It

it was nearly agony spilled out of unsuspected floodgates, and she bit down on his shoulder to stifle her cries.
‘Oh my God,’ Bill gasped, and although she was never sure later, she believed he was crying. He pulled back and she thought he was going to withdraw from her — she tried to prepare for that moment, which always brought a fleeting, inexplicable sense of loss and emptiness, something like a footprint — and then he thrust forward strongly again. Right away she had a second orgasm, something she hadn’t known wa s possible for her, and the window of memory opened again and she saw birds, thousands of birds, descending onto every roofpeak and telephone line and RFD mailbox in Derry, spring birds against a white April sky, and there was pain mixed with pleasure — but mostly it was low, as a white spring sky seems low. Low physical pain mixed with low physical pleasure and sense of affirmation. She had bled . . . she had . . . had . . .
‘All of you?’ she cried suddenly, her eyes widening, stunned.
He did pull back and out of her this time, but in the sudden shock of the revelation, she barely felt him go.
‘What? Beverly? A-Are you all r — ‘
‘All of you? I made love to all of you?’
She saw shocked surprise on Bill’s face, the drop of his jaw . . . and sudden understanding. But it was not her revelation; even in her own shock she saw that. It was his own.
‘We — ‘
‘Bill? What is it?’
‘That was y-y-your way to get us out,’ he said, and now his eyes blazed so brightly they frightened her. ‘Beverly, duh– d u h –don’t you uh-understand? That was y-y-your way to get usout! We all . . . but we were . . . ‘ Suddenly he looked frightened, unsure.
‘Do you remember the rest now?’ she asked.
He shook his head slowly. ‘Not the spuh-spuh-specifics. But . . . ‘ He looked at her, and she saw he was badly frightened. ‘What it really c-c-came down to was we wuh-wuh-wished our way out. And I’m not s-sure . . . Beverly, I’m not sure that grownups can do that.’
She looked at him without speaking for a long moment, and sat on the edge of the bed and took her clothes off with no particular self-consciousness. Her body was smooth and lovely, the line of her backbone barely discernible in the dimness as she bent to take off the knee-high nylon stockings she had been wearing. Her hair was a sheaf coiled over one shoulder. He thought he would want her again before morning, and that feeling of guilt came again, tempered only by the guilty comfort of knowing that Audra was an ocean away. Put anothernickle in the juke-box, he thought. This tune is called ‘What She Don’t Know Won’t Hurt Her.’ But it hurts somewhere. In the spaces between people, maybe.
Beverly got up and turned the bed down. ‘Come to bed. We need sleep. Both of us.’
‘A-A-All right.’ Because that was right, that was a big ten-four. More than anything else he wanted to sleep . . . but not alone, not tonight. The latest shock was wearing off — too quickly, perhaps, but he felt so tired now, so used-up. Second-to-second reality had the quality of a dream, and in spite of the guilt he felt, he also felt that this was a safe place. It would be possible to lie here for a little while, to sleep in her arms. He wanted her warmth and her friendliness. Both were sexually charged, but that could hurt neither of them now.
He stripped off his socks and shirt and got in next to her. She pressed against him, her breasts warm, her long legs cool. Bill held her, aware of the differences — her body was longer than Audra’s, and fuller at the breast and the hip. But it was a welcome body.
It should have been Ben with you, dear, he thought drowsily. I think that was the way it was really supposed to be. Why wasn’t it Ben?
Because it was you then and it’s you now, that’s all. Because what goes around always comes around. I think Bob Dylan said that . . . or maybe it was Ronald Reagan. And maybe it’s me now because Ben’s the one who’s supposed to see the lady home.
Beverly wriggled against him, not in a sexual way (although, even as he fled