Annie started laughing. ‘Sullivan is nothing like my cat David … Sullivan is my neighbor.’
‘Oh, right, your neighbor … so where’s the cat?’
‘The cat? I don’t have a cat.’
David frowned.
Annie laughed again. ‘No cat David. Just a neighbor. Neighbor’s name is Sullivan … end of story.’
David nodded, still frowning. ‘So you don’t want me to go?’
‘No, I don’t want you to go.’
‘Which means that you want me to stay, right?’
Annie shrugged. ‘What is this … stupid day or something? Yes, I would like you to stay. Take off your coat, sit down, make yourself at home. You want some tea, some coffee?’
David took off his coat. ‘Some tea, yes, that would be good.’
He set his coat down on the chair inside the front door, looked around once more, and then crossed the room. He sat at the table where Annie and Sullivan had spent so many hours shooting the breeze, unfolding their thoughts for one another and airing them in that same mellow current.
Annie paused in the doorway to the kitchen, and standing there for a moment she was surprised at how different the entire room seemed to appear with someone new inside it.
David looked up at her. ‘What?’ he asked.
She shook her head and smiled. ‘Nothing David … relax, take it easy okay?’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Sure … I’ll relax. You okay now?’
She nodded. ‘I’m fine, just fine.’
Annie left him there amongst her co-ordinated colors and tell-tale possessions while she made tea. She was no more than
a few minutes, but when she returned she found him looking through the CD rack.
‘Sinatra,’ he said.
‘You like Sinatra?’
He turned and smiled at her. ‘I
love
Sinatra.’
She looked at his face. It was genuine. David Quinn loved Frank Sinatra.
‘Put some on if you want.’
David took the CD from the case, turned on the player, the amplifier, and within a moment Frank was joining them in the room with his inimitable rendition of ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin.’
‘Los Angeles, 30 April 1963,’ David said.
Annie frowned and sat at the table. ‘What was?’
David walked across the room and sat facing her. ‘This record.’
She shook her head. ‘You know that? When and where it was recorded?’
‘I do,’ David replied. ‘Do you think that’s really pathetic?’
She smiled, laughed a little. She was touched. He had shared something with her, something personal. ‘You’re asking me if I think that the fact that you know when and where this track was recorded is pathetic?’
‘Uh huh … a bit, maybe?’
She frowned and looked serious. ‘David, it’s possibly the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard.’
For a moment he was speechless, and then Annie started laughing, and then David Quinn was laughing too, and it seemed that Frank was looking over them and crooning ‘I’ve got you deep in the heart of me …’ like it had been written especially for this moment.
And then there was no-one making a sound but Frank, and though Annie O’Neill had lived in the apartment for the best part of seven years, though everything in it had been chosen by her, though each cushion and drape, each chair and lamp had been purchased after considerable thought and consideration,
there was something entirely strange about her surroundings.
She looked across the table at David Quinn, a man she had met only eight days before, and there was something so meaningful in the fact that
he
was there. Richard Lorentzen had been here, as had Michael Duggan, but they had never served to change the way she felt inside her own home. David Quinn had been there all of five minutes, and something
had
changed. Something definitely
had
changed.
‘Thank you for coming,’ she said. ‘Despite how pathetic you are, I appreciate your coming.’
David smiled, reached out his hand, and closed it over hers. He leaned forward.
‘Kiss this pathetic little man would you Annie?’ he whispered.
The moment was there, right there in front of her. It was the moment of which she’d thought on the train after the priest had gone. It was this moment that required her decision, because now she could choose – to stay with it, or to let it go.
She looked at David, looked at his eyes, looked
through
them to see what lay on the other side, and tried to hear the language his expression was speaking. There was no way to tell such things, but it would always be like this, and if she turned back now there would be the ‘what if’ life that Sullivan had spoken of. She would look back at this moment, and she
would
regret it.
