Free You Don't Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem Page B

others.”
    “Not me.”
    “What about the complaint line?”
    “I haven’t told anyone about you.”
    “You will.”
    “Not if you don’t want me to.”
    “You can tell anyone anything you want, my name, how we met, whatever. But let’s create one real secret, let’s lock something in this room forever. Like a rock sitting on a beach somewhere, through all time and space.”
    His fingers fanned across her stomach, again as if taking her measure. His thumb stretched beneath the curve of her, still not touching where he’d gone so suddenly before. She felt it was possible he could lift his hand and she’d find herself raised to the ceiling aloft.
    “You can drink if you want,” he said.
    “Thank you.”
    “Do you want me to put my fingers inside you?”
    “Please, yes.”
    “Two?” He raised his glass and uncurled paired fingers to show them to her.
    “Yes.”
    “Only if you promise it’s a secret forever. I don’t care if it seems stupid to you, just a common act, no big deal. You can’t ever describe this to anyone, neither can I. The way it feels, the look I see on your face, even just the fact that I’m going to do the particular thing I’m going to do.”
    “Please do it now.”
    “Promise.”
    “Why?”
    “Because if it’s a secret it’s going to change how it feels. I want you to feel that.” He sipped from his tumbler once more and set it aside.
    “I promise.”
    One hand still bridged on her stomach, he reached with his other for her mouth. Lucinda gobbled his fingers avidly, slicking them. She heard her own zoological sounds, not only a snort as she widened her throat and breathed around his knuckles but also a hum and squeak deep in her chest.
    “Don’t give it a name,” he said. “Don’t even mention it to me.”
    “Uhnn.”
    “This doesn’t need a name,” he repeated, then moved his two fingers from her mouth and pushed them inside her.
    “Oh, god.” She took another drink, too much, and when she tried to swallow felt a sticky trickle of whiskey leak from the corners of her mouth, over her chin.
    “Enough now,” he said, and took the glass from her.
    “Don’t take your hand away,” she said, her voice very small.
    “Shhh. I won’t.”
    “I’m—”
    “Shhh.” He moved deeper, pressing his thumbprint to her clit. She abruptly came, shuddering against his whole arm with her swaying body, grasping at his back through his damp shirt.
     
    t he jazz ran out sometime without Lucinda noticing. He never restarted it, though they quit the bed several times to rearrange the lights, to draw the shades against the wall of offices that faced them, to run water in the basin to splash and slurp, to wash her scent off both their faces, though not before she’d sampled herself from his chin and nose. Lucinda was in a hotel robe and then out of it again. His body, once he removed his clothes, was thick. More generous than Matthew’s, than anybody’s. It surprised her how little she minded. His penis too. His hair, white at his throat, darkened below the curve of his stomach, as though night’s setting had recorded itself across the field of his body. The television was on for a while, music videos they drowned with their own groans. When her foot swept a miniature bottle from blocking the digital clock face it read one thirty.
    He forced her to wait once until she couldn’t wait anymore and then when she came it was enormous, and she began laughing and couldn’t stop for a while.
    “That was the funny one,” he said.
    “Are you counting?” she said, still laughing.
    “Sure, and giving them all names too, and that was the funny one.”
    “What were the others?” She panted to a halt.
    “The fast one, the big one, the ugly one, and the one where you kicked me.”
    “The funny one was the big one.”
    “You can have your own names.”
    “You weren’t there, you don’t know.” She laughed again. “And none of them were ugly. Fix me another drink.”
    “Another