Chapter 44 #2
than virginity. Once you murdered someone you had to carry it forever. You went to bed with it and it was with you when you
woke up. He had dreamt of Gwen in his bed for months, but it was Jayne he came home to at night. Jayne was always there in
the dark, grinning at him from her charred and blackened face.
“Is Van in the apartment?” Gwen asked, her face close to his neck, so he couldn’t see her expression, and he did not need
her to explain why she was asking.
“He’s out tonight. He had some studying to do.”
“Oh, he did, did he?” Gwen asked and dared a glance into his face. She was struggling not to smile. “I’m not surprised, a
young man of his scholarly inclinations. What’s he studying?”
“The bottom of one of Colin Wren’s Scotch glasses, I believe, and a hand of poker.”
“Good. How much longer do we have to dance before we can get the hell out of here? I’ve had about all of high school I can
stand, and my parents don’t expect me home until the witching hour.”
“Gwen,” he said, a discomfort and a hesitancy in his voice. “Gwen, I got a letter a few days ago.”
“Yes,” she said. Her face still turned to his, her eyes unblinking behind her glasses. “And I know what was in it.”
“You do?” he asked, briefly flummoxed.
“Van told Donna and Donna told me. It isn’t a surprise, Arthur. I knew you were going. I knew they would accept you. When
do you leave for Oxford?”
“The fall term—they call it Michaelmas—begins in September. But . . . I’ll go at the beginning of August. I have family there,
my father’s family. They’ll help me move in, and—I try to spend some time with them every year. It seems important to know
them. Since I can’t know him.” He took her hands in his and dropped his head. She put her hand under his chin and lifted his
face back up.
“We can still steal something just for us, can’t we?” Gwen asked. “Before you go? Is that so wrong?” She smiled fondly at
him.
It was hard to speak. Maybe that was why he took to studying languages—he kept hoping to find one that would make it easier
to talk about what he felt. “I’m a little attached, Gwennie,” he said in a whisper. “That’s the thing.”
“I’m a little attached too,” she said, still smiling, but blinking suddenly at tears.
“I’m not like Donna or Van. I have to feel attached to do the next thing.
But I also know you’re going—and you need to go.
I know it means the world to you, although I don’t know why.
I know and I’m okay with it. I wouldn’t be okay if you tried to change your mind because of me.
I’m not asking to have you forever, Arthur.
Just tonight.” She laughed and brushed at a bright gem on her cheek.
“Arthur, old pal, we have solved at least fifty crosswords together. How much more of this smoking hot foreplay do you expect an ordinary girl like me to take?”
“I don’t think there’s anything ordinary about Gwen Underfoot,” he said. He smiled and kissed one cheek and the other and
then the mouth in between.
When they pulled up in front of the house, the porch and the windows were dark, and with the car switched off, the night seemed
to throb with cricket song. Arthur wished suddenly he had thought ahead, had bought flowers and left them on one pillow for
her, or had put a bottle of champagne in the fridge to chill. But he had not made such preparations because he had not allowed
himself to imagine the night ending here, had even advised himself not to bring her home. Be better than that, he had told himself. But if the last half year had shown him anything, it was his own capacity to do worse than expected.
“Do you like champagne?” he asked.
“Tickles my nose,” she said.
“Oh, whew,” he said. “I didn’t buy any.”
The engine ticked as it cooled.
“I’ve never done this before, old sport,” she said.
“Me neither,” he said, and when he said it, it felt entirely true. It was true. He had never made love with someone he adored, someone who could make him feel almost heartsick with happiness.
They went up the path, bumping shoulders. In psychological time, it took him approximately seven and a half hours to find
the key while she waited patiently behind him, although in real time he supposed it was only half a minute. While he was fumbling
for the light in the front hall, he reached back to take her hand—and for an instant imagined he would find King Sorrow’s
cold and scaly claw instead. What do you say to a threesome, mate, the dragon purred in his mind.
Gwen stopped him before he could flip the light switch. “Leave it off.” The door was still open to the street behind her when
she unbuttoned her sweater, then shrugged off one shoulder strap of her dress.
“The door,” he said, his voice suddenly rough.
“No one is looking,” she said. “And no one can see. And the air feels good on my back.” The gown dropped with a dry rustle
and swish around her heels. She bit her lower lip while she worked to unclasp her bra. “This damned thing.”
“Christ,” he said, and got an arm around her while he shoved the door shut with the other hand.
