Chapter 17: No Form for This

"Go on Thursday," I told my aunt. "Sit in the front row at her showcase, and listen."

"I don't know what I'll hear."

"Neither do I. That's why you should go."

She said she would, and hung up without saying goodbye.

Gideon had been waiting outside the truck with the door open.

"There are six photographers at Margo's gate," he said. "Margo called. She says you're not to go back tonight."

"Where, then?"

"My house. It's small, and it has a lock, and nobody knows the address."

He drove through the dusk with one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the seat between us.

I took the hand and held it the whole way.

His house was a brick bungalow in East Nashville with a deep porch, a swing, and a battered upright piano in the front room.

He turned on one lamp.

He didn't ask whether I wanted tea.

"Come here," I said.

He crossed the room in three steps, and I took his face in both hands and kissed him.

It was nothing like the studio.

There was no clock now, no engineer, no Margo, nobody to wait for.

He lifted me against him, and my feet left the floor.

"The bedroom," he said into my mouth, "is behind you. If you want."

"There's always a form," I said. "Is there one for this?"

He laughed, low, and carried me there.

He set me on the edge of the bed and knelt on the floor between my knees, and looked up at me.

"Tell me what you want," he said. "Everything. I've been wanting for a week and I'd like to get it right."

"Take my dress off."

He did, slowly, over my head, and then the rest, and his breath changed at every layer.

I sat there bare under the lamp with my hands on the quilt.

He looked at me for a long moment.

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