She met him at the door, and his jaw dropped. She was wearing the net
bra he liked, a pair of semi-transparent panties, and nothing else.
'You look delicious,' he said. 'Where are the kids?'
'Missy Dandridge took them. We're on our own until eight-thirty… which gives
us two and a half hours. Let's not waste it.'
She pressed against him. He could smell faint, lovely scent—was it attar of
roses? His arms went around her; first around her waist, and then his hands
found her buttocks as her tongue danced lightly over his lips and then into his
mouth, licking and darting.
At last their kiss broke and he asked her a bit hoarsely: 'Are you for dinner?'
'Dessert,' she said, and then began to rotate her lower body slowly and
sensuously against his groin and abdomen. 'But I promise you you don't have to
eat anything you don't like.'
He reached for her but she slipped out of his arms and took his hand. 'Upstairs
first,' she said.
She drew him an extremely warm bath, then undressed him slowly and
shooed him into the water. She donned the slightly rough sponge-glove that
usually hung unused on the shower-head, soaped his body gently, then rinsed it.
He could feel the day—this horrible first day—slipping slowly off him. She had
gotten quite wet, and her panties clung like a second skin.
Louis started to get out of the tub, and she pushed him back gently.
'What—'
Now the sponge-glove gripped him gently—gently but with almost unbearable
friction, moving slowly up and down.
'Rachel—' Sweat had broken all over him, and not just from the heat of the
bath.
'Shush.'
It seemed to go on almost eternally – he would near climax and the hand in the
sponge-glove would slow, almost stop. Then it didn't stop but squeezed, loosened,
squeezed again, until he came so strongly that he felt his eardrums bulge.
'My God,' he said shakily when he could speak again. 'Where did you learn
that?'
'Girl Scouts,' she said primly.
She had made a stroganoff which had been simmering during the bathtub
episode, and Louis, who would have sworn at four o'clock that he would next want
to eat sometime around Halloween, ate two helpings.
After, she led him upstairs again.
'Now,' she said, 'let's see what you can do for me.'
All things considered, Louis thought he rose to the occasion quite well.
Afterward, Rachel dressed in her old blue pajamas. Louis pulled on a
flannel shirt and nearly shapeless corduroy pants—what Rachel called his grubs—
and went after the kids.
Missy Dandridge wanted to know about the accident, and Louis sketched it in
for her, giving her less than she would probably read in the Bangor Daily News the
following day. He didn't like doing it—it made him feel like the most rancid sort of
gossip – but Missy would accept no money for sitting, and he was grateful to her
for the evening he and Rachel had shared.
Gage was fast asleep before Louis had gotten the mile between Missy's house
and their own, and Ellie was yawning and glassy-eyed. He put Gage into fresh
diapers, poured him into his sleeper-suit, and popped him into his crib. Then he
read Ellie a story-book. As usual, she clamored for Where the Wild Things Are,
being a veteran wild thing herself. Louis convinced her to settle for The Cat in the
Hat. She was asleep five minutes after he carried her up and Rachel tucked her in.
When he came downstairs again, Rachel was sitting in the living room with a
glass of milk. A Dorothy Sayers mystery was open on one long thigh.
'Louis, are you really all right?'
'Honey, I'm fine,' he said. 'And thanks. For everything.'
'We aim to please,' she said with a curving, slight smile. 'Are you going over to
Jud's for a beer?'
He shook his head. 'Not tonight. I'm totally bushed.'
'I hope I had something to do with that.'
'I think you did.'
'Then grab yourself a glass of milk, doctor, and let's go to bed.'
He thought perhaps he would lie awake, as he often had when he was interning
and days that were particularly hairy would play over and over in his mind. But he
slid smoothly toward sleep, as if on a slightly inclined, frictionless board. He had
read somewhere that it takes the average human being just seven minutes to turn
off all the switches and uncouple from the day. Seven minutes for conscious and
subconscious to revolve, like the trick wall in an amusement park haunted house.
Something a little eerie in that.
He was almost there when he heard Rachel say, as if from a great distance: '—
day after tomorrow.'
'Ummmmmm?'
'Jolander. The vet. He's taking Church the day after tomorrow.'
'Oh.' Church. Treasure your cojones while you got 'em, Church, old boy, he
thought, and then he slipped away from everything, down a hole, sleeping deeply
and without dreams.