Luck Read Online Free PDF Page B

kidding.
    Too many bodies entirely, wherever she goes.
    It may have been an awful mistake, beginning the relearning of skin.
    Flesh is weak; sometimes surprisingly and suddenly so.
    Compared with Beth, Sophie is enormous; compared with Nora merely billowy, pillowy, zaftig. That’s how Phil described her:
zaftig
, he said, burrowing his face between her bountiful breasts—
bountiful
, he called them—and kneading her belly, her thighs, with his strong long-fingered hands.
    She had her nightmare—those withering arms, those sharp fingers—and woke herself up crying out. As she sometimes does, she crept downstairs from her tangled bed and, because it was a warm night, early summer, just a couple of months ago although it seems like for ever, poured a glass of red wine, that reliable sedative, and went outside to the front porch and its weatherbeaten old wicker sofa. In other skies elsewhere, millions more stars are visible than here. Inthe earth’s revolutions, the moon looks down on a terrible, glorious array of human activity: babies, loved and unloved, being born; middle-of-the-night acts of solace or cruelty being performed; kind words and vicious ones being spoken. In some places there would be laughter. The screen door squeaked open and there was Phil, in bare feet and green terry bathrobe, carrying his own reliable sedative, a six-pack of beer. Sitting, he adjusted the robe so it covered his thighs but left his calves and feet visible. “Okay if I join you?”
    “Of course. I’m sorry. I woke you up, didn’t I?”
    “Probably. Something did. But it’s okay. It’s a good night for not sleeping, don’t you think?” He seemed to mean the stars, the peacefulness of three o’clock in the morning, the crickets, the night-scent of the nicotiana planted by the steps of the porch, the comfort of company.
    Then after a while he said, “I’ve watched you for a long time, Sophie.”
    Had she watched him? He was not unattractive. He was energetic, and male, and a bulwark against external difficulties and threats; hard not to wonder if he’d be a bulwark against internal ones also.
    But wonder only. No touch.
    “I’ve watched you for a long time,” he said, with no stalking, absolutely no obsession implied. “You’re very beautiful. Full of light.”
    Really?
    “A man could dream of burying himself in you, did you know that?” She shook her head. He turned and kissed her as if there were no question about doing so. When she’d almost stopped trembling, he picked up the tattered plaid blanket kept folded at the end of the sofa and took her hand and pulled her to her feet and led her off the porch, around thehouse, across the backyard, past his workshop, to the property’s last outpost of yard, and spread the blanket and dropped onto it and drew her down and proceeded to surround and cover her with his larger bones and fuller flesh. He was patient and very slow. Her own full flesh kept leaping away, but he touched and touched until his skin finally began to feel indistinguishable from her own, no longer electrically separate.
    This was more magical than he could have dreamed.
    He took her hands two months ago and laid her down and wrapped himself around her and pushed them slowly off together on a smooth, swift, downhill run—but not so often. They had to take care. If Nora knew—well, Nora is passionate when it comes to unforgiveness and vengeance, that’s clear enough from her attitude to this town. Anyway, even if nothing worse happened, if anyone found out, the private charm of the thing would be ruined. So when Phil said, “Shhh” or “Not today” or “Half an hour?,” Sophie heeded.
    He claimed to enjoy the geography of Sophie’s now-lavish flesh. Then again, since he also mistook her for someone who gives little thought to herself, it’s hard to know how clearly he saw her. She did not correct him. “It’s one reason I love you,” he said, and neither of them enquired why a gift for