9

SATURDAY MORNING he feels such a tender longing for Jello, such an ache in every bone, that he calls her, breaking all his rules.

Sleepy, surprised by his call, he can hear a growing excitement in David’s voice. He asks if he can speak with Jello. David tells him Jello is not there, but he expects her back later in the day. He suggests they meet downtown at four.

Until now, he has always been a cautious seducer. Now this caution seems precious, adolescent, absurd. He prepares himself for the day ahead, relieved that by the time he is out of the shower, Akiko is already at work, the studio lights blazing in what is a misty fall morning, overcast, mysterious.

He thinks: I am the Prince of Saturn, on a holiday on Earth. He leaves a brief note on the kitchen table, something vague about getting the car serviced. The old Studebaker justifies many absences. What’s more, such banalities have a way of dispersing the stench of smoke. The next thing he knows, he is out and about, a leopard on the prowl. The world unfolds and time dissolves. It is ten o’clock in the morning.

He sees a cigar store where he has flirted, heavily flirted, with a woman like Lucy, not much older than a child. Impatient with fate, her dreams much bigger than her means, she has a way of revealing not only what her naked body looks like, but what she is like in bed. He cannot look at her without imagining plowing into her.

He sees her right away behind the counter. As soon as she sees him, she gives him one of her best hot looks. A customer leaves; he suggests they have lunch together, asks when she takes off for lunch. She is wide-eyed, exhilarated by this sudden outspoken interest. Eleven, she says. Perfect. Only an hour away. He imagines her co-worker watches this come together with envy.

He kills time with what Akiko ironically calls “domestic bliss”: the bank, the drugstore, where he buys a carton of Kleenex in handsome bronze-colored boxes for the new Spells. When he returns for her, she is already waiting on the curb. He asks her what she’s in the mood for.

She’s a fantastic little tart; she simply reaches over and squeezes his crotch. He says: I know just the place. She says: So do I. As they approach the arboretum, she unzips his fly. There is a dirt road parallel to a new public road that circles far back into the woods and ends behind an abandoned gravel pit. They fuck like high school kids in a kind of frenzy. She smells of oyster mushrooms and won’t stay still. She’s showing off, eager to impress him. At some point he goes crazy with it and forces her ass. Things are out of control now; she is crying, fearful. This all goads him on. He tells her she’s incredibly sexy, not to be afraid, but he’s almost impossible to understand. He’s thinking of Jello, of David Swancourt, both of them, the mad edge to fucking a guy. This kid, he thinks, is small, her body sweet and compact, except for her breasts, which are on the verge of unmanageable. And although he fully appreciates the ripe fruit of her, he is thinking of the length and sinew of Jello’s thighs, and David’s ass, so that somehow he is fucking David, Jello, and the kid at the same time and comes, howling, and she, the little imp, pretends to come too, hoping to save the day and with it herself.