If there were words now, they were just names, exclamations possibly. Whispers of astonishment that they should be together at all. He held her face close to his and wouldn’t let her go, though she made no effort to release herself. Either he was crying or she was
—
it was to be expected
—
and he was astounded at how profound was his sense of relief. He thought the words
drinking her in
even as he was, his mouth so thirsty, so greedy, he could not even take the time to speak to her. There would be hours later when they could talk, he thought, but for now it was simply skin and breasts and long limbs and the awkwardness of needing to pull back to lift a dress overhead or to unbuckle a belt. And it was as though they were again teenagers inside a Buick Skylark convertible. Not needing to be anywhere else. Unable even to conceive of being elsewhere.
The sheets were rough but clean, a thick, textured cotton. He felt lust, but distantly
—
not as with Regina, when lust was essential to accomplish the act, when lust was necessary to blot out resentment or even fondness. In the canopied bed, there wasn’t room for anything but an exultant sense of love regained and of a finite amount of time reserved to them. And that sense of time increased sensation, increased meaning, so that for an hour, possibly two, the bed, with its rough sheets, was all there was of the known universe.
______
He woke with the sun in his eyes. It was hot inside the room, and the sheets, so newly crisp just an hour earlier, were limp and damp. He moved, causing the top sheet to slide off the bed. He and Linda lay naked, covered only by the thin canopy above them that billowed in the slight breeze. He shifted his face from the direct sun and woke her as he did so. The jasmine petals had been ground into the pillows, and her hair and their perfume mingled with the musk of their bodies. They lay, as he had dreamed them, with her head on his shoulder, his arms around her, a leg curled up and over another. It was a simple posture, accomplished thousands
—
no, millions
—
of times a day, and yet so serious he could hardly breathe. He wondered how much time was left to them: an hour, a day, a year? And so he asked her. Determined not to leave before she did, no matter when that was. His body incapable of abandoning her, of walking away.
—
I have a day,
she said.
—
One day.
—
A day and a night, actually.
The sense of time so stupefying that he had to repeat the allotment aloud. The sun moved overhead; they hardly moved at all. As if, not moving, time might forget about them altogether. Until thirst compelled her to ask for a glass of water. He pulled on his trousers, reluctant to leave her, and went in search of a water source, encountering Mr. Salim reading at a kitchen table. Thomas explained, in Swahili, what he wanted, and instantly Mr. Salim produced from an icebox that looked to be from the 1930s a pitcher of cold water. The servant, seemingly pleased to have been consulted, added delicate confections of honey and nuts that he didn’t name. Thomas took the tray upstairs, noting the two glasses instead of one.
She might never have drunk before. She sat upright, entirely naked, and he admired her breasts and the shallow curve of her stomach as she tilted her throat. In similar fashion, she devoured her portion of the sweets, which made him laugh, so that he offered her his, which she took with little hesitation.
—
Sex makes you ravenous,
he said, and immediately hated himself for it. Reducing what they’d had moments earlier to an experience she might have shared with any man, might daily share with the man named Peter.
She understood the slip and lightly corrected him.
That wasn’t sex,
she said.
He sat beside her on the bed and wanted to make love again. Wanted to touch her shoulders and feel between her legs. Would a honeymoon be like this? he wondered. He didn’t know, not ever having had a true one of his own, Regina weeping almost constantly for the loss of the baby just the week before the wedding. A kind of wake it was. The grieving, however necessary, badly timed. Though truth to tell, he’d been relieved, too aware of pretense.
—
You promised me a walk,
she said, touching him.
______
They walked through the town hand in hand, looking at the Islamic carvings and the Swahili silver jewelry, seeing neither the carvings nor the jewelry, but only the past, the recent past, the wife or the husband of the other, imagined marriages, houses and apartments never lived in, and once, poignantly, a future with a child, though the future was a blank to them, unknowable and unimaginable. He could not stop himself from thinking
only one day
and
only one night,
and was on the verge, once or twice, of crossing the line between what was likely and what was possible. But did not, for fear that any plan that involved the hurt of others would frighten Linda off. It was a calculus problem he couldn’t solve
—
how to be together without catastrophe
—
and as with calculus, which had been his nadir, he felt his brain go hard and empty with resistance.
They had lunch at Petley’s, neither of them hungry, ordering too much food
—
pweza; supa ya saladi; kuku na kupaka (lobster cocktail; watercress soup; chicken in coconut sauce)
—
lingering after most of the other diners had left, staying long after a confused waiter had taken away their barely touched plates. They sat with too many drinks (she surprisingly overtaking him), until he looked up and saw that the help were waiting to leave for their breaks. He stood, slightly woozy from the alcohol (really four scotches?), and suggested they walk to Shela, an insane idea in the middle of the day after the drinking, with no shelter to speak of along the way. When what he really wanted to do was go back to the bedroom with the jasmine blossoms ground into the pillows and sleep with her body pressed close to him.
