The Shape of Desire by Sharon Shinn
Ellen points at her. “See? There’s always someone watching or a camera pointed at you. You can never be anonymous in today’s world.”
It is hard to tell if Grant finds this a sobering thought, but I surely do. By this reasoning, dozens of people could have—might already have—spotted me out with my own secret lover. I might run into Beth at a restaurant, Kathleen and Ritchie in the state park. We could be at a convenience store when it gets robbed and be captured on the security camera, our pictures broadcast to the entire world. Who’s that guy you were with, Maria? Why were you holding hands? Hey, do you have a boyfriend?
Well, in fifteen years no one has spotted us together—or, if they have, they haven’t mentioned it to me. And I have a dozen answers ready, ranging from the partial explanation I had given to Kathleen to an assortment of stories designed to fit particular situations or accusations. He’s an old boyfriend who happened to be passing through town…He’s this guy I’ve been seeing for a few weeks. Cute, don’t you think?…He’s someone that a friend at work fixed me up with. I don’t think the relationship will go anywhere, though. He’s kind of moody.
Lies are easy. It’s the living behind them that’s hard.
Finally, finally, it’s nearing the end of the third week since Dante disappeared. Over the weekend, I feel my heartbeat quicken, my nerves grow taut. By Monday at work, I am so tightly wound that when someone accidentally bumps into me in the hallway, I actually give a little scream. I’m continually dropping things, spilling things, losing track of conversations. Surely tomorrow, or the day after, or possibly the day after that, Dante will be back.
The birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
It is important every day to look my best, in case he is at the house waiting for me when I return. Starting on Monday, I set the alarm a half hour early, so I have extra time to style my hair and make up my face. I pick my most flattering clothes, red blouses, purple scarves, tight sweaters that show off my curves.
“You’re looking good, girlfriend,” Marquez tells me Tuesday afternoon. “Did you get your hair cut? Shop some sales? Fall in love?”
I just laugh and shake my head.
When I go home that night, I know Dante is waiting for me. The front door is open to admit the last of the October sunlight—and to let me know he has arrived. Before I go in, I spend a moment indulging in a frequent fantasy: He has stopped to buy champagne, roses, chocolates, bubble bath. I will push open the door to find a path of petals leading from the foyer to the bedroom, where candles paint the walls with warm highlights. Soft music will be playing in the other room, and Dante will be wearing some Chippendales-style outfit—slick black pants, a bow tie, no shirt. “Darling,” he will say, and pull me into a gentle embrace. We will slow dance around the bedroom, our bodies drawing closer and closer, as we desperately try to hold back from that first kiss. Finally, there will be no more resisting. Our arms will tighten around each other, he will sweep me against his chest, and we will fall on each other with an unappeasable hunger.
Well, we’ve managed that unappeasable hunger part often enough. Perhaps I’m greedy for wanting the romantic prelude, at least once in my life. But Dante doesn’t dance. He doesn’t bother with sexy clothes—he scarcely even notices if I’ve gone to the trouble of putting on black lace or red silk. And he never calls me darling.
Still, I feel my chest tightening with anticipation as I push wide the door and step inside. “Dante?” I call in a low voice.
No answer, and I do pause to consider that the door might have been opened by a thief instead of a boyfriend. But the living room is tidy and the mail has been dropped on the coffee table—an act that seems too considerate for a burglar. The most likely answer is that he’s sleeping. I lock the door behind me and creep to the bedroom.
Yes, there he is, sprawled facedown on the bed, his hair a smear of black across my white pillows. He’s naked and smells faintly of soap, so he’s been here long enough to take a shower and wash away most traces of new Dante. But I can still sense the wild creature in him. His hands are balled around the chenille bedspread, his face—turned so his left cheek lies against the pillow—is clenched in a frown. A long, half-healed gash runs all the way down his right arm, from the round knob of his shoulder to the bulky juncture of his wrist.
