Free Wanting Rita by Elyse Douglas Page A

fill her, impregnate her and mark her, for all time, as my lover. I drove as fast and as deep as I could, prayerful, until I fell into a damp exhaustion.
    Thunder rolled across the sky. The strobe of lightning caught us. Rita began to unfold in a slow crumbling descent, coming to rest on my trembling body. I wanted to stay inside her, warm and blessed. I wanted to breathe only her breaths; hear only her words; make love only to her with a man’s raw strength, love and lust.
    Her face fell into peace, and I held her, feeling the heat of her waning desire.
    “Rita…” I whispered. “I love you…”
     
    A coffee cup shattered on the floor. I was jarred back to the present. One of Jack’s customers had dropped it. Coffee lay in splattered geometric designs on the floor behind me. The diner was quiet now. The two men next to me had left. The booths had mostly emptied; there remained only an elderly couple eating oatmeal, and a family of four sharing eggs and pancakes, not talking. A teenage busboy mopped up the spill, while my waitress wiped the counter, refilled my cup, and then stopped to take me in, as if for the first time.
    “Anything else?”
    “No. Check please.”
    I was already buzzed from too much coffee. I reached for my wallet, convinced that Rita had gone home or had every intention of ignoring me. It was just as well. I felt slightly irritated at myself for reliving those memories, and surprised by the power of them to leave me strangely sad and wanting.
    When the waitress dropped the check, I stood, releasing a little sigh of disappointment and relief. Instinctively, I passed another glance toward the kitchen door, and for a second or two, I thought I heard someone call my name, at a whisper. I quickly scanned the room. Nothing. No one.
    As I pivoted away from the counter, the kitchen door opened and Rita slowly emerged. I stood in a strained formality, heart racing. She made a tentative entrance, like an actress on opening night, unsure of her character or lines. Her appearance startled the doctor in me to rigidity and alarm. For the boy of 17, who remembered the goddess, there arose a swift agony. I waited. All eyes were on her, rapt. The room became a tableau. I sensed that she felt my presence before she saw me.
    She turned slowly, finding my eyes. All that luxurious long hair was gone, replaced by a mercilessly short style, spiked with gel, and lusterless. Thin and bony, her body lacked shape under the loose blue nylon dress; and the damned dress cheapened her; demeaned her.
    It was the ravaged body of a starved animal, the pallid color of an old rag, and the hollow, deep set eyes of someone who had just emerged from a tomb. I met her gaze, seeing the once brilliant fireworks had vanished, replaced by a cold, vacant darkness.
    Her vibrancy and inner light, once so palpable and contagious, were smothered. She stood like a woman so damaged by tragedy, so spirit-killed, that it was painfully clear that somewhere, behind those swollen dull blue eyes, she believed that not even death itself offered an escape.
    She stared at me with an expression of reproach and pain, and without a movement or word, she held my gaze for the longest time. I was still. I could not find a voice to say “Hello.” An excruciatingly long moment later, her miserable gaze slid to the floor, and in a slow, awkward turn, as if being careful not to shatter, she exited through the door to the kitchen.

Chapter Five
     
    I arrived at the house a little after ten, turned into the driveway and stopped. The morning rain had passed, but fog remained. It hugged the elms and maples and draped the beautiful salmon-stoned Victorian house, with its grand porch, soaring gables and large bay windows, in a thin cotton blanket, giving it the peculiar ghostly appearance of hovering between worlds. In that pearl light, it seemed a place where the past could easily and naturally return to life in a splendor of reenactments, as if from a play. My