She takes it eagerly, crouching beside me. “What should I do?”
“Hold it firmly,” I hear myself say. “If you cut yourself, it’s your own fucking fault.”
She doesn’t flinch as I guide her hand, showing her how to slice upward through the hide so you don’t get hair on the meat and avoid the stomach and lower colon. She’s not strong enough to saw through the pelvic bone so I take over, slicing the deer wide and pulling the guts into a bucket to throw away. I cut out the heart and liver, tossing them onto a clean patch of grass. January watches in fascination as I wash the deer’s insides with river water then string it up along a tree branch.
“Aren’t you going to pull off all the hair and cut out the venison?” she asks.
“No. You need to leave it for at least a day, so the rigor mortis wears off and the meat goes soft.”
She looks away. I’m sure the phrase rigor mortis made her think of dead people. Probably the ones I’ve killed.
Good.Run away and leave me alone.
Without something to do, I’m far too aware of her body, her breasts, her lips, her shy smile. She only came here to thank me. Whatever happens, I will not reveal any more of myself to this girl.
She stands and wanders closer to the water. “Did someone teach you to hunt?”
“No.”
She toes off one of her white sneakers. “You taught yourself?”
“No.”
“Then how…?”
“The men who worked for Eli’s Nonno hunted boar. Sometimes, I went with them.”
Not that they wanted me to come. I was big and young, and I was an outsider. I barely spoke Italian and what I knew I confused with English and Ukrainian. Doc told me they’d shoot me in the back of the head when I wasn’t looking, but they didn’t. They let me camp with them. As I began to bring down boar and red stag and roe deer, they stopped laughing at me. Instead, they passed me bottles of homemade grappa, the glass already blurry with greasy fingerprints.
The girl is looking at me and I sense her curiosity and longing. I might not be the only one remembering our turn in my bed. But what the fuck am I supposed to do about that? Invite her into my cabin? Give her flowers or kisses or whatever the fuck normal men do?
She shifts her weight, pushing off her other sneaker then bending to pull off her sock.
“What are you doing?”
She blinks at me. “Cooling off.”
“I told you, you’ll ruin your dress.”
She smiles sweetly and then in a long, heart-stopping moment, pulls the floaty material over her head.
She’s naked underneath, her porcelain skin shimmering in the sun. My mouth dries over. “Are you fucked in the head?”
She moves toward the water, her ass swaying in a confusing mix of the refined and the erotic. “I don’t know, maybe?”
She steps into the stream, gasping at how cold it is. I wait for her to dive, my cock hard against my leg, but she turns in a slow circle. “It’s so nice.”
I can’t talk. I can’t blink. I can’t move.
She scoops up a palmful of crystal water and splashes it across her breasts. My head squeezes like it’s in a vise. “I don’t have anything to dry you with.”
“That’s okay, I can use my dress.”
The fading sunlight dots the stream with flecks of gold. They dance around January Whitehall like they’re drawn to her. But of course, they are. Everything bright should be.
She raises her arms above her head and turns in a half-circle, humming a song that’s almost familiar. Then she lowers her arms and lifts a leg, diamond droplets clinging to her shoulders. She’s dancing for me. Dancing the way she used to dance in her ballet studio when I was pretending to be a janitor. Only now she’s not in leggings and a leotard, she’s naked in every way she can be.
She holds her hands in front of herself and then spins. Our eyes meet for just a second and I understand. She’s thanking me, letting me watch without having to touch. Without having to force things or hurt her the way I would if we fucked.
