Magic Hour, Susan Isaacs [life changing books txt] 📗

I knew she wasn’t pretty, but for that second, she was so beautiful. “I’ll come up with some position where I’m all twisted up, with my head coming out of my ass and my dick pointing east. You’ll have to slide on sideways.”

She wiped away the last tear with the tip of her index finger, a lovely ethereal gesture from such a big, hearty girl.

“When you were holding me down…”

“Tell me.”

“What if you’d been a bad person?”

“But I’m not. I’m a great person. Now let’s talk about something else. Are your eyes blue-gray or gray-blue?”

“Please. I’m serious.”

I turned the pillow over to the cool side. “Well, if you are serious, maybe you should think twice before inviting guys you’ve just met to come into your house.” Until I said it, I hadn’t realized how much it bothered me. Angered me.

Goddamn it, she had been so easy. I hadn’t wanted her to reach out and touch me, a stranger. Play with me. In a public place, for crissakes. Here she was, tall and clean and fine, and she tied her own flies: a wonderful woman. But instead of a light kiss, a smile to turn down the thermostat after we’d been pushed together, she’d cupped my balls, stroked my dick; her hand was still cold from holding the beer. “You knew absolutely zilch about me, and you said, ‘Let’s get out of here.’”

MAGIC HOUR / 255

Bonnie didn’t get that guilty, You-think-I’m-a-whore look I’d expected, maybe wanted. “I thought you were better than this.”

“Hey, I’m not talking about morals. I’m talking as a cop who’s seen some nice girls get hurt when things got out of hand.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“You’re strong. Mountain woman, right? If someone you meet at a bar gets out of hand, you’ll just use some self-defense shit you read in Ms. magazine. Let me tell you something, sister. Before you can stick your finger into his eyeball or crash down on his instep or knee him in the nuts, you could be raped—or dead.”

“I’m a good judge of character.”

“You think all those nice, dead girls said to themselves:

‘This guy’s a psychopath, but he’s got cute dimples’? No, they said: ‘I’m a good judge of character.’”

For a minute she didn’t say anything. Then she propped herself up on her elbow and said: “Aren’t you starved? ”

“Yeah, come to think of it.”

“Scrambled eggs? An omelet and toast?”

I took a fast shower while she went downstairs to make supper. I put my clothes back on but went downstairs bare-foot. Sitting in the kitchen and watching her in her bathrobe, flipping an omelet, I felt snug; I thought: This is what husbands must feel like. But it was strange: the homebody with the spatula didn’t seem to have any connection with the wild woman I’d been fucking upstairs. Then she turned around, and I saw her mouth was swollen from all the kissing.

Bonnie handed me a blue-and-white plate with the omelet and the toast, buttered and cut in triangles. I went to the refrigerator and took out a couple of her 256 / SUSAN ISAACS

crappy light beers. I remember we sat there in the kitchen talking for an hour or more, but I don’t remember what we said.

Later, I remember thinking, as I followed her back upstairs, that Bonnie had grace. Physical grace that born athletes have.

The surefooted walk, the upright, easy posture. And common-sense grace. When to kid around and when to be serious, when to talk, when to shut up.

And sexual grace. She loved having sex—and having it with me—and every kiss, every touch, every thrust was something she wanted. She didn’t posture: didn’t stick her ass out for admiration, even though it was admirable, didn’t offer her tits up like they were twin trophies in some erotic contest. It was all natural. Graceful. No strings attached.

We must have been too exhausted to fuck, so we made love. Afterwards, I lay on my back, stared at the beams in the ceiling and thought: I did more than satisfy her. I’m important to her.

“Can I go to sleep now?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“I hope you’ll stay till morning.”

“Of course I will.” I got mad, though. Did she think I was some goddamn one-night stand who was going to tiptoe out at three A.M.?

“Don’t be angry,” she said. “It’s not you. It’s me. I needed a little reassurance.”

“Be reassured,” I whispered.

At about three A.M. I woke up for a minute. She was sound asleep. “Bonnie.”

Her head was resting on my arm. I could feel the flutter of her lashes as she opened her eyes. “Hi.”

“Hi. Listen,” I said. “I want to tell you something.”

“What?”

“I love you.”

MAGIC HOUR / 257

“I love you too.” Then she asked me: “Aren’t we too old for this?”

“No. Go back to sleep.”

I got up about six-thirty. She made me coffee. I said it again: I love you. I promised I’d call her from work or, if things got crazy, the second I got off.

I got into the Jag. It had been out all night, and the leather seats were wet with dew. I drove home, wet, limp, but filled with what I suppose was joy.

I got home. Yawned. Wished I was back in bed, wrapped in Bonnie’s arms. Really tired. Needed a pick-me-up. Made a double screwdriver. Drank it, then another. Called work and coughed. Said I had some lousy virus. A hundred and three. Ray Carbone said, You sound terrible. Yeah, I said. I feel like hell.

I went on a five-day bender. By the end of it, Bonnie was just a vague, irritating memory.

By the end of the following year, when I was forced to check into South Oaks for treatment for alcohol abuse—plus pancreatic insufficiency and malnutrition caused by my drinking—I had managed to wipe out her memory completely.

Bonnie Spencer never existed.

C H A P T E R F O U R T E E N

I got back to Headquarters a little before four o’clock.

Even before I saw Ray