They followed hand-lettered signs for Shela and caught a ride on a military truck that made its way through sand-clogged roads. They sat on benches at the back of the truck, and briefly she fell asleep with her head in his lap. One of her shoulders was burned by the time they had arrived at the beach, the scarf having lost itself at a jeweler’s counter or at Petley’s. They sat on the verandah of Peponi’s, the only beach hotel, and drank water and ate grapefruit
—
hungry after all
—
the sense of fog in the brain dissipating in the shade.
—
How did you get here?
he asked, having been too preoccupied to have imagined her arrangements.
—
I came up from Malindi.
—
That must have been an adventure.
She looked away, perhaps knowing the question that would come next even before he did.
—
Why Malindi?
She hesitated.
Peter is there,
she said.
That she had been with Peter on the coast should not have been remarkable at all
—
no more remarkable, say, than the fact that he had left Regina only that morning
—
but it disturbed him nevertheless.
Linda did not elaborate. She took a sip of water. It was bottled, but the water at the museum house hadn’t been. In her thirst, he remembered, she’d drunk nearly a pitcherful.
—
That’s why you have to go back tomorrow?
he asked, knowing better than to ask. The answers would hurt no matter what they were, the only acceptable answer being that she would never leave him.
But she, perhaps wiser in this regard than he, or seeing the future more clearly, said nothing. And asked no questions of her own. Her hair, which had come loose when they had made love, had been put into a twist again, and he saw, from the inexpertness of the hastily made knot, how painstakingly she must have prepared for their reunion.
—
It couldn’t be helped,
she said.
Jealousy squeezed his chest.
Did you sleep with him last night?
he asked, shocking himself with the question. She crossed her arms over her white linen dress. A defensive posture.
—
Thomas, don’t.
—
No, seriously,
he said, unable to give up what even a fool could see should be given up.
Did you sleep with him last night? I just want to know.
—
Why?
—
So I know where I stand,
he said. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, the shirt having been soaked through on the walk. Across from him, a couple were drinking Pimm’s. He envied them their easy boredom.
So I can know the parameters,
he said.
She looked away.
There are no parameters.
—
So you
did
sleep with him,
Thomas said sullenly, gazing into his water glass. Ashamed or afraid of the truth, he wasn’t sure. Distracted, as he’d been all afternoon, by her body. The way, now, her breasts rested on her forearms.
—
It was the only way I could arrange it,
she said. He noticed that there was a sheen of sweat on her brow.
Don’t let’s do this, Thomas,
she added.
We have so little time.
She uncrossed her arms and sat back in her chair. She put her fingers to her forehead.
—
You have a headache?
he asked.
—
A bit.
—
Do you love him?
The question, having waited in the wings, wanting the limelight now.
—
Of course I love him,
she said impatiently, and then paused.
Not in the way I love you.
—
How do you love me?
he asked, needing endless reassurance.
She thought for a moment, picked a piece of lint off her dress. Choosing her words carefully.
—
I think of you constantly. I imagine a world in which we can be together. I regret not writing to you after the accident. I lie awake at night feeling you touch me. I believe we were meant to be together.
He drew in a long breath.
—
Is that enough?
she asked.
—
Oh, Jesus.
He put his head into his hands. Looking at their table, the slightly bored couple with the Pimm’s might have thought it was he who had the headache.
She reached across and touched his arm. In one fluid motion, he seized her hand.
What will happen to us?
he asked.
She shook her head back and forth.
I don’t know,
she said. Perhaps he was hurting her.
It’s so much easier not to think about it.
He let go of her hand.
We could have found each other if we’d really tried,
he said, challenging her.
It wasn’t totally impossible. So why didn’t we?
She massaged her temple with her fingers.
Maybe we didn’t want to spoil what we had,
she said.
He sat back and ground the cigarette, barely smoked, under his foot. Yes, he thought. That might have been it. But, then again, how would they have known, at seventeen, that it was possible to spoil love? He remembered them together
—
in front of the cottage, at the diner, walking the empty streets of Boston.
—
What?
she asked, noticing his incongruous smile.
—
I was remembering when I used to make you tell me what you’d said in Confession.
—
That was awful,
she said.
—
This is awful,
he said.
He watched her take a sip of water
—
the movements of her delicate jaw, the contractions of her long throat. Beyond her was the white beach, an ocean so bright he could barely look at it. Palm trees rose high above them, and from open windows, gauze curtains billowed outward with a snap and then were sucked in again as if by a giant lurking in the shadows. It was a striking hotel, the only one in Shela. The only one in all of Lamu, his editor had said, with a decent bathroom.
He slipped another cigarette from its pack and lit it. He was smoking too much, eating too little.
We take life too seriously, you and I,
he said.
She pulled the pins from her hair and, in a perfectly ordinary but at that moment extraordinary gesture, let her hair fall the length of her back. He watched it sway as it settled. The surprising abundance of all that hair springing from a knot no bigger than a peach hurtled him back through the years.
—
It’s what I’ve always loved about you,
she said.
—
Other people might just fuck and be done with it. Enjoy the fuck.