I kissed every part of her. I realized that she was exactly what I wanted in a woman: sparkling eyes, springy hindquarters, the ability to save her own life. I felt for her then what I feel now, and knew without thinking anymore that we’d made it. Her nude hip, the most elegant line on earth, was staring me in the face. I touched her unburned parts and she smiled. We struggled to find a way I could hold her, and then suddenly it seemed we both were breathing harder.

I was unclothed and her skin burned against my unclothed body. She turned onto her stomach—I was above her, as careful as I could be—we found this to be the only angle. With her burns and loveliness and all, she pulled me in. I felt like a giant fishhook and I had her on the line and we were both rocking. I was like the Fonz with my dick right then. I tried not to touch anything except her peachy, scrumptious pillowy ass, but we were grinding and eventually I knew I was rubbing against the burned spots. She’d gotten ridden down into the bedspread and it must’ve felt like sandpaper against her burns but she said nothing, making sweet painful noises and laying low and going with it; she fought me while yielding.

Afterward we ate the apples we’d brought for the plane. We found a movie on TV about a princess riding a motorcycle. As the afternoon passed I knew then that I was missing this great event, with no way of predicting who might’ve flown in by now. Bibi Netanyahu? Marlon Brando riding a llama? I didn’t feel like I should be at one place or the other. It didn’t feel like a lateral move. It felt good. We ordered crab sandwiches from town and had them delivered to the room. Sebastian returned with cake on a platter. We had a party.

EUROPEAN WEDDING

THE CONSTRUCTION SITE was walled off from the street by a makeshift bay door that Rich had padlocked from the inside. They were both flush-faced from the thought of him cheating on his fiancée, Gynnie. They stood inside the empty half-built clothing store on a busy downtown street. It was seven o’clock at night.

Their summer of flirting led them here. It felt nice to be standing beside Nora, explaining the benefits of an auxiliary water pump.

No one ever really cared about an auxiliary water pump.

The summer was over. He was about to get married. He felt protected from his life’s unpleasant nauseating impending upheaval the more he joked with her and lied and led her on. It was a relief from the pussified wedding-planning crap that had taken over his brain—from the flowery mailings, the drilling and reenameling of his teeth. Nora was the reward for getting a facial that left him bleeding and humiliated. Why was getting married so humiliating? He didn’t know, but it was.