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NORMA MEACOCK
also. The station was dark and cool. He found a seat at the front
of the train and we made mouths through the glass window. I
supposed I ought to have made him sandwiches. I hoped he wasn't
hungry. He begged me to read some improving literature and sug–
gested Jane Austen. I shook my fist. The whistle blew. The train
moved out and far, far away. The tears dropped from my eyes
onto the floor and I rushed into a Ladies and sat on the lavatory
seat thinking of my mother, who had warned me sternly never to
do such a thing "now you have hairs on your bee tee em," and
positing a woman who really can't say no because she loves it.
13
I was twenty-seven and he was forty-two. When we woke,
mornings, the room stank like a fox's den. Even allowing for un–
washed bodies, foul breath from our carious teeth, and Klaus's
enormous feet hairy and white streaked with shreds of dirt matted
by sweat, the odor was strong. "For pungency," I told him, "the
stinking blackthorn must play second fiddle to you." We left the
windows shut. I nuzzled my nose into his wet armpit and breathed
rapturously. He stretched a hand out and picked his grey socks off
the fluff-balls under the bed. Their sales were matted to felt. He
rolled them up and deployed each lumpy sphere inside his pajama
jacket. His factitious bosom pouted invitingly. Then he offered his
fat bum, pink and charmingly spotted with moles. I whispered
tenderly, "My honey-cake," and he wriggled this delicious pumpkin.
I pressed my cheek against his hairy reins. I licked his coccyx.
His face was a smiling moon, a cream-lapping cat. My position was
awkward, horizontal, feet pointing east, head west, lower in the
bed than he, otherwise the same. I twisted round and licked the
cleft. "It tastes like bitter chocolate," I mumbled between his globes.
He cried "Bosch!" and jumped up. His socks fell out of his jacket.
I relaxed spread-eagled on the candlewick cover while he ranged
the bookshelves.
In
the total history of life, in that vast span, this
