Lightning That Lingers

by Sharon

  She was quiet for a moment before speaking. "Will state officials change their minds?"

  "I hope so. It's going to be damned hard to dance my routine with arthritis."

  Darrell arrived with a bouquet of daisies which he handed to her. Glancing down at the pillow she was sitting on, he asked, "Have you two been ice skating, or what?"

  They were nearly finished with dinner when Philip, who had been rather dreamily watching her spread wild grape jelly on a piece of cornbread, said, "Darrell helped make the jelly."

  Darrell looked pained. "Do you have to tell the world?" To Jennifer he said, "Wait until summer comes. Every damn weekend he has Jack and me out doing some damn thing like picking rhubarb, or elderberries, or raspberries, or slogging barefoot through some swamp picking cattails for flour. Then fall comes and and he has you out picking apples and canning them into applesauce."

  "If you're ever marooned in the wild, you'll know how to survive." Philip laughed at Darrell's expression. "Maybe I do it for the pure joy of seeing you standing over a hot stove in your aviator sunglasses, wearing an apron over that corny muscle shirt of yours, stirring a pot with a big wooden spoon." He stood. "Can you excuse me for a minute? The bird feeder needs attention."

  Men made Jennifer shy, and she couldn't change overnight. Nor had she forgotten that on one meeting with Darrell he had been naked, and on another, she had been. While they finished eating together, he tried with unexpected kindness to draw her out. She was attempting to respond, ashamed of her own stiff manner, when Chaucer arrived at a glide.

  "If there's anything I hate," Darrell Said glumly, "it's eating while that owl is around, fighting with you over every bite."

  Chaucer landed on the table, bobbed, subjected Darrell to a scornful survey and then went to Darrell's plate. He marched up one side and down the other of Darrell's mashed potatoes, then jumped on his water glass and bent over for a sip.

  Darrell's expression made her try to hold in her laughter, but it came sputtering out. She was carried away by it when Chaucer leaped on the vase to inspect a daisy and then nipped off its head. Darrell's long-suffering grimace did nothing to bank her mirth, which didn't begin to subside until she realized he was staring at her intently.

  "You're real foxy when you laugh," he said.

  She knew her cheeks had begun to color. "Thank you."

  He smoothed over the bird tracks in his potatoes and took a bite. "You really blow Philip away, you know."

  "Philip blows me away, too." Through the window she could see Philip in the snow, his lean outline defined by a backdrop of cranberry bushes, their bright red berries glowing in the weakening light. As she watched, a tiny black-capped chickadee landed on his hand and flew away with a sunflower seed. A glance at Darrell caught a subtle emotion: hero worship, deep affection.

  "You know the patience it takes to make them trust him like that?" As though it were something that struck him on impulse he asked, "You sure you care a lot?"

  "I'm sure."

  "That's good. I'd hate to see him get hurt. People don't understand him. They think he's"—a hesitation, a half-smite—"you know, like me. A great-looking, empty-headed stud. Makes him pull away from people. Chicks usually just want to get in his pants. Jack is the only friend he keeps from the old days when the family had big dough. Jack says that's because Philip can't afford to party in the same style anymore, and if he can't pay for himself, he doesn't go. People from town are bashful with him. He's a Brooks. Sometimes they get this idea that he's cold because he's so comfortable being alone. But he's not cold. This is one sweet guy."

  Those words returned to her later as she stood beside Philip in his softly lit bedroom, watching him put the baby owls to sleep in a wooden box. He spoke to them in a low tone, stroking the downy feathers soothingly, his hands graceful as a magician's, the long-boned fingers beautiful, clean and golden.

  "I want to make love," she said softly, lifting aside his hair to brush her mouth on the back of his neck.

  He closed the box lid and turned quickly on his chair, a smile in the clear compelling eyes. "A beautiful sentiment. Am I doing something to inspire it?"

  "Watching your hands makes me want to feel them on... on me."

  "Show me where." His soft tone matched hers, his gaze reaching out to her as he offered her his hands.

