Christian Kiefer - The Infinite Tides

“You’re going to do something now, yes?”

“Yeah, I’m going to visit the lady across the street.”

“Oh, you have date with pretty lady. That’s something.”

Keith laughed. “Funny,” he said.

“Why funny?”

Keith shook his head. “It doesn’t feel like much.”

“It is something, though, that I cannot do. You can go into space. You can date pretty lady. I stock shelves. I have wife. There are things I will never do.”

Keith was smiling in the darkness but he knew it was unlikely that Peter could see him there. “I’m not the guy to admire,” he said.

“If we could trade lives maybe everything different,” Peter said.

“Yeah,” Keith said. A pause. Then he said, “I have to get going.”

“Thank you for your time,” Peter said.

“Not necessary.”

They shook hands in the darkness. “You are welcome to be here,” Peter said.

It was an awkward statement and it took Keith a moment to understand what he meant but when he did he said, “Thank you.”

“I look at Messier objects mostly,” Peter said abruptly.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Does not matter. Is just something to look at. Like Ring Nebula.”

“OK then.”

“Next time I show you more of them.”

“Sure, next time,” Keith said.

The sky had darkened and his eyes had adjusted to the shadows, the path a silver line snaking through the spindly, skeletal arms of thistle. Beyond them, the cul-de-sac absurdly bright, the edges of the field silhouetted against it: tiny black knives arrayed as a kind of barricade against an unseen foe. Neighbors and suburbanites. The whole world out there lit like a film set: all the actors retired to their homes, the neighborhood scene frozen in stasis. A photograph. A still life. A museum piece.

Nicole was still awake and so he sat on the sofa downstairs and waited for Jennifer to return and when she did so they sat at the dining room table and ate cheese and crackers and drank a bottle of wine. When the wine was gone she asked him if he would like to follow her upstairs. Of course they made love. Of course they did: on the bed at first and then again in the shower. He may have enjoyed it even more than he had the first time, as now there was a sense of familiarity and possession that he did not have before. He knew he would have her and he did and that sense of ownership was something that both startled him and heightened his sense of pleasure, her body a thing that he craved like food. It seemed the same for her. She had pulled off his clothes as if some emergency necessitated the act, clawing at his shirt and his pants and taking him first in her mouth as if the need was too great to wait for her own nakedness to reveal itself.

The second time it had begun in the shower and ended with them both returning to the bed and when it was done he lay back, his legs extended over the edge of the mattress, her body poised over his, her breasts still touching his chest. She kissed him on the neck and breathed out, long and beautiful, a kind of sigh mingled with a moan of release. “You just keep on coming by, neighbor,” she said.

She was beautiful there, perched above him, his body still penetrating hers even as he softened. There were tiny freckles on her shoulder and he stared at them, so close to his face. “That sounds like something I’d like to do,” he said.

“I’ll bet you would.” She lifted herself up, sliding him more deeply into her for a moment and he tightened under her and sucked in his breath and then she lifted herself off. “I think I was showering before I was so rudely interrupted,” she said, smiling.

“Rudely?”

“You coming?”

“Yes.” He propped himself up on his elbows and looked at her as she stood there, the curves of her body, the hardness of muscle.

She turned and walked to the far side of the bedroom and he heard the shower start up again and the click of the door and she stepped out of sight.

His own body looked pathetic, his penis a weird pale worm that had wriggled up from some dark underground. Yes, he was free to date the pretty woman across the street, as Peter had said, and indeed here he was and Peter was probably still out there in the field with his telescope looking up at some nebula or another. Here he was, reclining on her bed, a fine slick of sweat cooling under the overhead fan, his member shriveling.

He rose and stumbled forward to the shower and she stood there under the spray, a bar of soap in her hand. “Don’t get any ideas,” she said.

He opened the glass door. A blast of hot steam. “Hmm,” he said. “You take a lot of showers.”

“Twice a day at least,” she said. “Sometimes more if there’s time.”

“Really clean,” he said. The water was the temperature of fire. “Damn,” he said.

“Too hot?”

“No,” he said. “Christ, yes.”

She reached out and turned the knob, just barely. He could not perceive a change in the temperature. “Sissy,” she said.

She finished with the soap and handed it to him and again it was too small a space for the two of them and their soapy bodies were slick against each other and when he tried to kiss her again she held him off with a gentle hand to his chest and said softly, “I think we’re done for tonight,” and he looked at her and she said, “Don’t be disappointed. It was fun.”

“I’m not,” he said, but he was.

She stepped out of the shower and into the closet and put on her white robe again and he showered quickly, turning the water temperature down until it was no longer scalding. When he was finished she handed him a towel and he dried himself and she moved past him back into the bedroom as he dressed. A moment later he heard the voices of the television in the room: a talk show with its occasional wave of laughter and applause.

She was seated on the bed against the headboard and glanced over at him as he entered the bedroom again.

“What are you watching?” he said.

“Oh, I don’t know. Letterman.”

He sat on the edge of the bed. “Who’s the guest?” he said.

“I don’t know.” She paused and then she said, “I’m just going to go to bed now, Keith.”

He did not understand what the statement meant at first and then he spluttered, “Oh, OK, yeah,” and stopped again and looked around the room, at the television, then back at her.

“Right,” he said. He stood. “I’ll see you later, then.”

“All right,” she said. She rose from the bed and embraced him briefly and then separated from him again. “See you later in the week, I’m sure.”

“Maybe next time you can enjoy my lack of furniture,” he said.

She smiled as if patronizing a small child. “Maybe,” she said. “You can let yourself out, right?” She turned, climbed back onto the bed, settling once again into her TV-watching position but continuing to look at him.

“Yeah, OK.” He was quiet for a moment and then said, “Bye then.”

“Turn the lock on the doorknob, would you?” she said. She smiled at him once more.

He looked at her but her attention had already returned to the television. He turned and paused and then turned the rest of the way and walked out of the room. Behind him the applause rose up momentarily as if in response to his departure and then muffled back into the voice of the host. Words he could not make out.

At the end of the hall, Nicole stood in the open doorway of her bedroom in her nightgown, rubbing one of her eyes absently. “Where’s my mom?” she said.

“In there,” he said, pointing behind him. She did not move and after a moment he said, “Are you OK?”

“Why are you here?”

“Just visiting.”

“Mr. Corcoran was just leaving,” Jennifer’s voice came from behind him, the words clipped and quiet. She moved past him and picked up Nicole in her arms and the bedroom door closed abruptly behind them.