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By Root 252 0

She feels powerful in it. She’s trying to get somewhere fast. The laptop is getting heavier with every step, weighing one arm down to the point that she’s lurching like a humpback across the field. She’ll never make it if she has to hold on to this laptop. When did she allow herself to be so burdened by technology? When did she stop using black-and-white composition notebooks and start relying on a laptop? Before she realizes what’s she’s doing, she sets the laptop down on the grass and keeps on walking. She feels so much lighter now, but her slingbacks are still sinking into the soft earth, slowing her down. She takes off the heels and flings them aside. Barefoot, she pushes off from her tiptoes and breaks into a run. The sky is cloudless and the sun is hot. Jessica feels the streams of sweat forming at her temples and racing down her torso. She unbuttons her jacket, slips it off her arms, and lets it fall to the ground. Picking up the pace, she tries to find a racing rhyme but gets too distracted by the zzzp-zzzp of fabric rubbing between her legs. She grabs at her thighs and—whoosh!—the tear-away bottoms come off with the professional swiftness of a b-baller or a stripper. Now she can concentrate on her mantra—you yes you—but not for long, because her camisole is chafing her shoulders. She clutches the offending straps and whisks that garment away as well. You yes you. With each item of discarded clothing, she is lighter, fleeter of foot. You yes you. She doesn’t need the suit, she feels powerful without it. You yes you. Finally, in one impressively gymnastic maneuver—you! yes! you!—she leaps out of her panties without breaking stride. She bursts into a full sprint, running faster—youyesyouyouyesyouyouyesyou—than she has ever run in her life when—You! CRASH! You!—she runs right over Marcus Flutie in a red T-shirt, who, up to and including the moment of impact, has been standing perfectly and peacefully still.

I’m here, she pants, still sprawled on the grass. Naked. Without shame. In paradise.

He smiles and reaches for her hands.

nine

Marcus pokes his head outside the bathroom door to check once more that Jessica is still asleep. All evidence says yes, but he asks out loud anyway. “Jessica? Are you still asleep?”

Jessica snorts, murmurs something unintelligible, and pulls the duvet over her head.

Aha! She can hear me, Marcus thinks.

Deciding there’s no need for modesty, Marcus struts out of the bathroom, across the room, toward the duffel bag propped up against his bed. As he uncinches the top of the canvas sack, he dismally remembers an important detail: There are no clean clothes in this bag. Not only are his clothes unclean, they are surely in violation of several basic health codes. They are caked in toxic demolition dust, outhouse mud, po’boy drippings, a spilled Hurricane Katrina cocktail, and other unidentifiable forms of fluid and filth. Marcus thinks it might be best to torch the whole bag and its contents and start all over again.

He debates the condition of the clothes he was wearing before the shower. The corduroys are in okay shape—they shouldn’t spread any communicable diseases. He tugs them on, then stands half dressed, considering the rest of his options. Now that Marcus himself is scented with rosemary and mint, the once endurable if unpleasant stench of the T-shirt, the dress shirt, and yes, even the cashmere sweater strike him as noxious, perhaps even nefarious. He can’t tolerate the thought of putting them on again, and he doubts that Jessica would come within arm’s length if he did. That is, whenever she wakes up.

Should I try to wake her up? Marcus asks himself.

“Jessica?”

His voice is so needy and pathetic, it makes him recoil in shame. He’s so grateful that no one else heard his whimpering. Natty’s right, he thinks, I need a roundhouse kick to the brain.

At least hearing the sound of his own needy, pathetic voice has helped him realize that he doesn’t really want to wake her up. If he really wanted to wake her up, he could easily do so by jumping up and down on her bed or shouting