Author: zdunno03

for the night before Valentine’s Day an excerpt from a work in progress: with all my love for David & Maureen, lest they think I forgot about them

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Later, at home, Joe receives a late night visitor.
“You weren’t expecting me, I take it,” Rebecca says as they stand facing each other in his open doorway.
“Uh, well, no,” he replies.
“And why not?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I guess I just didn’t think about it.”
“But aren’t you glad I’m here?”
“Yes,” he says. “Of course.”
“Then shouldn’t you move aside so I can enter?”
“Right,” he says and moves to the side.
Rebecca moves inside as if she is thinking of buying. Then she turns to face him. “So, are you going to give me a big smile, a big hug, and a kiss to take my breath away?”
Joe thinks for a second and says, “Well I could do two out of three, I suppose.”
“Which two?”
And he pulls her inside his arms, covers her mouth with his, tongue to tongue, and kisses her longer than she’s ever been kissed before. When they finally part, all she can say is “Wow.”
Then he leads her back to the bedroom where he manages to put smiles on both their faces that last beyond the morning.

Ted rises early, has a cup of coffee and a buttered roll, showers, shaves, brushes his teeth and combs his mane of golden hair, then fills his travel mug with more coffee, and heads out for school. And as he surveys the girls sitting in his first period class, he wonders just how many will grow up to be like Alice, and that sort of allows him to get through the day with a smile on his face and hope in his heart.

Joe knows he’s in trouble when he has a shot of whiskey before starting out to teach his first class. And though he manages to get through it undetected, meeting Rebecca for lunch is another story.
“Do I smell alcohol on your breath?” she asks, sniffing the air around his mouth. Then she kisses him rather passionately, tongue to tongue, and after releasing him adds, “Yes, whiskey kisses all right.”
“Ah, I felt the need to fortify,” he offers in way of explanation.
She can’t help but smile even though she doesn’t exactly approve. But having read all his books, she does not really expect any less.

Ted loosens his tie as soon as he walks through the door leading out to the parking lot and breathes fresh air. It’s not that he feels trapped in his job, it’s just that he’d rather be doing something else: making music in some bar with people out in front dancing. This life, though guaranteeing him a comfortable retirement, is just something to live in order to make the other possible. For he can play when he wants, where he wants, without having the pressure to subsist entirely on his earnings from making music. Instead he makes the music he wants to make on his own terms, and that is what he figures life has always been about. And this tie, like this second life, is a small price to pay to do that.

Joe settles into the office they have provided for him, their new writer-in-residence, and puts his feet up on the desk, leans back in the swivel hair, closes his eyes, and tries to nap. There are papers from his one undergraduate creative writing class lying in a stack off to the side of the computer they have furnished him with, and he knows he must attend to them eventually. But having quickly scanned them, he doubts there will be any suprises awaiting him there. Maybe in the graduate seminar he is scheduled to conduct tomorrow night there might lurk someone with talent. But what can he expect from this small university in Upstate New York? He had his chance at more prestigious universities but for one reason or another, though mostly for the one reason of his drinking, he never lasted more than a few years at any of them. This is, as his agent pointedly told him, probably the last stop. And the only reason he accepted was for the chance to live in the same town as his oldest, closest friend. What irony, he thinks. To end it where he probably should have begun it. Ain’t life a kick in the head?

Sue is, Ted thinks, slightly crazy, only because she is so obsessive in her emotions, so extreme, as to not be quite balanced. It should scare him, or at least give him caution, but Ted has for so long flirted with destruction that he only views her as just another leg on a journey that cannot end in any other way but badly. So he ignores the wildness in her eyes, rolls her over, and mounts her doggy style which is the position she seems to prefer. And as she twists the sheets in her hands, moans, and lets out those little whoops he knows signals yet another climax, he feels utterly disengaged with it all, as if someone else is pumping what’s left of their manhood into her, not him. He is not in the same room, but thinking of the expression in Karen’s eyes earlier that day.
And later, after she has showered, dressed, called a taxi, and gone home, Ted stares at the drink in his hand and wonders just what he is doing. It can only be another step in what can only be the wrong direction of his life and yet where else, at his age and in his condition, should he be going? It’s only crazy, desperate women living some fantasy in their minds in his bed or else a step toward even more dangerous territory: love with someone young enough to be the daughter he never had.

