A Certain Slant of Light (24 page)

  
I held my textbook open, but the words were as meaningless
as mouse prints. I stared at the white space between the pages. I noticed how childlike my slim wrists and small hands appeared.
It seemed scandalous for such a young body to be clicking with
desire. Had I been many years older when I had first felt this
way? When the bell rang next, I walked to the library, searching
for James with a savage thirst but not finding him.

  
Library practice consisted almost entirely of shelving books. I
rolled the loaded cart up and down the aisles. A handful of stu
dents taking independent studies sat at desks or at the long tables
in front, reading or writing. One was sleeping. When I had
shelved my books, I chose an armful of novels and poetry. I de
posited them on the front counter and peered over the pile. "How many may I take out?"

  
When James found me waiting beside the recycling cans, I was standing next to my bulging book bag. He kissed me for a
long moment, holding my shoulders, perhaps to keep me from
pressing my whole body against his. Then he tried to lift my bag.

  
"My God," he said. "What happened?"

  
"I found out one may check out twenty books at a time from
the school library."

  
"They make soft-cover books now, you know." He handed me
his own bag and picked up mine with both hands. "Come with
me."

  
I followed him behind the auditorium to where a fire exit had
been propped open with a wooden ruler. He opened the door for
me, making sure no one was watching. It was very dark. I
touched his face, but he said, "Wait." Taking my hand, James led
me into the school's theater, through the narrow pathway back
stage that was lined with ladders and tall canvases stretched on
wooden frames. It sounded hollow as a cave and smelled of
mildew and wood shavings.

  
At the base of a built-in wooden ladder, he took both our bags
and pushed them under a table. He pointed up and, without hesi
tation, I started to climb. At the top was a platform already
spread with a thick black curtain like a velvet bed. The floor was as wide as a rowboat and, although I could stand without crouch
ing, James had to duck his head. It was like a tree house. I had
never explored it in my spirit form. I stepped out of my shoes and felt the cloth with my bare feet. The stage, twenty feet below, was
a beautiful lake of darkness.

  
"Miss Helen," said James, "I don't want to compromise you."
He stood, his head bowed and one hand holding the cross
beam above him.

  
"If I am in any way taking advantage of the situation
..."
"As far as I know," I said, "we are the only two of our kind in
the whole world. Who could be more mated in God's eyes?"

  
That was all he needed to know. There was a confusion of
clothes among our kisses. He was trying to the take my dress off
over my head while I struggled with his denim pants, which had
far too many metal buttons. One of my shoes slipped off the plat
form and hit the stage, with a bang like a rifle shot.

  
How strange it was to open his clothes without shame. I was
often shocked when modern women in books and movies became
the aggressors, pushing their partners onto beds or stopping ele
vators between floors. Even Mrs. Brown would startle me by her sudden seductions, rousing Mr. Brown's interest so quickly that I
hardly had time to escape. Although I could not recall who had
taught me as a girl or what words had been chosen, I knew the
etiquette—the bride waits, seen but not heard, ready to open at
his command. His pleasure is the goal, and hers, if any, is the se
cret. But this was new. Everything seemed new with James.

 
  
Now I marveled at my own boldness. When we lay down in
the bed of black drapes, there was only skin between us. He put
his hand down to guide himself into me, and a sharp pain made
me gasp.

  
"Is this your first time?" he asked.

  
"No."

  
"I meant for Jenny."

  
"Oh." I could feel his whole body trembling, but he waited. "I
don't know," I said.

  
"Am I hurting you?" he asked.

  
"I'm all right."

  
With relief he pushed in. A small sound from my throat came
back to me, a sister echo out of the cathedral darkness. A deep re
call made me squirm into the shape of him and cling. All around
us the shadows pulsed with the rhythm of his sounds, a whisper breath with each thrust. My answers as soft as bird talk. The in
visible depths above shifted with hidden ropes and dark lights
like the hushed sway of limbs in night trees. As I pressed his
lower back to me, my vision went white and a wave of sweetness
rushed everywhere, even into my scalp. I didn't know I had cried
out until I heard the echo. James covered my mouth with his,
then broke off the kiss when his body arched. He lifted me off
the cloth with his arms around my waist.

