Laura ate pie by the roadside. The flimsy paper plate – balanced precariously between blueberry-smudged knees – threatened to close in on itself, as much from the heat as from weight and wetness.
Damp strands of hair clung to her neck, forehead and face. A rebellious few came unglued and mingled with the pie as she chewed. She made no move to dismiss them, though she felt them chase the berries around her tongue. It made her think of Christmas. Wetting the thread between her lips. Warm smells. Familiar sensations. Stringing cranberries.
She had never strung a cranberry in her life.
Charles stood not more than three feet behind her. She could hear him chewing. His arguably more successful method of supporting the plate on one large callused hand and forking the pie in with the other had less to do with conscious reason than with his chronic practicality.
She ached for his pie to fall – to feel it spill warm and gummy down her bare sodden back. The curious urge sent a hateful sadness through her. Ashamed, she snuffed it.
* * * *
Laura had gone to him again last night. The fire had returned. It kept her from sleep. She had wept desperately as she tried to douse it – both hands clutched over it – legs crossed tightly. But it wouldn't subside and the fear of him catching her like this again had sent her running to his room in tears, at a loss as ever for the accepted action. The last time he found her touching herself, he hadn't spoken to her for over a week.
Her white night dress, soaked through with sweat, had clung to her like strips of wet paper. It rose and fell with each frantic breath, stretched tightly across her chest. She stopped in the doorway – moonlight playing with her hard little nipples as they pushed against the thin white fabric – she could tell she'd alarmed him. The pleading look in her eyes all too quickly turned his concern to anger. Charles dismissed her abruptly without explanation.
He hadn't tried to touch her since that first time. How the shame had ripped through her splayed naked body, when his hands recoiled from her hungry flesh. The unmistakable disgust that registered on his face when she raised her hips high off the bed in invitation had cut her to the bone.
"Why did you do that?" he'd hissed, backing off the bed and away from her at this shameless exhibition.
"I am for you," she'd offered feebly, "I am yours." Her wide-eyed bewilderment and deep hurt found no consolation. He'd simply thrown a bed sheet toward her, indicating she should cover herself, and stormed from the room in revulsion.
No attempt or suggestion on her part could patch the unexplained rift. No clarification or understanding seemed to be forthcoming.
They'd settled into a quiet standoff, punctuated regularly by Laura's futile stabs at seduction. Each failed approach left her more and more self-conscious and everyday the expanse between them seemed to grow larger. They had never shared a bed.
* * * *
Sitting on the curb now, she felt his weight shift behind her and heard him clear his throat. She determined his plate must be empty, though he made no other discernible advances toward action or conversation. She knew neither was forthcoming, but her body tensed in anticipation just the same.
A punch-drunk wasp hummed stupidly about her soppy plate and sticky knees. She inched the hem of her sundress farther up her purple-stained thighs, letting the disheveled remains of gooey piecrusts and tattered would-be dinnerware collapse and fall between them. Where the plate had been, that dark pulse quickened as she thwarted instinct and allowed her legs to remain open. She imagined herself running the smooth length of the fork's handle against the heat and wetness of the aching exposed flesh between her freckled sweat-slick thighs. She sucked in her breath and shuddered as a make-believe cool metal sting traveled through her like a current. Her mind's eye watched the fork sizzle and melt – become her.
The wasp whirred, blind to the fallen attraction, dangerously close to the origin of this other frenzied stirring she could not control. She could actually feel the wake of the insect's darting circular movements, every sensation amplified and heightened by the all-consuming force of this wicked thirst. Fear rose up in her. The dopey thing, flitting around like that, might catch Charlie's eye. It threatened to give her away. Reveal her filthy soiled disgusting soul to him yet again. She couldn't bear to see that look of stern disapproval in his eyes.
With a heavy sigh, she smoothed the dress back down into a slightly more respectable arrangement and returned to her semi-conscious self. Shamefully aware now of the colorfully tragic mess she had made of it, herself, the pie and the curb – she filled with intense sadness. The hurt gave way to resentment. For a fragment of a fraction of a second, she longed to thrust her fork – with savage force – down through the top of Charlie's dirty old boot. Instead, she followed the pie's example – heaved another full-body sigh and resigned her waiflike frame back to its crumpled inward state.
She laughed a little – thinking the wasp could not have attracted Charlie's attention if it had buzzed right over and stung him square in the ass – but it was a sad hollow kind of laughter. She loved him, without question, but minute-by-minute and day-by-day her insides churned in fear. He wouldn't tell her what she'd been doing wrong. She didn't know how he needed her to change.
Laura lived at the edge of a scream. How could she maintain this faltering numbness – this thin veneer of skin stretched so tightly over all the buzzing nerve endings of a thousand hungry shrieking souls clawing and chewing at the surface? She cursed the unknown dream that woke them, but dare she tell herself she'd been content not knowing the possibilities: the world of intense pleasure that waited on the tender underside of this fragile shell?
She didn't want to hide it from him. She wanted to show him.
* * * *
