She notices things in bits and pieces; the clock radio, which reads 1:37; the poster stating, "Don't Tell Me What Kind Of Day To Have;" the way the wrapper from the condom misses the wastebasket by over a foot when Sammy throws it, and the way he leaves it there on the carpet. He puts her on the bed, nibbles her ear, and moves downward over nearly every part of her that's soft, almost to her knees and then back up a ways and Rowena gasps and then tries to say something but she doesn't know what, and she twists around and grabs at his hair and twists some more and her legs desperately need to be in some position that doesn't exist and when Sammy stops she can hardly move, but he travels up her body and kisses her throat and she reaches her arms up to his back and she gasps again and sighs as he enters her.
He is gentle; he is sweet; she had known this, but she knows it all over again now. Their rhythm changes; they match each other again and again. When he speaks to her he uses words like "wonderful" and "sweet." When he stops for a moment she touches him and he looks for an instant as if he might cry. He rolls over and pulls her on top of him and she laughs at the difficulty she has sitting, gives him a mock apology.
"Sorry, Sweetheart?" he says. "I hope not." He says "Sweetheart" as if aware, very fully aware he has never called her that before. Rowena begins to move, long strokes. When her eyes are open she looks into his face. He watches her with such intensity, his hands moving over her. She leans forward, lets her hair brush over his chest, back and forth until he pulls her down and kisses her and . . .
It is when he lets her go and begins to thrust back that she can no longer be silent, hold back the voice she can never believe is hers, the strange pitches that sound to her like a wounded animal, or like somebody trying to be silly. He doesn't seem to mind--she can't keep her eyes open long--but really . . . really . . . And the noises continue, whatever they do; Sammy behind her; Rowena in his lap; once more on top . . . and . . .
And the voice goes really out of control, and she can't stay still, and he is doing things to her, she's not sure just what, doesn't try to figure it out; doing something just a bit unusual between her legs, doing it and not doing it and doing it again, and she pitches around and is blind, blind and tense, there is a tempest of some sort, all inside her, everywhere, and out of the confusion she is aware of herself standing, seeming to stand, at the top of a chasm in which rages wild a familiar whirling void, roaring silence; and she is at the edge, the very edge, and she stands and it is there and she falls
and flung about, in her body and not in it. Sammy's face, briefly, his arm somewhere, that voice, but distant; his voice near but too soft to understand, only the half not in her body could understand words anyway; and aware, somehow somewhere amidst all this and all somewhere deep inside her and low something like a second heart begins to
beat
beat
beat
beat
Sammy lay beside her; they were resting. She looked sometimes at him and sometimes around the room, what she could see of it without turning her head. As near as she could tell, his eyes never left her. She wondered whether this was supposed to be embarrassing, and whether she was embarrassed.
"You," Sammy said, and stroked her hair. "Do you even know what you do to me?"
She was embarrassed. She looked at the bit of blanket between them; it was a warm night and the blanket did not quite reach her breasts.
"I hope you're not going to tell me," Sammy said, "that you're ugly and boring and all that."
"No," said Rowena slowly. "No; it's just--it's just that . . ."
"What?"
She started picking at the blanket's edge, not looking at him at all. "It's just I--I don't think I make the right kind of noises."
For just a moment--one of those moments that seems to at least one of the people involved to last a great deal longer than it really does--for just a moment there was silence. And then Sammy started to laugh. He laughed and laughed, and Rowena, finally looking at him, recognized that laughter; it was the laughter of a man whose wife or girlfriend has just done something he considers endearingly silly in a very female way. He laughed with that sort of bemused fondness until, finally bringing himself under control, he motioned to her.
"Come here," he said. Rowena wriggled closer. She could see that he loved her.
"Now," said Sammy, trying very hard to look stern, or at least not to start laughing again, "there is nothing the matter with your noises. Okay?"
"Okay," said Rowena.
And she let him kiss her.
S.D. Youngren - Rowena 2 - Rowena Gets A Boyfriend.txt Page 6