She felt butterflies in her stomach. The palms of her hands were sweating. She felt the grip of tension through every muscle in her body. She closed her eyes slowly, opened them, took a deep breath. She asked herself one last time if this man was a blessing or a threat … but the answer didn’t come, and she knew that had she waited for eternity there would always be silence out there.
And then Annie O’Neill leaned forward, touched his face, closed her palm over his cheek, opened her fingers and ran them through his hair, and then she pulled him towards her.
The sensation was somehow different, and yet somehow the same as before – the time in his empty warehouse apartment. This time it was
her
home, here amongst
her
things. And simply because it was here it was somehow more meaningful, and when her lips touched his, when she felt the pressure of his face against hers, when she sensed the rush of emotion and feeling that came with it, it was all she could do to restrain herself from tearing his shirt from his back and dragging him to the floor.
Eventually – a lifetime, perhaps two – she withdrew from him.
He continued to hold her hand, and when she rose he rose with her, and when she walked he followed her without question, and leading him past the kitchen towards the door on the far side of the room there was nothing in his expression that questioned what she was doing or why.
And once through the door, her bed behind them, clean clothes scattered across the end of the mattress and over the deep armchair that stood beside it, she pulled him close once more, could feel the pressure of her breasts against his chest, the ache that had started in the base of her stomach, the tension in her throat …
His hands were on her waist then, his fingers pressing into her, and then he slipped his thigh between her legs and she closed her legs around him, and seeming to float backwards she felt the backs of her shins touch the edge of the mattress, and with her right hand she swept the clothes off the bed onto the floor and collapsed.
He collapsed with her, and she could feel his weight over her, but somehow weighing nothing, and then his hand was sliding from her waist to the top of her leg, and with his fingers he was tugging her tee-shirt free from the waistband, and when it was free he seemed to lift it from behind, and with one swift motion she felt her tee-shirt slide up over her head and vanish. She found his shirt buttons, slid them free from their eyes, and
then he was helping her, and she could feel the warmth of his skin, the rough texture of hair on his chest …
Her jeans, her bra, his pants, his shorts beneath, his shoes, his socks, her socks, the clean clothes from the mattress, and something up close and personal amidst all of this, and breathless beneath his weight for a second, and then released but enclosed, and feeling the weight of his head on her stomach, his hands over her breasts, her nipples swollen, her back arched, and then his tongue tracing a fine line from her navel downwards, downwards …
And a warm rushing sensation inside her, like a slow-motion flood of something indescribable as his mouth touched her, as his fingers brushed against her, found their way inside her, deep inside her …
And then she was turning, and she could feel the muscles in his thighs tensing as she touched him, as she closed her hand around him, as she kissed his stomach, his back as he turned, and then sitting up she closed her mouth around his nipple, and she could feel him sigh without sounds, and then lowering her head she took him inside her mouth, and it meant something, more than it had ever meant before, and never had she felt so close as this to someone …
From the edge of the mattress he turned her onto her back, and then he was over her, his hands around her, gripping her waist now, and leaning up he pressed himself against her leg, and then sliding sideways he entered her, and she could feel him within her, deeper, ever deeper now, and there were tears in her eyes, and she was laughing she seemed to remember, and then there was motion, and within that motion there was something that could only ever have been described as love …
At least she believed this was love, for she had never felt something like this … could never
remember
ever feeling something like this.
And it seemed to go on forever. And she didn’t want it to end.
More than anything in the world, she didn’t want it to end.
But it did, and then there was silence but for their breathing, and out beyond the window rain began to fall.
She didn’t make a sound, didn’t wish to fracture the atmosphere for a second. She closed her eyes, pressed her face against his chest, and lay silent as he ran his fingers through her hair.
An hour passed, perhaps more, before she stirred. She turned slightly, looked up at David’s face. His eyes were closed, his breathing deep but gentle. He was sleeping. Here among the mid-afternoon ghosts of something they had shared, he was sleeping.
