Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [48]
Sprawled across the bed, he pushed his pants down, rolled away from her to put on a condom, and re-establishing eye contact, promptly guided himself inside her. His eyes flickered. It was a little much, a little intense, so she looked over his shoulder to where a wall met the ceiling. Jean buttons snagged on her thigh. The musty sweater was itchy, abrasive, like his beard. She didn’t even like beards, thought them slovenly. The whole grungy room was slovenly. She came fast and hard. Like I’m the man, she thought. Premature. He paused until she looked him square in the face. He smiled and, without pulling out of her or looking away, took off his sweater and T-shirt. His chest was hairless, the ribs pronounced. His olive skin was granular, like muscled sand.
“Do you want to talk about this?” he asked, still inside her.
“Not now!”
“We’re doin’ it,” he said. “Shouldn’t we talk about it?”
“God, Lewis.” She bundled his butt in her hands and, to shut him up, pushed him into her.
“No?” Laughing a little. More in control than she ever dreamed he’d be. “You sure you don’t want to talk about this?”
She couldn’t talk if she wanted to, and he knew this. That was the point.
Afterward, they lay there like gasping fish. He held her forearm, squeezed it occasionally, kissed her ear. He got up first, and brought her back a mug of lukewarm tap water. They shared a cigarette. When she returned from the bathroom, his pants were on. “Breakfast,” he said.
At Happy Yolanda’s, they found Billie and the Bills sitting with Red Ray. Little Bill and Red jumped up to drag over another table. “We’ve been fishing,” Lewis said. “It’s so cool. Libby goes every Sunday.”
Libby blushed and sat up straight. Did she smell like sex? The back of her hair was a bird’s nest. Billie winked at her at least seven hundred times. Lewis and Red Ray talked about the softball game later that day. She drifted, chewing machaca and eggs, sipping burnt, weak coffee. Lewis grasped her hand under the table and placed it on his erection. She inhaled coffee, coughing until Red handed her a glass of water.
She and Lewis walked outside with everyone else. She hung back, thinking he might want to say something to her. But suddenly he was half a block away—“Bye! So long! Thanks for the fishing!”—and she was still standing next to Billie outside of Happy Yolanda’s.
“You’re hooked,” Billie said.
“I’m not hooked.”
“You’re hooked, all right. Your eyes have turned to goo.”
“I HAVE before me a monster lasagna,” said Lewis. “And Red says you should come help us eat it. We have a meeting at eight, so it won’t be a long evening. If you got here at six …”
Libby went straight from work, pulling off her pantyhose at a stop sign. Dinner with the guys. She liked the idea. When she reached the bungalow, Red was inside and Lewis was out picking lettuce.
“How’s our friend Billie?” Red asked.
“Wild and woolly,” said Libby. “You hear she’s got a court injunction against the county? Doesn’t want ’em chopping down those eucalyptus trees. I agree with her.”
“Me too, this time.” Red’s eyes were blue and kind. “She filed three injunctions against me when I started Round Rock.” He laughed quietly. “Once she lost, she leased the groves and saved my hide.”
“She filed against us when my ex-husband and I brought the trailer onto the property,” said Libby. “I think it’s her way of saying hello. Some communities have welcome wagons. We have Billie and her court injunctions.”
Lewis walked in, his arms full of greens. Libby dried the leaves as Lewis washed them. She was careful, as was he, to reveal no hint of intimacy. “Sorry,” she whispered when she brushed his arm.
They ate on the porch, in a cave of bougainvillea. Red had set the table with a white damask cloth, sterling silver, a jar of pink roses. Lewis’s lasagna was made not