The pleasure comes not in waves, but in stabs. The short,
sharp intakes of breath are punctuated by sensations of separation, of a
journey to somewhere else. It’s a patchwork of departure and return, of absence
and presence.
Leigh is lying on her back, naked from the waist down. She’s
braless and wearing a t-shirt that says MIZZOU. She closes her eyes, then slits
them open, then closes them again, more tightly this time. Behind her eyelids
she can see spirals, a laser show of sorts. Her fingers find the head that is
between her legs and they squeeze, first lightly and then with increasing force,
feeling the skull that lies beneath the hair, the fragility of bone.
She thinks of demolition, the kind she saw just yesterday in
downtown. They were taking down a hotel, one that hadn’t hosted a guest in well
over a year. She’d paused on the sidewalk and watched the crane yawn and chew,
the construction workers stand idly by with their cigarettes, not even
acknowledging the destruction. Were you supposed to smoke at a demolition site?
Wasn’t there some risk involved?
By the time she was done watching, the crane was lowered as
if in embarassment. One of the smokers had put out his cigarette and was
watering the debris with a long orange hose. She felt a sick and sorry
fascination, a dull ache at the idea that at one minute something can exist and
the next moment can reduce it to nothing.
Sharp pleasure undercuts her thoughts. She bites her lower
lip, bites it hard. Brooke, she
thinks, lingering over the double o’s.
The head responds by moving faster, the tongue by making its movements even
more precise. Brooke, she thinks
again but for some reason doesn’t say. Instead she presses her fingers against
the head’s face, feeling – stubble?
Evan. It is her husband, Evan, who is going down on her. Her
husband of 13 years, her partner in life. Remember, Leigh? Remember?
The crane stood out against the bright blue winter sky. That
she remembers.