Joe sits in the dark, Roberta Flack’s The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face on repeat mode on the CD player, a glass of whiskey held loosely in his hand, and a faraway look in his eyes.

Ted sits in his boxer shorts in his favorite chair with his Martin held like a lover in his hands as he works a melody out on the strings. The words fight him, straggling in mid thought in his throat, but the progression of the chords is there and for now that is enough. He stops to take a sip of his trusty Jack Daniels and then plays it again. This process is what he has always lived for and though his son is his proudest accomplishment, this comes in a very close second. And as his fingers slide along the strings, his eyes close and he sees the images. Now he just needs the words.

Joe is dreaming; his first ex-wife Ruth is going to walk the dog wearing only her bikini panties and a t-shirt that barely covers her ass. He says, “Shouldn’t you put on something else?” and she smiles and says, “I’m just walking the dog,” and goes down the stairs and is out the door leaving him in a mild panic as he tries to find a pair of shoes to wear so he can accompany her, thinking of all the guys out there who will be oogling her and not sure the dog is up to protecting her but the phone keeps ringing and people are asking about private tutoring which it seems she does and while he is trying to get the phone numbers so she can return the calls, the connections keep getting lost, and those shoes just won’t slip on his feet, and by the time he finally gets a pair on, and is halfway down the stairs, the door opens, the dog comes running in, and Ruth is on the stoop talking to someone totally oblivious to the stares of the dozen or so men in the street and Joe coaxes her back inside, gets her upstairs, and takes her in his arms and suddenly is kissing her, his tongue down her throat, and his pillow in his mouth as he wakes.
Jesus, he thinks. What was that all about?

Ted ponders the email from his son who is living with his girlfriend in Key West working as a bartender in a rock and roll bar. “Dad,” he writes, “why don’t you retire here. It’s wide open for a guy like you and there are chickens and cats everywhere. You’d love it.”
Ted wonders why his son thinks he’d love chickens and cats roaming freely everywhere. It’s an image that perplexes him long into the day.

Later, while sitting on the couch in Joe’s living room nursing his Jack Daniels and trying to reconcile pictures in his head with names he cannot seem to forget, he asks, “Do you remember the name of the woman I was with at the time you visited me in Utica? I can’t seem to recall it.”
“Now why should I remember her name or any of their names for that matter? I mean, I maybe remember the names of the ones I met, but there were others I did not meet who I shouldn’t be held responsible for remembering. Why don’t you keep a journal, or a scrapbook, or something where you write down their names, the dates you were involved in whatever way you were involved with them, the color of their hair, eyes, bra size, whatever else you think appropriate? I mean, wouldn’t that be much more practical than expecting me, with my suspect memory, to recall?”
“Well you’re the writer,” Ted says, “and, as I remember it, you were always borrowing things from people’s lives for your books. Maybe you borrowed her name.”
“Ah, well that’s possible, but trying to remember which name in which book is the real problem here,” and Joe sighs.
“Well if you can’t remember what names you used in your books, how can you expect anyone else to?”
“I don’t,” Joe says. “Sometimes, though, someone surprises me. Like this teacher Rebecca at the college. She knows the books maybe better than me.”
“That must please you,” Ted says. “I know I like it when someone knows my songs, can even sing along ’cause they know all the words.”
“That happen often?”
“Often enough,” Ted says.
“Karen know them?”
“Yeah,” Ted grins. “Every single one.”
“Perfect,” Joe says. “A match made in heaven. The only one you really need.”
“I wish that were so,” Ted says and sighs. “But I seem to need more than one. It’s just in my genes.”
“And your jeans, too, no doubt.”
“Yes,” Ted goes. “In those, too.” He studies his old friend for a long moment, both sipping from their drinks, though Joe’s mind is off somewhere to some past association while Ted keeps his grounded firmly in the present. “That’s one thing I could never understand about you, Cisco,” he says, finally. “Your ability to go long periods without a woman in your life.”
“Ah, well…” and Joe trails off, not knowing exactly how to respond to that observation.
“I just never understood why you’d do that. Don’t you miss it?”
“Of course I miss it,” Joe says. “It’s just that I look for more than that in a relationship. Otherwise I get bored.”
“You get bored of sex?”
“Not of sex,” Joe says. “I get bored of a relationship that is just sex.”
“That’s where we’re different,” Ted says. “I look at each relationship as unique unto themselves. Some satisfy me intellectually, some emtionally, some are just for laughs, and others are just for sex. But I always have to be getting my share of that somewhere. Otherwise I’m just not happy and I go looking for it wherever I can find it, with whomever can supply it.” He shrugs. “It’s just basic biology to me.”
And therein, Joe thinks, lies a basic difference between them.

