She looked toward him thoughtfully. “I suppose so. I think I may be homosexual. A lesbian.”

He looked at her. What she said seemed true. Maybe that explained his lack of feeling toward her. “Do you find the women here attractive?”

“No,” she said, and then smiled at him. “I bet you don’t either.”

He smiled back. “No, I don’t,” he said. And then, “Why don’t you come over here and kiss me on the mouth? It couldn’t hurt anything.”

“Okay,” she said and got up. She walked over toward him, seated herself on the edge of the bed, bent over slowly, and kissed him, with her mouth open and soft. At first he felt almost nothing, as though he were kissing the smooth palm of his own hand. But they held the kiss and, gradually, he felt an excitement begin in his stomach. It was a different feeling from what he was used to; there was some kind of very strong and frightening power to it. He continued kissing her, working his lips a bit now but not using his tongue and not reaching his hands toward her breasts that hung down over his chest. There was some great power there; but something in him would not let him yield to it. There was something he was afraid of. He pulled away from her, and looked up. Her face was very serious and just a bit frightened.

“Something is scaring me,” he said quietly.

“Me too,” she said. “I think I’d better go.”

She got up from the bed and left the room without saying good-bye. He lay there silently for a long while, thinking of her. Somewhere in his stomach there was still a ribbon of unpleasantness—of fear. But the fear was being buried by the excitement of desire, becoming indistinguishable from it.

In the middle of that night he was awakened by her wet mouth kissing his breasts, under the sheet. He could smell the faint smell of sweat from her warm body—had been smelling it even while asleep. It aroused him immediately. Then without saying a word she moved her head down to him and took him in her mouth. Still in his stomach was the ribbon of fear, but the excitement, the movement toward ecstasy, buried it. And he exploded into her mouth, beneath the sheet. She stayed with him, holding his hips, for only a minute afterward and then left, padding slowly—somehow, it seemed, thoughtfully—out of the room in bare feet, leaving him alone in bed. Neither of them had said a word.

***

He did not see her the next morning at breakfast; for several days she had been joining him for the farrago of oats and wheat and honey that a silent male nurse brought him every morning together with a yellow cup full of powerful, astringent coffee. Nor did she join him for his lunch of odd-looking vegetables and what he thought of as “Mystery Soup.”

Ben dropped in on him after lunch for a conversation about twentieth-century America; Arthur told him about movies and cars. His heart wasn’t in it; he could not get Annabel off his mind.