Life Among Giants (29 page)

“I jumped out of the car,” Emily said suddenly, tugging at my shirt. “I just opened the back door and jumped out and ran into the woods.” I pulled at her shirt, too, pulled it over her head, just a light shirt, a shirt for an airplane ride to a warmer place. She looked like Emily again, someone I recognized again, her features adding up. She pressed her breasts naked against my chest and pulled at my belt—disquieting expertise—shoved my pants down as far as she could, put her hands on me, this sudden heat. So I put both hands in the back of her unlikely Capri pants—they were ruined anyway—and pushed them down off her butt, just popping the buttons in front, pushed them down, soaked panties and all—she'd been in the rain for hours.

“On the way to Kennedy,” she said.

I got my shirt the rest of the way off and tripped over my pants, sat my naked butt unintentionally on the mud and gravel she'd brought in. I said, “You jumped out of the car?”

“I just opened my door at a light and jumped out.”

We both laughed. Suddenly it all seemed pretty funny.

She didn't wait for me to get my difficult shoes off but fell on me naked and crawled to my mouth and kissed me more, our foreheads banging—we were no less clumsy than ever—our brows knocking, our tongues counting teeth, her hair falling out of its braid thick and black and soaked, the smell of vanilla and rain, her hips pushing at me, her cold toes pushing my pants down as far as they'd go with the stupid shoes in the way and then her legs straddling me and her hand on my hard-on, way too skillfully putting it to herself, her soaked self, all but drinking it in, and she fucked me, that's the only way to put it, with every bit of an athlete's attention and focus, muscle, too. Huskily, rapidly the words tumbled from her, like she couldn't stop talking, all the things she'd planned to say: “I jumped out of the car at the tollbooth in probably Greenwich and just took off.”

“Whoa,” I said, trying to get my hips flat on the linoleum floor—the girl was cracking my pelvis.

“And I lied to you,” she said, pushing herself on me, around me, her eyes full of lights, pushing her pubis on me uncomfortably till finally I got my hips square enough to push back, push up, arching myself up with every muscle, pushing up and into her maybe all of three times till I felt everything building and humming and massing at the gates.

“I lied to you,” she said again emphatically. “I lied, I lied a lot.”

I tried to pull out—yes, you lied, so what—tried to disengage, knew everything about babies being made, but Emily wouldn't have any of it, clutched me with her legs, kissed me with her hot mouth, kissed me and clenched me and I let go, like nothing I'd ever felt or anticipated, let go in silent waves and lingering spasms, nothing like alone, nothing like with Jinnie and her dry little hand, more so even than with Sylphide, those triumphant leaps she'd made around her studio.

“I
felt
that,” Emily said.

My first time, not hers.

W
EARING MY FLANNEL
shirt and nothing else after a shower, Emily made a noodle soup from the dregs in our kitchen: one frozen chicken leg, odd vegetable butts from the drawers in the fridge, a shake or two from all those jars and jars of untouched herbs and spices in the pantry, finally a decade-old can of coconut milk. Just add spaghetti, which we had in abundance. And the Noodle-Loving Boys had nothing on me.

Afterwards she went through her purse, found a little bag of pot, tucked some fat pinches into a tiny pipe from a hidden pocket, lit the bowl with a miniature Zippo she stored in there as well. It's not like I didn't know: her crowd at school had always had the whiff of dope about them. I refused a puff, refused another.

“You need
something,
” she said. She went to the liquor cabinet, Mom's A&P brand Vodka. In the kitchen she made tea and honey, added the last teaspoons of coconut milk, a couple of spices, let it all steep a while, total focus on the task, her legs long and brown and recently parted, her hair still damp, back in its loose braid. At length she poured her concoction over ice, two big tumblers, and added an equal amount of vodka. She might have been in her own house, the way she led me into the living room, set our drinks up on coasters, put on a record, Brazilian jazz of my father's, his best moods, one hand on his belly, the other out to the side, make-believe samba, Mom drifting in to make it real, all love and smiles. My girl drifted away into the music, sipped at her drink. She leaned into me, kissed my chest.

“Mark saved my letters,” she started.

“Letters, so what,” I said, but I already knew what was coming. I'd been thinking about saying something about the little creep getting pounded, not now.

“He gave them to Mr. Demeter. Did you hear? You heard. Mark got beat up. By like grown-ups, weird. I'm worse than grounded.
Th
e letters were pretty, I guess, dirty.”

“You mean, like . . .”

“Like really dirty. Like everything we did. I pretended like I'm so innocent, but really I'm not. Okay? Okay, I said it. I just wanted you to like me. Because I like you.”

I sipped my drink, found it delicious, sweet, direct contrast to the conversation, heavy bite of alcohol, whoa. I said, “You didn't have to worry about that.
Th
at's in the past.”

“He would strangle me and pull my hair. He's very crazy. I liked it, okay?”

“All right,” I said. “
Th
at's fine.
Th
is is getting to be quite an apology.”

“It's not an apology. It's an explanation. Demeter called my father. It's like a hundred letters. We did stuff all summer, Mark and me. I wrote him a letter every single day because they turned him on. And now we all have to have a conference. Mark and me and his parents and mine and Demeter and Mrs. Haggerty and maybe more, maybe the police.
Th
ere's some drug stuff in there. And a time we broke into the field house at the polo club.”

“Emily. And you're not making this up?”

“I wish. He thought you set him up.
Th
ese guys?
Th
ey said, ‘A message from a friend.' And they basically kidnapped him right from school.”

“Message from a friend?”

