Academy Street by Mary Costello Page B

She
sipped the amber liquid, felt its heat spread through her. She put a hand on his
arm to steady herself and his eyes smiled. They moved to a dim corner, sat on plush
red velvet, touching shoulders, arms, thighs. This certain love is melting me, she
thought, and leaned into him.
    He was carrying her shoes. Her hand was inside his as they climbed stairs. A corridor
of crimson carpet, deep, under bare feet, and then the sinking softness of his bed
and his face swimming into view. His chest, the glow of uncovered skin. She left
a hand on his sternum, his collar bone. She thought of the word clavicle , how beautiful
it was. Her eyes opened and closed and opened again and she was gone, drifting, lightheaded.
    And then, woozy, half dreaming, she gasped at the first hot stab and cried out in
pain. She pushed at his chest, tried to pull herself from under him. Frightened,
he looked into her eyes, and rolled off. He stroked her cheek tenderly. Shh, I’m
sorry. A look of sorrow came upon him. She began to crumble. A tear rolled from the
corner of her eye. He kissed her eyelids, whispered something she did not hear.
    They lay in each other’s arms. She did not want to lose him. She pressed herself
to him, felt herself yield again. He searched her face, kissed her. He began to move,
slowly, gently, his hands caressing her until she felt the swell and ache of her
body, the longing to fuse, to be subsumed. She turned her head to the side, repositioned
herself under his weight. He seemed to forget himself then, and her. She did not
care. She closed her eyes against the pain, both shocking and stirring. She was offering
herself to him, and to something larger. She felt herself topple and a point of light,
of bright sensation, opened and spread, spacious within her, and pushed her perilously
close to a precipice. She had the feeling that he might after all save her, save
them both, but then he gasped and shuddered and collapsed on top of her.
    She lay there like a stone. She heard footsteps, voices on the corridor. From somewhere
far off came the sound of music, as if reaching her through water. She hauled herself
from the undertow and staggered to the bathroom and knelt at the toilet bowl. Strands
of her hair fell into the vomit. She sat on the floor, trembling, the walls spinning.
She ran hot water and sat into the bath, scalding herself.
    When she went back to bed he was deeply asleep. She began to shiver. After a time
she drifted off. When she woke he was gone, and everything was silent.

9
    SHE TRIED TO make good what was terrible. She tried in her mind to tenderise it,
beautify it. More than anything she wanted to cast off shame. She sat in the dark
of her apartment and covered her head with her hands. She did not know how to reassemble
herself.
    She took refuge in the routine of work, in the care of patients and the ordinary
talk of her colleagues. For brief interludes she forgot. She arrived on the ward
early and left late, speaking and moving with a slowness, a soft remote kindness
in every action. An acquiescence, an atonement too, as if relinquishing all claims
to the earth. Everywhere, she watched her step, fearful of walking into doors, trees,
people. She lowered her head and walked hard and fast on the pavement to beat down
words. Sin. Shame. In the hall each evening she opened her mailbox with trembling
hands, and each evening there came nothing, no word from him. She had thought she
had known him. She had known only a small corner of him. Is it possible to know anyone,
ever? Taking the stairs in one deliberate step after another, she felt her resistance
fade. Hours later, with the TV turned down, fear turned to anger. Suffer , her heart
cried. Suffer a little of what I suffer.
    Weeks passed. She was late. She had known from the start—amid the confusion of shame
and fear she had expected this too and now it was almost a relief to be right. To
know the worst had come, and the wait was over. In those first nights she had