She slid out from beside him, slipped on his shirt, and tiptoed to the kitchen to pour a glass of juice from a bottle in the refrigerator. Standing there, in front of the window, the rain sheeting down against the glass, she was conscious of a smile creeping across her face, taking over her whole expression.
This was something new, something different she believed, and though their lovemaking had been spontaneous, impulsive, she also felt that it had perhaps been the rightest thing she had ever done. She was not
in love
, not so naïve as to consider such a thing, but she truly felt there was enough about this man that she
could
love him. He made her feel important, and – truth be known – she believed the feeling was reciprocated. They were both odd ones out, anachronisms within their own lives. She knew almost nothing of him, a little of his family and what he did for a living, but beyond that very little. It didn’t matter, such things would come in time, for wasn’t falling in love – or
rising into
love – all about creating the here and now and building from that into the future? The past was the past. The past was gone, best forgotten, and for now she believed that the past had been worth it: it had given her this, and this was something which could make her truly happy.
Somewhere beyond the far reaches of her thoughts she heard
the street door open and close. Footsteps on the stairs. Sullivan, unmistakably. And when he reached the landing she heard him pause, and then – perhaps sensing the need to leave Annie undisturbed – she heard his apartment door open and close. She closed her eyes and smiled again.
Another sound. A sound behind her.
She turned, the glass of juice in her hand, and saw David standing there. He was naked, and for the first time she saw the shape of his body, the way he looked in the late afternoon light, and she felt herself react to his nakedness, the feeling inside her that she wanted to feel that same nakedness close against her once more.
‘Fuck me,’ she whispered. ‘Fuck me again David.’
He turned.
Annie set the glass on the counter and followed him, unbuttoning her shirt – his shirt – and letting it fall to the floor as she went.
This time it was different. Passionate. Heated. Angry almost.
She remembered clawing at his back, his stomach, digging her fingernails into his thighs as he thrust himself into her time and again.
She remembered feeling the headboard smacking against the top of her head, but she didn’t care, didn’t care at all, for the pain she felt was drowned out by the sound of her own voice as she moaned beneath David’s weight. At one moment he turned her over onto her hands and knees, and then he was behind her, and with his one hand finding her breast, the other gripping her shoulder, he pushed himself into her and kept going until she felt she would collapse.
Sweat ran down her forehead and into her eyes. She bit her own lip until she tasted blood. She clenched her fists until she felt her fingernails would puncture her skin, and then the sound from the base of her throat was like some animal lost in a wilderness of emotions and feelings and sensations.
And then she did collapse, and David rolled sideways, and
still holding her from behind he thrust back and forth in slow motion, his thighs against her buttocks, sweat adhering to their skin, his hand between her legs, stroking her, massaging her, kissing her neck, her shoulders, his fingers finding her nipples and pinching them until the pain was almost more than she could bear. And then there was that warm release inside her, every muscle tensed, every nerve and sinew rushing with electricity, and as he moaned she moaned with him, and the sound was like one voice echoing up against itself and then separating into two.
‘Oh Christ, oh Christ,’ he was gasping, and rolling onto his back he withdrew from her, and turning to face him she held his hand, pressing it then between her legs, using his fingers to touch her, pushing them inside her. She rolled onto her front, and then kneeling up she straddled his chest, leaning forward and kissing his face, holding handfuls of his damp sweaty hair, and then she felt his hands around her waist, pulling her forward, her own arms outstretched until she felt the cool surface of the wall behind the bed against her palms. Pulling her forward again he leaned back, and with one final movement she felt his face between her legs, his mouth beneath her, his tongue finding its way inside her. Looking down she watched him, his eyes closed, his expression intent, and before long she could watch no more, aware of nothing but the feeling inside her, the sensation of everything within rushing to escape from between her legs. She screamed, a scream of ecstasy as she hurtled over the edge of anticipation into orgasm. He kept going, his tongue pressed up inside her until she couldn’t bear any more. She rolled sideways, collapsed beside him, and turned to hold his face between her hands. His skin glistened with her sweat, with her passion, with everything she was, everything she had become within these moments.