He lifted the lid and placed the record down.  When he shut the lid the arm came down, and when he turned on the hi-fi it crackled and popped before the music came out, quiet and solemn.  The howling wind soon became part of the background, an instrument in the music, adding tangible texture with its own pitch and tempo. 

Jake stood and walked over to the stove.  He poured himself a mug of hot milk then added cocoa, honey, and salt.  He sat down on the hardwood floor, leaned back against the couch, and wrapped the blanket tighter around him as he stirred the milk.

To fuck around.  Wouldn’t that be nice.  To find some girl willing to have sex just once.  And then to find another girl and then another.  Not a chance though.  Those were few and far between.  And they weren’t interested in him.  He wasn’t aggressive.  He didn’t know how to talk to them.  Hi, what’s your name?  Would you like to fuck?  No, you have to be coy, be sweet, but let them know that you want to fuck them and it’ll be worth their while. 

Jake took a sip of the hot chocolate milk.  The music sped up, became more anxious.  Why did he have to make the effort?  Because he was lonelier than them.  But was it loneliness?  Yes, at times.  He definitely envied Isaac and Kat now.  But then again winter was setting in.  The holidays.  A time for family and friends.  And significant others.  It would all be over though.  And then he wouldn’t care.  Wouldn’t want that other.  He would want more.  Every girl. 

To fuck around then.  He always got that feeling, even in a relationship.  The time would pass and one day another girl would touch him, bend over, show her ass, her cleavage.  And he would want to fuck her.  Not the other.  But he couldn’t just fuck around.  He’d want to fuck that girl until there was another.  He’d want her to be his until he was done.

Selfish.  Objectifying.  That’s why he couldn’t fuck around.  There was no respect.  And that in itself would destroy his being.  But what if he gave himself totally.  To the idea of fucking around.  One girl at a time, and no other times.  Could he force himself to forget each one?  That they were off fucking someone else?  What if one of them was actually the one?  The significant other.

Fuck it.  There was no significant other.  Time had told him that.  He had told himself that.  Another.  There were always others.  After time.

He stood and with the blanket draped over his shoulders walked to his north windows.  Beyond the glass where the wind was howling was the Downtown and its high-rise buildings – structures stretched into the sky built of brick, glass, mortar, and steel.  In the dark of the storm with its howling winds and pelting ice the buildings’ outlines were dim and marked by lights left on by cleaning crews and lights that topped each building tip.

The storm blew hard, howling around his building, howling around all of the buildings, driving the ice hard into everything.  Jake turned and walked back to his kitchen and opened a cupboard filled with bitters, liquors, and spirits.  He pulled out a bottle of bourbon and poured it in until all of the liquid in the mug was at the rim.  He stirred it and walked back to the windows where the cold was seeping in as a slight chill breeze.

There was nobody.  It would always be like this.  No matter the girl, no matter how much he liked her, thought about their children together, there would always be that moment when he would see the supple skin of another woman’s breasts or thighs and want them.  He wanted them all now.  To be surrounded by an endless field of fertile women.  Wrapped in their legs, their arms, their skin pressed against him, warm and inviting.  He wanted to be with them all at once in a cataclysmic orgy of nirvana.

Jake drank the hot chocolate milk, the bourbon giving it spice, warming his body.  He walked back to the kitchen and rinsed the mug out then filled it half-full with more bourbon.  The music had ended.  Only the crackle and pop of the hi-fi mixed with the howling wind and pelting ice were audible.  He went to his records and thumbed through them again until he came to “Either/Or.” 

As the first guitar began to strum he took a drink from the mug then sat on the floor.  The bourbon was beginning to warm his head.  He took another drink then lay down.  Jake closed his eyes and let the music and wind and pelting ice surround him.

Beside the swollen stream,

I roll along the hard dry dirt.

The rushing air across my ears

Blends with the rushing stream.

Whoosh and whish are one long swooish.

Above and along birds twitter

Like sugar, and beneath

My fat tires the earth crackles.

And the atmosphere is hot and

Heavy with sticky wet

Humidity — I am my breeze.

Built beside and on the sloping

Bluffs are freshly painted

Houses with freshly watered lawns.