Ted feels a slight tinge of guilt when he does not answer Karen’s call but instead goes to see Alice. If it weren’t for that ass, he thinks, he could perhaps be a bit more faithful to the one woman who is faithful to him but he finds that line of thinking will ultimately confuse him more than make things clear. After all, he reasons, a man can’t change his basic character just to satisfy someone else’s expectations of him. No, he concludes, one can only be true to oneself. That is the main thing. And following his little head is perfectly okay as long as his big head is in agreement with it. So when Alice opens the door to her apartment wearing the flimsiest of nightgowns, he knows there is no room for guilt in what remains of the evening for him.
And both heads make themselves at home in Alice’s bed after what is a prolonged workout.
“Would you like a drink?” she asks as she sits up rather abruptly in bed.
“I thought you’d never ask,” Ted says, grinning.
She gets up and leaves the room, leaving him sighing as he watches her ass disappear from view but she is back pretty quickly with a Jack Daniels and water mixed just the way he likes it and he thinks there are more attributes here than previously guessed.
“This is perfect,” he says after taking that first sip.
“I’m a bartender, remember,” Alice says. “And good bartenders always get to know their regular customers’ drinks.”
“And I’m a regular now, am I?”
“At least here in my private bar.”
And Ted finds that pleases him more than he had anticipated and begins to wonder if maybe this is turning into more than a physical pasttime with a marvelous ass. Could he be feeling something more? At his age that could be dangerous, especially when the object of his possible affection is young enough to be his daughter. But he does know this is different than it is with Sue something and quite possibly be bordering on what he feels for Karen. And life starts getting even more complicated for him than he had planned, or, to be more accurate, than he hadn’t planned, and therein lies the problem to be sorted out, perhaps, when he is sober.

It was the drinking, really, that caused the loss of the jobs, the missed classes, the angry outbursts, the occasional brawling in townie bars, the mumbled insults to administrators at faculty luncheons, the smell of whiskey that permeated from his pores during seminars he would fall asleep at. The drinking. Always the drinking. And he wants to tell this to Rebecca but can’t think of a way to work it into a conversation that would seem natural to anyone but him. And as he sips his whiskey contemplating his problem, Rebecca watches him from across the room.
“You know you drink too much,” Rebecca says.
“Funny,” he says, “but I was thinking the same thing.”
“And?” she asks, waiting what seems an appropriate time for a reply. But he just stares at her, not quite sure how to proceed. “And?” she says again, this time stretching the word out to two syllables and widening her eyes in anticipation of an answer.
“And I don’t know what to say,” he says, almost helplessly. “I thought I wanted to talk to you about this but I don’t know what to add.”
“You are speechless when it comes to discussing your drinking?”
“I am speechless trying to explain it to you.”
“Is it to me or to yourself?” she asks and here Joe just stops doing whatever he is doing, which isn’t much besides trying to drink in peace, and stares at her.
“You have the uncanny knack of saying things that are more perceptive of me than anyone else I’ve ever known, even though I hardly know you.”
“Does that worry you, big boy?” she asks, a slight smirk on her face. “You think you can handle it?”
“I don’t know,” Joe says, finding it difficult to be anything but honest with her. “But I think I’m getting ready to try.”
And Rebecca laughs then, a laugh from deep inside her, full of mystery, of sex, of courage, of love. And Joe thinks he’s never heard anything quite like it. And ready or not, he knows deep in his heart, that he wants to hear it again and again in every corner of his life.

An old favorite of mine: The Beloved by Paul Eluard

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She is standing on my eyelids
And her hair is inside mine,
She is the shape of my hand,
She is the color of my eyes,
She is surrounded by my shadows
Like a rock by the sky.

