Wolf Point by Edward Falco Page B

after a moment or two, and then he was thinking about the cover of a slim book of contemporary poetry he had purchased recently. It was a reproduction of Thomas Hart Benton’s
Persephone
. Snuggled in the hollows of a gnarled oak tree, unclothed Persephone’s perfect body radiates the splendid luxury of youth, while behind her an old man with thin gray hair and features twisted into ugliness by age reaches one arthritic hand toward her thigh. T pushed the image out of mind. He wasn’t old and arthritic. He hadn’t crept away from his horse-drawn cart to spy on innocent Persephone. He had picked up Jenny and her companion hitchhiking. He had delivered them where they wanted to go. At Jenny’s request, at her urging, he had agreed to spend the night in her uncle’s cabin. As for the old man’s lust in theBenton painting, about that he didn’t know. He wasn’t sure what he was doing. He didn’t know what he wanted. All he knew for absolute certain was that he preferred being where he was, in front of a fire in a cabin on the Thousand Islands waiting for Jenny to take her shower, to where he had previously been headed, which would most likely have been a generic, sanitized motel room separated by four walls from everyone else in the world.
    The sound of the shower curtain being pulled aside in the bathroom bounced out into the empty hallway, followed in a moment by Jenny’s inarticulate squeals and articulate curses—
Oh, shit; motherfucker; son of a bitch
—and the interrupted rhythms of water splashing off a body and onto porcelain. Then the water stopped, the curtain was pulled back, and the sound of scurrying feet preceded her appearance in the bedroom doorway wrapped in a blue towel held together by one fist at her breasts, but not long enough to cover her. She stood a moment shivering in the doorway. After the first instant’s reflexive dropping of his eyes, T fixed his gaze on her face.
    “Water a little cold?” he asked.
    “Think so?” she said, and dropped the towel as she pulled the white quilt off the bed, threw it over her shoulders, and lay down on the rugs in front of T by the fire. She pulled the quilt tightly around her, tucking the edges under her thighs and legs, and pushed her body back into T. “Put your arms around me,” she said, turning to look into his face, “before I freeze to death.” She kissed him on the cheek.
    T put his arms around her. Her head rested on his bicep as he held her tight.
    “Ummm,” she purred. “This is delicious.” She snuggled into him, molding her body to the contours of his and closing her eyes drowsily.
    T touched her bare shoulder with his cheek, and she turned in his arms onto her back and kissed him on the lips, her hand under the quilt pushing up under his T shirt and along his ribs to his chest.
    T knew what was supposed to happen next. This was the moment when he kissed her in return and then fumbled out of his clothes as he raised himself up over her and onto her and then pushed himself into her for the familiar warm rocking and thrust and moan of sex, but instead of the rising and filling and swell the moment required, he felt come over him a sense of deflation, as if his body from head to toe were going so soft it might liquefy. What he felt was sadness flowing through him, deep sadness. He leaned away from her under the quilt, making enough distance to look her in the eyes. “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” he said.
    Jenny seemed puzzled. She leaned back on her elbow and propped her head up on her hand. “What do you mean?” she asked. “What do you mean, you don’t know what you’re doing?”
    “I don’t,” T said.
    “I just— Why? Why would you—”
    “Why’s a dumb question.” She touched his lips with her finger. “I want you to make love to me. I just want you to.”
    T watched her watching him, her eyes on his eyes, and knew she was expecting him to start again, to lean into her with the kiss that would put the