Sometime in the past three weeks he has been in a fight. I wonder if there are even worse wounds on his chest. I wonder if he has chosen to sleep this way simply so I won’t see them, not at first.
But he won the fight, or at least survived it; he is here now. Moving quietly, so I don’t wake him up, I lay aside all of my workaday encumbrances—purse, briefcase, phone. I slip out of my shoes, silently pull off all my clothes except my underwear (which, yes, is black and sheer), and carefully crawl onto the bed beside him. He mutters in his sleep and turns on his side, all without waking up. I fit myself against him, feeling the heat rising from his skin, pressing myself even closer to absorb that warmth with my own body. It is as if I am some kind of hothouse flower that thrives only under a rare sun, and now that solar body has made its reappearance in the skies. I slide one set of fingers under his hard ribs, coil the others in his dense hair; they are like questing plant tendrils, twining around some upthrust support as they strive to get closer to that source of light. Only now that the sun shines on me again do I realize how shriveled I had become; only now that I can open up and bask greedily in his light do I realize how dark the days have been. Only now do I acknowledge how close to death I have been without him.
Once Dante wakes up, we order Chinese food and curl up next to each other on the couch to eat it while we watch TV. We don’t bother turning on any lights; the whole house is dark except for the flickering colors emanating from the screen. I love these early hours back together, when he is still sleepy and a little inclined to cling. We are always touching; it is like we both know we’re floating, and the only thing that keeps us from crashing to the ground is the weird electrical power we generate when we are skin to skin. So while our hands are busy wielding forks and chopsticks, we intertwine our ankles. When he stands up to carry our dirty plates to the kitchen, he places his hand on my head as if he needs to catch his balance. Eventually, of course, we stretch out side by side on the couch, my back to his stomach, his arms around my body, my hands around his arms.
My fingers encounter the red edge of that recent wound. “Looks like you got into a fight or something,” I say in a carefully casual voice.
Dante grunts. “Yeah, but I didn’t. Got caught in a windstorm and a branch came down. Gouged my front leg. Hurt like hell, but didn’t do any lasting damage.”
My eyes widen, an expression he can’t see. “Wow. That could have been a lot worse.”
He lifts a hand to rap a fist gently against my skull. “Yeah, could’ve hit me in the head and knocked me right out. But it didn’t.” His voice holds the equivalent of a shrug. No use worrying about things that might have happened, things that didn’t happen. Just deal with what you’re handed and forget the rest.
“So how far do you think you traveled this time?”
The hand that tapped my head is now stroking my hair. “I don’t know, a few hundred miles? Distance seems harder to estimate when I’m in animal shape.”
“Going to be getting cold pretty soon,” I say, although he obviously knows this. “I hope you shift into something warm and furry.”
I hear the grin in his voice. “I always have before.”
I turn in his arms and now we are face-to-face. “Like, you know, a malamute. A Saint Bernard. A sled dog.”
“Sure, because those are pretty common in Missouri.”
I lean in to kiss him. “Common enough. If you take dog shape, come around to the house. I’ll put out food for you. Good stuff. Canned stuff. You’ll like it.”
He responds enthusiastically to the kiss and offers me one of his own. It’s clear he’s losing interest in conversation as a way to pass the time.
“I’m a vegetarian when you’re gone,” I say primly, or as primly as a person can when someone else’s hand is toying with the lace of her bra. “You’d probably prefer the canned goods.”
“I’d prefer anything you wanted to give me, baby,” he says.
We both giggle, and then we snuggle closer. The kissing continues and intensifies and eventually takes over all my senses. I sit up just long enough to unhook and discard my bra, kick off my panties. The lights from the television play across my body, across Dante’s, making us glow like space aliens filled with phosphorescent blood. When I lie back on top of him, his skin is hot enough to reinforce the illusion that he is from another planet altogether. Certainly he is foreign enough, rare enough, to have no permanent place in this world.
We writhe on the couch and make love, and I swear, beneath our laboring bodies, I can feel the spinning of the earth.
