Free Addition by Toni Jordan Page B

the sound of our steps. We’re so quiet we surprise a possum on a light pole. We keep walking. You mind your business, we’ll mind ours.
    We walk down the side street now and we’ve reached the spot where I need to make a decision. I need to lean across him and take my bag of toothbrushes back, if that’s what I’m going to do. I can do it easily; I can say, ‘Thanks, officer. I can take it from here’ or ‘I don’t want to take you out of your way’ or ‘Did I mention I have a communicable disease?’
    But I don’t. Instead, at the corner I stop and say, ‘So are you planning to polish off an entire half chicken by yourself ?’
    He lifts the hand with the bags in it. ‘This miserable runt? I think it’s a tall quail. And three petrified potatoes and a bit of soggy pumpkin. This isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I invited you to dinner.’
    I lean back against the lamp post and cross my arms. ‘Luckily we supermodels don’t eat much.’
    He smiles into my eyes, and bows. ‘In that case, my quail is your quail.’
    As we walk up the path, I think of Nikola and Westinghouse. How different they were. How perfect for each other. Westinghouse bought forty patents, including the induction motor he desperately needed, from Nikola for a complicated blend of cash, royalties and shares. Nikola left New York and moved to Pittsburgh to help Westinghouse overcome any difficulties in the manufacture of the motor. No regrets. No fear.
    At the top of the stairs I fumble for my keys in the pocket of my track pants. We go inside. My last proper visitor was in October of the year before last when Larry slept over, on the couch. Jill and Harry had gone for a skiing weekend. I’d like to think they had in fact gone to a mad three-day key party in a lodge with a spa, six cans of whipped cream, one midget and one latex batman suit but, knowing them, it probably was a skiing weekend. Having Larry here felt right—we watched the late movie until past her bedtime, had ice-cream for dinner and made nuisance calls to a boy she liked at school. Having Seamus here is different.
    ‘This is it,’ I say. ‘My lair. It’s here I hatch my plans for world domination. I’m saving for a white Persian and a monocle.’
    ‘Nice. No supermodels or bomb shelters, I notice.’ He puts the chicken, vegetables and my toothbrushes on the kitchen bench. He opens the bag and rifles through them. ‘So, Grace. Are you going to tell me why you’ve bought so many toothbrushes?’
    I pretend to think for a moment and fold my arms. ‘Ah…No.’
    He shrugs. ‘Fair enough.’
    His hands are in his pockets and he leans his left hip against the bench. My flat is made for me, measured for me, for the length of my tibia and fibula and ulna and spine. His bones are longer than mine and if I lined my limbs and back and fingers up against his I would find a difference in length and also in thickness. The room is out of proportion now, like long hair on a baby or a mansion surrounded by one metre of lawn and a high fence. He takes up all the room.
    There’s no space now for my thoughts to develop and they fall stillborn on to my dark green carpet. Now, I do understand E=MC2. I understand that the little packets of energy that are my thoughts have become matter. A solid body. Flesh.

7
    Sometime the next day or the one after that, I kiss him. Or maybe it is two minutes after we walk in the door. I am still standing in my kitchen and he is still leaning on my kitchen bench, hands in pockets. I move my body across until it is close to his. My kiss, this first one, is more a pressing, lips closed and soft. For one instant he is still. For one instant I think that there is nothing I can say to erase such a foolish act. Then he moves towards me. He trails his closed mouth across my top lip so I can feel the tiny prickles. His mouth brushes along the line of my jaw and scoops up the side of my face. Along my eyebrow. My left eyebrow. He licks my eyes closed.