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Show Motherlunge a novel 213 32. Unprotected Sensibly, Jack moved back in to the townhouse. I moved in with Eli and Cassandra. General and Xavier stayed put of course, and I missed them. I missed their bodies-their warmth, their poorly controlled limbs and overlong nails, their slobbering joy at seeing me come through the door at the end of the day. I missed the way Xavier, his head heavy against my sternum as I carried him to his crib at night, had pressed into me the weird joy of overwhelming responsibility. Still, I had another responsibility, just as weird: to keep thinking that Pavia would get better and stay that way, and more generally a kind of hope for myself. Now, in the new living arrangement, Eli would roll off me breathing hard. He would look at me in the dim light of his bedroom. He would reach beneath the mattress and pluck a condom out with two fingers. He would hold it up. I would smile, shrug. I no longer thought I should be the one to choose. My bare shoulders rose and fell. Eli held the package up-the little square of purple paper with its suggestive circle in the middle-then let it drop to the floor unopened. He smiled and pushed my knees apart with two hands the way a gunslinger comes through the doors of a saloon. The ragtime music stopped, then started up again, louder than before. |