CHAPTER NINE
The next two days pass in an odd checkerboard of daytime blur and nighttime clarity. I yawn through my working hours, drowse at my computer, but come alive every night as my drive brings me closer to home. Oh, those evenings aren’t perfect. As Dante becomes accustomed to being human again, he grows increasingly irritable. It takes more effort to entertain him, more activity to keep him cheerful.
There are frequent pickup basketball games at the high school about a mile from my house, so we go there Friday evening and find about a dozen men of all ages and races playing a sloppy but raucous game. There are even a couple of women on the pitted asphalt court, tossing balls and sinking baskets. I think they might be from a local college team; at any rate, they’re better than about half the men. I huddle on the metal bleachers, glad I wore my heavy coat, and talk idly with a teenage girl whose boyfriend is playing center. She’s black and so is he. He works construction by day, delivers pizza in the off hours. She’s studying at the community college, hopes to get into nursing school next year.
“Health care, always a good field,” I say. This exhausts the topics on which we can manage to converse, and we watch the rest of the game in silence. It’s hard to tell who has won, but everyone coming off the court looks sweaty and happy. On the way home, Dante and I stop for ice cream and swap cones halfway through. I consider this an excellent end to a pretty good day and a pretty satisfying week.
I am in no way prepared for the turbulence that Saturday will bring.
It’s scarcely eight in the morning when the doorbell rings, often enough to seem frantic, followed by repeated knocking at the door. Adrenaline brings me fully awake, and I’m already afraid as I jump out of bed and throw a robe over my nude body. An urgent summons at this time of day cannot possibly be good news.
Dante, of course, is wide awake and coiled on the bed as if prepared to leap up and fight. He’s still fully human, but it is impossible to miss a predator’s instincts in the set of his shoulders and the narrowing of his gaze. “What do you want me to do?” he says. “Maybe I should be the one to answer the door.”
“No, no, it might be Beth or Sydney,” I say, slipping my cell phone in the pocket of my robe. “It might be a neighbor who needs to use the phone. Just stay here. Unless I start screaming.”
Using my hands to comb back my tangled hair, I leave him in the bedroom with the door half closed and hurry to open the front door. I’m astonished to find Kathleen on my front porch. Her little blue Aveo is parked in my driveway.
She’s crying—sobbing, really—and it looks like she has been doing so for a good couple of hours. Her cheeks are so splotchy that I can’t tell if any of the marks were caused by a blow to the face. She’s wearing a loose sweatshirt over a turtleneck sweater, so I can’t see if she’s got marks anywhere else on her body. The air outside is so chilly that my bare feet are instantly cold, and I pull the robe more tightly around me as I hold the door as wide as it will go.
“Kathleen!” I exclaim. “Come in! What’s wrong?”
“I have to—Ritchie says—here, take it back,” she chokes out as she thrusts a canvas grocery bag in my direction.
I take it automatically; whatever’s inside doesn’t weigh more than a couple of pounds. “What’s—Kathleen, come inside. Let me get you something to drink. What’s wrong? What happened?”
“I can’t,” she replies, her voice so distorted from crying that she doesn’t even sound like herself. “I just came to drop that off, I have to go home.”
I reach out, take her arm, and tug her into the house. She looks like she wants to resist, but she doesn’t know how; she has learned the hard way that gainsaying anyone with a stronger temperament will lead to disaster. She is still sobbing and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know how to stop. She stands there with her arms wrapped around herself, her eyes cast down, and her face a mess of tears and snot. I have never seen anyone so forlorn.
I keep a box of Kleenex on a console by the door, so I hand her one. “What happened?” I ask gently. The answer is obvious, though I try to couch it in the least accusatory terms. “Did you and Ritchie have a fight?”
She nods and swipes at her nose with the tissue. She has to gulp for air twice before she can answer. “He said—he said that we don’t need charity—that he doesn’t want anyone thinking he can’t provide for his family—”
For a moment I am wholly bewildered. “But—who said—what charity?” And then I realize what is actually in the canvas bag I’m still holding. “Oh my God. The computer? The one I let you borrow? That wasn’t charity. That was me lending you something I don’t even need.”
