535. Anticipation

Yul sat, twin curves catching the moonlight in shades of Ansel Adams gray. Drawing breath, waist swimmer tight, the fruit of her nature rising, firm, symmetry smooth, seductive. "Tell me about Susan?"

Rog rolled on his side, head resting in his palm, elbow anchored in the mattress like a tent peg. "What do you want to know?" He replied without making eye contact, neither smiling nor not smiling, a look of eyes drinking in the dawn, a face standing still before wonder, breathing unconscious.

She watched his eyes, his face, could swear she felt his warm breath caressing her mind. Tilting her head back to expose lean neck, she arched her back, her arms locked as buttress, softening the curves on her chest to sharpen the sparkle in his eyes. "The first time. How did it happen?"

His eyes drifted into memory and for a second she regretted the question. Like the new sun, his cheeks rose, exposing the rogesque grin she had claimed as her treasure, a simple, natural gesture that made her feel good to be fertile, and as the moon reflects the light of the sun, she smiled back.

"Snizzle." He said the word as if sacred, as if the tone of expiration, spoken not of tongue or cord, but breathed into life by mind and memory, needed no further explanation. Pauses speak; Yul heard. He continued, "One morning, after the milking, she offered me a cup. Well, offered isn't quite the way it happened. I remember the words, then I remember her walking through the mud to the front porch. I followed like a roped calf, her gait a spell before me, her primrose hair as the wind. We walked not twenty yards and I never heard a step nor felt the ground and what should have taken, did take but a minute to walk, endures as hours in my mind, each step, clear as dream, forever changing perception, founting sensations I never knew existed."

"So you had a cup of snizzle and then she frailed you? Is that it?"

"In a manner of speaking," he offered. Like a single coin thrown in the collection plate. A bit irritated with the interruption.

"A manner of speaking? You shiotting me? Either she frailed you or she didn't. Or maybe . . ."

"Or maybe there is more to the story than you know."

"Rog, no offense, but you're not that deep."

"Not that deep? Really. Okay. I might not be that deep but I wasn't the river and a dumb as stone rock don't need do nothin' to fall to the depths." Rog paused, a bit unsure of where he was headed. "Have you thought about that little miss oculator lady?"

Yul tried to maintain a serious look. "I'm sorry baby. You're right. Now tell me about that river. Just how deep was it?"

"I've lost the mood. Another time."

"Rog."

"Alright. So she invited me in. We sat the kitchen table and she poured fresh brew. She didn't speak. Neither did I. I held my cup under my nose as if the steam could hide my eyes. And I watched. I watched a sight that I'm not sure how to explain because what I'm about to say and what I saw never seem to match. So here it is. I watched her rotate her index finger along the rim of her cup. I can't explain it--that sight. I remember the bent of her finger, her clear nail, the skin both soft and experienced and the way she caressed the lip of that bone cup. If she had been a witch casting a spell I would not have denied it."

"Interesting."

"What?"

"I've never heard you so subtle and detailed before."

"Am I boring you?"

"No, not at all. I'm enthralled."

"What?"

"Nothing. Just continue."

"The morning light beamed from window to table, her golden hair sparkled. The morning milking was done, and the room had that lazy satisfied lull between chores. Her finger sang the cup like bow on string and although I followed her finger round and round I found my eyes drifting up to her face, to her eyes. She was looking down, only the bottom quarter visible, her lips sitting ripe, pink, petite, neat, neither too big nor too small, the kind of lips that spoke of wit and humor and educated in common sense, not a stranger to hard work, sincere as syrup on pancakes. So there it was. The finger, the eyes, the lips but that wasn't it at all. There was something else. A mood, a feeling, a texture, a color, hue whatever you want to call it."

"So . . ."

"So that's when she told me one week."

"Are you shiotting me?"

"Nope. To make a long story short, she told me to appreciate the anticipation. Said there was every likelihood the "warm commerce" would not be as good."

"Was she right?"

"I'm not telling."

Yul smiled. "Come here baby."

Rog smiled back. "One week."