The radio in the room, the Capehart console, looked like an old trombone player napping in a chair.

The walls could be paper, ready to burn, tear or fold back and drop him into space.

“You’re crazy to do this,” he said.

“Oh, yes, I’ve been certified.”

“Certified?”

“Officially,” she said and smiled.

It was the dual moment of knowledge. The learning of legs, hands, skin, sweat, when the body is the whole terrain and the obsessive scope of attention. Every word echoes on and on and becomes the color of action. Breath synchronizes and the sheets twist.

They sat cross-legged on the bed, the ashtray and haze of smoke between them. Although the heat of the day had faded, their sweat shone.

“I was in love,” she said. She lit a cigarette for him and put it between his lips. “I loved a French boy. He was very poetic. I loved a German boy. He was very depressed. It was fun to be in love. What I liked was the element of irrationality. This isn’t love at all; this is pure irrationality.”

He inhaled, filled his lungs and let the smoke escape so that his breath filled the room. Of one thing he was certain. “You’ve never been in love before,” he said.

She watched as if from a cat’s distance. Until her eyes closed and she arched. With her hair back, her forehead seemed higher, the lofty brow of genius, so the black hair was the giveaway, swaying, a jet flag whipping the dark above him. Until he pulled her head down and opened her mouth with his, and she gathered his hair in her fingers and would not let the kiss go.

She asked, “You’ve been in love?”

“It was a flight to the moon, a night in June. Icy fingers up and down my spine, that same old witchcraft when your eyes meet mine.”

She rested the tip of her finger between his eyes. “Tonight is the last night in June.”

“I knew one of them was right.”

In total dark she lay on him, with him in her, the last drawn-out confusion of lovemaking. So deeply connected, they were halves of each other. So still there was no sound except the sea-rush of highway traffic and the slowing, purposeful step of their hearts.

* * *

The car was a Plymouth two-door she had borrowed from Teller at the pueblo. He found jazz on the radio. Stars lit the road. Wind whipped the hair around her face.

“I loved King Kong,” she said. “I would have traded places with that girl. King Kong was very popular in Germany. And you can play the piano too.”

“Great.”

“And a boxer. I asked all about you.”

“Was a boxer.”

“You were good?”

“Not bad. I got interested in other things.”

“Music?”