Women with Men by Richard Ford Page A

impact like a shock, did not break. And little Léo's pallid face assumed a look of controlled fury. He quickly took two more vengeful back-and-forth swipes at it, the second of which struck Austin's thumb a stinging then numbing blow, then Léo turned and fled out of the room, down the hall and through a door which he slammed behind him.
    Austin looked up at Joséphine, who was just finishing at the window.
    “He is very mixed up. I tell you before,” she said, and shook her head.
    “That didn't work out too well,” Austin said, squeezing his throbbing thumb so as not to have to mention it.
    “It's not important,” she said, going to the couch and putting her compact in her purse. “He is angry all the time. Sometimes he hits
me.
Don't feel bad. You're sweet to bring something to him.”
    But what Austin felt, at that moment, was that he wanted to kiss Joséphine, and not to talk about Léo. Now that they were alone, he wanted to kiss her in a way that said he was here and it wasn't just a coincidence, that he'd had her on his mind this whole time, and wanted her to have him on her mind, and that this whole thing that had started last week in discretion and good-willed restraint was rising to a new level, a level to be taken more seriously. She could love him now. He could conceivablyeven love her. Much was possible that only days ago was not even dreamed of.
    He moved toward where she was, repocketing the egg, his injured thumb pulsating. She was leaned over the couch in her idiotic animal pants, and he rather roughly grasped her hips—covering the faces of a yellow giraffe and a gray rhino with his hands—and pulled, trying to turn her toward him so he could give her the kiss he wanted to give her, the authoritative one that signaled his important arrival on the scene. But she jumped, as though he'd startled her, and she shouted, “Stop! What is it!” just as he was negotiating her face around in front of his. She had a lipstick tube in her hand, and she seemed irritated to be so close to him. She smelled sweet, surprisingly sweet. Like a flower, he thought.
    “There's something important between us, I think,” Austin said directly into Joséphine's irritated face. “Important enough to bring me back across an ocean and to leave my wife and to face the chance that I'll be alone here.”
    “What?” she said. She contorted her mouth and, without exactly pushing, exerted a force to gain a few inches from him. He still had her by her hips, cluttered with animal faces. A dark crust of eye shadow clung where she had inexpertly doctored her eyelids.
    “You shouldn't feel under any pressure,” he said and looked at her gravely. “I just want to see you. That's all. Maybe have some time alone with you. Who knows where it'll go?”
    “You are very fatigued, I think.” She struggled to move backward. “Maybe you can have a sleep while I'm going.”
    “I'm not tired,” Austin said. “I feel great. Nothing's bothering me. I've got a clean slate.”
    “That's good,” she said, and smiled but pushed firmly away from him just as he was moving in to give her the important kiss. Joséphine quickly kissed him first, though, the same hard,unpassionate kiss she'd greeted him with five minutes before and that had left him dissatisfied.
    “I want to kiss you the right way, not that way,” Austin said. He pulled her firmly to him again, taking hold of her soft waist and pushing his mouth toward hers. He kissed her as tenderly as he could with her back stiff and resistant, and her mouth not shaped to receive a kiss but ready to speak when the kiss ended. Austin held the kiss for a long moment, his eyes closed, his breath traveling out his nose, trying to feel his own wish for tenderness igniting an answering tenderness in her. But if there was tenderness, it was of an unexpected type—more like forbearance. And when he had pressed her lips for as many as six or eight seconds, until he had breathed her breath and she