Loonglow

by Helen Eisenbach

  “Get off me,” she said.

  Numbed by her tone, he sat on the floor against the couch, waiting for an explanation. His body ached for release, but he couldn’t move until she told him why she was acting so strangely.

  She let the movie continue playing and rose, standing in front of him and slowly taking off her clothes, holding his eyes. Despite himself, his own body prickled in response, as if hypnotized by her mood. She let her pants drop to the floor, stepping out of them and kicking them aside, hooking her fingers into silken underpants, starting to slide them down off her. Her eyes seemed to bore into him as she changed her mind, pulling them back up and standing upright.

  Now it was his turn, and he began to slip the shirt over his head, but her eyes cautioned him not to move. She came over to him and removed his shoes and socks; her hands caressing his feet seemed deliciously powerful, as if she could command his body to respond merely by touching him anywhere. She tugged his jeans off with no help from him, pulling his briefs off in the same motion. He was so hard he was nearly past the point of pleasure. She left his shirt on and inched in toward him, brushing her breasts against the front of his shirt, teasing him with them, then nipping at him through the shirt. He was losing his will to resist. She remained silent. Then she sat on him, bringing him tantalizingly near her core despite the strictures of the thin cloth. Only now would she kiss him, moving back each time he tried to respond as if to warn him against daring to enter her mouth. The friction everywhere was agonizing; he was nearly out of his head.

  Abruptly she grew still. She seemed very subdued, locked in by the confines of his body, and he opened his eyes, puzzled. “Louey?” he whispered against her neck, and she sighed heavily. “What’s the matter?”

  “Not one thing,” she said against his chest; then she withdrew, walking to the bedroom. He joined her, taking off his shirt along the way. She threw the covers aside and lay down, and he sat beside her, stroking her cheek. She glanced at him, then helped him pull the panties off her.

  “So,” she began. He lay down beside her, running his hand over her breasts and stomach, propping himself on one elbow to regard her. “Guess who got her period?”

  “Someone in this room?”

  “Which means we can do it,” she said.

  “What?” He laid his hand flat on her belly. Her skin was burning. “It’s not as if it’ll be a first for either of us.”

  “Clay.”

  “Tell me,” he said, exasperated.

  “How about it?” She rose to nibble an earlobe, imprinting a trail of heat down his neck. “Wanna by that special thing we’ve heard so much about?”

  He realized he was staring. “Are you sure you want to take the chance?”

  “What, now you don’t want to?”

  “Are you kidding?” He lowered his voice. “I just don’t want you to feel …”

  “Enough stalling, baby, time to reach nirvana.” She lay back, then sat up again. “Or should I get on top?”

  “Uh—either way.” He couldn’t believe they were clinically discussing this. “It’s easier if you open your legs, though.”

  “Picky, picky, picky.” She looked down at herself, laughing. “Well, fire away.”

  “Jesus, Louey, you’re about as romantic as—lunch meat.”

  “Sorry.” She smiled and lay across him, humming a romantic melody indulgently and then kissing him as she had the very first time: soft, quick kisses that reassured him and made him want more. He trailed his tongue along her neck and slid his fingers down until she moaned into his ear. Years of training made this feel foolhardy, but he was damned if he was going to be the one to be cautious.

  “Hmm,” she said as they began: odd that it should feel like white noise, painful without really hurting. What a lady, she thought, hearing herself grunt. How did people do this?

  “Be sure,” he said between gasps, “and tell me,” through gritted teeth, “if I’m hurting you.” She relaxed her body against his, stroking his back. At first she could only feel him in her but nothing on the rest of her body; then he shifted, broadening his strokes, and her mind went blank with desire.

  “Oh,” they breathed together as he ground the front of her and she moved against him, hotter and hotter. Finally they fell, crying out, one after the other. He stayed inside her, his heart pounding against hers.

  “God.” He spoke at last, rolling off her and resting a dead arm on her stomach. He could still feel the touch of her palms flat on his back.