  A sharp sensation escalated in her chest, cold and hot at one time, the keen anticipation of her body. Grasping his wrists, she guided them to her waist, stirring them against the T-shirt of his that she wore. The motion stretched the fabric, teasing it over her breasts and back. She closed her eyes and saw bright-hued streams of primary colors, felt the tingling sweetness of her awakening nipples.

  His hands revolved in lazily widening circles, spreading to her hips, and in back, to the cheeks of her bottom. The world careened around her as his strong fingers framed her thighs, turning her. A flutter sank from her stomach to the warmth between her legs when his hands began to steadily caress her upper thighs. His lips touched her twice, on one back pocket, then the other, nuzzling under her T-shirt to find the margin of warm skin that bordered her jeans. The lace-work caress of his hands moved inward, and his mouth worked a deep circular motion on the small of her back as the low flutter within her became a sting.

  "I love you everywhere," he murmured. She could taste his words through her skin.

  She was turned again, and her hands, love heavy, found his shoulders. One of his hands dragged up the T-shirt to allow his mouth to surge over the slight convexity of her bare stomach. She began to arch into his warm mouth while it trailed over the bow of her pleasure-tightened diaphragm. His other hand went between her legs, massaging her, wringing a moan from her parted lips, and she pushed against the shelf of his palm, her blood running like hot rain.

  "Do you think I'm oversexed?" she breathed into his hair, and felt it eddy against her lips, rich, like some smooth exquisite textile.

  He was pulling open her jeans, slipping the zipper lower. "It's too soon to tell." The tip of his tongue followed the outline of soft curls at the base of her stomach. "But I'm hoping for the best." One of his hands climbed her ribcage, riding the impeding cloth out of the way with the back of his hand, his fingers wreathing one rampant nipple. Catching her as her knees buckled, he hauled her onto his body, sliding her thighs around his waist.

  A rustle came from the wooden box on the desk. The lid popped open, rising like a hat on the fuzzy head of one baby owl, whose round yellow eyes fixed on them curiously.

  Heated everywhere, desire braiding and unbraiding itself inside her body, still Jenny laughed. Philip laughed too, but she was surprised and bewitched by the breathless quality in his voice when he spoke.

  "Go to sleep, you." He reached out a long forefinger and tamped the box lid down. It bounced once and then the box became quiet.

  His hands, warm and large, threaded into her hair, his breath coming quickly as he pulled her into a hard kiss. Their bodies twisted feverishly together, entwined. Cradling her, he carried her to the bed. He had begun to tremble, and their hands were clumsy and fast, pulling the clothes from each other, their love an unbanked burning hunger.

  "I could hardly wait—the afternoon seemed so long...." She arched her back and his mouth made a thrilling outline along the shore of her nipple.

  "For me too. I tried not to—"

  "What?"

  "I was worried about..." He inhaled shakily as her mouth tripped heavy open kisses down his neck.

  "About what?"

  "Your poor little—Jenny, Jenny, darling, that feels like heaven."

  "Poor little what?"

  Laughing, his lips came into slight, moist contact with hers. "Smile. Your poor little smile." He felt it form against his lips. "Because it feels like someone's connected it right to my heart."

  Philip's voice roused her in the sweet deepness of the night and she woke to find him raised up on his elbow, trying with enchanting absurdity to reason with the two tiny owlets who
sat on his pillow in a spill of silver moonlight.

  She lifted her head groggily. "Philip? What do they want?"

  "Embarrassed as I am to admit it, they've developed this terrible habit of wanting to crawl under the covers with me."

  "I can understand why," she said, laughing huskily and yawning. "Do they really sleep with you?"

  He sighed and laid his head back.

  "Aren't you afraid of rolling on them?"

  "No. I don't move very much in my sleep. The trouble is, they don't sleep as much as they used to when I first brought them home. They chase each other around under the covers and fight. Watch this." He lifted the bedclothes. The babies skedaddled underneath, and two lumps ran around in random patterns. Finally they converged, and there was a loud clacking and frantic wing-flapping. He pulled the small furies out and separated them. Each clung to an index finger, their wings spread menacingly. One suddenly leaped into the air and landed talons down on a Kleenex box on the bedside table and began energetically ripping it to shreds.

