The Bleeding Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

did not speak. He just looked at her, and she realized after an instant that he was asking a question, and her blood began to flow again and she almost smiled looking back, answering it
    They turned together down the street of low stucco houses with their little gardens, turned again up the walk of Number 17, and she found her keys and let them in.

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    I T WAS AFTER THE door was shut that the discomfort began. She mounted the stairs to her flat aware of him behind her and wishing that they could just go on like that, mounting stairs one behind the other, and not have to look at each other, not have to do anything else. Because how was she to behave? She could talk, of course, could launch into her name, rank, and serial number so that he would have to launch into his. Then she could offer to make a cup of tea. But that would destroy the tension, the unknownness that made this encounter so marvelous. She did not know what else to do. She had lived always using language as a shield, and did not know how to live without a shield.
    She unlocked the upper door and went in. Her tightness, which was beginning to turn to panic, blurred her vision so that she could not really see her apartment, only a patch of bright light from the living room, the afternoon shadow in the kitchen. She walked into the kitchen, simply out of habit. He followed, set down the suitcases, and stood there. She turned and looked at him.
    “I’m Dolores.”
    “I’m Victor.”
    “Would you like a cup of tea?” Her voice was tense.
    He took her hand and held it with both of his. “Fine,” he said tightly, but he did not let her hand go.
    She could feel her body—not quite move —but incline towards him; it yearned, it leaned. And his body did the same, it merely inclined, but suddenly their bodies were together. And then they were pitched into the middle of a battle, or a battle began inside of them. Chemicals pulsed through thighs and sides, electrical impulses swept through bodies, fingers were charged, lips felt like victims of starvation, and the two of them clung together as if only holding fast to each other would save them from this bombardment, but of course, holding fast to each other only made it worse. They clutched and caressed as their hearts pumped, as the sparks fell, as fiery charges burned them up. She looked up and saw his mouth, full, sensuous, and a little wrenched (did he not want to be here? to be doing this?) and she raised her own mouth that felt like a melon that was ripened and wanted to be eaten, was aching to be eaten, and they kissed and the war was escalated, but they were the war, and they pressed their bodies together until they felt like a single unit melted together by the heat they generated. They clung together without moving, desperately, as if only this clinging, this being together, could keep them from perishing.

II

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    W HEN SHE TRIED TO recall it afterwards, it was blurred in her mind, so fiercely had she felt their lovemaking, so little observed it. It had taken a long time. They could not get to fucking, so caught up were they by holding and embracing and kissing. Clothes were a problem, ripped off impatiently piece by piece as each was felt to be in the way. She remembered hearing a tear as one of them pulled something off in irritation. But at last they got down to bodies, simple smooth wonderful bodies, and they both uttered little sounds, as they rubbed their bodies together, and each stroked the other’s.
    Everything was extreme, shot with gold. He came to her at first with ferocity, with shudders that ripped through his whole body, and he stayed with her, inside her, and they played and wound around as if they were the one flesh the marriage service declares. A creature with twenty fingers, two tongues, two hearts, one body rolling over and around, interchanging its parts. Cries, sighs, moans escaped like animals from the cages of their ribs. They fit their bodies together clutching, clinging as if