Now the words are tumbling out of her mouth. “I know, I know. I tried to tell him that, but he said, ‘Bullshit.’ And then he said that I knew it was wrong, that I knew I was wrong to take it from you because I tried to hide it from him. But I wasn’t hiding it. I mean, I didn’t have it set up in the living room, it was folded up on top of the filing cabinet, but it was out in the open, I wasn’t concealing it—”
My heart twists with pain for Kathleen, pain and horror at the life she must lead every day. I put my hand on her shoulder. “Kathleen,” I say in a quiet voice. “I will certainly take the computer back. That’s no problem. But I’m a little worried about you going back to the house while Ritchie is so mad. Can you stay here for a few hours? Or maybe even overnight?” I’m not quite sure what I will do with Dante, but I obviously can’t send Kathleen back to her husband’s unloving care. “I’ve got plenty of room, and maybe it would—”
Her drowned eyes have gone wide with fright. She backs away from me, forcing me to drop my hand. “Oh, no, no, that would make it worse. He’ll be even madder. He’ll think I told you secrets—”
Maybe you should tell me secrets. “Kathleen, I don’t want to pry but—”
“Don’t. Don’t ask. I’ll be fine.”
“Can you at least stay and drink a cup of tea or something? You look too upset to even drive home.”
“I—thank you, no, I’ve got to go.” She has put her hand on the doorknob, but now she turns back to give me the saddest look I’ve ever seen. “Please don’t tell anyone at work,” she says in a low voice. “Don’t tell Ellen.”
Of course I plan to call Ellen as soon as the Aveo is out of the driveway. “I think Ellen might be able to help you.”
“I don’t need help,” she says.
On the words, the front door is shoved open so forcibly that it hits Kathleen in the shoulder, and she trips backward with a little cry. A small, fierce, dark-haired man charges inside, eyes glaring and hands clenched as if he’s prepared to take on a host of adversaries. I do not need Kathleen’s cry of “Ritchie!” to guess who this newcomer is. I catch a glimpse of a rusted red truck parked at the curb in front of my house. It takes no great deductive reasoning to guess that he followed his wife to make sure she did what he told her.
“What the fuck are you still doing here, Kathleen?” he demands. He grabs her by the arm an
“I didn’t say anything, Ritchie!” she protests. With her free hand, she is digging at the fingers clenched around her forearm. “Maria asked if I wanted a cup of tea!”
“Well, you don’t want tea, you don’t want any charity from these people. Now get out the door and go home.”
I am flabbergasted, horrified, and more than a little afraid. I have stood mute and motionless, unable to think how to respond, but now I take a tiny step forward on my frozen feet. “Please, I think everyone’s upset. Mr. Hogan, I apologize for offending you by lending Kathleen the computer. Let’s just talk calmly for a moment—”
Not letting go of Kathleen, he swivels on the balls of his feet and shoves me hard in the chest. I lurch back and slam into the couch, no doubt earning an impressive bruise on the back of my thigh. “Don’t you even mess with me,” he says in a menacing voice.
Catching my balance, I pull out my cell phone. “I’m calling the police,” I say coldly. “And Kathleen had better be here when they arrive.”
He flings Kathleen aside, bounds over to me, and knocks the cell phone from my hands. I hear it skitter across the floor and bounce against a wall into the kitchen. “You stupid bitch,” he says. “Don’t you ever call the cops on me.”
I am the only one not surprised when a deep voice from over my shoulder growls, “Get the fuck out of this house.”
Ritchie freezes; Kathleen spins around to stare. I sense Dante cross the room in a slow, lethal glide. I am gazing fixedly at Ritchie, so I only see Dante out of the corner of my eye. He is still naked, and he looks magnificent—tall, lean, muscled, marked with the souvenir scars of a dozen fights, all of which he has clearly survived. “Get out,” he says, “and leave the girl behind.”