Paul Levine - False Dawn

She shrugged, opened the fridge, and found some milk that didn’t predate the Carter Administration. We ate standing up at the counter, looking at each other, contemplating the situation. At least that’s what I was doing. What was going on here? After a moment of silence, I said, “We sure needed the rain, huh?”

She looked at me as if I were a complete fool, which of course I was. There is that peculiar mating dance for the species that doesn’t sing songs or lock antlers to win its mate. We paw the earth and shuffle and smile and chat about everything and nothing and send out little coded signals. I decided to dispense with the meteorological insights. She touched her ebony hair and smoothed it back over an ear. She cocked her head and looked at me from under dark eyelashes. I responded by taking a bite of my sweet turkey sandwich and leaving a glob of cream cheese stuck in the corner of my mouth. When it comes to savoir faire, I come up a little short.

“Let me,” Lourdes said, with a come-hither look. She moved close enough for us to breathe each other’s air, and she scraped up the cream cheese with the ruby red fingernail of a pinky. Then she stuck the fingernail in my mouth. And then the whole finger. When the finger came out, her tongue went in. We stood there, kissing soft and slow, pressed against each other, my hands running from her shoulders to her buttocks. She arched herself into me, running the tips of her nails across my bare back, full lips caressing mine. I cupped my hands under her leather-clad bottom and lifted her off the floor, bringing her to my height. She wrapped her legs around me, and we stood there, motionless except for the grinding of loins.

“The bedroom’s upstairs,” I whispered.

“Here’s fine,” she said.

And it was. I stepped out of my shorts. She wriggled out of her mini and pulled the white silk blouse over her head. Underneath she wore lacy white panties and matching bra. From somewhere she produced a foil-wrapped condom. She opened the foil with her teeth, smoothing the condom on me with steady fingers. She slipped out of the panties and bra with no help from me and was left in her red stiletto high heels. The shoes stayed on as I lifted her again, feeling her moist heat pressed against me. My hands flowed over her, from the shoulders through the smooth valley of her back to the silken skin where her hips flared into that wondrous sweep of womanhood.

“I want you,” she breathed into my ear.

“Whatever the lady wants.”

Our engines hummed along, the fires building. She raised her breasts to my mouth, cradling them in each hand. Her nipples were taut and erect, startling in their darkness against the creaminess of her skin. I lifted her buttocks higher and pressed into her. As she took me into her sweet soft vise, her body stiffened and her eyes widened, nearly fearful. Then she exhaled a slow warm breath, closed her eyes and locked onto me. There was a perfect meshing of gears, temperature rising, cadence matching. When my pace increased, hers matched stride. When my breathing deepened, hers followed. Our tempo built to a crescendo, she dug her nails into my back, wailed some entreaty in Spanish I had never heard, threw her head back, and tightened her grip while spasms shook us both.

“Good Lord,” I said, at last.

“ Ay, Dios mio,” she breathed in my ear.

Later, upstairs in the bed under the paddle fan, her head cradled in the crook of my right arm, she said, “I nearly forgot why I came to see you.”

“It wasn’t to cook-sorry-make sandwiches?”

“No.”

“Or to clean my kitchen?”

“Hardly.”

“Or to fix my clock?”

“That just happened. Yo no planee.”

Uh-huh.

“Want to talk about it?” I asked. Lately, I’ve become sensitive to a woman’s needs. I’m not sure why, but it seems only fair. My rules are simple: I say what I feel, and I never pretend, mislead, or say I love you unless I mean it, so the words have seldom been heard. After an encounter, I try to talk, and not about the recent narrowing of the goalposts in college football. Some years ago, in the dentist’s office, I picked up one of those women’s magazines with a bosomy woman in a low-cut dress on the cover. I took a quiz on my lovemaking skills and made Dean’s List in technical proficiency but flunked the part about postcoital cuddling and conversation. So I read some of the other stuff, too, about connection and communication. Now, I’ve picked up the buzzwords about how men and women misunderstand each other. Men speak the language of power and independence; women speak of closeness and intimacy. Men report what they do; women reveal their feelings. So here I was, a former varsity member of the AFC Eastern Division All-Star Party team, master of the one-night stand, lying entangled with Lourdes Soto with lots of me touching lots of her, trying to make sense of it all.

“Talk about it?” she responded.

“Like what just happened. What it means.”

She chuckled into my ear. “You mean, will I call you tomorrow?”

She was mocking me, just like Mimus polyglottos.

“I was just surprised, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting this.”

“So you want to analyze it?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. I just thought that, as a woman, you might want to talk…”

“Hey, big guy, just lean back and enjoy it.”

She was tracing figure eights on my chest with her manicured nails. And then the eights moved south to my stomach. And then lower still. Soon her lips took over the movements. I gave up and did what I was told to do.

I have some news for you about the Crespo case,” Lourdes Soto said, her head resting on my chest.

“No business now. Let’s enjoy the moment.”

“ Good news.”

“Whatever it is can wait.”

“Okay, but I’ve got sworn statements from two witnesses that the Russian threatened Crespo on several occasions and once attacked him with a knife.”

“What? Who?” I sat up so quickly Lourdes nearly slid off the bed.

“Tomas Rivera and Lazaro Soler. They’re on your witness list.”

“Sure they are. I listed everybody who worked for Atlantic Seaboard, just to cover all the bases. But I’ve interviewed them, and they didn’t see, hear, or know anything.”

Lourdes propped herself on an elbow and ran a fingernail across my thigh. “Maybe you didn’t smile when you asked the questions.”

I wanted to believe her. And when we want to believe, we sometimes do. But Francisco Crespo never told me about being attacked. “Crespo told me he owed Smorodinsky some money, and they argued about it, but he said nothing about a knife.”

“I’ll give you the written statements. The Russian tried to slice Crespo’s throat with a survival knife. You know, like Rambo used. Three rows of saw teeth, a hollow handle, and a spear point. Took Soler and Rivera to stop him, had to threaten him with a gun. Of course, you’ll need their live testimony, and they’re willing to come forward.”

Three rows of saw teeth. The best lies are crammed with details, like the redheaded Anglo with the American flag tattoo I’d invented ten years before. “The police didn’t find a knife, not at the scene or in Smorodinsky’s belongings.”

“They didn’t report any,” she corrected me. “A knife like that, maybe a cop slipped off with it. Maybe another worker did.” She pushed me back into the pillows. “It happens.”

Outside, the rain had stopped, but the mockingbird was still singing up a storm. He sounded like a bobwhite. My windows are open because I choose not to have central air. I don’t want to live in a hermetically sealed tomb. I like the breeze and the smell of mango trees and the sounds of burglars in the bushes. I listened to the mocker and the rhythm of the paddle fan, whompety-whomping its endless circles. “If the two guys saw the attack,” I said, after a moment, “we can get that into evidence, but I don’t know about the threats. All hearsay, unless they’re considered res gestae or excited utterances. How long before-”