  After a while, she turned to look at him. “So. That’s it?” When he turned to her, she broke down, grinning. “All that talk about something so—whimsical.”

  “Are you all right?”

  She pointed to his still-heaving stomach. “Better than you, sugar.”

  “Give me a minute.” He went to embrace her, but before he’d managed to succeed, she’d draped herself across him. “This time I get to be on top,” she said. He opened his mouth to protest that he wasn’t quite ready for next time, but before he could speak he discovered it was no longer true.

  After the fifth month, Louey realized she was doing with Clay what she had never done with Mia: pretending not to be involved with him. The prospect of telling her friends she was sleeping with a man—a white man—held so little appeal she couldn’t conceive of doing it. “Uh, by the way, girls, guess what I’ve been up to …” Opportunities to slip the news innocuously into conversation were hardly plentiful.

  At the office, her assistant handed her messages from Clay with a blank expression on her face; her co-workers seemed far too casual whenever she brought up his name. Suddenly she could understand why bisexuals had such a hard time of it; it was as if she were lying to everyone. The straight people she met with Clay simply assumed she was straight, while her gay friends didn’t even consider the possibility that she could feel anything but what they did. (Not that she could even consider herself bisexual; she had hardly started leering at pubescent boys on the subway.) What she felt with Clay was some sort of fluke. Jesus, baby, you’re disgraceful, she thought, at a loss.

  The first mistake Clay made was to suggest celebrating their six-month anniversary. Shock colored Louey’s face. “You mean it’s been half a year already?”

  Oh, I see, he thought; he was some brief aberration in her life, that was how she justified continuing with him.

  Their next mistake was going dancing. She seemed uneasy in his arms, looking at the other couples as if incredulous to find herself among so many women out with men. Worse, dancing always reduced him to a raw mass of desire, and she was clearly feeling far from amorous. His worst mistake was stopping her from saying what was bothering her, lest she tell him six months was his deadline; instead, he ordered more and more champagne, staving off despair. He wouldn’t let her go. He wouldn’t. So what if he wasn’t goddamned Mia, so what if she went back to women, as long as she still wanted him.

  “Clay—” she started, as the music changed.

  “I know,” he said. “Let’s leave, then.”

  She opened her mouth, then decided better of it and turned from the dance floor.

  After they’d walked several blocks outside, she began again. “Clay, I need to talk to you.”

  “Let me guess.” A sinking feeling filled him. “You think we should spend—”

  “Louey?” They both looked into the face of a tall woman with a gleaming full head of red hair. “Is that really you?”

  “Teddy?!” Louey hugged the other woman. “I haven’t seen you in a million years!”

  “Don’t I know it.” The other woman looked her up and down, delighted. “You look wonderful. Where the hell have you been? Everyone’s been wondering if you’ve suddenly become too good for the rest of us.”

  “Too tasteful, certainly,” Louey said. She glanced over at Clay and then back at the woman. “This is my friend Clayton Lee. Clay, meet Theodora Wilkin, the sickest woman in New York.”

  “And here I thought you held that tit
le.” Clay shook the woman’s hand.

  “Ah, a man who understands.” Teddy smiled at him, returning his handshake warmly. She didn’t seem at all put off by his presence. (Hell, he realized, she probably thought he was gay.) It was remarkable that they’d never accidentally run into any of her friends before: only a matter of time, he thought, before Mia showed her ugly face again. “Listen,” Teddy went on. “You’ve got to come with me right now. I’m just on my way to a party at Tony’s, and if I tell him I let you get away he’ll skin me alive.”

  “Oh, I don’t think …” Louey turned to Clay, trying to conceal her eagerness. “Clay and I were on our way to—”

  “We can’t disappoint Tony,” Clay said, “now, can we?” The gratitude on her face pained him. “Unless he wouldn’t approve of my crashing the party.”

