, the head of his prick touching bone, it seems. They lie exhausted, side by side, as if just having beached a great boat.
“It was the best ever,” she says finally. “The best.”
He is staring upwards in the dark.
“Phillip?”
“Yes,” he says.
“What a machine, eh?” she says. “Was it always so good?”
“I don’t think so.”
She touches him. He is still quite large.
“I think it’s bigger,” she says.
“A little, perhaps.”
“We must type more letters,” she says.
The night is not cold. It is quiet, piercingly clear. Across the dark roofs, crowded close, the spires of town rise, illuminated, steeped in terrestrial light.