Unwritten Laws 01(83)

“Let me down,” she said. “Scoot back. It’s locked.”

Tom pressed his back against the door so hard that the wood groaned.

As Viola slowly turned away, she said, “There’s not enough room to take my stockings off.”

“It’s all right,” he replied, not meaning it. “We can wait.”

He heard a swish of polyester against nylon, then a sharp ripping sound. Blood throbbed in his veins.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

He reached down, seeking out her hand in the dark. His fingers slid across her bare behind, found her grasping fingers. He pressed them against the swelling in his pants. She deftly unzipped him with a nurse’s confidence. When she closed her hand around his penis, he sucked in his breath, afraid he would lose control then and there. He felt her rise on tiptoe, tugging him forward, under her rump.

“Jesus,” he whispered, bending his knees. “Will they hear us?”

“They’ll think we’re working on the machine. Just push.”

He pushed.

She sucked in her breath sharply. “Lower down.”

“Sorry.”

“Oh,” she groaned, much too loudly.

He’d plunged into her virtually without resistance. When her weight settled back against his pubic bone, she shuddered along the length of her body. He took hold of her hips and began to thrust into her by flexing and unflexing his knees, gently rocking in the confined space. Almost no other motion was possible.

“This won’t be good for you,” he said.

“Rub me,” she whispered, pulling his right hand from her hip and guiding it to the rip she’d made in her hose.

As his fingers slipped between her thighs, Tom received one of the most profound shocks of his life. Viola’s pubic hair was softer than any he’d ever felt. Even after years of giving pelvic exams to Negro women, he’d unconsciously assumed that their pubic hair was coarser than a white woman’s. With Viola, at least, the opposite was true. He was still pondering this when he discovered her swollen clitoris. She jerked as though he’d shocked her, then flung her head to the right and bit his upper arm as though only this could keep her quiet.

In the claustrophobic darkroom, they developed a slow but effective rhythm, a primitive, serpentine dance, slowly building toward ecstasy. Tom felt as though they were suspended in water, intertwined like nether creatures fulfilling some ritual that had sustained their species for millions of years. The experience transcended anything he’d ever felt with a woman. Apart from his wife, Tom’s sexual experience was limited to two prostitutes in Japan during the war. But even so, he sensed that if he’d coupled with a dozen gifted courtesans, this experience would surpass them all. There was no color in the darkroom—and barely any form, it seemed—yet his senses had never felt more alive to every stimulus. The enforced silence of their coupling drove them deeper inward, until only the oceanic pounding of blood in his ears competed with the electrical hum of the developing machine against the wall. Deprived of light and visual cues, his inner ear became confused, and the sense of being in water gave way to something still more surreal. He felt as though they were making love on some distant planet that dwarfed the earth, their bodies twenty times as dense as normal, his penis harder than it had ever been, her breasts as resilient and hard-tipped as those of a woman who’d lived in this environment all her life.

He cursed the fact that he was behind her. He longed to kiss her mouth, her neck, her breasts again—he hadn’t even seen them!—but with the gift for anticipation she’d always possessed, Viola tilted back her head and opened her mouth to his. As he explored this alien space with his tongue, her clitoris grew so hard that it felt masculine under his fingers. He kissed and rubbed her, kissed and rubbed. At last she tore her mouth away and bit into his arm, her body convulsing in the dark. His back slammed against the door, and for a moment Tom feared it would burst open, but then his own spasms began and he abandoned all fear of being caught.

When he finally sagged against her, Viola leaned back and nuzzled her hair in the hollow of his neck. The feeling of heightened density slowly faded. Now they were levitating in the dark, floating inches above the floor, hovering in their sealed capsule while outside the world moved in barely controlled chaos.

“Can you reach the safelight?” he asked, still inside her.

Viola extended her long, slender arm and pressed the switch that bathed the closet in a soft red glow. He slipped out of her then, and she slowly turned until she faced him. Her eyes were black pools in the eerie glow, but her face radiated happiness.