Mañana Means Heaven

Chapter 8.

45 8 An hour had passed,or maybe it was five.Their brains were fuzzy with drink,and so all forms of measurement were off.Jack took a bath,and when he came out he was sopping wet with only a towel wrapped around his waist. Bea couldn’t help but feel a stitch of modesty about it. He dropped his clammy body down onto the bed and lit a cigarette, while she sat up against the headboard staring at the white-tipped goose bumps that formed over his biceps and stomach. She had not been with another man before Beto. Not in that way at least. She had kissed many, and one even pawed her breasts, but to actually press her thin naked body to another man’s, with his pulsing extremity deep inside her, as if to stake his claim—only Beto had landed that privilege. Jack got up and went over to the window and dropped his cigarette to the street below.He grabbed his wrinkled pants from the floor,slid them on beneath his towel, and watched her roll over onto one side of the bed and yawn. “I sure can’t wait to see Patsy tomorrow,” she said. It was nervous chatter. The warm venom of the Tokay was seeping from Jack’s head down past his stomach, settling between his thighs. He went and lay next to her, gently, his guts fluttered. She turned her back to him and the crescent arch of her hipbone rose like a wave. He lifted his hand, contemplating for a second, before resting it on her lowest rib.Though he could not see it, she smiled. By morning she would not remember clearly if what happened in those dark minutes after would in fact be true, or else a delicious dream, filed somewhere among the sour ones. When his touch landed, a sensation rose up and scattered in her pelvis like the branches of a tree. In the darkness their mouths found one another and refused to let go.His hard cold hand plowed under her blouse,her bra,kneading her warm breasts. Her slacks slid away to the floor. Underwear followed. She grabbed at the swell beneath his zipper and tugged and kissed his lips sloppily and sucked his earlobe.Their pupils darted wildly to gain their sight.Headlights slit the dark open and they caught a glimpse of each other’s bodies. She climbed 46 on top of him and her thighs quivered. He strained his eyes to get a good look at the landscape of her small frame. Her blue-bronze body arched, and the tiny rows of ribs sprawled like his own piece of fellaheen country, with its vast and fertile complexities, plains and valleys, peaks and ripples. She thrashed back and forth until her body, against his, was liquid, making its way down the pipeline, while he lifted his hips and dug deeper yet. His thick fingers scanned her body, touching all the parts that had forever been void of attention—the back of the ribs, wingspan of collarbone, tender flanks of calf muscle. More headlights cut the dark open. She could feel herself surrendering. She fought it, once more, before letting go entirely. Suddenly his fingers strummed the scar on her navel. She moaned and arched back. Again his hand stroked the soft tissue.This time she shrank and nudged his hand away, gently, then thrust her hips deeper onto him. He watched as the green of her eyes rolled like alfalfa in a harsh wind. She fell over and threw both hands against his bare chest to contain herself, gripping at the sparse patch of hair like she was tearing beets from the root. He uttered indecipherable words and they trickled on her neck, and she focused hard on holding back, for one last second. But then he took hold of her head and swallowed her mouth whole, and right then, all she could do was give way to the pressure that stemmed from all polar points on her body,imploding in her pelvis like a five-pointed star. When it was over,they lay tangled in the sheets,legs and arms collapsed sloppily over one another. Jack folded his right arm under his head and lay still. She reached over the side of the bed and found her underwear and slid them on. She could feel his eyes on her backside as she sat up and slipped her breasts into...