Change of Heart by Sally Mandel Page A

Smile muscles, she thought.
    With her finger, she traced the line of his jaw. Except for short stubble at the chin, his face was quite smooth. She touched his mouth, running her finger along his lower lip, a long straight line that lifted slightly at each end, just enough to hint at the humor lurking there.
    His hand slipped underneath her sweater, the palm rough and warm against her bare skin. She pressed into him and put her mouth on his. Letting her body guide her, she arched her back, wondering at the simultaneous tensing and relaxing of various pieces of her—breasts stretched tight, pulling, and yet her arms dropped weakly to her sides as if the muscles there had simply melted away. She pulled back from him, put her hand at the top of her sweater and, staring at him with eyes immense and glistening, began to undo the buttons.
    When she’d finished, Brian slipped it off her shoulders. Naked, her skin shone in the soft light like pale marble. His fingers were gentle, slowly exploring all the curves and shadows. After a moment Sharlie looked down at his hands as they covered her breasts, and she shook her head.
    â€œWhat?” he said softly.
    â€œI thought I must be glowing in the dark,” she whispered.
    He pulled her against him, and she heard him murmur, “You are.”
    Sharlie insisted that he send her home in a cab rather than deliver her in person. She wasn’t ready for the convergence of Brian and her parents. As she let herself in the front door, she wondered if she would ever feel prepared for that particular moment of reckoning.
    Maybe if she stalled long enough, Walter would disappear or something. She couldn’t bring herself to wish him dead, and anyway, if anybody were going to die, it would be Sharlie. They’d all have to meet sooner or later, she supposed, but for God’s sake, let it be later. Especially not tonight, when the outline of Brian’s hands was surely gleaming from her breasts as if traced in Day-Glo paint. Through her sweater, through her coat, two phosphorescent imprints as clear as the cement hands on the sidewalk in front of that Chinese theater in Hollywood: Brian Morgan Was Here.
    She called out a noncommittal hello and rushed past the doorway of the living room, where she knew Walter and Margaret were waiting with set, silent faces for an account of this important night.
    Once inside her room with the door shut, she took a long look at herself in the mirror, smiling at the rosy reflection she saw there, grinning at the smile, laughing at the grin. Finally she sobered up enough to realize how exhausted she was, and she undressed, taking her time, examining her body in the mirror as if she hadn’t seen it before.
    Always she had glared at her image resentfully, regarding her body as the traitor, the villain of the piece. Now she tried to view herself as Brian evidently did.
    She heard the sounds of her parents preparing for bed and sighed thankfully. How much simpler to keep Brian stashed away someplace where they couldn’t get at him and mar the perfection of their hours together, clomping brutally across their tenderness, two sets of heel marks, little sharp ones and flat heavy ones, treading to the merciless rhythm of common sense and reality.
    She looked forward to lying in bed in the dark, remembering tonight, relishing it all as if it were some precious treasure to hold cupped in her hands, to turn over and over and examine from all sides.
    She pulled her favorite long white nightgown over her head and took one more appraising look in the mirror. Anemic, she thought, but her dark hair mingled softly with the creamy frills at her neck, and her eyes were filled with light. She crawled into bed, and before she’d replayed the memory of herself walking out of the theater with Brian onto Third Avenue, she was asleep.
    It must have been about four o’clock in the morning. She awoke startled, the cold pain gripping her hard across the