320
PARTISAN REVIEW
collected. It gave Beard time to see Inger exactly as she was, a slender,
pale girl with pensive grey eyes whose posture was exceptionally straight.
She made an impression of neatness, correctness, and youth. In this access
of plain reality, he felt no anger and no concern for the earrings. As he
could now see, they would look absurd on the colorless Inger. He felt
only that his heart was breaking, and there was nothing he could do
about it.
With a slow, uncertain smile, Inger said, "How are you?"
Beard picked up her suitcase. "You always travel first class?"
"Not always."
"It depends on the gentleman who answers the door."
''I'm very pretty," she said, her tone sweet and tentative, and faintly
self-mocking.
"Also lucky."
"I don't think so ."
"I'm sure of it."
He put her suitcase onto the seat strewn with magazines. Then he took
her hand, drew her toward him, and slid the door shut behind her. She
said, "Please. Do give me a moment," but she didn't resist when he
pressed her to the floor, his knee between her thighs. Her grey eyes were
noncommital and vast as the world. Beard raised up on his knees to undo
his trousers and then he removed Inger's sandals. He kissed her feet and
proceeded to lick her legs, and then he hooked the crotch of her
underpants with an index finger and drew them to the side and he licked
her until she seized his hair with her fists and pulled him up, needing him
inside as much as he needed her. He whispered, "I love you," his mouth
against her neck, and he shut his eyes in a trance of pleasure and thrust
into her, in her clothes, as the train pressed steadily into a mute and
darkening countryside.