Atop the bluffs the woods tower

Like engorged broccoli,

Emasculating the houses.

But between the bluffs, beyond this

Valley, I spy the white

Ominous cloud, bright beside sky.

It billows up and up, filling

The sky and the heavens

Between bluffs, and above valley.

The rain will come soon, cooling and

Cleansing the dirt and my

Skin. I am the salt of the earth.

The two men did not move except to pass a joint between them. When they inhaled, its red ember tip burned brighter than the moonlight and lit red their bearded faces. A cold wind blew across the clearing, across the crest of the bluff, driving high thin sheets of dark clouds across the sky towards the moon and the City. As if to beat the new incoming storm a train wound its way through the plain, between rows of silent standing trains, towards the far red pinpoint.

One of the men reached to his side where a case hung from his shoulder. He pulled out a camera and aimed down the slopes, past the woods, into the long narrow rail yard towards the slow but steady moving train.

“That’s it.”

“Good, it’s about to hit again.”

Both men looked back towards the dark crowding sky, their faces reddened by the sharp, biting teeth of the driving wind. They set off across the crest into the upper woods where a single dirt path led from the clearing to a lit parking lot. As they stepped into the man with the camera’s car he asked the other: “What are your plans for tomorrow night?”

“I’m not sure. It depends on the weather I guess. If it’s bad I’ll stay in and read with a hot toddy. Why, what’s up?”

“Kat and I thought that if you weren’t doing anything you might like to come over. We could drink some wine, play a game. Plus, there’s football on Sunday morning. I think Liverpool and Pompey. Maybe Tottenham.”

“Isaac, I wouldn’t mind, but sooner or later I need to grow up. You know, find my significant other instead of a significant couple.”

Isaac chuckled.

“I love you Jake, but this is no ménage a trios.”

Jake did not speak, but proceeded to roll another joint. Isaac drove slowly down the winding road enveloped by a canopy of naked tree limbs. The road reached the bottom where the billowing bluffs came to an end, washed away over millennium, and smoothed across for miles by the endless, meandering River. In the plains the road intersected with the highway that followed parallel to the rails. As he crossed the median and drove south towards Downtown Isaac spoke.

“You know if you weren’t so damn nihilistic, you might actually make some girl happy. Instead of shutting down on them, always expecting the worst, you should open up. A relationship involves two people.”

Jake took a drag from the joint and then handed it to Isaac before replying.

“I know all that. But how can you open up? Nobody is anybody else. I’m not them. I will never know who they really are because I didn’t go through their life experiences and the same is true for me to them. No matter how open I am, in the end it always comes down to them not knowing who I am because they can’t understand me.”

“Oh boo hoo. What a bunch of shit. You do need to grow up. You need to get your heart broken. You need to be in love with someone instead of always dating girls because it’s comfortable.”

“Well you know what I think of that.”

“Yeah yeah, yank yank, agnostic in love.”

Isaac took a drag then handed the joint back to Jake. They drove through sprawling Northtown that blanketed the northern flood plain. It began as an industrial town to compliment the City at the turn of the last century, and had grown from its working class roots to support students and young professionals, new Korean immigrants replacing the older Italians. Only the grain elevators beside the rail tracks and the tower of the airport in the bend of the River downstream from the mouth of the Kaw stood higher than one hundred feet. It was understood that the real reason no buildings were built higher was not because of the incoming personal and corporate flights but because it would obtrude the view from Downtown to the River and flood plains and bluffs.

And so they drove through Northtown with its two and three story brick warehouses, eight and nine story chemical stacks, with scattered four and five story loft apartments. The highway became a street, devoid of any traffic because of both the earlier and approaching storms. Only a police car idled in a side street, a steady stream of thin white exhaust emitting from its tail pipe. Jake took a drag, then rolled down the window and tossed out the roach.

“It’s just depressing that I can’t find one girl who understands me, who will let me breathe. Someone like Kat is to you.”

“Well, I hate to burst your bubble of our perfection, but we went through some shit to get where we are now. Remember we didn’t even date in the beginning. A drunken one night stand full of awkwardness was followed by a few years of friendship.”

“Yeah, and I said then you guys were perfect because she could take your shit and give a little back.”