She was tight and they had to be patient, working at it slowly and gently. He took his time to be sure it was all right, while
she urged him on, whispering it was fine, it didn’t hurt, although later, tired and happy, she admitted it had, just a little.
For a long time afterward, he lay on his side next to her, enjoying the flush across her chest and throat, moving his fingers
between her breasts to feel the trip-trap of her hurrying heart. Her hand closed over his after a while and held his palm
to her breastbone.
“It’s still there, you know,” she said.
“What is?” he asked.
“The tattoo,” she told him. “I can show you, if you want.”
“No,” he said, his sides prickling with goose bumps. “No, thanks.”
“You haven’t noticed?”
He shook his head.
“Isn’t that funny? He left his mark on all of us. Do you think it’s an invitation? To call him back sometime?”
“He’s not coming back. Not ever. That’s over now.” He didn’t want to talk about it. He got up and went into the bathroom to
get rid of his condom. Grotesque little things, like the shed skin of a snake—he found them distasteful, but between Tana’s
pregnancy and Llewellyn’s illness, he was persuaded they were necessary until such time as they weren’t.
“I won’t get it, you know,” she said to him when he came back to bed.
“Get what?”
“AIDS,” she said. “I won’t get it looking after Llewellyn.” As if she had read his mind on the subject of prophylactics, and maybe she had—she had been half reading his thoughts since the beginning.
He furrowed his brow. “But you aren’t looking after him. Your mother is. You’re starting school in a few months.”
Gwen looked at the ceiling—she was still smiling, still easy, no tension in her body at all—but she sighed in a way that suggested
there was a sticky conversation ahead of them. Arthur felt a sudden tug of unease, but before the conversation could proceed,
the phone rang in the kitchen. They listened to the brash clamor of the bell, three, four, five times.
“Probably Van, wanting to know if he can come home yet,” Arthur said.
“Can he?”
“No,” Arthur said. “I’ve many more wicked designs for your tender and innocent flesh.”
“Not so innocent flesh now!” she said merrily.
The phone stopped ringing. His hand slid down to her navel. The phone began to ring again.
“You should get one of those machines,” she said.
On the fifth ring he threw the sheets back and stalked naked into the kitchen and grabbed the phone.
“I’m in the middle of doing something,” he said.
“Yeah,” Tana Nighswander said, “and I know who you’re doing too, but pull your dick out of her and get dressed. You two are my goddamn ride to the goddamn hospital and
we need to go because I’m having this goddamn baby whether I goddamn want to or not.”
Maine Medical was a collection of smart, five-story towers made of brick and glass, surrounded by a green collegiate campus
and parking garages. Arthur cruised around and around it, looking for signs to the family center with an increasing sense
of desperation, while Gwen and Tana sat in the back of the Caddy.
“Take your time, sport,” Tana said. “I’ll just be back here emptying my birth canal all over these nice leather seats.” Then she made an angry sound and doubled over, clutching her abdomen, while Gwen stroked her between the shoulder blades. “Did a baby just fall outta me?”
Gwen leaned forward to squint into the footwell. “Nope. Not yet.”
He found the entrance to the family center at last and slowed at the curb. Gwen helped Tana out of the back. Tana was hunched
over, one hand resting on her great globe of a stomach, her legs pipestems beneath. She grimaced as if stepping into a face
full of cold wind.
“Thanks for driving me, Arthur,” Tana said. “That’s the nicest car I’ve ever rode in. I felt like an absolute princess. Next
time I’m in a car that nice, it’ll probably be a hearse.”
He watched them walk in through the automatic doors and then took off to find a place to park the Caddy. Ten minutes later
he was in the maternity ward, a warren of antiseptic corridors, bedrooms, and offices, managed by a quartet of chippy nurses
in soothing pink smocks. When Arthur said he was looking for Gwen and Tana Nighswander, one of the nurses invited him to have
a seat in Family Room B. Family Room B turned out to be a lounge with a few worn-out recliners in it and a TV tuned to CNN.
The windows offered a view of some air-conditioning units and, across the street, a dumpster. Arthur stood at the window and
watched a pair of raccoons digging through the trash. One of them sniffed a diaper and discarded it with unmistakable and
very human revulsion.
He was still at the window, long after the raccoons had gone on their way, when he saw Gwen reflected in the glass. She had
a hospital smock on over her prom gown now. She looked wide-eyed with exhaustion, although it wasn’t yet midnight.
“How’s it going?” Arthur asked.