He put his head between her legs and she began to moan in her ecstasy. I tried to turn away but something, some power kept me riveted to the sight of him licking her. Every so often he would stop.
"Stay with me forever," he'd say. Or "I'm yours until the end of time." Then he would resume his attention and she'd groan and twine her fingers through his hair. She arched against his face and screamed her climax into the darkness. I felt wetter still between my thighs and it horrified me.
He mounted her with a tenderness I had never seen in him. He was rapt in worship of her and moved with agonizing slow thrusts that I could almost feel in my own trapped body. Involuntary tilts of my pelvis strained toward the cock that was now impaling this apparition of purity and loveliness. I watched them in tortured silence and knew without a doubt, even before he said her name, that this was the woman who'd forever haunt him. The woman to whom he compared me. The woman I could never be.
He began to come and cried her name in his rapture. "Elsa, Elsa, oh Elsa my love . . ."
***
I woke in a burning sweat. My skin was soaked. I was sticky and hot between my legs. Mortified, I shook the dream from me and whimpered against the sheet I drew up against my hot cheeks. A dream can shame you, and this one did.
The clock said five-thirty. It was close enough to dawn for me to get up. The prospect of the dream returning motivated me out of the treacherous bed that led me to such a miserable nightmare.
I went down to the kitchen and started the coffee. I've always hated getting up before the sun. The darkest hour was made even darker as the dream refused to leave my psyche. I kept hearing him whisper all the things I knew he had probably really said to her. The things he'd never say to me.
Mercifully, I wasn't alone with my thoughts very long. George wandered up the stairs and Dad came down. I got busy cooking up a batch of biscuits. I knew my mother would welcome the smell of baking bread when she joined us. By the time the sun was fully up, breakfast was well underway and the dream receded into the backwaters of my mind.
I intended to stay busy and keep my thoughts from drifting to Tristan. He had said that he'd be in touch, but I knew better than to expect it to be any time in the near future. I had made my decision and I had said the words. I couldn't take them back now and he couldn't take back the gentle but cold dismissal of my needs.
As the day wore on, I was thankful that my sadness began to morph into anger. Anger is a lot easier to channel into productivity than sadness. I didn't want to be depressed, I wanted to take action. Since the day I met Tristan, I had allowed him to take control of my emotions. He had made all the rules and I had blithely followed them out of fear that not doing so would lose him.
Indeed, that's exactly what happened. As my mind wrapped itself around the damage I had done, I started to forgive myself. I watched my parents cherish one another in the small things as they began their umpteenth day together. She poured him coffee, he shared a headline or two out of the morning paper. When he rose to take his plate to the sink, he picked hers up as well and gave her a little peck on the cheek. It was all very mundane.
My mother didn't have to ask my father to be there the next morning, or the next or the next. And if she had, he would have thought it an honor to promise her anything. He would not have felt cornered or thought her needy for asking. As much as I would miss Tristan's touch and the adventure and excitement of time spent with him, I deserved as much as my mother. I deserved to expect.
By midday, I had the want ads spread out on one end of the table and my laptop at the other. My resume was slim, but polished. There was no point now in kicking myself over blowing off those interviews to go to France with Tristan. There was a job waiting for me out there and I intended to find it.
Three
A week later, I wasn't nearly as optimistic. I had emailed my resume to any and all jobs that remotely fit my limited experience and my liberal arts degree. I applied to publishing houses, theaters, museums, libraries, bookstores and non-profits. In seven days, I hadn't netted a single return call.
As a fall back, I had pounded the pavement in my neighborhood hoping to luck into a vacancy in a restaurant. I had experience as a waitress, hostess and pantry girl. Although I hoped it wouldn't come to restaurant work, I was prepared to take anything. I had let the grass grow under my feet. I was broke and had stooped to getting spending money from Mom and Dad. This was not the way I had envisioned life after Bennington.
Dad had been talking to Tristan on the phone. My parents knew, of course, that we were no longer 'together' as if we had ever really been. They were diplomatic about it and didn't question me. But they didn't avoid him, either. My father still wanted to nail the bastards that beat him up and Tristan was the only person who seemed fully committed to seeing it through. I left it alone, it was between my Dad and Tristan.
Plus, Archie was still hound-dogging the money trail to see if he could nail Mom's kidnapper. He was convinced that those hundred dollar bills would surface sooner or later and probably closer to home than any of us thought. Archie claimed to be an 'intuitive' detective. It was a word that seemed out of place in his vernacular. But he was sure that his gut feelings were as valid as any other piece of evidence in Mom's case. The police had been cooperative, but it was Archie (and thus Tristan) who was supplying the man-hours. Plenty were needed.
We were at dinner one night about two weeks 'post Tristan' as I had come to think of it. My father mentioned that a friend of a friend had a bookshop on the upper west side that was looking for an assistant manager.
"It's a really small place that specializes in rare books--antiques and first copies, I think he said."
"First editions, you mean?"
"That's it, first editions." He fished a rumpled piece of paper from his pocket. "All he gave me was an address. If you feel like it would interest you, why don't you check it out." He handed the paper to me. It was on Broadway, upper Westside.
The next day I put on a nice pair of slacks with a light turtleneck and my favorite, well worn but still classy blue blazer. There was a good autumn chill in the air and I threw a wool scarf around my neck for extra color and the warmth it provided.
The store was one of those narrow, tiny places with a classic green canvas awning stenciled boldly on the top with the word "Books" and across the apron on the front "Rare and Used Volumes". It was wedged between a florist and a dry cleaners and right across the street from Zabars. That was a great sign; I could always count on a good lunch from Zabars even if it would eat up half my paycheck.