  
"James," I said.

  
He didn't answer. He rocked with me for a moment.

  
"Was that your first time?" I asked.

  
He finally started breathing again and blinked at me. "I don't
know." Then he laughed.

  
We lay braided together, but our teeth started to chatter. Our
skin was wet and there was a draft in the loft. He pulled his shirt
and my sweater over us like blankets. I felt almost dizzy, imag
ined the loft was rocking on a river, taking us downstream under
a moonless sky.

  
"How did you take the body?" he asked me.

  
I shocked myself by laughing about it. "I went into her at a
church picnic during the prayer."

  
"You didn't."

  
"They thought I'd had a holy vision."

  
"Where do you live?" James asked me.

  
"I don't know," I said, having forgotten to take notice. "I don't
know my phone number either."

  
How amazing, how unexpected, that after my heart had
stilled and my body had relaxed, he was still holding me, so in
tent on my every word and gesture. Why I had anticipated loneli
ness afterward, I couldn't say.

  
"Have you started to remember things yet?" he asked.

  
"Only glimpses." I didn't like the feelings that went with
most of my moments of recall. "Tell me what else
you
remem
ber," I said.
   
*

  
"Let's see." He was staring at me, tracing the shape of my jaw
and collarbone with his fingertips. "This morning I remembered
that my mother had half her finger missing, here." He held up
his right hand, the index finger bent in half. "When she did up her apron, she flipped the ties in this funny way." He tried to
demonstrate the little dance of her hands. Then he put his face to my neck and breathed in.

  
I jumped when the bell rang.

  
"We both have second lunch," he said, kissing my throat. "We
can stay here until one o'clock."

  
"And miss lunch?" I sat up. "I still haven't tasted an apple."

  
We dressed each other and then James climbed down first,
holding one of my shoes. I climbed down the ladder barefoot. He had found my missing shoe on the stage, because at the bottom of
the ladder, James knelt in front of me and placed both on my feet.

  
When we'd picked up each other's book bags again, he looked
at me with a peculiar smile.

  
"What's wrong?" I asked.

  
"You look mussed," he laughed. "It looks as if someone has
been doing this—"He put his hands on either side of my head
and kissed me deeply while moving his fingers into my hair.

  
When we reached the courtyard, it was already filled with students sitting at tables, on benches, and on the grass, eating
sack lunches and from cafeteria trays. We stopped under a tree.

  
"Do you have a lunch ticket?" he asked.

  
I searched the purse in my book bag. There was a comb, a
small cloth bag, a mirror, a tissue, a thin box of chewing gum,
and a wallet. I opened it and James pulled out a plastic card with a black band on the back and the school crest on the front.

  
"This is it," he said.

  
"I live on Lambert Drive," I said, having found my driver's li
cense.

  
"You must have flunked your driving test," James told me.
"Otherwise you'd have a photo on your license."

  
I put it away, pretending to be insulted by the suggestion that
I could flunk anything. Something about the license bothered me,
though I didn't know what.

  
"So what's your last name?" he asked me.

  
This amused me, considering what we had just been doing.

  
"Thompson," I said.

  
"Well, Miss Thompson of Lambert Drive," said James.
"Would you have lunch with me?"

  
In my girlhood it was rare for a bride to see her groom's bare
arm or a groom his bride's naked ankle before the wedding night.
The Bacchanalian abandon with which modern young people ex
plored each other still shocked me at times—the dance of mat
ing without courtship. Boys and girls hid in the library stacks or
behind the gym and flew at each other with no promise of love or
even kindness, tasting one another in clumsy attempts to steal
pleasure before they could be hurt or hated.