The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [107]
Phoebe ate his dessert. Something with pears, a sweet glaze. Wolf laughed and ordered a second. His lips and teeth were stained from the wine. The restaurant was nearly empty.
“All right,” he said, mashing out a last cigarette. “Let’s make our exit while we still can walk.”
The darkness smelled of flowering trees and motor oil. Phoebe tugged in lungfuls of warm air to stop the violent spinning of her head. She nearly toppled off the curb, but Wolf was behind her. “This way,” he said. “Here, okay,” laughing, slinging an arm around Phoebe’s shoulders. She leaned against him gratefully. Right away she felt better; closing the gap between them seemed to ease some tension within her, as if hundreds of taut, quivering strings had relaxed for the first time in hours. A silence overcame them. Wolf navigated briskly toward the hotel. Phoebe drank in the warmth of his skin. This is crazy, she thought, I’ve gone absolutely crazy. Her blood felt thick, clogging her veins.
When they reached the hotel, Wolf let her go. In the elevator he stood opposite Phoebe, craning his neck to study the overhead cables. Phoebe watched the bones in his chest. She felt predatory, thirsty, already slightly sick.
Wolf took their keys from the desk and led the way to the rooms. The hall was poorly lit. He opened Phoebe’s door and handed her the key, kissing the top of her head. “Schlaf gut,” he said, but as he tried to move away, Phoebe lifted her arms to him blindly, craving again that relief of closing the gap. And here were his legs against hers, his stomach, so many points of contact that their meeting felt miraculous, irrevocable. The keys slipped from her hand and clattered to the floor. Wolf held quite still, arms at his sides, while Phoebe hung there, foolish and drunk, fastened to the heat between them, chest and ribs, the roll of his throat as he swallowed.
“Whoa. Whoa, Phoebe, hey,” Wolf said, half laughing, trying to shake free, but Phoebe heard the falter in his voice and she cleaved to him, turning her head so her lips met the hot skin of his neck. Abruptly Wolf pulled her against him, a swift, fierce tug at the small of her back. He lifted her onto her toes, one hand fisted, holding his keys, his heart beating into her like something come open.
It lasted an instant. Wolf seized Phoebe’s arms and forced her away, hands trembling. “Stop,” he whispered. “Jesus, we’re out of our minds.” In the half-dark he watched her, a stunned look on his face as if she’d punched him with a strength he couldn’t fathom. Then his grip on her arms softened, as if suddenly he felt her there. One kiss, Phoebe thought. It was that close. The enormity stopped her.
Wolf let go. “It can’t happen, Phoebe, listen to me,” he said. “Are you listening?” His voice filled the hallway, half-angry, half-disbelieving. “This is not a possibility.”
They parted without another word. In her dark room Phoebe clawed the sundress over her head, yellowy street light spilling across her damp skin. Deep in her belly a small ravenous animal lay coiled; Phoebe felt it breathing, felt its heartbeat.
She yanked the bedspread away and lay under one sheet. Across the wall she heard the jerk of bedsprings and realized that Wolf’s bed and her own met against this same thin wall; they were practically touching. Across the wall she heard tiny movements and imagined him in his bed, what he must be doing now or be about to do. Phoebe braced her head against the pillows until her neck felt ready to crack, every nerve in her body trained on that wall—this was sickness, sweet awful sickness, her flesh an open wound she could barely touch yet had to, mercilessly, again and again, nothing else would heal it.
Hours later Phoebe crawled from murky sleep and fumbled her way to the sink.