Kissing in Manhattan Read Online Free PDF Page B

jaw.
    Now what? thought Jacob.
    Rachel picked up a white cotton washcloth. She lathered it on a bar of soap. The soap smelled like wintergreen.
    “What’re you doing?” asked Jacob. He kept his eyes on the washcloth.
    Rachel rubbed the washcloth till it foamed. She arranged the cloth over her hand, dipped her hand under the water. She massaged her husband’s chest.
    “Be quiet,” said Rachel. “I’m going to give you a bath.”
    Jacob obeyed his wife. He remained quiet, and she did what she said she would. She gave her man a bath.
    In the bath’s early stages Jacob laughed. He had ticklish underarms, and he was self-conscious about his body. But as Rachel proceeded to wash him head to toe, Jacob stopped laughing. His wife was committed to her action. She scrubbed her new husband carefully. She was firm with his hands—which had been tainted by skunk—and hard on his feet. She worked thoroughly on his torso, but she was tender with his groin. Finally, overwhelmed with the care being shown him, Jacob closed his eyes. A mellow joy stole over him. For weeks he’d been planning for tonight—for his conquest of Rachel’s body—but now his plans faded. He still wanted to make love to her in the bed, but right now something simpler was happening. Rachel’s fingers were tending his skin, grooming him wetly, kindly.
    “You like this?” whispered Rachel.
    Jacob kept his eyes shut. His body had gone over to goose bumps, and his mouth came open in surprise. Jacob felt sure, suddenly, that Rachel had never bathed another man.
    “Hmmm.” Rachel’s throat was pleased.
    “You like this,” she whispered.
     
     
    The bulk of Jacob and Rachel’s honeymoon was their business. But one warm fact remained: after a meal and a walk in the forest Rachel gave Jacob a bath every night. Within three days husband and wife were hooked on the ritual. They came to enjoy it not as a luxury, a sign of some new, candied life, but as a necessity. It was as if Jacob had been climbing a mountain all his years and had come now to a decent peak, where there was a woman and a well of water. The woman was there to strengthen the man, to quench his thirst, and the man loved the woman and he was grateful. It wasn’t about equity: Jacob never bathed Rachel. He was ready to perform a lifetime of chores for her, but this isn’t about that. This is about the bath: the legend.
     
     
    Jacob and Rachel returned to Manhattan. Rachel returned to checking facts, Jacob to writing jingles. They moved into Jacob’s place in the Preemption apartment building.
    The Preemption was located at West Eighty-second and Riverside Drive. It was a cryptic old brownstone, with gargoyles on the roof, and it loomed over the Hudson River like a watchtower. Inside, the Preemption was special for three reasons. It featured the oldest working Otis elevator in Manhattan, a hand-operated antique with mahogany doors at each floor. The Preemption also featured a peculiar doorman, a Negro man named Sender. Sender was tall, wiry, and dignified. He wore a blue suit like a train conductor, and he never seemed to age or leave his post. Some Preemption residents guessed that Sender was not quite fifty, some that he was over one hundred, but nobody could beat him at arm wrestling. He had an oval scar on his forehead between and just above his eyes. Whispers went around every October that Sender had been born with a third eye, and that the doctors had removed it from his forehead when they cut his umbilical cord.
    The third, fatefully unique characteristic of the Preemption was the fact that Elias Rook, the building’s originaldesigner and owner, had installed freestanding bathtubs in every apartment. Elias Rook finished the building in 1890, but he was an endowed, strict Presbyterian, and he had eternity in mind when he fashioned the Preemption. As a result the apartment floors and walls were cut from the sturdiest oak. The glass on each vaulted window was inches thick. The tubs,