Chapter 19: Forty Feet from Parking

"You can't park on the grass," a man was shouting, forty feet from my head. "That's the septic field!"

"It's a lawn!"

"It's a septic lawn!"

I was on my knees on the porch boards, in a green wrap dress, with my hands behind my back.

The porch swing hung above me, hidden at the dark end of the porch.

A screen of morning glories and a hanging fern the size of a sheep stood between us and the lawn.

Jack sat on the swing in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled, his good dark jacket folded on the armrest.

He looked at me.

It was ten past seven.

The light had gone long and gold, and cars were turning in at the gravel drive in a slow honking line.

Everybody I had ever been related to by marriage was about to climb the porch steps.

"Where do I put my hands?" I'd asked, five minutes earlier.

"Behind you," he'd said. "Like they're tied. Keep the scarf on."

So I kept the scarf on my left wrist and held my right hand around it, small of my back.

I knelt between his knees on the planks.

The swing swayed an inch each time he breathed.

"Is the wisteria thick enough?" I whispered.

"The wisteria is a professional."

"And if somebody comes up the steps?"

"Then you'll have an interesting thing to tell your therapist."

"You're enjoying this."

"I'm enjoying you," said Jack. "Come here."

I leaned forward and undid his belt with my teeth.

He made a sound I felt in my knees.

I wasn't allowed to use my hands, so I did it slowly, the buckle first.

The button, then the zipper's slow rasp, with my eyes on his the whole time.

When I had it open, he lifted his hips and shoved the fabric down for me.

He sprang free, hard against his stomach.

"Look at that," I said.

"I'm looking."

"Not at you."

"At what?"

"At me looking at you."

He laughed, quietly, dark and breathless, and put his hand in my hair.

I took the head in my mouth.

He tasted like salt and heat and soap, and he said "Fuck," softly, to the sky.

I went down on him slowly, and drew back, and went down again, with my lips tight and my tongue flat along the underside.

Every time I did it, his thighs flexed against my shoulders.

"That's it," he whispered. "Like that. Oh, you know how to do this."