The Origin of Species by Nino Ricci Page B

on in the garden after they’d finished supper. It was late June, midsummer, and the light went on and on. As the wine went down Ingrid grew more candid.
    “A very typical Swede,” she said of her ex-husband. He worked as some sort of engineer at the shipyard in Helsingborg. “Very conservative. Very boring.”
    “Like Canadians,” he said.
    “But you are also Italian. You are different.”
    “Italian and not Italian. Not really.”
    “Then I am like you,” she said. “Swedish and not Swedish.”
    Before he knew it, it was midnight, though the darkness still had the dreamy crepuscular tentativeness of dusk.
    “It seems so cold, to make you sleep in the cabin,” Ingrid said. “Perhaps I will make a bed for you on the sofa.”
    Again, Alex felt relieved: so nothing would come of it. He stood by sheepishly while she arranged sheets, a duvet, on the long white sofa in her living room.
    “Will you sleep in your clothes?” she said, smiling.
    “No. I mean, I’ll change in the bathroom.”
    She was still waiting for him when he emerged. All the lights had been put out save a lamp in the alcove, leaving the room in shadowy gray. Ingrid waited as he settled and then knelt beside him as if tucking in a child.
    “Thank you, my young Alex, for a very lovely supper,” she said, and kissed him softly.
    There was still that part of him that had been hoping this wouldn’t happen. What little he’d had in the way of sex in his life had always left him feeling somehow dirtied, as if he’d merely done what was expected. He didn’t want to ruin things now with that feeling, not with someone like Ingrid.
    They kissed again. Everything about her seemed fresh and distilled. Something shifted in him and he felt free to touch her, her hair, her midriff, her face, though it seemed incredible to him that she would allow this, that alarms didn’t go off.
    Her hand had slipped beneath the drawstring of his pyjamas and she was touching him, gently, in a preliminary way. He was already hard; the touch was electric. Then before he was able to distract himself, he felt a surge and he came.
    He was mortified.
    “I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I’m sorry.”
    She was quiet an instant but then kissed him lightly, her hand still on him, and said, “There’s no reason.”
    She pulled a tissue from a box near the sofa to clean them, drawing the covers down and making Alex pull down his pyjamas so she could dab at his penis and thigh. The thing felt more intimate than coming, more awful.
    “Come up to my bed.”
    So he’d been given a reprieve. She led him up to a slope-ceilinged room with a futon bed and a skylight, the still-insistent afterglow of the midsummer sky casting the room in a kind of ghostly pallor. Alex had the sense that something had changed between them, that the stakes were higher now.
    Ingrid undressed facing away from him and slipped under the covers.
    “Come,” she said.
    But when he was lying next to her it seemed too much, this wasted luxury. She was touching him again, kneading him with a slow deliberateness, but the longer she went on, the more painful it grew.
    He could feel his guts knotting up.
    “I’m not sure I can,” he said, when he couldn’t bear it. “I’m sorry.”
    “Oh.” He couldn’t read her, if she was surprised, put out. “Oh.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Yes.”
    She had drawn her hand from him. For a moment they lay there, inert, and Alex was afraid that she would throw him out, to her cabin, to the street.
    “Perhaps you can help me,” she said finally.
    He felt instantly ashamed, not to have thought of it. Then when he’d put his hand to her he couldn’t find the spot and had to be guided,though after a minute she cupped his hand once again and gently pulled it away.
    “It’s nice just to be close,” she said.
    He felt tears welling up in him.
    “I’m sorry,” he said again.
    He felt a wave of self-pity come over him, and was suddenly sobbing.
    “You are crying!” But