“True, but there was a lot of petty fighting in private. Hell we still have stupid fights over stupid girl shit, but that’s part of a relationship. You should try it sometime instead of packing it in after two months and becoming passive aggressive until the girl breaks up with you.”

Jake looked out the window as they crossed the darkened gulf of the River. Below them, between the levies, the trees grew thick and wild, their dark naked limbs entangled in each other, in cataclysmic struggle as they reached higher and higher for more sunlight. And then beside this wild strip of land, carved into the earth, the River moved silently and thickly through, pushing further into the land. They stopped at a red light as tiny crystals of ice began to strike the car.

“You know, you should just fuck around for a while. You’ve never done that. It’s always been one short relationship followed by a long period of loneliness and then another short relationship. You should just try fucking a few girls instead of worrying about what they think of you, when they’re going to dump you, and why you can’t be in a relationship. Instead just sleep around.”

“Ha, yeah right. I have a hard enough time sleeping with the girls I’m dating. How the hell am I supposed to fuck some girl I don’t know?”

“You just do. You get drunk, go to her place, fuck her, and then never talk to her again. Out of sight, out of mind. I’m serious, try it. It might help.”

“Maybe.”

The light turned green and Isaac drove up the first bluff south of the River, through streets surrounded by towering buildings of dark reflecting glass and steel – the City’s Grand Canyon. The street descended into a valley of brick warehouses built during the City’s cowtown days now turned into artist studios and loft apartments. Near the bottom of the brick and concrete valley Isaac pulled the car aside and stopped near one of the lower warehouses.

“All right buddy, give me a call tomorrow if you want to come over.”

“Okay.”

“Or just come on over. Kat and I would like it.”

Jake nodded his head and stepped out of the car. The ice was biting as it began to blow thicker and harder. The sidewalk was already covered again, and though rough like sandpaper, had a slippery edge.

“Night Isaac. Be careful going home.”

I feel the humidity — sticky, suffocating.

Everything is blanketed.

Below the open window, softly splashed by streetlights,

The sidewalks, streets, and buildings are washed in dull yellow.

Inside, the fans twist the heat.

And across the room I see her, beads of sweat holding

Fast to her glistening forehead. She brushes back a

Long dirty blond strand of hair.

Like a euphoric whisper, always ephemeral

But feeling eternal, her bosom beckons to me

– Like g-d’s grace, but damnable.

Her long, smooth legs stretch through my mind, shimmering like a

Constellation high above the midnight reflection

In my celestial river.

Barely covered and brimming with power, her tight round

Ass pulls me like gravity, quickly through, eroding

Banks in a subdued deluge.

Like the Missouri in June I push through and expand,

Swelling discreetly until I burst over my banks

To wash clean her fallow fields.

            “This is your stop,” he said.

            The engine had warmed enough that when he spoke there was no sign of his breath, and the glow from the horizon was enough that she saw the smile behind his beard.  Amy couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled.

            “Do you have everything?”

            She felt her bulging pockets.  There was the crumple of the tags and the cling of the extra cartridges.  At the bottom was her cell.  She pulled it out and turned it silent.

            “Yeah, I have everything.”

            The air outside was crisp.  Her smell wisps of breath quickly became nothing.  She heaved the case from the bed of the truck and set the butt on the ground.  From inside it she pulled out the cold steel and wood of the rifle by its leather strap and slung it over her shoulder.

            She put the case back in the bed and walked back to the cab.

            “Now, if you need me, I’ll be up over that crest, in the back of the draw,” her father said.

            Amy nodded. 

            “And wait until I’m out of sight before doing anything,” he said.

            She pushed the door shut.  He waited for her to trudge to the tree line before driving back onto the double tracks.  The truck’s red taillights were quickly all she could see, and soon they were gone, over the crest.

            From the tree line Amy could not see the glow from the horizon.  The tree line was thicker there as it followed a draw.  She gripped the straps tighter and followed the path in.

            It was cooler inside the trees, and down around the draw there were traces of morning fog.  She stepped carefully between the rocks washed into the path where it crossed the draw.  Her boots scraped along the sand covering the rocks.  She became more aware of how loud she was and stopped. 

