The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [111]
“Is this a hotel?” Phoebe asked, anxious for voices.
“More or less.” Wolf sounded odd, strained. “A lot of times there aren’t hotels per se in these little towns—you just go to the bartenders and they have access to rooms.”
Thick burgundy carpeting covered the stairway. Phoebe swallowed and looked at Wolf, startled and relieved to find her panic mirrored starkly in his face. Man of the world he might be, but Wolf hadn’t counted on this. He was out of his league. Hesitantly he approached her, placing a hand on each of Phoebe’s hips. They kissed at the foot of the stairs, deep pulling kisses that shuddered through Phoebe, emptying her mind of every thought. Wolf’s mouth tasted fresh, sweet almost, like a child’s. He pulled Phoebe against him and buried his face in her neck until she jerked back and cried out. Wolf’s hands shook; she felt the pulse of his erection near her hip.
“Come on,” he said. Hand in hand, they took the carpeted stairs in twos. The door was right at the top. Wolf opened it quickly with the key. The room smelled of cedar. There was a large bed with a window beside it overlooking the courtyard. The tangled colors of sunset flooded in, indecently bright after the quiet gloom of downstairs. Phoebe heard the slap of the boys’ soccer ball against the stones. She shut the door behind her and locked it while Wolf lowered the blind.
They undressed in the dim light with an urgency suggestive of disaster. Phoebe was afraid to look at Wolf. Naked, they held each other, breathing. His skin was hot. Suddenly he lifted Phoebe into his arms and carried her to the bed, where he laid her gently down, then set upon her like someone starving. Missing was any sense of choice. Phoebe closed her eyes. When she opened them, Wolf was staring at her face, as if forcing himself to see what he was doing, as if that might stop it.
She hadn’t expected the pain, such a jagged tearing pain at the pit of her stomach. Phoebe winced and cried out, and Wolf knew then, though she couldn’t tell if it surprised him. He yelled himself a moment later, his face frozen in a look of anguish, then he fell upon Phoebe, as if barely conscious. For a long time after, the pain was all she could think of.
As darkness fell, Phoebe listened to the tables in the square below being set for dinner. Distinct sounds arrived through the window: dishes, silver, chairs scraping brick. Torrents of Italian, each conversation like an exchange of passionate ultimatums. Noises echoed slightly, ricocheting off the surrounding miles of emptiness.
The bedsheets were stiff against Phoebe’s skin, as if they’d been dried in the sun. She lay on her side facing the window, only her feet touching Wolf’s. She thought he might be sleeping. An image of herself as a little girl riding his shoulders kept invading her mind, and the memory filled her with horror.
“Hey,” he said softly. “How you doing?”
Phoebe turned to look at him. Wolf lay on his back, facing the ceiling. The sheet was pulled to his neck.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I feel weird.”
“That seems reasonable.”
There was a long silence. Phoebe grew panicky. “So, what are you thinking?” she asked, wanting Wolf to talk.
He exhaled the ghost of a laugh. “I’m thinking I’ve lost my mind.”
“Is it bad?” she whispered.
Wolf turned on his side, facing her now. The tenderness in his eyes was unexpectedly calming. “I’m not sure good and bad quite figure here,” he said.
Below, people were sitting down to eat. Phoebe heard laughter, caught a whiff of someone’s cigarette.
“It felt unavoidable,” Wolf said, as though thinking aloud. “There just seemed to be no way around it. I tried to find a way but I couldn’t.”
“That’s true,” Phoebe said. “I tried, too.”
“You did not.” He was grinning.
“I did,” Phoebe said, indignant. “I tried to leave.”
“That’s true,” Wolf reflected, serious again. After a moment he said, “I was so