“You’ll only do it with me?” Quick grin, mischievous movement against him—“Yes”—and they are back in the world of sex, a duet collaborating in the most fascinating variations on a theme: the kinetic melody with its intense blisses, accompanied by crackling leaves and the odd squeak, hum, moan, grunt, whoah, exhalation, endearment, giggle, and a whole lot of heavy breathing. It’s incredible fun.

Chapter 55

55

They sleep together cuddled like spoons. In the morning Jim wakes to find Hana already at work, painting at a table in the main room. She’s put on a bulky sweater and army fatigues. He watches her, noticing the brusque concentration, the tangled hair, the tree-trunk legs. The indirection that is not really shyness, but some unnamed cousin to shyness. She gets up and walks into the kitchen, passes a mirror without even noticing it. He gets up to run give her a hug. She laughs at him.

“So,” she says after breakfast. “When do I get to read something of yours?”

“Oh, well.” He panics. “I really don’t have anything ready right now.”

And he cringes a little to see the quick grimace on her face. She thinks he’s being stupid. Wonders if he isn’t just lying about his poetry, a bogus artist trying to impress her, with nothing behind it. He can see all that in the quick flow of expression in her face, which is just as quickly suppressed. No, no! But he really is scared; his poetry is so trivial, and there is so little of it, he’s sure her estimation of him will drop radically when she reads it. So he doesn’t want her to. But that desire in itself gives it all away. She might even be imagining it’s worse than it really is. Jim sighs, confused. Hana lets the matter slide.

He fills in as he so often does, by telling tall tales of his friends’ exploits. Tashi and the night surfing. Humphrey’s empty tower. That kind of thing.

After a while Hana looks at the floor. “And when am I going to meet these amazing friends of yours?”

Jim gulps. It’s the same question, isn’t it: do I get to be part of your life? And by God, he wants her to be; he’s forgotten whatever reservations he might have had about her. What were they about, her clothes, her look? Absurd. “There’s a party at Abe’s house tonight. His parents are going on vacation and he has the house to himself. Want to come?”

“Yes.” She smiles, looks up at him.

Jim smiles too. Although he’s remembering that Virginia will probably be there. As well as two dozen other perfect examples of the Modern California Woman. But he doesn’t care, he tells himself. He doesn’t care at all.