She was not alone.  A twig snapped.  A bush was rustled.  She felt something watching her.  The glow from the horizon was finally beginning to penetrate through the trees.  Her eyes began to see shapes, but they were only broken branches, uprooted trees, and tree stumps.  She smiled.  There was nothing.  It was only the wind or a squirrel.

From the draw and the trees she made her way onto a long sloping fallow field.  At its edge she heard murmuring.  She stopped again and listened. 

There was an outburst and an explosion of feathers beside her.  Three or four turkeys frantically flapped their wings as they lifted their heavy bodies from the ground to the highest branches inside the tree line.  They settled in the dark of the trees and were quiet.

Amy left them alone and trudged through the moist dirt and the cut grass stalks of the field.  She tripped a few times on clumps of dirt and grass, and when she reached the top of the field her body was beginning to sweat under the weight and warmth of her thermals and coveralls and rifle.  Pausing, she reached under her orange vest and unzipped the coveralls.  The cool air met her sweat. 

The sun soon peaked over the horizon.  Its warmth struck her face.  She closed her eyes.  Her boots sunk into the dirt. 

If the sun was nearly up that meant her chances were nearly gone.  She felt all right with that.  She wasn’t sure what she would have done with a deer.  Could she have killed it?  Placed the bullet right into its heart?  She opened her eyes into the brightness of the orange glow of the sun.  What if she missed?

The sun was above the far treetops.  She would just keep walking.  Her father would stay out as long as he had to, and she hadn’t heard a shot yet.  She would follow the trees around back to where she began and if she hadn’t heard from him she would walk back towards where the truck had to be.

She trudged backed down the field into a stretch of the tree line where she hadn’t been.  There was a leaning fence of barbed wire strung from posts of thick gnarled branches planted into the ground.  The underbrush was not thick but her baggy coveralls caught on branches and thorns.  She stopped to untangle herself and to pull the thorny branches and leaves from her clothes.  By the time Amy reached an intersection of fence her hands were scratched and red with exposed flesh. 

The animals of the tree line by then were awake and scampered away as she broke through branches and snapped twigs.  Squirrels sprinted through the grass and twisted up the trees to jump from the high branches to other trees.  Rabbits bounded away, jumping through the barbed wire and down into another draw that snaked by.  It was deep near her, and there were puddles of water standing among its dark mud. 

Amy rested against the post intersection.  With the rifle cradled in her crossed arms she listened to the birds.  She wasn’t sure who was who except for the bobwhites.  She whistled their tune, and saw it move.

It had jerked its head up.  She hadn’t heard or seen it before.  It was only fifteen yards from her on the other side of the fence.  It turned its head so that a dark eye was watching her.  She slowly shouldered the rifle and pointed it towards the deer.  The scope magnified it to a mass of light brown.  She shifted less than an inch and searched until she found its head.  The cross hairs lined up and she slid her index finger onto the trigger.  The deer stood still, its eye never blinking, watching her.  Amy gently squeezed the trigger and braced for the explosion and recoil.  There was only a click.  She had not turned the safety off.

The deer started but did not flee.  Ignoring the suddenness and noise, Amy quickly thumbed off the safety.  She sighted the deer again and remembered to aim not for the head but for the heart.  Once the cross hairs were lined on the chest she squeezed the trigger.

The crack of the shot deafened all other sounds and the rifle butt jerked hard into her shoulder.  After the split second when she blinked during the shot, the deer stumbled and bounded off through branches and brush.  Amy lowered the rifle looking for any sign of the animal.  There was nothing.

She reached over the fence and rested the rifle against the opposite side of the post.  Her feet pushed the wire down and the barbs sunk into her boot soles as she climbed the fence.  She maneuvered her boots between the barbs and pulled a gloved hand off another barb and then jumped the three feet down.

Amy collected the rifle and set off in the direction that the deer had sprinted.  Her body was shaking and her head felt light.  She wasn’t sure whether she wanted a hit.  They could run for a hundred yards before dropping dead.  She hoped she had missed.  But what if she’d only wounded it?

Her breathing quickened as she made her way slowly through what was not her great uncle’s tree line but someone else’s woods.  At any moment she could come across its dead body, or worse, its living body writhing in pain as blood gushed from the hole in its flesh that she had torn away.

