Vanished in the Dunes Read Online Free PDF Page A

he made years ago as he pulls the cork from a bottle of Merlot. He pours a modest serving into a single glass. He has no intention of joining her. He holds the glass in his left hand and walks to where she has stopped, in front of the deep-green couch.
    “Please sit,” he says as she takes the glass. She takes a large sip, almost emptying the glass. He sits on the opposite couch and looks straight ahead through the large window at the ocean.
    “Please sit over here,” she says. “You seem so far away.”
    Posner moves to the other couch, just as she asks, “Can I rest my feet here?”
    He waves his arm to the side in a universal gesture. She raises her hips and both legs spring forward onto the couch. She crosses one leg over the other and he faces ten polished toes. Then she shifts her legs back in parallel. She reallocates her skirt so that he has a clear view of her browned upper thigh. She spreads her legs more than slightly. The invitation is clear.
    They talk aimlessly. She sits on the couch, ignoring the view, chatting about her hospital duties, her parents in Vienna, and why shedoesn’t want to stay in New York. He becomes edgy. He wants her to leave.
    “Do you like my polish?” she asks, sliding her body down and raising one foot, barely inches from his face. The temptation is there, but he abruptly stands before she makes contact.
    “I think we should go,” he says.
    She rises and follows him slowly to the top of the stairs. He feels her stare, but his eyes are fixated on her painted toes.
    “Can I see you again?” she asks.
    She smiles, doesn’t wait for an answer, and searches her large straw bag, until she withdraws a card printed with her name and a New York number. Then she offers her hand, a puny gesture, he thinks, but he takes it anyway.
    “I’d like to see you again,” she repeats. “Whenever you want. Whatever you want to do.”
    Whatever is the only way something could happen, he thinks, but while there is more than a flicker of interest, he isn’t crazy enough to start. He knows that a fuck in the room not twenty feet away from where they stand is where it would end. That’s what whatever means. She was right about guilt, though. He feels it squeezing him like a fog that has crept into the room, filling every available space and daring, even mocking him to try to touch her. He wants to release her hand, but she holds his with even more pressure.
    He sees from the quickening in the rise and fall of her chest that her breath comes in shorter increments. The pink dress fabric strains forward and he feels his cock swell. He looks away, out through the window, across the pine-coated dunes, as he’s done only minutes before. Anything to forget the surge that has gripped him. He knows that she only has to brush against his groin and he would be lost, but then she eases the pressure on his hand and the rush begins to ebb.
    “I have a boyfriend,” she says. “His name is Henry, but I do like to meet other men.”
    Posner wants to hear none of this. Not the fact that there is a boyfriend who must surely suck on her painted toes. He had a second cousin named Henry, a gangling, acne-faced teenager when he last saw him more than forty years ago. The name merges with his memory’s image of his cousin.
    “Henry gave me this.” She absently fingers a gold chain necklace from which hangs a small capital letter H . “To remember that both our names start with H .”
    “And what does Henry do?” he asks as if he might find some positive trait in the man sufficient to move her down the stairs and farther away from the bedroom.
    “He’s a resident in radiology. Also at Mt. Sinai.”
    Posner has regained his composure and has a sarcastic urge to say that Henry’s balls were already probably burned away by radiation and that his sexual future was at best iffy, which is probably why she is here, but he says nothing. He feels her fingers slip away from his hand as she turns toward the