Page 20 of The Spirit of Love
Listen. you can hear it rise.
The voice swells in my dreams, coaxing me from deep sleep. Where am I? How did I get between these silky sheets? Did that storm, that hike, those eyes—did any of that really happen?
I’m still tired, and these sheets are delicious, but a guilty feeling spreads like a storm cloud in my stomach, and I’m not sure why. I roll onto my side, stretching diagonally, arms over my head. When my fingers curl around his bedpost, the guilty cloud shifts into a shiver that dives between my legs.
I decide not to imagine him sleeping here. But does he take off his shirt before he climbs in? Does he sleep on his side, his stomach, or his back? Edie says you can tell by the creases in a person’s face. But Sam’s face is so smooth, maybe he sleeps hanging from the rafters like a bat.
How much heat comes off his skin when he’s dreaming? What other women have lain here? Why is it so easy to imagine Sam’s face between a woman’s legs, his shoulders flexing as she writhes?
A green tendril of jealousy curls around my chest, which makes me roll my eyes. Icannotbe jealous of imaginary women having twenty orgasms in a row on a random stranger’s face.
Butishe a random stranger?
Yes. Although he may not have felt like one last night, he is. I know next to nothing about this man, which means I can’t do what my body’s begging for.
I sit up in bed—God, this bed—and pull back the homemade curtain covering the small loft window. Daylight avalanches into the room.
I check the analog clock on the dresser by the bed. Holy hell, it’s almost noon.
I pad toward the wooden ladder leading down from the loft. I try not to notice that Sam’s bedroom is enchanting—clean and spare and sparkling—but I do:
A book ofNew York Timescrossword puzzles and tortoise-shell reading glasses on a glass tray by the bed.
A mahogany box on the dresser, left open so I can see the corner of his driver’s license—a pornographically good picture, along with a set of keys and a wind-up watch with a leather strap.
Behind the box, a framed Polaroid of what must be little boy Sam. He looks around five years old, and he sits in a forest on a fallen tree, between his stunning mother and a father he’s grown up to look like.
Descending the ladder, the smell of burnt toast finds me. I don’t see Sam in the main room, only charred bread slices on the top of the trash. It makes me smile to imagine him burning them. Toast isn’t one of his two dishes. This scorched breakfast is evidence of his honesty.
And evidence that I’m in trouble, gazing into the trash with a goofy smile on my face. I can’t be seen like this. I can’tbelike this.
I move to the bathroom, where I find my dried clothes,folded—yes, horror, even my paisley thong, tactfully tucked into the pocket of my cutoffs.
I put my clothes back on, fold his, and use the spare toothbrush again. I like his toothpaste. I like knowing what he tastes like when he goes to bed.
Through the window that looks onto the back porch where we’d listened to the dawn, I see him, and the man is doing one-armed pull-ups—shirtless—on a metal bar. His body glides, outside gravity, muscles flexing.
I wish I weren’t eight years older with a skepticism that makes me feel warm and wise in Venice but uselessly cold on Catalina. I wish I didn’t have a new career to launch, an industry to dominate.
I wish he’d asked me to stay.
But because life is what it is, I scrawl the following note:
Sam,
Had to run. Heaps of zombie work to do today. Thank you for the S&R.
—Fenny
I write quickly, not letting myself second-guess my phrasing or I’ll be here all day. I can’t risk Sam turning around to complete his reps on the other trifurcated arm, because he might see me, and I might see his pecs, and my paisley thong might quickly hit the floor.
I take one last look at him, fan myself, and slip out the frontdoor, grabbing my shoes as I go. I carefully close the main door behind me, but the screen door—I hadn’t realized—squeaks like Fran Drescher’s voice onThe Nanny.
“Fuck,” I mutter, then freeze, trying to discern if he heard.
“Fenny?” his honeyed voice calls from so close, he must be inside the cabin. He must be a single wall away. “Is that you, sleepyhead?”
How can he sound so intimate, like we’ve been friends—or more—for years?