She stopped at the bank of the snaking draw.  The ground dropped six feet into mud and puddles.  Surely if it was wounded it couldn’t cross this gap?  She walked along the bank scanning the draw and its opposite side.  There was no sign, no tracks, and no blood.

She heard a distant crack and froze.  This was not her great uncle’s land.  Even though she might have shot and killed a deer it was on someone else’s property.  Amy didn’t want to be caught, or worse, shot.  But she didn’t want to give up on the possibility that she’d shot the deer.  She didn’t know whether she wanted to find its body, but she knew she wanted to find out what had happened to it.

Her path back to her great uncle’s property was long and arching as she searched for the deer.  She reached the fence and climbed it again.  As she slung the rifle back over her shoulder she heard her father calling.

Harold pulled hard on the taut barbed wire loop, and forced it off the top of the gatepost.  He stepped over the fallen gate and walked away from it. The oak and hickory leaves crunched beneath his boots.  Autumn was near an end, and soon the ice would come.  These trees would be encased in it, the grass would be frozen and broken, and some of the livestock would be dead.  Probably a calf and a of couple piglets.

And maybe Maude.  She didn’t remember much.  Hopefully she was still in bed.  He’d walk a while and meet up with Clark and Amy, and then make Maude lunch.  She’d like that.

He stopped and shifted the rifle from one shoulder to the other.  Maybe he was too old for this.  Maybe it’s about time to let the young ones alone, just let them use the land.  He liked seeing Clark and Amy.  It was too bad Beth was too busy to come with them.  But she would not have enjoyed.  She’d always been a bit squeamish, not that Clark was good.  He never would have made a good farmer.

Harold continued through the woods.  The trees were mostly young, but even some had branches snapped off from storms or disease.  The late morning sun shined down on the back of his neck.  Sweat began to build up underneath his arms.  The young trees did not provide much cover now, not that they did much in summer.

Near the edge of the woods Harold stopped.  The wood had been cut ten yards out from the fence.  On the other side were two deer.  One was smaller than the other and had the white spots of a fawn.  The other was surely the mother.  Harold raised his rifle and aimed.

Neither deer started.  Both continued with their heads bowed, eating the tall grass that was never cut around the fence posts.  The crosshairs came together on the doe’s neck.  She lifted her head and looked at him.  He waited for her to start, to sprint off.  She did neither, but resumed eating beside her young.

Harold lowered his gun.  He was too old for this.  If he killed her then he would have to dress her.  He’d have to drive across the county to the nearest checkpoint to report her and then drive to the Shannon’s for butchering.  The bed would be stained blood red and the stench would remain at least for a week.

The doe lifted her head again and looked at him.  She turned and began to slowly walk back through the field.  At twenty yards she stopped and waited for the fawn.  It moved slowly towards her.  He could still take a shot. 

Harold raised the rifle.  He thumbed off the safety.  The cross hairs lined up, but he waited.  The fawn reached the doe and they began to move quicker.  Harold tightened his grip.  He was too old for this.

When he lowered the rifle again the doe took off in a sprint followed by the fawn.  They bounded and jumped across the field throwing up dirt as they kicked off.  Harold raised the rifle one last time and aimed deliberately under and then fired.  A small fountain of dirt exploded fifty yards ahead of him.  The deer by then had slipped into the distant tree line.

Harold thumbed on the safety then slung the rifle onto his shoulder.  It was getting late.  He would circle back to the pick-up and return to the house.  Maybe make some lunch for Maude and for Clark and Amy when they get back.  He wondered whether Clark got one.  He was always looking for a trophy.  So far though, the best he’d done was a few years back with that eight-pointer.  But what if Amy got one?  What if she’d gotten the trophy?

He chuckled.  Clark would be mad.  He’d always had that temper.  But what a first time out it’d be for Amy.  She’d been so excited last night when they’d arrived.  Of course this morning she was tired and quiet.  Probably nervous.  The excitement never went away, but the nerves could always subdue it.