  "Okay, you two, it's the toy box for you."

  "You have a toy box for them?" she wondered sleepily. "What kind of toys do owls like?"

  "I have kind of a playpen for them in a bathroom down the hall. They've got an old hairbrush, mice made out of upholstery scraps, plastic balls, baby rattles...."

  He took care of his tiny nuisances and returned to the bedroom to find that she'd pushed the bed clear of covers. She lay in the center of the bed on her stomach, her bare legs deliciously long, her chin supported on one palm.

  "How's your smile?" he asked softly, and sat down on the bed at her side.

  She rolled on her back and showed him. As the breath began to catch in a hard knot in his throat, he realized that it was no bad thing to have two tiny owls that woke one up at two o'clock in the morning.

  CHAPTER 10

  In the week that followed they spent mornings together, and called them undates. Memories collected in her mind like intimate postcards: Philip in the snowy woods kissing her brow under the tapping golden brown leaves that clung to an oak; Philip running through the genteelly fading opulence of a long hallway trailing a child's pulltoy—Buzzy Bee—with Chaucer chasing excitedly. Philip drawing her back from a daydream by touching the glossy softness of an owl feather slowly under the curve of her bare knee.

  A raft of rumpled stationery grew in her waste-basket, each with a few lines on it that read,

  Dear Mom,

  I'm in love! His name is Philip and he's a—

  Or they read,

  Dear Mom,

  It's happened, I've met him. It's wonderful and I'm still reeling. His name is Philip and he's a—

  Sometimes she could laugh about it. Sometimes she could not. Her mind retreated from the thing he did when they were apart, shunning it like a bad neighbor. She deceived herself that she was tolerant. She had a constant heart-in-the-throat feeling, an elated teetering happiness. At moments, she felt the strong need to share the richness of it, the hidden burning problems with another human being, a wise objective source; but she wasn't in the habit of making those sorts of confidences. It was difficult enough for her to divulge a single constrained statement to Annette. They were alone in the break room in Friday's quiet, sipping coffee.

  "I spent the weekend with Philip," Jenny said suddenly, and waited.

  Annette set down her mug and studied Jenny with fascination and empathy, and grinned. "You lucky duck. I'll bet every moment was golden."

  "Most of them were."

  "Well, you know what? He's a lucky duck, too."

  Jennifer was alone on Friday night, closing up the library, damping down the image of Philip at work. Muted shadows hung like soft shrouds from the stacks. Leaves from the green hanging plants gleamed in the iridescent varnish of the security lights.

  She heard a knock at the back door and ran to answer it, wishing that some miracle had happened and it would be Philip. It had. It was. She was in his arms immediately, her warm body pleasantly cooled by the wintry radiance from his jacket as his arms enfolded her. His mouth was soft, his cheeks windslapped and chilled, innocently rosy. Even on a winter night his hair carried the fragrance of sunshine. She tried to pull back to see him better, but he held her close, almost desperately so.

  She sighed against his lips. "I'm sorry, sir, the library's closed. You'll have to use the after-hours depository."

  "I could," he murmured, "but it just wouldn't be the same." His face nestled in her hair, moving from side to side, allowing it to polish his face. "This morning was a century away. Will you adopt me? Keep me in a box by your bed?"

  "Anything." As his fingers followed the ridge of her spine down, she moved restlessly. "Anything. I thought you had to work tonight?"

  He drew back then, his muscles subtly tightening. "There was some kind of weird feedback in the sound system so they had to cancel the first show. I have to go in later." One arm left her shoulder and he held up a gaily ribboned present. "I brought you something."

  She opened it there in the hall. It contained a child-sized overnight bag with the cheerful lettering "Going To Grandma's!"

  "Pack that when you stay the weekends with me and no one will suspect a thing," he said. She made a wry face at him and began to laugh, flushing helplessly.

  "It's very elegant."

  "I shoplift only in the best departments." A gentle finger tapped up her chin for another kiss. "Are you alone?"

