lest she try even for a moment to break away, then slipped his other arm out of the sleeve. She pressed his shoulders back. His lips were trembling and his teeth began to chatter. She was as still and calm as the lake. “The seats,” she said. He reached beneath her, between her legs, pulled at the latch and pushed her seat, hard, as far from the dash as it would go. He reached across her waist, his cheek pressed against her blouse, and lifted the latch by her door so that the bucket seat fell to near horizontal—then he was on her again. And just the feeling of her legs in each of his hands as he kissed her—the slightly moist crook of her knees and the soft, leather-warmed underside of her thighs—might be enough to satisfy him, or the pain of her heels hooked into his calves as she lay beneath him, or simply the sight of her as she crawled up the seat on her elbows so he could slide her panties off the leg he pressed bent to her chest and then down over the knee of the other to dangle at the ankle. Or how she slowed him down, unbuckling his trousers, lifting him up at the hips so she should could push his pants to the floorboard with the sharp toe of her shoe, stretching the boxers away from his cock, so it arched taut and free in the warm morning air. He raised himself up toward her chest, Susan taking hold of him—“Lie back,” she said—and never letting go while he slid beneath her, guiding him in while she eased herself down slowly, gently, the containment and spatial restrictions of the car itself, that it wouldn’t give either of them full freedom of movement, augmenting the bliss. “Goddamn it,” she said, pressing the heel of her hand to the headrest for balance and gripping the door handle with the other, both of them finally finding the right purchase, Sheppard shifting until he was nearly diagonal, his leg thrown over the stick and his foot smashed against the brake. “Are you ready?” she whispered. He closed his eyes. She moved so fast he was afraid to look, this physical incantation as she thrummed a brand of magic above him, something that might transform him into a pillar of salt if he dared open his eyes, a spell whose effect was to suck away something feathery that he hadn’t realized was lining his whole body. When she stopped, he lay there blind. His stomach, for a time, contracted uncontrollably and his extremities tingled so violently he had to tense up to keep from convulsing. And then he felt it: the warm wash spreading over his lap, an issuance that made him instantly erect and almost immediately ejaculate again. He lay still, groaning, and opened his eyes to see her watching him. Her hair was pasted against her forehead, her neck and chest shining. Her large nipples had burst from her white brassiere. She laughed now, wickedly, leaning forward and gathering his collar into her fists while he regrew inside her yet again.
“Did you feel that?” she said.
He blinked away his sweat.
“Who are you?” he wanted to ask.
• • •
Where was that Susan? he wondered now, staring at nothing over the cliff. And did she wonder herself? For it was a car just like this, Sheppard thought.
Once again and in spite of everything, he came around to the passenger side and opened the door for her, though this time she didn’t thank him. He took his seat and started the engine, his thumb throbbing, then pulled out onto the road. He shouldn’t be surprised that things between them had changed; like health, no state of being endured. Yet they’d reached what seemed to Sheppard a perfect arrangement: they were the exact answer to each other’s needs. Marilyn had cut him off, after all, or at least urged him to leave her alone. He was free, she said, just so long as she didn’t know. And so through all of that spring and into the summer of 1951, he and Susan had fucked in that car until they arrived at something they both believed approximated lovemaking, that felt necessary. But it was different, he realized: utterly new, something more. Even through the fall they maintained a pure pragmatism to their relationship, an unspoken agreement to