Her eyes always opened
She never lets me sleep
Her dreams in broad daylight
Make sunlight evaporate,
Make me laugh, cry and laugh,
Speak without a thing to say.

translated by Michael Benedikt

Bird-Catcher’s Song by Jacques Prevert

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The bird that flies so sweetly
The bird red and warm as blood
The bird so tender the bird mocking
The bird that suddenly is afraid
The bird that suddenly hurts itself
The bird that would like to flee
The bird alone and enraged
The bird that would like to live
The bird that would like to sing
The bird that would like to cry
The bird red and warm as blood
The bird that flies so sweetly
It’s your heart pretty child
Your heart that beats for the wings so sadly
Against your breast so hard and white

translated by Mark Strand and Jean Ballard

Saltimbanques: for Louis Dumur by Guillaume Apollinaire

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Across the field the traveling clowns
Go past beside the gardens
Before the doors of mist-enshrouded inns
Through churchless towns

Some children run out ahead of them
While others fall back dreaming
Each fruit-tree gladly resigns
Its burden when from far off they make their signs

The weights they bear are round or square
With tambourines and hoops gilt silver
Wise beasts the bear the monkey
Beg small coins along the way

translated by Michael Benedikt

Flamenco Cabaret by Federico Garcia Lorca

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Lamps of crystal
and green mirrors.

On the darkened stage,
Parrala maintains
a conversation
with Death.
She calls Death,
but Death never comes,
and she calls out again.
The people are
inhaling her sobs.
And in the green mirrors,
her long, silk train
sways back and forth.

translated by Carlos Bauer

excerpt two from my novel World of Shadows: Chapter Six

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SIX

The Greek woke to an empty house. Irina was not there, nor was there a note from her explaining where she had gone. Her absence wasn’t unusual but the lack of a note was. Though this caused him minor distraction, he managed to consider it a momentary lapse in their normal routines and made himself a cup of coffee. While he was stirring the grounds, he thought that Irina was much better at this than he was. Even though this coffee was part of his culture, she, for a Russian, was more skilled in its preparation. As a matter of fact, she was better at so many things that were Turkish in origin than he was: her cooking, her brewing of cay and coffee, her baklava, her mezes, everything she touched was made as if she were a Turk, not a Russian. He often wondered how he was so fortunate to have her in his life and then remembered what brought them together and quickly put it aside. She was his now, regardless of the past, and he only hoped she would stay his as long as there was still breath in his body.
He drank his coffee while trying to decide what to do next. If Irina were here, she would turn his cup upside down and read his fortune in the grinds. Of course, neither of them would believe in it and The Greek suspected she didn’t read his fortune so much as offer her advice, but it was their way of sometimes exploring options. And he smiled remembering it was her gift of reading fortunes back then that precipitated their first real conversation which lead to all that followed, so they both had a special fondness for fortune telling.
It didn’t take a fortune teller, though, to tell him someone was lying. The Chinese were either coming in from Georgia with the Russians or from the East with the Kurds. To find out which he would now have to go talk with the Turkish underworld. Hopefully some old associate there could point him in the right direction.
So he finished his coffee, emptied the grinds in the trash, rinsed his cup in the sink, put on his jacket and shoes, and left without waiting for Irina’s return.

