Switch by William Bayer Page A

come out, Janek ." There was a nice rhythm to her speaking, as nice as the rhythm of her camera's click-click-click.
    They paused at the corner of Baxter and Hester. She stood beside him while he unlocked his car. When he opened her door she just stood there under the streetlamp searching his eyes, and then he kissed her, and felt the warmth of her hand as she reached up and curled it around his neck.
    They drove back to Queens in silence. There was just the sound of the city outside, the summer sound of traffic and people, and it all seemed subdued somehow as if set in relief by the murmur of their breathing inside the car. There was a bond between them, he felt, and it heightened the feeling he had as they sat together and he drove, and the city was quiet, a gentler place because of the warmth he felt beside this quiet girl.
    Outside her building she turned to him.
    "Want to come up?"
    "Of course I do. You know I do." He paused. "I didn't know, Caroline, didn't know it was going to be like this."
    "I didn't know, either. How could we know? That's the mystery of it, isn't it? Sweet mystery."
    There was a spell between them and they were both careful not to break it. They moved quietly up the stairs. There was no talk, smiles, jokes, flirtatious looks as they paused and she opened her locks and led him in. The loft was softly lit. She had half a dozen Japanese-style paper lanterns, and they were set in various parts of the huge room. She had left them on when she'd gone out and now they cast a warm glow over everything, making the loft seem more tender than it had the evening before.
    She kicked off her sandals, opened a cupboard, pulled out a bottle of wine. He came behind her, stood just a few inches behind, and she turned to him and smiled. She handed him the bottle and a corkscrew, then brought down two glasses from a shelf.
    "Music?"
    He nodded.
    She went to her stereo, chose a record from a rack beneath—Miles Davis playing with Coltrane, subtle and hypnotic, endless too.
    They sat side by side in her worn sling chairs, sipping and listening, not speaking at all. Then she stood and brought over a hassock and set it in front of him and sat so her back pressed against his knees.
    He reached down into her hair, ran his fingers through it. Then he massaged her neck, kneaded the upper part of her back, running his thumbs gently along her shoulder blades, and it seemed to him that she was purring almost as she moved her head slowly from side to side.
    It seemed to him that their lovemaking had been humane when, later, they held each other and stroked each other on her huge brass bed. He had felt consumed by tenderness, had reveled in the slow languorous rapturous way they'd moved at a half-time tempo, never lying still, but without banging or making any motion that was angry or angular, always smooth, always slow and easy. They had been people making love, not animals screwing, and he thought of that just before he fell asleep.
    He awoke several times in the night, wondrous at finding himself here sleeping in her loft, with her smooth, young, bare body beside him, listening to her drowsy breathing, feeling the warmth of her back against his palms. It had never been like this for him, at least as far back as he could recall. It had been a long time since he had made gentle love, felt this way toward a woman, held a woman so young and strong and beautiful, held her through the night. And he was amazed that it had happened. It seemed like an impossible dream, something he had longed for, that marked a turning point. It was all so strange, the way they'd met and then fallen in love, without any sort of courtship except her photographing him and taking his arm out on the street. All his detectiveness had melted away, and now he was a man again, reborn, and this seemed a momentous thing, as if his life would be different now.
    Suddenly he was scared—he, Janek , who normally was not afraid of anything. Maybe she did this all