He was halfway back to his pick-up when he saw the brown body still in the brush.  Harold came up to it and felt it.  The body was warm and the legs were not yet stiff.  It had not been that long since it dropped.  He circled the body and noticed two small nubs hidden behind the ears.  It had to have been Clark or Amy.  Nobody else should be out on this land.  Unless Old Man McManus was letting someone else out here.  But McManus wouldn’t do that, not while he was leasing it.  Most likely it was Amy.  Clark usually went out further northwest towards where the big draws met.

It would be best to drag it back to his pick-up.  He’d walk back and try to see how far in he could get. 

“Amy!”

That’d be Clark.  That’d mean they’re around.

Harold turned back and began to walk through the woods towards the call.  Clark called out again a few moments later.  He must be in the other field past the north tree line.  Harold walked along through the woods near the clearing before the fence.  The brown rugged field came to an end at the north tree line.  On the other side was a field he had let fallow for hay.  There was not much now left.  It was mostly rugged as well but with grass stalks cut off and laying about.

He tugged on his orange cap and looked at his orange vest.  Amy was a beginner.  He wasn’t sure about her reactions.  Clark was experienced, but even so.

“Clark!  Amy!”

He could see them standing near the crest of the fallow field.  They looked towards his direction.  Harold pushed through branches and brush and came to the fence.  Clark and Amy had started to walk towards him.

“How’s your morning going Harold?” asked Clark.

“Not too bad.  Did you get anything?”

“I got a little seven pointer back where those two draws meet.  It looks like it last one antler.  And Amy thinks she might have hit one a little earlier.”

Clark gave a brief smile.  Harold looked at Amy and winked.

“Did you now?” he asked her.

She looked towards the woods.

“Yeah, I shot him over there.  I saw him stumble so I think I hit him.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what, I came across a young button buck up in those woods not far from here.”

“A button buck?” she asked.  “I thought it was a doe.”

“No,” Harold said.  “It’s a button buck.  And I’d say it’s yours.  I haven’t heard any other shots out this way, and I’ve been walking through the woods for a while now.  The body’s still warm, so I’d say it’s yours.”

She looked at him and smiled.  It faltered though on a few moments thought.

“I won’t get in trouble for shooting a button buck will I?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Harold said.  “You can’t even see them nubs unless you get up close behind him.”

“It’ll be ok,” Clark said.  “Well, we better go dress him.  Are you ready to do that?”

Amy looked back at the woods.

“Well, I guess so.  I don’t remember exactly where to start.”

“We’ll help you,” Harold said.

He helped Clark and Amy over the fence.  They started into the woods.  Amy slung her rifle on her should like Clark.  She walked a little to the side and behind them.  Her eyes were moving nervously.  It is her first kill.  They came to the body.  Clark circled it and felt it.  Amy stood back staring at it.

“Well Amy, are you ready?” Clark asked.

She nodded.

“Lay your rifle down gently and come watch me,” Clark told her.

She did as told, and Clark pulled a hatchet from his backpack. 

“You have to swing hard enough right here in the sternum,” he said.

Clark tapped the deer’s sternum with the blade and then raised the hatchet above his shoulder.  With a heavy swing Clark cracked into the sternum.  The skin broke instantly and the blood permeated the fur crimson.  The hard fibers of the sternum were smashed but not completely broken.  Amy’s face became pale.  She looked away but then back.  Clark raised the hatchet again but not as high.  With another swing the sternum broke open.  The tearing of the fibers cracked in succession like ice. 

Amy backed up.  She put out a hand to a nearby tree.  Clark looked back at her.

“Now remember this for next time, if you still want to come again,” he said.  “This is all part of hunting.”

Harold smiled at her.

“That’s why I don’t do it so much,” he said.  “I’m a farmer.  I’ll let the slaughterhouses take care of my animals.”

She smiled weakly.

“My way you don’t have to get your hands as dirty.  Though you do have to take care of some sickly animals and every once in a while a death.  I guess it just don’t seem as dirty.”

Amy turned away.  Clark was prying the sternum open.  The stench was instant.  Harold felt sorry for her.  She would never make it out here.  Most people wouldn’t.  Clark didn’t.  He never liked it.  Everyone thinks it’s too dirty, too much work.

Clark began to pull out the intestines.  They slipped from his gloved hands down along the deer’s body.  Amy took a few steps back.

