In Spite of Everything

He watches the paling of the skin at her fingertips, the flush that spreads in counterpoint over her breasts. Her pelvis rises from the bed, taking him along with them, both of them silent within the irasciblity of depressed springs, a metronome of straining joints. Their bodies persist in a grotto of discrete light, carved out of the smoker's thumb grubbiness of forty-watt bulbs. Their own sacred space, no less gorgeous with opiated peace than the church that they had visited in Arles one afternoon in search of refuge from the heat. Dehydrated, irritable, they had chosen a seat at the back, both of them eyeing their surroundings with apostate defensiveness, a wisecrack about kiddy-fiddlers forming and dying upon his lips. She wouldn't have appreciated it. He could tell by her expression. Both of her palms were laid flat upon the cool oak of the pew, a throwback to the Sundays of her childhood, self-conscious and itchy in her best frock yet not daring to scratch. She had sweated off all of her make-up apart from her mascara, always the last thing to go, coming undone in cinders which gathered in the damp lines beneath her eyes. The braised tip of her nose inclined to the west, devouring a once familiar scent. She whispered that she could smell cinnamon. (All he could smell was the futility of deodorant.) When she knelt down, while he sat back self-righteously, she left a damp imprint upon the wood, complete down to the string of her thong. He laid a sponsor's hand upon her shoulder. She didn't look around. She didn't need to...

His stoicism is waning. Her eyes plead with him to stop being a martyr. She gets it, she appreciates it...Now she needs him to come, much as a child read to at bedtime desires the certitude of a happy ending. Her mouth is at his ear, invocation audible, tangible, in every breath. He focuses upon a cramp in his calf, attempting to hold out but it is in vain, another doomed appeal to gallantry...The intensity of his letting go is shameful, yet would be somehow lacking were it not so. She shivers, gluttonous for the heat of him, the zenith of her climax held in reserve for the first hint of its flowering. Both of them are quiet, undemonstrative, scornful of the clichés of abandonment. Her face is amphetamine bright, strange with ultimate revelation, enlightenment borne upon blood that rushes to gather and burn like white phosphorous in the softness of mucous membranes. The heat contains traces of his own, much as their mutual bliss has become indiscrete, impossible to categorize as belonging to him or her alone. The epiphany is of communion, the mixing of substance as well as soul. He glories in the abdication of the self, the self-sufficiency of their new form. Nothing is amiss in such perfection. Nothing can threaten the wholeness of such peace...

Yet even at its peak – especially so – the jubilee is melancholy. He despairs at transience, helpless against the reassertion of reality. Her features coalesce against a backdrop of quieting synapses, the memory of their frenzy already becoming faint, fantastic-seeming, strangely embarrassing. She is as breathless as he is, the bloom upon her neck fading, stray curls forming miniscules within the dampness of her forehead. The clock by the bed complies, its minute hand detumescent at twenty past the hour.

They apologize to each other as they disengage. Her eyes are tired. She needs her sleep; has been known get unreasonable on the subject. She goes to the bathroom and a moment later he hears the cistern's indifferent refill above the running of both taps. She has her rituals. He doesn't ask and she doesn't tell. He picks up his shorts and wipes himself off with them before putting them back on. The dark stain on the endsheet is already cold. A million dead souls...She had told him not to be flattering himself...

He turns off his beside lamp and watches her return in the diminished brightness, smiling at how she winces with every step. She'll feel it at the top of her thighs in the morning and in her lower back, raw with the mattress burn he can already feel simmering in his kneecaps. For now though, her only thought is of sleep...

There is a pause immediately after she turns out her lamp. He sees her as a dark outline, unmoving, observant. He reaches up, knowing exactly where her face will be. She is smiling. He can feel her dimples...She takes the back of his hand, draws it closer, kisses the ball of his palm. Neither wife nor lover – nothing quite as trivial...

She turns on to her side, settles herself, and is asleep within minutes. He watches her for a long time, battling the desire for sleep inspired by the sight of her restfulness. The prayer he offers up for her is a reflex, a memento of the night terrors of childhood but still viable somehow, still hopeful of being heard.