Someone once told me that Bulgarians shake their heads up and down when they mean 'no,' and side to side when they mean 'yes.'
* * *
I followed Ana through the house as if I had broken in. Every time a board creaked, I froze, waiting for the effect. She took me upstairs to her room. I wondered if she would like the way I looked when I was naked. I wondered if she'd look as I had imagined her, with full, strong curves, and graceful, assertive movements.
The wallpaper was peeling from the walls. I sat on the bed. It reminded me of my grandmother's bed, an ancient acetate bedspread on a plastic mattress. My ears buzzed, filling the aching silence.
I tried to figure out what to do with my hands as we walked into her room. I thrust my hands in my pockets and pretended to read the spines of the books on one of the bookshelves.
She laid across the bed, closed her eyes, stretched, and sighed. Her eyes opened and looked at me expectantly.
"What do you want to do?"
I almost stumbled backward at the question.
I wanted to climb into the bed with her and pull her over top of me like a cover. I wanted to hold her and I wanted her to hold me. I wanted to fuck her. I wanted to put my hand on her waist. I wanted to kiss her upper lip when it was beaded with sweat. I wanted to sit in her lap while she rocked me back and forth. I wanted her.
I shrugged and turned away. I picked up a book—the spine started to crumble in my hands. Sweat mixed with dust. It smelled like sex.
"Jason."
"Huh?" I feigned interest in the book. A Henry James novella—A Passionate Pilgrim. Perfect. That was me.
"Jason, come over here."
I turned toward her, still keeping my gaze firmly locked on the thick yellowed paper of the book. "Listen to this: 'If he could ever have been said to threaten complications he rather visibly did so now. I began to regret my officious presentation of his name and prepared without delay to lead him out of the house.' I know all of those words, but I understand none of it."
"Jason, put the book down."
I looked up. She was laying back on the bed, her dark hair arrayed on the pillow. She was turned toward me, her right hip dug into the saggy mattress, her left hip echoing her beckoning hand.
"Come lay with me."
My hands dropped to my sides, the book in my right briefly, until it slipped from my fingers and hit the wooden floorboards with a thud. This room is ancient. The wood floors. The dusty bookshelves. The saggy mattress. Us. This tension. What was about to happen. All ancient. Determined. Written. I had to do as narrated.
I didn't yet know what the pilgrim in James' novella was passionate about. I would have to do my best to adapt the work based on what I knew—the title and two obscure sentences. Chapter 1. He approached the bed.
She patted the bedspread in front of her chest and smoothed out a little circle, beckoning me with a target. I pushed my shoes off one at a time with the opposite foot, abandoning them with the book. The bed was small for two people. I settled next to her, our knees and hips kissing, laying my head next to hers on the pillow. The closeness of her eyes, dominating my field of vision, gauged the proximity of her lips.
"Jason," she said, "what do you want to do?" She giggled at how obvious her question was now. I tilted forward, as if losing my balance, until our lips touched. I felt her hand on my left arm, tipping me further into her, our shoulders touching now.
"Ana," I murmured into her lips, finally brave enough to answer her question. "I think I found something for us to do." My left hand reached out to her arm, buttressing her body against mine. There must be something about architecture in James' oeuvre.
"I think I found something, too," Ana said, surprising me with a hand on my groin. I collapsed into her, our cheeks connecting, finally laughing now. I pulled her into me with a hand on her back, feeling her breasts rub up against my chest through our shirts. I put my left hand on her right hip and moved it up, catching the hem of her shirt, feeling the belt loops of her jeans against my palm and then—skin. Smooth, hot, soft. Inviting. A contrast to the ancient dust surrounding us.
She continued to fondle my hardening member while I worked to remove her shirt, pushing the cloth up into her armpits. Taking the hint, she sat up suddenly, pulled her shirt off the rest of the way and reached behind her back with both arms to unhook her bra. Slumping her shoulders forward, she shrugged off her bra, and tossed it over onto the book and my shoes. This story was definitely getting more interesting.
"Ahem." I looked up from her breasts, realizing I was staring. "Do you want to take off your shirt?" This Ana, she was full of questions, intriguing questions.
"I do. I do want to take off my shirt."
