Free the Writing Circle (2010) by Corinne Demas Page B

seeing her. He would not kiss her good-bye—he wasn’t so foolish—but he would just touch her: her hair, her arm, anything. Surely she would grant him that. He thought, fleetingly, about writing Gillian a note, leaving it out on the counter, but he couldn’t imagine what to say, nor what tone he should take. Something cute about his gratitude towards the mouse? No, all wrong. Something about the quality of light in the study when he awoke, the narrow bed where they had slept, her head so close against him that her hair covered his mouth? No, wrong, too. Here he was a writer and he had nothing to say, or so much to say he couldn’t say anything at all.
    In the kitchen Adam found a bagel from the grocery bag he’d unpacked the night before. He put it in his pocket. He would pick up a cup of coffee when he stopped for gas along the road. The dishes from their dinner the night before were stacked, still, by the sink. He thought about washing them, but he didn’t want to remove the evidence of that dinner; he wanted to leave something behind of himself so she might think of him after he was gone.
    He took a last look at the study: the two pillows squashed together at the head of the bed, the two armchairs pulled close to the fireplace, the ash in the fireplace, feathery, the color of doves. He closed the front door behind him and stood on the doorstep looking out at the marsh. He watched Gillian as she walked along, head bowed as if she were studying the ground. She bent to pick something up, a shell perhaps? Before she had straightened up again to examine it in her hand, he had begun running towards her. He had stopped thinking now, stopped trying to decide what to do; he just moved.
    She turned when she heard him approaching. He was out of breath, and she gave him a little smile, her head cocked, while she waited for him to speak. But it wasn’t just the running that kept him from speaking. He had no words, all he had was images: Gillian’s long, slender thigh, his own fingers running from her knee up to the curve where the pale skin stretched tight across her hip. His hand moved now, to touch the hair on the side of her face that had gotten free of the sweater’s hood, but it moved too slowly. He rushed ahead and kissed her mouth—kissed her without asking if he could—and then turned and started running back towards his car. He got in and started it up without looking towards the marsh. But after he had turned the car around and was ready to drive off, he stopped and looked back at the whole scene. Gillian was walking towards the house now, her hands in her pockets. She looked so small against the wide marsh. The last thing in the world he wanted to be doing was to drive off, to leave her there. But that’s what he knew he had to do.
    KIM HAD LEFT HIM SEVERAL MESSAGES on his cell phone, as well as his voice mail at work. Her voice, perky and familiar, grew more querulous with each call.
    “I got offered free tickets to the Natalie MacMaster concert last night,” she said when he got back to her. “I was so frustrated I couldn’t get ahold of you.”
    “So, did you go?”
    “Yup. Sandy went with me.”
    “How was it?”
    “Amazing,” said Kim. “You would have loved it.”
    To make up for his initial annoyance at the persistence of Kim’s messages, Adam took her out for dinner at Peking Garden, the more expensive of the two Chinese restaurants in town. Across the booth from him, Kim unwound her long scarf and laid it on the seat next to her. Her soft blond hair was puffed out on one side of her head with static electricity. She leaned back against the banquette and smiled at him. She had a round face, and her eyes were set wide apart, which gave her, Adam felt, a slightly bovine look.
    “How come you turned your cell phone off?” Kim asked.
    “I didn’t,” said Adam. “Battery must have run out.” The lie came to him so quickly, so easily, it startled him. He wasn’t a skilled liar, wasn’t used