“Probably some drug thing, that's what I think. Mother and Daddy are freaking. I mean, all that, and then your father. Mother showed me
Th
e New York Times
yesterday. Holy shit. It's like a crime wave around here. I'm never to see you again.”

We drank our drinks.
Th
e Brazilians played on. We listened to two whole songs, quite separate on the couch. I'd told my dad about Mark. I was pretty sure I'd told him. How Mark had popped me in the jaw. Message from a friend!

Dad?

Emily said, “Okay, and it gets worse. After the thing with your father in the paper, and after this morning, my mother announces that I better pack a second suitcase, because she and I are going to
stay in Seoul.
We are moving to Seoul! She went
nuts,
David. She blames it all on the United States. Also on my dad and his ‘Black-Negro' ways. She's full of racist stuff, I'm telling you. And he's not standing up for me. She runs him like a factory. David, they were going to make me stay. I might have never come home.”

Emily rose to get her little pipe, had a puff or two more. I felt my disgust return. She was no victim. She was bad as Mark, maybe worse.

“
Th
e other thing is that I love you,” she said.

“You do?”

“I really do.”

I pulled her up to my face, kissed her mouth. I could taste the pot. She kissed me back, kind of the old way, and then she really kissed me. We held on tight. I wanted to say I loved her, too, couldn't get it out.

“I'm in big trouble,” she said. “I'm in really big trouble.”

“So am I,” I said.

She kissed my chest, kissed my belly, took me straining in her mouth. Whoa. She knew when to stop, too, called the moment perfectly. “Go in me now,” she said, arranging herself so I could, my second time. She made noises like I hadn't heard before. I kept thinking of Mark. Should I strangle her and bite her and pull her hair? I was quick, I was gentle, managed to last a few strokes longer than the first try. We lay a while in my contentment, the samba record repeating for the third time.

“I'm not really done,” she said after a while.

“Okay?”

“I mean, you know. Like I did for you.” She wriggled, positioned herself, pushed at my shoulders, made it plain what she was saying. It wasn't like I hadn't heard of such a thing, even knew the Latin. I slid down, couch cushions falling all over the floor, my first view that intimate of anyone, the most beautiful vista I'd ever encountered. I gave a few tentative kisses, fell enthusiastically to my task, the root and salt fragrance of her. She pulled away some, said, “Just easy, is how that works.” I slowed things down, relaxed into it, something going right, going very right, a kind of violence building—she pushed herself on me, the rhythm breaking, something going right for sure, really going right, gathered herself and gathered herself and gathered herself and then abruptly let go, let go in several waves, squeezed me and my fingers and face away from her suddenly with her legs and a giggle unlike her.

“I
DON'T NEED
sleep,” Emily said. I'd finally got her to climb the stairs with me.

“I'm more of a sleep person,” I said.

I pushed the door open to my room and we staggered in together.

“Oh,” she said.

All my photos of Sylphide, spread out on my covers!

Emily looked me square in the eye, awaited an explanation.

“I just like her,” I said.

“You like her a lot.”

“I like her a lot,” I said, “yes. Plus, I'm working over there.”

“It's okay,” she said. “So long as you like me.”

“It's very different,” I said. “How I feel about you.”

“Very different,” she said. “Like, unattainable versus a blow job in the living room with a nice cold drink in your hand after you've already been laid on the kitchen floor?”

“Maybe something along those lines, yes.” I gathered the gallery in a loose stack, put it on a high shelf in my closet, really wished the girl hadn't seen them.

She said, “I got her note, by the way. In my locker, thanks. She wants me to come dance for her, do an audition.
Sylphide,
David. So like, I'm going to go live in Korea? Are you kidding me?”

“So that's why you're here?”

“Oh, David. Yes.” Kisses, her hands on me.

D
AWN, AND WE
still hadn't slept more than an hour, tangled up naked in my sheets under airplanes. Emily was pumping me for information: “But, I mean, what's she really like?”

“She's nice. She's hurt her shoulder, you know.
Th
ere was, well, she had an accident.”

“An accident?”

I skipped ahead: “Her real name is Tenke Tangstad. She named herself
Sylphide when she was maybe your age.”

“No, much younger.”

“Well, right, you'd know all this. It's the name of some second-rate ballet.”

“Second-rate?
La Sylphide
?”

“
Th
at's what Kate said, second rate.”

“Well, we all know about Kate. I mean all about Kate and Sylphide.”

“I guess.” What we didn't all know about was Lizard and Sylphide. Increasingly guilty, I felt I was balancing my way along the top edge of an endless two-way mirror, Emily on the dark side, the great ballerina seeing all. But Emily and I hadn't really been together till now, and Sylphide and I would never be, and as for honesty, some things were just best left unsaid. Overnight I'd caught up to Kate, sexually speaking. And learned a little Korean: my
jaji
was raw, Emily's
boji,
too. My airplanes turned on their threads.

A matter of subtlest movements and then raw or not Emily and I were making love again, less urgently, more companionably, like a conversation. In fact, she was talking, a series of languid, distant, disconnected sentences like sighs: “I saw it just like two years ago . . . . With Carla Fracci as the sylph and Erik Bruhn as James, amazing . . . . We've been studying it at conservatory, too . . . . It began the era of the romantic modern ballet . . . . Natural and ethereal settings, flowing dresses, satin toe shoes, ballerinas en pointe, partner lifts . . .” She climbed upon me, and the talk stopped, all right, deep kisses, whoa, till we'd climbed the mountain via the dozen ravines and seen the brilliant glaciers on the other side, a nice long climb up, a quick trot down among the wildflowers.

Flopping off me, she said, “But the big thing was it had a story—like, a really involved plot, which they didn't used to have.”