Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

“This is kind of public,” Tommy says with a laugh when Jesus and his friends have moved on. “Maybe we should go somewhere.”

“It’s already booked,” she says.

She yelps with pain. Tommy recoils, but she claps him to her. “No, stay where you are, don’t move. It just hurt more than I thought it would.” She’s gasping, as if she’s run a mile. She doesn’t know if the pot has served as a partial anesthetic or has intensified her sensory apparatus. “Give me a minute.”

“What hurt?” he asks in palpable confusion. “Wait a minute! Why are you so wet? Omigod, Sal!”

“It’s all right, Tommy. It really is. Just hug me for a minute.”

“But I always assumed — I wouldn’t have — fuck! You should have told me!”

“Ssshh!”

To be naked with him. Holding him. Such a sweet thing. But awkward at first. She felt self-conscious, offering up all she had and fearful he might not want it. Thankfully he left his T-shirt on, so then she did too, and that seemed to help. When their pants came down, it all felt completely natural. Almost too natural, like when they were little kids jumping about under the garden hose. But this time he had a hard-on. She was so grateful for that hard-on. It meant he wanted her. Even if he was too stoned to be sure just who she was. It meant everything would really happen. She wanted to kiss him but was afraid to. She wasn’t used to it, might do something stupid, and didn’t think he’d want to, kissing being more intimate than mere sex. But no need to fear. He’s an experienced lover. Did all the right things, made her feel desirable, desired. He was the one to turn the lights out. To put her at ease, she thought. He was so pleased about the room. Before switching off the lights, he thanked her for choosing a place with air conditioning, but he was looking out the window onto the highway and she knew he had been afraid she might be taking him to the Blue Moon Motel. She was staring at his bare backside as he stood there at the window. It was heart-breakingly beautiful. She wanted to nuzzle it. Wipe her tears on it. Bite it. Chew it. With the least encouragement, she would have done so. She was high as a kite. The cliché seemed right. All clichés did. Everything happening was a most wonderful cliché. When he did kiss her, his long-fingered ball-playing hands stroked her gently, lovingly, passed down her back, over her buttocks, between her thighs. Also a cliché. A creamy one. She was already coming before he lowered her to the bed.

Now he’s moving in her again. This is okay, she thinks. This is really okay. Bring on the clowns. Even the pain’s okay. Mostly gone now and overtaken by all the other physical stuff happening. Worth cataloguing, but not now. All the way to her throat she feels it. Her eyes, the roots of her hair. On her own, it was never like this. She clutches his undulating buttocks, her hands grasping what her eyes ate up, and as he drives harder and harder, she knows just how to respond, as though she has been doing this all her life, her hips rising to meet his thrusts, her thighs clamping him. She even — how did she know to do this? maybe she read it somewhere — while gripping his neck with one hand, fingers his anus with the other, then searches for the base of his testicles, some special spot there, pulling him deeper into her. At the last minute (for her, it’s not the last minute, just another one, it’s great, don’t stop, her whole body an infinitely expanding orgasm), he grunts, jerks out of her, spills his seed on her belly, both hands cupping her buttocks, pulling her to him, whimpering softly, his body still pumping furiously, and then with a deep sigh he collapses gently on her. The right thing to do. But, oh, how she ached to have him stay where he was, explode inside her. What an ecstasy — even as chubby Monica with the bad complexion comes to mind — that must be! So much yet to experience, to try, to learn. He kisses her under the ear, his nose guard massaging her scalp. A kiss of appreciation. Not once but twice; leaves his lips there. She feels so rewarded.

They lie there a while like that, she holding him in place, caught in the parentheses of her thighs like a delicious thought to be squeezed of nuance. Like hugging a heavy pillow. The darkness is not so dark now. She can see his shoulders, faintly blue from the light outside, can hear beyond the hum of the air conditioner more fireworks going off, the distant drone tone of motors out on the highway, the world returning but not the familiar one she knew before. She’s never been in a room like this, for example. Out by a highway. In a houseful of adventurous transients. Fondling a boy’s testicles. He will ask her why she did this, and does. The answers she has rehearsed won’t do. This is no time for her usual wiseass comebacks. No mention of that night at the ice plant, please. She tells him simply she had always wanted it to be him, even before she knew what “it” exactly was, and she has waited all this time until it could happen and she thanks him for it. No obligations, she says, but only to herself, happy when he hugs her tenderly in response.

And then finally he does slide off and stand up and turn on the light. “Oh man. They’ll think there’s been a murder. Why didn’t you put something under you?”

“I always sign my work,” she says, hearing her old self again, but proud of the body that his paired shiners are staring down at: it did everything it was supposed to do and it did it well, never mind what he might think of it as an aesthetic object.

“Just look at my dick,” he laughs, holding the bloody thing up with his fingertips. She’s afraid he might be angry or disgusted, but he grins and takes her hand and pulls her to her feet and says, “C’mon, let’s get cleaned up.”

And so they do that, and the shirts come off and there’s all the fun with the soap, and more sex standing up and kissing under the shower, and then toweling each other off and back to bed — it’s a big room with two beds, so they have clean sheets to crawl into — and one last joint to share (thank you, Moron, you dear little horse’s ass). It’s all very tender and loving and completely naked now, better than she could ever have imagined it, using their mouths as well as everything else, he punching her here and there with his funny nose, one position not unlike that dogleg at the fourth tee. My God what has she been missing? She even gets to realize that little fantasy of a while ago of nipping his bottom in her teeth. But also a certain melancholy is stealing in because she knows it can’t last — he doesn’t love her and her feelings, well, they’re mixed at best. Much as this is, it may be all of it. Tomorrow it will already be a memory, a dream dreamt like all memories and fading as dreams do, and she’ll be overtaken by a longing quite different from the sort felt until now. Humans. They think too much. “Are you hungry?” she asks. “I’ve only had a hotdog all day.”

“Sure. But it’s late.”

“I checked. The bar has snack food and is open until one. You’ll have to buy. I spent my last dime on the room.”

“No problem. I’ve got plenty. We can shoot the moon.”

So they start to get dressed and he pushes his hand between her legs while she’s pulling her panties up and there’s another delay, he taking her from behind this time. They’re both still pretty high and it seems better than ever, like they’ve got dangling nerve ends in all the right places, their bodies are just having the best time in the world, and then they start the dressing again, finishing this time, even though there’s a moment when she opens his fly and gives his penis a final kiss, his hands tangled in her wet snarls, before they head for the bar.

“Look,” Tommy says, pointing toward an opening door down the corridor, “it’s that cute chick from the bank!” He starts to call out, but then the guy she’s with steps out behind her, and Sally understands that the night has just suddenly ended.