Irina had learned many things during her years with The Greek and one was never to lose connections to people and places in the past because you could never know when someone or something might be of value to you in the future. So Irina stayed in contact with some of the Natashas still working in Turkey and even some of the people who brought them here back in St. Petersburg. And it was to visit some of the working girls that caused her to leave early that day in order to catch them coming back from a long night of work.
“It’s a long time since we’ve seen you, sister,” said the tall blonde in the spiked heels and miniskirt named Valerie. “You coming back to work?”
“I don’t have the clothes for it anymore,” Irina said and smiled. “Unless you want to lend me that dress.”
“Turn around and let me see if you still have the shape.” Irina did a little twirl for her and Valerie nodded approvingly. “It looks like it will still fit.”
Irina laughed. “Are you ready for the competition?”
“Ahhh,” and Valerie sighed dramatically, “I see a loss of revenue in my future.”
“Don’t worry,” Irina said. “I’m getting a little too old and lazy to compete with you.”
Both women laughed then, hooked arms, and walked off to a nearby café. “You paying, sister?” Valerie asked. “Time is money, as the Americans say, you know.”
“Of course I’m paying. I wouldn’t want Erdal to think I was dipping into his profits.”
“Oh Erdal doesn’t know everything I do,” Valerie said. “Or at least he’s smart enough to pretend not to notice.”
“He treats you well still?”
“As well as can be expected. After all, I’m an investment, and he knows a good investment when he sees one.”
“You’re lucky,” Irina said. “Not every girl working these streets can say the same thing.”
Valerie looked at her then and rubbed her arm. “You’re not thinking of the past, are you, sister? There’s no profit in that.”
“No,” Irina shook her head. “I am past the past.”
“And The Greek?” Valerie asked. “You are still with him?”
“I have no reason to leave.”
“No reason to leave is not a reason to stay.”
“It is reason enough for me.”
Valerie looked at her carefully and asked, “Do you love him, sister?”
Irina didn’t answer right away but stared off somewhere, beyond the moment, to somewhere between the past and the present where no future existed. Then she looked at Valerie and smiled. “I don’t know how to answer that. It isn’t love the way you mean and yet it is more than love. It is so complicated and yet it is so simple. I am with him because I cannot think of anywhere I’d rather be. The last time I felt like this I was a child and my parents were alive and the world was a simple place and I didn’t have to think about anything because everything I could imagine was there in my hands. Do you understand?” she asked and looked at her closely. “It is like that with him.”
Valerie nodded, looked off somewhere herself, and then sighed. “I envy you, sister.” They both sat in silence for a moment, then Valerie opened her purse and took out a cigarette and offered Irina one. Irina took one and Valerie lit her cigarette first, then her own. They both inhaled deeply before Valerie spoke again. “There is talk on the street about your Greek.”
“There is?” Irina asked, but her voice did not seem concerned. ‘And what kind of talk is that?”
“He is asking questions and some people do not like those questions.”
“Anyone I know?”
“You know them all even if you have never seen them. The people never change, just their faces and their names. But the people are always the same.”
“I see.”
“I am only telling you this because you helped me once with my daughter and I will never forget that. But we have been told on the street to mind our own business.” She looked deeply into Irina’s eyes and put her hand on her forearm. “You understand, don’t you, sister?”
“Yes,” Irina nodded, her thoughts turning inward. “I understand all too well.”

The Greek sat at a café in Taksim listening to Baris, an old business associate, explain why it would be worth his while to go back to smuggling again. “I know you aren’t interested in drugs but there’s a lot of money to be made in auto parts. We bring them in pieces, reassemble them here, and sell the cars. Very high profit margin.”
“I’ve retired from that line of work,” The Greek said. “I’m enjoying my old age.”
“We’re only as old as we think,” Baris said and tapped his head with a finger. “In here, I’m 35.” Then he tapped his chest. “In here, I’m 25.”
“That makes you 60,” The Greek said and smiled.
“Still a little younger than my passport says.”
They both laughed and drank some more cay. Baris signaled to the waiter. “Bring us some mezes and some raki,” he said. Then to The Greek, “You ready for some real drinking or do you want to stay with cay?”
The Greek nodded. “But it won’t change my mind about going into business.”
“Fuck business,” Baris said. “I just want to drink with you like in the old days.”
And they nibbled on the mezes, cracked open pistachio nuts, and drank raki as the afternoon drifted by.
“You know,” The Greek said, “I have come to see you about some business but not business I want to be in.”
“What other kind of business is there?” Baris said. “If it’s business you don’t want to be in than it isn’t worth talking about. What’s the profit in that?”
“I’m helping a friend,” The Greek said.
“I hope it’s a close friend.”
“It is as close as you and me,” The Greek said.
“Ah, well,” and Baris shrugged, “in that case there is no need of profit. At least not the monetary kind.”
“But it is about business you are familiar with,” The Greek said. “Business, I believe, you might still dabble in yourself.”
“I dabble in everything,” Baris said and smiled. “It’s good business sense to diversify.”
“It’s the business of flesh peddling.”
Baris shook his head. “I still have a few fingers in most things but never that. It is just not something I wanted to be personally involved in. I know some who are, though.”
“As you talk to those you know, do you hear anything about Asian flesh?” The Greek asked. “Especially Chinese.”
Baris shook his head. “The only Asians I deal with are mostly Thai and it’s dealing with drugs, not women. The women I hear about are strictly natashas.”
“No Chinese?”
“No,” Baris said. “Though if there were a market for that, it would probably be in Arab countries. If you’re looking for a connection there, try the Kurds.”
“I did,” The Greek said, “and they point fingers at the Russians who also point fingers at them.” The Greek sighed. “No one seems to know anything about Chinese trade.”
“Hmmm,” Baris took another sip of his raki and thought for a minute. “Maybe someone from one of the families is going into business for themselves in town,” he said finally. “But I don’t think that could happen without anyone else knowing. Especially in women. Those markets are pretty well defined.”
“So someone is lying?” The Greek asked.
“That would be my guess. Maybe they want to corner the market but it must be strictly for transport somewhere else.” Baris finished his raki and poured another both for himself and The Greek. “I still think it’s for the Arabs,” he said. “And if so, I would look east to the Kurds. They control that area. But be careful. You know you can’t trust them.” He shook his head while adding water to both their glasses. “Never could.”
“East,” The Greek said and stared at the cloudy glass of raki in front of him. “You think I should go east.”
“I would,” Baris said, “if you’re serious about this. You still know people there?”
The Greek nodded. “But I do not think they would be so happy to see me.”
“You want me to come with you?” Baris asked. “I don’t like dealing with human traffickers even here in Istanbul, but there,” and he whistled through his teeth, “you would be crazy to go alone.”
The Greek nodded. “I would appreciate the company.”
Baris stroked his cheek for a second, then said, “Give me a day or two to settle some things and then we’ll go.”
“Thanks,” The Greek said.
“Don’t mention it,” Baris said. “You saved my ass a few times so it’s the least I can do.”
And the two old friends touched glasses and drank.

