Boris Fishman: Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo

She tried to fit him for the mask of death she had slipped so easily onto her mother, and herself, and Alex, and Max. But she could not picture Marion as anything other than there, his face taken up with a mournful amusement. He was older than her, but despite the slightly bent fingers, the tiredness around the eyes, and the loose skin she felt feeling his heart, it felt more difficult to imagine his death. Perhaps she knew him too little, had him too flimsily to be able to calmly let go. And yet, she felt she knew him. Some things, she knew. She knew that if he walked out of the room, she would love him. If he took off his clothes, but wore a condom, she would love him. If he didn’t use a condom, but nothing came of it, she would love him. If he didn’t, and something did, still she would. Every single outcome was the right one.

Her legs parted slightly from a slow-sweeping lurch in her stomach. She felt a dull furrow open, as if by a sledgehammer dragged by someone too young to lift it. It was her — she was dragging the sledgehammer. She was on Misha’s farm, dragging the sledgehammer, everything still up ahead. From the furrow things wanted to spill. The sensation was of some sort of impending evacuation, and she turned over because it was all happening there. Her knees, pressed into the roughly starched cotton of the bedsheet, nearly buckled but she grunted and dug in. She pushed her face hard into the pillow so that no light came in — she wanted to be underwater without adequate air. She closed her fingers over the thin vertical iron slats of the headboard, such as it was, and dug her nails into her skin. She would love him if he walked out of the room, but if she heard the buckle snapping on his jeans, the flop and rustle of denim — she would love him a little bit more.

“Your son is wild because of you,” Marion said.

She looked up at him insolently, and said: “Don’t be frightened of me.”

The first thing she felt were two fingers on the strong vein inside of her thigh. They ran down it, feeling it like an old scar. Then his hands moved to her ass, and he held it in his hands like two breasts, just holding, like a cat with tinfoil in its mouth. He spread the cheeks with his fingers, and she let out a soft groan while reaching for his jeans buckle. Working with one hand, she undid the button and zipper and pulled down the jeans around his thighs. He wore nothing under them. Sliding out from under his touch, she pushed her face into his groin, and inhaled around him. He smelled clean, human but clean, like the leaves that stay cool on the floor of the woods even though the sun is shining with force. His penis was warm on her cheek, and she pressed her head into it. They were oddly positioned, like two wrestlers in an impasse, no winner, he on the bed on his knees, she worked into him like a burrow. His hands scaled and descended her back, the two panels on either side of the spine like the wings of a book, firm board over soft flesh.

When they had enough of feeling each other, they rearranged themselves on the sheets, Maya under Marion, the blanket kicked around their feet. The room was submerged in a half gloom; Maya felt around herself a softly swallowing grayness broken only by the vague shape of his body. Alex came into her mind, but instead of shutting her eyes against him, she apologized to him for feeling none of the fault he wished she would feel — she would begin feeling it as soon as this ended, but she wanted to do this now, forgive me, my love — and waited until he went away. When Marion entered her, his hands levered on her hip bones below him, she kinked up her back, drove the crown of her head into the mass of pillows beneath it, and issued a low, satisfied grunt at the uneven ceiling. Then she clasped his arms and forced him down onto her. She wanted his weight.

Though Marion was only slightly taller, their bodies did not have the same rhythm; he pushed in while she was pushing out. Eventually, she smiled sheepishly at him, and he, licensed by her, at her. Uninstructed, he withdrew. She slid out from under him and pointed with a finger at the pillow, which now went under his head. His erection faltered, and he muttered sheepishly. She closed his mouth with her lips. It was their first kiss. It seemed so belated. There was so much else that they’d forgotten to kiss. There was old sleep on his tongue, but she wanted it. She wanted everything having to do with him. She lifted her lips from his for the second it took to say “I want everything having to do with you” and then covered his mouth again before he could answer, though his eyes answered her — with disbelief and rising desire. They kissed for so long that they forgot everything else.

In the night, the difference between one minute and four works differently, but they kissed for four minutes, not one. Then they stopped kissing and lay hidden in each other’s mouths until Maya felt the outer edges of sleep. No. She withdrew herself from him, and pulled her lips down to his chest, covering one nipple with her teeth, her hair falling over his chest. Then the other. It stirred him — she felt him growing full under her. She unsealed herself from his chest with a long inhalation. Then she took his penis with her fingers, and worked it inside herself. The rhythm was better this way. Her back kinked again, she raised and lowered herself on him while their bellies took sweat from each other. Each lowering-down was a soft pop, her ass on his thighs. She preferred down, because she felt more of him. Now, some milestone having passed, she allowed herself to make noise — a long call, meant to travel. He was shyer than her, and it was several minutes before he forgot his reticence and moaned with an uncomplicated satisfaction.

She was consumed by his look of stupefied wonder — wonder at her. She had never seen a man more plainly happy. So even in the midst of all that was happening, plain happiness was available. She would not have dared to guess. She felt for his face, and scratched it with her fingernails. His neck, ribbed with age. She wished her fingerprints to become altered by him; she wished for some part of him to pass into her in a way that wouldn’t dry and leak out. He warned her that he was close. She warned him to remain inside her. She needed just a little bit more. But he was already lost to new information. He clasped her ass in his hands, and cast himself into her with a force he counted on her to understand and forgive, one finger grazing the pleated spout of her asshole every time he pushed up. It accelerated her, and they came almost at the same time, him hitting the walls of her so forcefully that he cried out. She fell on him; they ran with sweat, running off them onto the sheets. And again, they lay hidden in each other. Until he was soft enough that he slid out of her in the wetness. And still they remained, drying and leaking out and memorizing the other. To no value because memory is nothing next to the thing.

They drove back to the Dundee in silence. The storm, which in the night had only dusted the pavement, seemed to have changed its mind, the slate-gray sky swirling with snow. Because of the weather, Marion had offered to accompany her; he would find a lift back. She agreed — for no reason having to do with the weather. Her heart wobbled at seeing another man in the seat Alex had occupied, and occupied responsibly, for two thousand miles.

The mountains watched her go the way she had come with neither pity nor shame nor sympathy nor regret. Marion, who sometimes regarded her with the same motiveless curiosity, kept his eyes on the road and said nothing. She relished the silence, the snow like the cotton damping a wound. The new skin over the ground was thin, and only briefly unblemished, but it worked for the moment; she was at the remove that she wanted. For instance, the Escape was past the turnoff for 2207 New Missouri Trail South before Maya thought of Harry Sprague and Sangu Sethi — she saw her: big-lipped, big-haired, big shiny white teeth with a gap: the lurcher of the family — caught up in each other in bed, the dogs at their feet. She knew this steadiness would desert her soon, but it was holding for now, and past this she decided not to think. They were pulled up at the Dundee, idling, before she fully noticed they were in Adelaide.