“No. For an extra three-fifty a month, this baby is all mine.”
“Thank God. But it’s still nothing to be talking about on the phone. And certainly not at Al’s Diner over Prongburgers. Can you come for supper? We could have a little picnic in my backyard. Say around five?”
“That would be fine. I’ll bring a poundcake, or something.”
“That’s not what I want you to bring.”
“What, then?”
“I can’t say it on the phone, even if it’s not a party line. Something you buy in a drugstore. But not the Jodie Drugstore.”
“Sadie-”
“Don’t say anything, please. I’m going to hang up and splash some cold water on my face. It feels like it’s on fire.”
There was a click in my ear. She was gone. I undressed and went to bed, where I lay awake a long time, thinking long thoughts. About time and love and death.
At ten o’clock on that Sunday morning, I jumped into the Sunliner and drove twenty miles to Round Hill. There was a drugstore on the main drag, and it was open, but I saw a WE ROAR FOR THE DENHOLM LIONS sticker on the door and remembered Round Hill was part of Consolidated District Four. I drove on to Kileen. There, an elderly druggist who bore an eerie but probably coincidental resemblance to Mr. Keene back in Derry winked at me as he gave me a brown bag and my change. “Don’t do anything against the law, son.”
I returned the wink in the expected fashion and drove back to Jodie. I’d had a late night, but when I lay down and tried to nap, I didn’t even get in sleep’s neighborhood. So I went to the Weingarten’s and bought a poundcake after all. It looked Sunday-stale, but I didn’t care and didn’t think Sadie would, either. Picnic supper or no picnic supper, I was pretty sure food wasn’t the number one item on today’s agenda. When I knocked on her door, there was a whole cloud of butterflies in my stomach.
Sadie’s face was free of makeup. She wasn’t even wearing lipstick. Her eyes were large, dark, and frightened. For one moment I was sure she was going to slam the door in my face and I’d hear her running away just as fast as her long legs would carry her. And that would be that.
But she didn’t run. “Come on in,” she said. “I made chicken salad.” Her lips began to tremble. “I hope you like… you like p-plenty of m-may-”
Her knees started to buckle. I dropped the box with the poundcake inside on the floor and grabbed her. I thought she was going to faint, but she didn’t. She put her arms around my neck and held tight, like a drowning woman to a floating log. I could feel her body thrumming. I stepped on the goddamned poundcake. Then she did. Squoosh.
“I’m scared,” she said. “What if I’m no good at it?”
“What if I’m not?” This was not entirely a joke. It had been a long time. At least four years.
She didn’t seem to hear me. “He never wanted me. Not the way I expected. And his way is the only way I know. The touching, then the broom.”
“Calm down, Sadie. Take a deep breath.”
“Did you go to the drugstore?”
“Yes, in Kileen. But we don’t have to-”
“We do. I do. Before I lose what little courage I have left. Come on.”
Her bedroom was at the end of the hall. It was spartan: a bed, a desk, a couple of prints on the walls, chintz curtains dancing in the soft breath of the window air-conditioning unit, turned down to low. Her knees started to give way again and I caught her again. It was a weird kind of swing-dancing. There were even Arthur Murray footprints on the floor. Poundcake. I kissed her and her lips fastened on mine, dry and frantic.
I pushed her away gently and braced her back against the closet door. She looked at me solemnly, her hair in her eyes. I brushed it away, then-very gently-began to lick her dry lips with the tip of my tongue. I did it slowly, being sure to get the corners.
“Better?” I asked.
She answered not with her voice but with her own tongue. Without pressing my body against hers, I began to very slowly run my hand up and down the long length of her, from where I could feel the rapid beat of her pulse on both sides of her throat, to her chest, her breasts, her stomach, the flat tilted plane of her pubic bone, around to one buttock, then down to her thigh. She was wearing jeans. The fabric whispered under my palm. She leaned back and her head bonked on the door.
“Ouch!” I said. “Are you all right?”
She closed her eyes. “I’m fine. Don’t stop. Kiss me some more.” Then she shook her head. “No, don’t kiss me. Do my lips again. Lick me. I like that.”
I did. She sighed and slipped her fingers under my belt at the small of my back. Then around to the front, where the buckle was.
I wanted to go fast, every part of me was yelling for speed, telling me to plunge deep, wanting that perfect gripping sensation that is the essence of the act, but I went slow. At least at first. Then she said, “Don’t make me wait, I’ve had enough of that,” and so I kissed the sweaty hollow of her temple and moved my hips forward. As if we were doing a horizontal version of the Madison. She gasped, retreated a little, then raised her own hips to meet me.