  "Except for Jinx."

  He slid an arm around her waist and began to walk with her back into the warm cavity of the library. "Yes? Let's put him back down your blouse and see what we can come up with." His arm squeezed her waist but the light tease was spoken almost absently. He released her and she watched him wander around the room, his hand straying over the walnut card catalogue, spinning the globe in the children's section, his movements restive, unaware. Finally, he dropped his jacket onto the floor and lowered his body in an attractive way onto one of the sizable floor cushions in a secluded corner. "568—Dinosaurs. Right?"

  She recognized the Dewey decimal number. "Right." The careless, elegant drape of his body caught in her imagination. "You must have read dinosaur books voraciously as a kid."

  "Voraciously," he said, his eyes coming alight in a way that sent burning signals through her nerves. "You have a wonderful occupation, passing on the wonderful classic books we read as kids, telling them about Winnie the Pooh—" He patted his lap invitingly.

  Some part of her was beginning to sense an inner desperation under the play, and she stood paralyzed, trying to guess, to understand. But thought sank in her mind, as though the buoyance of her love was too ethereal to support fear. The air around her seemed thin and light, her limbs weightless, her heartbeat jumpy and volatile. She saw his lips curve into a smile and he came to her and drew her down beside him.

  "I love you," he said, gazing into the brown eyes that had grown solemn and misty. He stroked back her bangs, uncovering her lovely brow, wanting suddenly to see her whole face. There wasn't a way to tell her. The words would be unbearable said aloud—that the sea of faces, the eager mouths that weren't hers had begun to strip some unarmored layer of his soul. The intangible cord that joined him to her neither numbed nor severed when he stepped on stage.

  Needing her, attempting lightness, he let his hand slip up her sweater and watched her eyes widen and warm when he uncovered her breast. "What's this—what's your sweater made of?"

  She swallowed hard. "Angora."

  "Angora." He repeated the word as though it were some womanly mystery. "It's soft. But not as soft as your mouth." His lips dipped to hers and their pulses quickened together, their breathing beginning to race.

  "I miss you when we're apart." He touched her upper lip with the tip of his tongue. "I've never needed anyone or anything this much. Promise you won't disappear...."

  "Yes," she said in a breathless whisper as his fingers laid gently over her nipple. "Philip—this is the library. We should
n't—"

  The urgency of his kiss exploded her protests. His hand slid past her knee, yearned against her stockings, sending a frazzle of shivers through her, climbing upward on her thigh. She soothed her body closer, still trying to tell him no.

  "Why not, Jenny? Would it be bad... shocking?"

  She made an attempt to nod, her eyes sparkling with passion, her lips seductively parted and dewed from his kiss.

  "Then be bad for me, Jenny. I want you to remember me here, when you're being so good and helpful and conscientious. I want you to remember this—and this—and think about me." Their kiss became wild, delicious, their hands searching each other with tender hunger. "Libraries... are magic places. Make magic happen for me, Jenny...."

  Later she walked into her apartment and thought, If anyone saw me like this, they'd know. She flumped down on her sofa, sinking into the cushions, the happy goofy smile still in place. And sighed contentedly.

  "I love you, Philip Brooks," she said aloud. After a moment she began to sort through her mail with limp, pleasure-weakened fingers, letting unwanted envelopes fall like withered leaves onto the carpet after a cursory glance at the return address.

  The last was from her mother and she opened it and read it and the smile faded, forgotten, gone. She touched her fist agitatedly to her forehead, and then to her mouth.

  Her mother had tried to phone during the week but never caught her at home. She planned to come to Emerald Lake on Friday night—tonight, oh, God, that was tonight—with a group of friends from work. They were coming to the Cougar Club on Jenny's recommendation to see the handsomest man in the world take off his clothes. They probably wouldn't make it until the third show; Jenny shouldn't wait up. They could spend Saturday and Sunday together and wasn't it going to be great....

  Jenny sat on the couch, staring into space, and realized that at last she had met herself at the blind corner of her own contradictions.