“East?” Irina asked. “You are going east?”
“Yes,” The Greek said. “Tomorrow, or the next day.”
“For how long?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, “but hopefully not for long.”
“You are going alone?”
“No. Baris is going with me.”
“Baris?” and she looked at him suspiciously. “He is still alive?”
“Yes,” he said. “Why? Have you heard different?”
“No,” and she watched him as he slowly sat in the chair as if he were unsure of whether or not there was a chair beneath him. “I just haven’t heard his name in a long time.”
“Well,” and The Greek shrugged, “I’m retired.”
“You’re also a bit drunk,” she said. “Aren’t you?”
“Can’t a man drink if he wants when he is retired?” he asked as if scoring a point in a debate and waiting a bit aggressively for a retort.
“Yes,” she said, smiling slightly. “A man can do whatever he likes when he is retired. But can’t a woman make an observation without causing the man who is retired to get upset?”
“I am not upset,” he said, and then realizing he sounded upset, became apologetic. “It is the raki talking. You know it always talks like this when I have too much.”
“Yes,” she said and then came over to the chair and sat on the arm stroking his hair. “I know you and raki too well.”
He looked at her tenderly, his eyes a bit misty from the alcohol but also from the love he felt swelling in his heart. “You know me too well.”
“Yes, and that is why I am worried that you are going east,” and she continued combing her fingers through his hair. “You have enemies in the East.”
“I have enemies many places,” he said and sighed. “The value of a man can be judged by the number of friends he has and the number of enemies as well.”
“And you have many of both.”
“I have not always lived a good life.” He sighed again. “I am lucky to have made it this far in one piece.”
“Very lucky,” she said and smiled warmly at him. Her fingers brushed his cheek. “And not only are you drunk,” she said, “but you did not shave today.”
“I forgot,” he said. “You were not here and so I forgot.”
“I must be here for you to remember to shave?”
“Yes,” he nodded. “If you are not here, I don’t care how I look. But if you are here, I try to look as young as I can.”
“And why is that?” she teased.
“To keep you here.”
“Are you afraid I will leave if you do not look young?”
“I am always afraid,” he said, suddenly very serious, “that you will leave.”
“You are a foolish man sometimes,” she said, then slipped off the arm of the chair into his lap. “Do you know that? So very, very foolish sometimes.”
“Yes,” and he closed his eyes as he leaned his head against her chest. “That is another reason why I am afraid. I can’t help but wonder why a lovely woman like yourself would stay with a foolish, unshaven old man.”
“You’re not so old,” she said, and brushed her lips against his forehead. “Now if you will shave every day, I will only have to put up with your foolishness.”
“Can you do that?” he asked, his eyes still closed, his breath stuck somewhere in his chest.
“Haven’t I always?” she said. And her tongue licked his ear, her mouth found his, her fingers in his hair, her chest tight against him, and the chair, being a recliner, slid back as she hiked up her skirt and mounted him and once again all doubts, all worries, all thoughts of the outside world disappeared as the two of them made love as if for the first time, as if there were no years separating them, as the day ended and a long night began.