Reluctantly, slowly, simultaneously, as if in some tacit agreement, they took their hands from each other’s bodies; they stepped back and put distance between them.
The world seemed strange. Her head was still spinning. She felt like an astronaut rudely ejected from her shuttle while she was up in space.
He buttoned his jeans.
Funny how watching him get dressed in some ways felt more intimate than sliding her hands into his underwear.
She re-arranged her own wanton disarray. Dragged her fingers through her hair in a probably futile attempt to straighten it.
He drew in a long breath, and it was like he was drinking in the sight of her.
“Just... be sure, Glory.”
She knew he meant for his sake and for hers.
He didn’t kiss her good-bye. He did pause to pick up the forty-five single of “Hey Hey What Can I Do,” which he’d dropped.
It was unscathed.
“I’ll be keeping this,” he said.
He turned around and walked away, off toward the home he’d lived in for as long as she could remember.
And suddenly it was like every memory she’d ever had of Eli, at every age, in every season, walking away was superimposed on that big man walking away from her now.
She put her hands up to her hot face. Her body was ringing like a suspended fourth chord, but her whole soul felt scraped raw and ached like an open wound.
A cleansed wound, maybe.
But it still hurt like hell.
She sank into a crouch and pretty soon she was weeping again, for the enormity of everything, for the beauty of it, for her fear of the unknown, and for the big decision she’d have to make on her own. Without Eli or anyone.
One way or the other, it looked like she was going to lose something.
And finally she swiped at her eyes. And sighed. Boy, she was going to look like hell when she got home.
Finally she stood, exhausted as if she’d run the length of Hellcat Canyon and back.
And perhaps naturally, she began singing softly to herself. A sort of stop-start near waltz of a melody. The song of someone gasping for breath. Maybe out of fury. Maybe because he’d exhausted himself with lovemaking.
Too much crying today
Too much hurt
Too much truth
Too much dirt
Too much love
Too much fury
Too many things
We try to bury
It was raw, and had beauty and ache and promise, and it needed work. Like everything else in her life.
