Please Come In

They’ve just finished. They’re putting themselves back together, smoothing their clothes and hair. His is the color of dead leaves; hers the ruddy meat of a fig. They brush their teeth using the same brush, something she does not usually do. There is a large mirror in the bathroom and each watches the other in it. Their reflections, not the one standing next to them. Her face is still flushed red; his unshaved and ashen. The man places himself on the couch, drapes his arm over its back, his ankle hooked on the opposite knee. It is not a natural pose, more for an absent audience, imaginary onlookers, than himself or even her. It has only been a few weeks, but he feels as though he no longer knows how to occupy his own body, does not remember what to do with it when they’re not together. How did he walk before? Where did he place his hands? He hears the woman down the hall. Putting on makeup. Reassembling her room. She will make the bed smooth but leave one small dimple or bump in the middle, a pillow left askew, wary of what perfection might give away. It’s a loft, open and exposed, the furniture adrift in a sea of blonde wood and sunlight. There is nowhere to hide in that big room and he often feels as though someone is standing behind him. There is a knock. She emerges, her dress a study in contrasts, fitted yet fluid, deep green and black, the chiaroscuro of an El Greco. In a flutter, a wave of air, she passes him, all the while scanning the floor, stopping to turn a circle, to search for what is out of place. She finds only him on the couch looking not like himself, seeming very small. She wants him again-she does-and when she gets to the door, she pauses, not sure of what to do with her face, how to say to this new person Hello, please come in. How nice to see you again. Her hand on the knob, but instead she turns herself around, rushes forward, and crushes his face with hers, her body on his, a stroke of color awakening a blank canvas. For a moment, he is not there, he is instead the one outside waiting to come in, both the man now and the man he was just hours before. He had cradled a bottle of burgundy wine in his arm, a growing, flickering desire in his stomach. He thought about that song she was always singing, Anticipation is so-much-bet-ter. What does it tell her of the moment between being and not being. But being what, he thinks? Satisfied? Together? Would it be different for her were it not a betrayal? He does not want to think about it. Her knee grazes one of his ribs, she reminding him of his body, and his hands come alive on her waist, the back of her thighs. The knock comes again, a more insistent fist. Why is she having people over? Who is out there now? He nudges her away, but she is on him fiercely, the same thing, some thing awakening in her again. Was it she or the twisting, struggling energy inside her that had said it, just an hour before? Or was it he? A breath lost in the passage between their mouths. No, she had said it. But it felt like a wish of his made manifest, at once formed and fulfilled. He pushes her-hard-and now she is up, standing breathless. She loves being pushed away by him. It is a matter of perspective, she knows. For the longest time she has felt it: I don’t want to do, but want things done to me. Her eyes are wide and fervid but grow tame, shifting to the one who is outside, arriving. She will be cool, she decides. Calm. No need to get excited just yet. This was, after all, her favorite part. The just before. The almost there. She opens the door. A pause, a beat in time. He steps in, exhibiting a shy confidence. In his arms is a bottle of wine and he slides it onto a side table, scraping the surface as a fiddler might warm up his bow. The man says: You look like you’ve just robbed a bank. She draws a pistol finger to his chest. Bang bang. You’re as good as dead, she says. I hid the money in the mattress. Oh yes? he asks, glad for her ease, this transition. But he has become wary: Will it be the same? Will he feel, as always, like he is being watched? It is impossible not to follow her, that wry smile, the shifting, snapping whip of her green dress, the luster of an unripened apple. In her room, they are quickly on each other, ripping at the other’s seams. Funny about what he said in the doorway, he thinks, when he is the one who is stealing. But he is rapt, with this body that does not belong to him, how close he can get and still not know all that it can do. He is thinking this when she says it, a whisper so clear that it sounds as though it comes from inside his own mind. Hit me, she says. And he does, both his face and his hand feeling the sting. He hits her and splits into a man inside his body and a pile of clothes on the floor-an old skin.