A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [76]
I nodded.
“Really?”
“I’m not very used to this.”
He pulled back, away from me, the look on his face unsmiling, suddenly cautious.
“Yes,” I said. “Please.” It was humiliating to ask, but that was okay, too. Reassuring in a way. He smiled. That was the reward.
Then, afterward, I began all at once to shiver.
He pulled away and I buttoned three buttons on my shirt. He said, “Are you cold? It’s only ninety-four degrees out here.”
“Maybe t-t-t-terrified.”
But I wasn’t, not anymore. Now the shaking was pure desire. As I realized what we had done, my body responded as it hadn’t while we were doing it—hadn’t ever done, I thought. I felt blasted with the desire, irradiated, rendered transparent. Jess said, “Are you okay?”
I said, “Hold me for a while, and keep talking.”
He laughed a warm, pleasant, very intimate laugh and said something about let’s see, well the Sears man would be out tomorrow, at last, and I came in a drumming rush from toes to head. I buried some moans in his neck and shoulder, and he hugged me tightly enough to crack my ribs, which was just tightly enough to contain me, I thought. He kept talking. Harold was feeling a little sheepish, and making Loren tuna-and-mushroom-soup-with-noodles casserole for dinner. Jess had promised to put it in the oven at four-thirty; what time was it now? The farmer near Sac City had called him back, four hundred and seventy acres in corn and beans, only green manures and animal manures for fertilizer, the guy’s name was Morgan Boone, which sounded familiar, did it sound familiar to me? He said Jess could come any time. Jess held me away from him again, and gazed at me for a long minute or two. I looked at the creases under his eyes, his beaky nose, his serious expression. His face was deeply familiar to me, as if I’d been staring at it my whole life. I took some deep breaths and lay back on his shoulder. The sky was steel blue, the sun caught in the lacy leaves of the locust trees above us. I wanted to say, what now, but that was a dangerous temptation for sure, so I didn’t. I said, “What time is it? Did we ever figure that one out?”
“Three-fifteen.”
“I left the house at one.”
“It seems like a lifetime ago.”
“Is that true?” But I found it hard to believe that such episodes as this weren’t fairly routine for a good-looking guy on the West Coast. I tried to sound joking. “You’ve done this before.”
“Well, I’ve slept with women before. I haven’t done this before.”
I said, “I haven’t slept with men. I’ve slept with Ty.”
“I know, Ginny. I know what that means.”
“Maybe you do. Maybe not.” I thought of saying, last night was the best ever with Ty, last night when I dreamt I was a sow. I could ask someone like Jess, someone good-looking and experienced, what that meant. Someone like Jess might be able to tell me.
I sat up and reached for my underpants. The world had an odd look, as if it were not itself, but a panoramic, 360-degree photograph of itself. I glanced at Jess again, then lay down on his shoulder. He said, “I trust you. I’ve trusted you since the first time I saw you again at that pig roast. That’s part of what draws me back here.”
“Oh,” I said. “That.”
Jess laughed, but didn’t pursue it. I sighed, wondered when Ty and Harold and Daddy and Pete would be back. Rose, too, had gone off, to Mason City with the girls. I could feel myself disengaging from Jess. It was a natural will-less process, an ebbing that was more reassuring than anything else, since it seemed to mean that I could be satisfied as well as full of longing My nose itched, and I sat up and wiped it on the tail of my shirt. Jess sat up, too. We smiled at each other, another degree of ebb. When he leaned forward to reach for his shirt, he ran his hand down my shin and said, “You have nice ankles. I