And so I planted a whisper of a kiss on her sculpture-still mouth and held it there for an eternity. She raised her hands and placed them lightly on my shoulders and my arms encircled her, drew her to me, and Oh Lord God Jesus the sweet excitement of holding her. It flowed from my arms through my body and I was secretly exultant, as if I had found a treasure. In the dark and glacial wood she seemed by some astonishing chemistry to throw off light. Her hair, tumulting in the wind, whipped the corners of my eyes. She smelled like some exotic sundae of peaches, strawberries, cream, and hot chocolate. The point of her tongue slipped into my mouth. Immediately it was gone, and gently she drew away. I stood there, glass-eyed and shaky, breathing like a bellows.

“Now,” she said huskily, “just don’t get any ideas…”

What could I do to top that? I threw myself backward on the forest floor spread-eagled and spent, staring up blindly at the leafless trees.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, only mildly concerned. “You okay?”

“Ecstasy robs me of consciousness.”

“You’re crazy,” she repeated, and dashed off over the frozen field.

I lay there on that soggy turf, slowly regaining my feeble strength, happy at last, full of the ideas she had forbade me from entertaining.

And so, you see, I had the best of incentives to keep Chatterton’s shop in business, and the most propelling of reasons to stay on there.

SIXTEEN
HEAVEN

Soft rain, whippoorwills and flowers,

Dreaming kings in lonely bowers,

I’ve got fever, can’t get going.

Sit and watch the sky, enjoying

Fleecy wisps of clouds that sheen,

While far below all gold and green

She looked up. “Jesus,” she said, “that’s good.” And, frowning, “You think it’s too good?”

I didn’t know how to make it any worse.

“What does it mean, ‘I got fever’?”

“Spring fever.”

“Wow,” she said. “It’s a real pisser, it’s really something.”

Something? It was the portend of a week that was the best I had ever known. Slowly it began, our heads together, bending over a book, the soft fire of her breath on my cheek, the days unfurling like a banner and soaring beyond expectancy. I was wired to the wonder of the world, a garden of delight, and cut off, at long last, from all the lost, snakebite days, the sleepless, storm-tossed nights of what seemed to be an earlier incarnation.

Monday night was the night of the poem.

Tuesday: m sin (A + B) = m sin A cos B + m sin B cos A. “Jesus,” she said in a whisper of disbelief as we tiptoed through the prickly thickets of trigonometry, “I think I got it.”