L. has the short waist and long legs of a long-distance runner from the British Isles. His immaculate gym body is like a house so clean that no one has a real life there. I draw back to look at his asshole, bubble-gum-pink; there’s a bead of balled-up paper lodged in a brown curl. I flick it away like a jaunty waiter brushing a crumb from the banquet table. He’s sunk in a depression that paralyzes and terrifies him. For the last three months all he’s done is look to other people for help. He’s surprised by the pitch of my love. His features are sympathetic because frail. These descriptions support him as they consume him.

•

I follow him. He steals the value of my longing and rejects my fury and drab complaints. As he turns away I feel metal chains pull the gears of a clock in my chest. I raise my hands in a gesture of protection as my face subsides, the face of my elderly father.

31

When the Brothers of St. Thomas—who had kicked Margery out—heard of her success in Rome, they issued a new invitation. Margery returned to her room. Now the grapevines were bare and a rangy lizard clung to the brick wall.

Margery’s maid also lived at St. Thomas; she lived well because she was the wine keeper. She performed her duties with watchful eyes and wore her good-looking body like clothes—a blue gown, tight above the waist and flowing below, with an oval neck and long tight sleeves. Margery begged from her and the maid was glad to help with food and wine; sometimes she dropped a groat in Margery’s hand. The maid had shed her virginity: she was preoccupied by the moment when a monk’s soft spike drove into her guts, so close their pubic hairs tangled.

They’d met in a tavern. Her clit had been too sensitive to touch. His cock poked her leg like a dog’s nose. Wind whistled high in his throat. He spasmed shyly, laughing in embarrassment. For her, the event summoned an incomplete world. She didn’t come but later, alone, added her own orgasms to a continuous replay of seizing his cock with her cunt. She did not want to marry; she shared Mrs. Noah’s reluctance to board the ark. She probed her own truth, which hid in convulsions between her legs, wafting its aroma upwards. The monk had broken cloister; he’d found in her body and especially in her cunt an elegance he experienced as meaning.

On February 1, St. Bridget’s Day, Margery tried to convince the maid to serve again. Unseasonal sunstorms bleached the sky to an eerie pallor. The maid mistook an ant crawling on her inner arm for a trickle of sweat; it moved on its own, a bead of exasperation. Her period was on its way so every insult and criticism was said for her benefit.