  “Are you kidding?” Teddy came between them, taking an arm from each and leading them down the street. “Darling, he’ll love you.” Clay caught Louey’s eye, and she couldn’t help laughing. Teddy joined in, innocently.

  The party was everything he feared: beautiful women dancing with each other and pretty men looking to dance with him. So far Louey had resisted dancing with anyone, but he couldn’t help noticing the squeals of delight that greeted her with each newly discovered long-lost friend. As each of them embraced her, he felt a pang. Why hadn’t they done more together with her friends? She must have feared he wouldn’t fit in, or would shame her. He watched her greet the host, a slim black man—and the dancer who had told him Mia’s name. Clay felt a twinge: no doubt about it, Mia had to show. Yet Louey clearly wasn’t worried. Why was he?

  They were really nice here, he thought with surprise some hours later. They accepted him at once and teased him fondly, as if he were family, home at last. He was at home, somehow. So why did he feel so hopeless?

  It was the sight of Clay dancing with Tony’s ex-boyfriend that did it for Louey. She’d been amazed to see him so at ease with her friends; the average straight man would have been possessive, threatened. Mark took his hand and tried to dip him, and he winked at her, giving Mark his hand back apologetically. He really was wonderful, she thought. She approached him just as the dance was ending and asked to cut in. (Clay, ever the Southern gentleman, was thanking Mark.)

  “Disgusting,” Tony murmured at the sight of Louey nibbling on Clay’s neck; then he gave Clay a wink. “I only wish I could get her to do that to me,” he added.

  “You’d run shrieking from the room if I ever tried,” said Louey.

  “You’ll never know now, will you?” Tony flounced off in mock offense.

  Clay closed his eyes, feeling dreamily contented, as if time were suspended. After the next song, a woman asked each of them to dance. In a little while they left, reassuring their host they’d do their best to fight this perverted business that had gotten hold of them.

  This time the silence as they walked to Clay’s apartment was comforting instead of tense. When Louey smiled at him, he felt so happy he wanted to crow. Somehow the evening had changed so completely he scarcely believed it. How could a party with her gay friends have made her happier to be with him?

  As they neared his place she pulled him to her, backing him against a wall and kissing him, all hot and liquid. He put his hands all over her.

  “Wait, wait, we’re almost home,” she said, laughing.

  “What’s wrong with here and now?” She’d started it.

  “Nothing,” she said, “but it could be so much more tawdry inside.”

  When they got home he pulled her to him, and she slid over him deliberately, making him groan. Lowering her breasts against his, she fastened her mouth for a fresh assault, stripping, and he ripped his shirt off, grinding her into him and inhaling her neck, drenching her. He slid down to her bare breasts and she twisted to escape, ticklish, but he forced her into his tongue, his hands firm on her bare back. Her breasts pointed at him as she arched into his mouth. He eased his knee between her legs and she fumbled for him, until he had to take his mouth away from her and strip off the rest of his clothing.

  It was only later that Clay wondered if the presence of all those women had been what had excited Louey, and nothing to do with him at all. It was not a thought he liked having.

  “Come here often?”

  Louey was walking with two packagers and an agent when Mia appeared from out of nowhere and clapped her on the back, smiling down at her.

  It was worse than on the subway. This time Mia seemed to want to talk, as if nothing could be as pleasant as a chat with an old pal. Louey froze as two of her friends stopped debating where to go for dinner and examined Mia’s beauty; the third stared up Columbus cynically and said rude things to passersby. For the first time Louey wished that Mia were indifferent, elsewhere, gone, but Mia stood and blocked her way, still smiling. At last her grin changed to bewilderment, then shock, when she saw Louey wasn’t going to meet her eyes. After what seemed like hours, she dropped her hand from Louey’s shoulder and disappeared.

  Instantly Louey’s friends reinstigated forward motion, putting Columbus Avenue once more under assault. Not mentioning the incident, the three discussed the usefulness of leather, pointing out examples from the streets before them. (No one complained when Louey’s contribution proved minimal.)

