Just One Night, Part 2_ Exposed(14)

Daylight is fading behind a smoggy sunset. The sky is a brilliant combination of pinks and lavenders. That’s the thing about smog. It’s toxic and according to the American Cancer Society it can even be deadly. But when framed the right way, at just the right moment it can make everything beautiful, and you forget. You look up at those colors as the sun rises and declines and you forget that the very thing that is enhancing the natural light, the thing that makes everything look so intensely beautiful, is slowly killing you. Eventually the sun gets a little higher and you see the ugliness of it. But by then it’s too late. You’ve been pulling it into your lungs for hours. It has you. It’s in you. That’s it.

I wonder if my affair with Robert Dade has been a little like that. Intense, brilliant, beautiful . . . but now it’s killing me. I’ve lost control and for me, for my entire life, control has been my oxygen.

I stare intently at the colors, wishing they would stay. What if I had never met Dave? What if I had found this job that I have loved so much on my own? What if when I had met Robert in Vegas, I had been free? How would things have proceeded? Would we have dated like a normal couple? No, nothing about Robert Dade is normal. But still, we would have become a couple. I’m sure of it. We would have traveled together—sometimes hiking up the Mayan pyramids; other times making love in “The Hotel of Kings” in Paris, the Tuileries Gardens below our window.

But I’m being too conventional in my thinking. We could go to Nice, to the Musée Marc Chagall, rent out the concert hall for a private performance. Not something the Musée would normally agree to, but Monsieur Dade could make it happen.

A small band of musicians is waiting for us on the stage as we walk into the room bathed in the blue light streaming through the stained glass. A pianist sits with his fingers poised over a baby grand that would be completely unremarkable if the lid of the piano wasn’t open to reveal painted lovers rising into a blue-gray landscape. Around them are villagers, a quarter of the size of the lovers. They don’t attempt to match the couple’s grandeur but they seem to rejoice in the warmth that emanates from them.

Robert leads me past rows of empty seats until we are in the front of the room, just a few feet from the stage. He steps away from me only to extend his hand in my direction, his palm up, offering a universal invitation that he reiterates with words when he asks, “Will you dance?”

As I take his hand the band starts to play and we begin to move. The bass is so low, its vibrations tremble against my skin as I follow Robert’s lead in something that resembles a waltz but is different enough to make it uniquely ours. I throw back my head and laugh as I’m twirled around the room, wrapped up in blue light and Monsieur Dade’s arms.

But then he stops, right there in the middle of the floor and with a slow smile, he tells me I’m beautiful. Lifting myself onto my tiptoes, I kiss his lips, lightly at first but then his hand moves to the back of my head, pulling me in closer.

The music soars with my pulse and we begin to dance again. But this time it’s different. Our shirts drift to the floor as the sonata ends, bringing us to a new, more rhythmic melody. Then comes his belt, my skirt, everything, until we are dancing naked through the hall. A red dove on painted blue glass seems to swoop down on us as his tongue parts my lips. The music beats through me as we sway. I feel him get hard against me. The musicians don’t even seem to notice us; that’s not their place in this dream. They are only required to provide Robert and me with a soundtrack for our passion. And as he lowers me to the floor, as I roll on top of him, straddle his hips and feel him push inside of me, I know that, in the ways that count, it is just the two of us. I ride him slowly, moving with the tempo.

The musicians have the stage. We have each other.

Robert’s hands slide to my waist, guiding me, moving me so I can feel the full length of him inside of me. Painted memories of Chagall’s youth seem to fall from the sky as Robert sits up. He’s still inside me as I sit facing him in his lap. For a moment we don’t move; we just take a moment to feel what it is to be connected, with our bodies, with our eyes, by an emotion that is so much bigger than either one of us.

And then the dance starts again. I gasp as his hips buck against mine, splitting me open until it feels like it’s not just him but the music itself that’s inside of me, moving through me, resonating against every nerve ending to make me frantic with desire.

With one decisive movement he flips me over and I cling to him as he begins to pull out only to enter me again with a forceful thrust and a gentle kiss. “I love you,” he says, and I respond in kind.