All anyone wants is to take it easy.  He was getting too old for this.  He should be getting back to take care of Maude, make her some lunch.  But first he’d have to help get this deer back to the pick-up.  They could go back to the house, grab a bite, feed Maude, and then go to the county checkpoint.  After that he’d help take the deer out to that processing plant that Clark liked nearby just inside Osage County.  Amy wouldn’t like that.  The carcasses lying about in the sun waiting to be butchered.  The blood caked dirt.  The smell.

Harold looked back at Amy.  She was watching now, but looked faint.  She probably wasn’t expecting this.  Nobody really does expect it.  But sometimes it has to be done.

He withdrew and hovered above her.

“I did?”

“Oh yeah, you got me.”

He rolled to her side and lay on his back. His eyes turned and watched her brown breasts push up and come down push up and come push and come.

“How was it?”

“Good, very good,” she said.

He turned his head and studied her. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was parted. A red tongue darted out and wet her lips. Under her head her hair overlaid a white pillow except for one strand of ebony that hung from her forehead hooking her chin. It barely covered her blushing cheeks. He lifted his head and leaned over her naked body. She opened her eyes momentarily then closed them once more.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, nothing,” he said.

He read the clock beside her. Its red numerals were 12:01. He bent down and kissed her lips. They were cool and chilled him. He rubbed his tongue against hers but warmth did not come. He pulled himself from her but still leaned upon her, their breasts pressed together. He marked her breaths and created a rhythm, interposed in the offbeat of her respiration. Each breathed after another, either giving in or pushing out. She giggled.

“Stop breathing for me.”

“Whatever are you speaking of, dear?”

She opened her eyes again and smiled as he watched her. Her face was round. A pair of dark eyes formed a triangle with her sharp nose. Underneath, a smile stretched back her upper lip revealing a row of small white teeth. Dimples now pocked the corners of her smiling mouth and a single hair from the strand that hooked her chin rested on her lower lip. He took his free hand, and touching her cheek, brushed it behind her ear.

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Nothing at all,” he said.

“Liar,” she whispered.

He bent down and kissed her. She was warmer. She had become warm without him. He chuckled. She pushed him back.

“What?”

“Nothing, I said.”

“It’s something.”

“I was thinking only of your beauty.”

“So you laughed.”

“What? You make me so happy I laugh.”

“Uh huh.”

“What?”

“You suck.”

“Not as well as you.”

She pinched his arm and he fell back beside her. She turned onto her side and stared at him.

“Stop staring.”

“Bastard.”

“I love you.”

“I wonder.”

The wind began to whistle through the closed window. He raised his head and looked at its veil. Upon the glass were soft taps. He leaned over her again. The time was 12:49. He looked back at her. She shifted her gaze from his face to the window.

He lay beside her on his side. He put his free hand on her stomach and rubbed the palm around her navel. He bent down and kissed it. He laid his head upon her stomach and looked at her. She smiled as she watched him. His hand drew through her parted breasts.

“Pitter patter,” he said as his fingers tapped her chest. “Pitter patter patter patter.”

She giggled. The rain came harder. He lifted his head from her stomach and drew a line down her body to her navel with his thumb. He stood his hand on its fingers and began to circle her navel. Thunder shook the building.

“Pitter patter.”

But you made me stop - for once, the universe stopped.

The stars were still, but g-d did not appear,

But the prophets cry is to trust in faith.

And I will always love you

Because we were

And I still am.

My arms and embrace.  I will reel in that

Flathead cat, and roast its flesh to taste.

From channel to channel, on top of sand

I will step through currents that whisper their

Secrets between my legs, tickling my toes.

Through fallow winter fields I will follow

The tracks of split hooves pressed to the earth.  There

Is no greater fear of g-d than of man.

And when first light breaks through wood and leaves, its

Warmth stokes chills that I embrace.  The hoarfrost

Mellows and seeps back to earth, back to grace.

It is serene to know that all will change and all will change again.

It is not death, because we resurrect. It is just shedding skin.

And we're laid bare to winter's come - cold, wet, but knowing spring follows.

If only everyone read Emerson

Then we could stand naked beneath the falling locust leaves,

The kissing chill would tickle every spine.