  The years with Mia had been a rich feast. Louey’s life hereafter was to be a sip of tea, she saw now, a biscuit eaten hastily over the sink: at best a subtle consommé that would never leave her filled, though it did make her feel noble.

  To celebrate the signing of their book contract, the group went (after prolonged drinking) to a dance club. “So, Louey,” one packager inquired as they braved a medley of Diana Ross. “Who was that hunk of woman?”

  “What woman?” Louey answered. Diana called to her.

  “We would all be most displeased to learn that you’ve been holding out,” her friend went on. “We all thought you never went in for that sort of thing. So messy, love, so—cheap. It’s going to be a shock when everyone finds out you’ve got a heart.”

  “Not anymore,” said Louey. Diana grew fainter, and the beginning rumblings of Madonna threatened to erupt into volcanic squeaks. She closed her eyes. “That was my past.”

  “You gave that up?”

  “No.” Louey lost the will to rumba. “It gave me up.” The faces around her looked away out of respect for a tragedy even they couldn’t comprehend.

  Surely in time the lure and memory of Mia would have to fade into oblivion, Louey told herself. For now, all she could do was wait.

  “So when are you guys going to move in together full-time?”

  Louey brought the salad bowl from the kitchen and handed a glass of wine to her oldest brother, Paul. Her other brother, Danny, was remaining tactfully silent on the whole topic, she noted, and Clay, too, seemed to be keeping a low profile.

  “I’m serious,” Paul went on. “It’s time you made a commitment, Louey. You’ve been avoiding adulthood long enough.”

  “Have we met?” (I have so much work to do, thought Louey, I don’t have time for this.) She had two novels to edit before the end of the month, exactly two weeks. One week per novel, she groaned: perfect.

  “Meal looks great.” Danny changed the subject. “Are you sure you cooked this?”

  “Clay cooked most of it,” Louey said. “I made dessert, though.”

  A rare family reunion over the coming three-day holiday had brought both of Louey’s brothers concurrently through New York, and after an intense campaign to persuade her, Louey halfheartedly agreed to join them in D.C. “I can’t,” she’d moaned, but Clay told her it would do her good to get away from work—and him. Something in her resisted leaving New York, as if outside the city she would be diluted, forced to live a fraudulent existence.

  Louey drank her wine and listened to the lively talk, marveling at the contrast Clay made with her brothers. It should comfort her to have them so clearly approving of him, Clay so obviously genuine in his enjoyment of the
m, yet she found herself watching, listening as if from a remove. If she were to tell Danny that she was dreaming of Mia again, even felt the stray pang for Mia to have it in her to woo Louey back properly, he would be aghast. Yet the scene in front of her was strangely surreal, like someone else’s family. Her brothers welcoming a lover of hers so readily into the family—a rich blond Gentile who didn’t even work for a living? It couldn’t be.

  She was piling dishes in the sink when Clay came up behind her. “Overdose of family?” he whispered, wrapping his arms around her. As he nibbled on an earlobe, she wriggled from him.

  “I’m just tired.” She wanted to tell him what was bothering her—if only she could figure out what it was.

  “Louey!” The sight of her mother’s glowing face erased whatever fatigue had accumulated from the journey from New York. It had been nearly a year and a half since Louey had seen her mother, an unusual lapse in what her friends had always considered excessively frequent maternal contact. They embraced; her mother kissed her warmly.

  “How’s work?”

  “Wonderful,” she said, not mentioning that every time the phone rang in her mother’s house, she would probably have to stop herself from answering it, certain it was an author with a vital problem that couldn’t be solved unless she flew back instantly. “I shouldn’t be here now.”

  “Your employer doesn’t believe in the sanctity of Martin Luther King Day?”

  She smiled. “How could I work for one that didn’t?”

  “So what’s this Paul tells me about your having a boyfriend?” Meredith asked when they had spent some time alone in Louey’s old room, going through her closet to throw out old clothes.