Free The Illusionist by Dinitia Smith Page A

worry that all our lovemaking is just for me . . . but then I cannot think about it when he does it to me. . . . I go to work and I cannot concentrate I am a stranger just going through the motions. People have no idea though I guess that maybe Chrissie suspects. She keeps looking at me Dean if you are reading this it is okay because what I cannot tell you myself you will find here. . . . This is a message. . . .
    During the day Dean and I went to work and, as usual, I left Bobby with my dad. All day long at the Nightingale Home, I moved through my tasks as if I were sleepwalking, thinking only of him, and I couldn’t wait for four o’clock when I would return to him.
    At night, after we’d had dinner, I’d hurry to put Bobby in bed, so we could be alone together, so we could make love.
    I guess that during the day when I was at the Home, he wasn’t showing up for work at the Laundercenter or something, because after he had been with me ten days or so, he got fired. They said he was late for work too much, and that sometimes he wasn’t coming in at all.
    So now Dean had no job, and I had to support him as well asmyself and Bobby, and that left almost nothing of my paycheck at the end of the week. But that was okay, I couldn’t let him starve, I couldn’t throw him out.
    During the day, while I was working, he’d drive around in his truck looking for work. Sometimes he’d take Bobby with him, just to give my dad a break from baby-sitting.
    And when I came home from work, he would be there waiting for me, and we could begin our secret life. As I made dinner, Dean would stare at me, wouldn’t take his eyes off me, a faint smile on his lips, like he was sending me a message, teasing me.
    But it was always for me, not him. He’d never let me touch him there. And after a while, I forgot to care because I was so lost in what he was doing to me.
    He would prolong things, hold himself back, his hand, his tongue—stretch it out until I was in pain wanting it, until it was torture and I’d be begging him, please please and he’d laugh at me and my agony. Everything focused on this place, or that, my breasts, between my legs. Then he’d take pity on me, and it would all come together like a wild storm.
    *  *  *
    We were like a little family, he and I and Bobby. On Saturday, we’d go into town to Food Mart and do all our shopping, and then we’d go to Uncle Dom’s Pizza for lunch—a little family of Saturday morning shoppers, walking along the street surrounded by the warmth from our love. And sometimes we were so heavy with love, from what we had done the night before, that we could hardly speak, could only smile.
    On Sunday, Dean would study his magic books for hours, concentrating on them while Bobby played on the floor at his feet.
    Dean held a piece of string in his hand, looking from his book to the string and back again. There was a knot in it. He cut a piece from the string, then wound it around his hand.
    â€œPull it,” he said to me. I pulled, and suddenly the string was miraculously in one piece again and the knot had disappeared.
    He made me choose four crayons from the box. “Don’t let me see—hand one to me under the table. Don’t let me see which one you picked.”
    I handed the crayon to him, under the table, and he felt it without looking down. “Green,” he said.
    When he took it out, of course, the crayon was green.
    At night, he would rouse me from sleep to make love. And I was so tired, I didn’t think I could do it, but I could, I could . . . and we’d go at it, the warm, damp smell of sleep filling the air around us in the tiny room. And I’d whisper, “What about you? This is all for me.”
    â€œDoesn’t matter,” he said, his breath fluttering on my cheek.
    Dean was a jealous lover, too. One evening, Bobby was having