He followed her back down to the basement. Mina was still in front of the
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C h r i s t o p h e r B r a m
TV, Jocko sprawled across her lap. The child refused to look at the grown-
ups, which made Zack wonder if she’d crept upstairs and heard something.
But girl and dog looked as immovable as a statue of two lovers.
Zack watched while Elena shifted a pastel salad of cold, wet underwear
from the washer to the dryer. He worried that he’d get much too familiar with
this family’s laundry in the weeks to come.
“I would like to read some of your poetry,” he said.
“It is all Russian. It will be only noise to you.”
“You could translate it. Your English is very striking.”
She frowned. “Only by accident. I can control my Russian but not my
English. I do not always know what I am saying.”
“Which is how the smartest, most original things often get said.”
The doorbell rang.
“Damn. It’s my five o’clock.” Fay Dawson, his nervous Christian, which
would mean twisting his brain into an entirely new shape.
“I will let myself out when I am done,” said Elena.
“I’ve enjoyed this,” he said. “Odd as that must sound.”
She studied him a moment with her cool gray eyes. “Yes, we must do this
again. As things develop.”
“Or even if they don’t,” said Zack.
They hesitated, unsure how to say goodbye. Then Zack held out his hand,
and Elena gripped it, like a friendly business partner.
14
Abbas moaned and kissed harder—his moans buzzed inside Daniel’s
mouth. He lay on his back on the old studio sofa while Daniel bent
over him, one foot on the floor, one knee propped between his legs, kissing
and pumping him. The shaft in Daniel’s hand felt like stiff rubber. In a second it would turn as hard as hickory. There was already the fresh pollen smell
of sperm, but that was Daniel, who had finished five minutes ago. They’d
found that Daniel took longer, and so he went first. Abbas, however, came
quite easily.
The hands clutching Daniel’s head gripped tighter; Abbas kissed deeper.
He lifted his hips into Daniel’s pumping. And he grunted into Daniel’s mouth,
a hard, strangled gasp. He broke off the kiss, threw his head back, and let out
a cry.
His mouth was wide open, his eyes shut, his face all tongue and palate.
And the hickory in Daniel’s hand was not only hard but slick. Abbas foamed
up like cream soda. His cries jumped from the rear of his throat into the
depths of his chest, shifting from treble to bass to treble again, until they
ended in a long, low moan.
He fell back, catching his breath like a man who’d just jumped aboard the
last train out of a burning city. Then he opened his eyes again and smiled.
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C h r i s t o p h e r B r a m
Daniel couldn’t help smiling, too. He usually treated a partner’s orgasm as
just a warm courtesy. But it was a thrill to watch Abbas finish, a privilege. Daniel
was breathing hard himself, as if he’d come again, too. He absentmindedly
wiped his hand off on his own chest, as if to save the scent for later.
Daniel climbed off while Abbas sat up, the two men drawing their humid
bodies apart. They sat facing each other on the sofa, stacking their legs to-
gether. Daniel wished they had a bed and could lie side by side; the sofa was
too narrow. It was after six, and the studio was dark except for the floor lamp
out in the middle of the room. The boom box was still playing—the
Supremes, which Daniel had brought today as a change from Abbas’s Bolly-
wood tracks. The music was meant to cover the sounds of their lovemaking if
anyone happened to visit the building on a Sunday afternoon.
There was no guilt afterward, not that Daniel could see. Neither man was
ever in a hurry to wash off and get dressed. Once Abbas was naked and satis-
fied, he liked to stay naked. He sat at his end of the sofa, lean and dark,
smoothly crosshatched in body hair. He reached down to his bib overalls for
his glasses and cigarettes, put on the glasses, and lit a cigarette. He now
smoked unfiltered Camels, the closest American equivalent of Gauloises. He
released a harsh cloud in a happy sigh. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.
Yes. I needed that. Very much. This was a difficult week.”
“Good. I needed it, too,” said Daniel. “Uh, anything in particular?”
“Oh, the teaching. These students are so needy. And I want more time to
paint or I go crazy. And this new canvas does not come together.” He gestured
at the painting that lay flat on the floor under the lamp. “And there are things
at home.”
“With Elena?” Daniel asked.