[50] Words have made my eyes enebriate

I hadn’t planned this; her walk decided me. How she moved, how she didn’t stop when she could, how she shed her skin with the city, and how I could tell she’d never done that before and how she wanted to.

She’s watching me kindle the stove. Your first time with a woman, you should go at it every way you can think of, twist each other into pretzels, make her give up everything she has and do the same yourself. That way, if there isn’t a next time then you’ve already had each other. So I don’t know why I’m taking my time. I don’t touch her until after midnight. I must be waiting to see if she’ll run. I would let her go, I would help her get back. I must want to be sure she won’t, because I tell you, I don’t for once want to frighten a woman. I’ve always wanted too badly to see the future, and I’ve already begun to wonder what she’d look like there. Not while we were in Gus’s garden, or crouched by the fire, but while she was walking beside me. I’m already seeing her there. When I saw her walk, I saw us doing that together.

‘Why have you brought me here?’ she asks.

I look up to give a sight to the words. She’s brave within her fear.

‘For your hair in that light,’ I tell her. And I open the stove door to let the woodfire’s light flood out, bathing her face from the side. ‘That’s the best light there is for drawing. It moves.’

‘I’ve never seen.’

‘Here,’ I tell her, and hand her a pocket mirror. I’ve always got one.

‘Really?’

A year in the hussars teaches you how to forage. I mound the hot coals over the potatoes wrapped in corn husks, I roast the maize in the flames. I draw water from the well and heat it in a paper sack I’ve scarfed from my drawing case – you can do that, boil water in a paper sack. That was the first thing I taught her, when I think about it, the thing she watched me do before anything else. When I look up she’s still staring at herself by the firelight, looking entitled and self-absorbed, which I learn soon is her happy look. I take the maize from the fire and we eat two cobs each. I build a bed of pine boughs and hang a blanket behind us to keep in the warmth from the hearth. I don’t speak to her. There are ways to learn people, and here’s one – say nothing, then watch what they do. When she looks like she’s about to tell me something, I just put a finger to my lips and shook my head. Then I wrap her in a blanket. I go out to find better-seasoned firewood – the pile inside has gone too soft – and when I come back she’s still there, hasn’t moved, blanket around her shoulders. I get out my drawing tablet and sharpen a graphite, polish the edge to a point with my fingertips. When I look up, she’s opened her blanket, and there is her body again, dress gone tucked away somewhere, her lines leaning forward and legs tucked under. Her hair has flowed in crinkled waves down her neck almost to her waist. When you want a woman, it’s the first thing you ask yourself – what do her nipples do? I stare into her eyes and wait to see, and feel her shiver and her face’s edges go soft. And when I look down, I see them standing out, coral, pyramided, hard against her soft skin.

I turn the tablet to show her and get a smile from her. I make four more drawings.

‘Skin to skin,’ I tell her. ‘We’ll be warmer tonight.’

I touch her then. I wrap her up, my arms around her back and her elbows against my chest, and we sleep for a while. When I wake her knee is locked between my legs, I can feel it in the dark, and the fire has gone out. That makes her feel even warmer. A damp kind of warmth that smells like the sea but richer. Rich like silver.

‘Reach down for me,’ I told her.

‘What time is it?’

‘The time?’ I looked out at the moon. ‘It’s about two o’clock.’

‘I know what it’s supposed to be like,’ she says. And she at least knows where it is. ‘I’ve never touched one, but I know.’

‘It gets hard when you touch it.’

‘Silly …’ she calls me. And soon it does. She squeezes it until I go yipe. ‘What now?’

‘I’ll get on top. This way. It’s your first time.’

‘My first time with somebody else there.’

She moves her hips around until I take her knees and held them open and still and show her, there, there.

‘It’s going to hurt,’ I tell her. ‘You might bleed.’

‘I don’t care,’ she says, but her hand is trembling while she holds me. ‘Like there?’

I gasp. But she’s wet inside, and warmer the closer. She doesn’t know where to put her hands and keeps looking for the place.

‘You’re deep,’ I tell her. ‘You’ll drown me.’

And then I kiss her. She’s never been kissed before either. And we kiss each other everywhere our lips can reach from that place, until her body stops shaking and she can hold her palms still on my shoulders.

‘What do I do?’

‘This time, hold still and … I go in and out. Don’t let me hurt you.’

‘It already hurts. When does it feel good?’

‘The third or fourth time.’

‘Hurry. No, slowly …’

I feel her hands teasing my chest. Then she draws my face down to hers and I lick her tears from her cheeks.

We fall asleep. I wake up hard again, and she wakes when she senses that and begins to twist under me, as if she’s trying to escape, but when I rise up too high she pulls me back down and springs her legs out and open till I’ve groaned myself still and she lets them fall to the ground. She’s crying again, but instead of turning her face away, she’s rubbing hers against mine until I can taste her tears. Until her tears stop.

‘Was that the second time?’

‘Yes it was.’

‘So next one’s the third? Really?’

‘Wait …’ I fumble for my pants.

‘They’re folded under your boots,’ she says in the dark. ‘Why do you need them?’

I find them where she says, fumble for matches, strike one. Under the blanket, we’re sharing, her face has lost its paleness, her eyes are staring up at the light in my own, her lips are open and sighing into mine. I lift up slightly and feel her hips rising, her legs seeking a grip.

‘I don’t need four,’ she whispers. ‘I don’t want to move, my hips are just right like this. What else can you do?’ I scrape her nipples gently with my fingertips. ‘Ohhhhh …’ Lean back and press, sip at her nipple between lips and tongue. ‘Three …’ she sobs. ‘Do that again.’ And she tries to shake me off, and cries and cries, and something liquid flows from her into me and keeps us from trembling apart. She cries out, and reaches for something to grab, and keeps missing me, and lets her hands fall like weights to the ground.

‘I thought I knew,’ she says, wiping her face against my chest. We wrap ourselves around each other with my soldier against her belly and sleep. Except we’re not – we’re both pretending to. I see embers in her hair, dancing ghosts on the walls. It always feels like surgery, being a woman’s first. Once was enough, I’d decided long ago after the first few times. One virgin was enough to know what they’re like. Except I don’t know why, this time, I’ve ended up trying to remember when I was one.