Love Doesn't Work by Henning Koch Page A

not leaving him. Not yet anyway.”
    “You two are a fucking recipe for divorce.”
    “If you don’t want to do it, that’s fair enough. You seem a sensible bloke, Chuck, and I like that.” She grabbed the wire-netting fence with both hands. “I expect you’re probably the kind of man who doesn’t like a straight offer, but I don’t have very much time. So just tell me if you want me or not.”
    I looked at her and I did want her, although it was all fairly abstract. “Yes. Not very fair to Jimmy, though, is it?”
    “Oh it’s very fair. I’ll tell you more about it later. Maybe.”
    She waited for my answer, and finally I nodded. “Okay, if that’s what you want.”
    “Good. You’re sure?”
    “I’m not sure. I can’t be sure until this whole thing’s played itself out, but I’m saying okay for now.”
    Her eyes were still consoling. Now those eyes seemed to say: relax, take me, do what you want.
    “Don’t make such a big thing of it. It’s really not. You don’t have to marry me or anything.”
    “Maybe for you it’s something very normal. Maybe you do this stuff all the time. You know when I first met you I thought you seemed a straightforward woman with a good mind. I was a bit confused, though—do you mind my saying that?—about you and Jimmy. What you were doing with him.”
    “You have a pretty low opinion of your friend, don’t you?”
    “I suppose so.”
    “And of me as well?” She loomed over me when she said that, the sun catching the shine of her black hair.
    “I don’t have a low opinion of you at all.”
    “Thanks.” She stuck her finger through the netting and wiggled it at me. “So you want to go ahead with this thing?”
    “I told you yes. Just stop talking about it like some sort of project. But I’m not getting involved in this whole mental sex thing. I make love normally, so don’t bring some damned sculpture to bed, because I’ll walk out. This is all a bit of a mind-fuck, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
    “Chuck, get out of the taboo, get inside the emotion. Okay?”
    Christ, this woman had spent too long in America! I stared at her, then tried to control my disquiet. “When do you want to start?”
    “Tomorrow. We’ll have a light supper at about six, then we’ll rest for a half hour and meet here on the terrace afterwards. One other thing, Chuck. Try to remember that I will be working through a number of different sexual attitudes.”
    “How do you mean, attitudes?”
    “You’ll see. I won’t be myself. Not quite.”
    “Like a role-play thing? Will you come in wearing black leather and thigh-length boots?”
    “Would you like me to?”
    “No. Not at all. Just wear the red dress you wore last night.”
     
    VII
    The next day, after we’d eaten and Jimmy had left and said his despondent farewells, I almost sighed with delight when I saw her. She’d conspired to look exactly as she did the first night I saw her. Women understand these things. Her hair was up, revealing that soft arching neck with the soft earlobes pierced by gold rings. Even the tiny piercings excited me, the way they broke through the soft rotunda of flesh. Her lips were slightly tensed—sexual excitement or just plain nervousness?
    “So. Here you are. In your entirety,” I said.
    “Not quite,” she said. “Remember, flesh is a veil. Come over here, sit down. Take a closer look at me.”
    I sat down beside her. No longer forbidden fruit, she now seemed a woman like any other. Certainly beautiful, but otherwise perfectly ordinary. When she leaned back and smiled invitingly at me, I felt coerced by the situation. She noticed immediately.
    “You preferred me when I was not available?” she said.
    “Oh, infinitely.”
    We sat in silence. Then she shook her head. “You see. Words are such a turn-off.”
    After that we kissed for a while. To be frank, I found her slimy tongue rather repellent, the way it insistently pumped in and out of my mouth. She maintained this for