Chapter 9: The Section House

He knocked at nine, exactly, and I opened the door before his hand came down the second time.

"Rule one," Anton said, from the step.

He had shaved, and the cut on his chin had a bit of paper on it.

"You said I don't come into your house."

"I did," I said.

"I'm standing on the step," he said.

"My door," I said. "My rule. I break it."

I took him by the front of his shirt and pulled him over the sill.

He came in with his hands held away from his body, open at his sides, and I shut the door and turned the lock.

The woodstove had been going for an hour.

The section house is two rooms and a bed, and the bed is what the stove warms best.

I stood in front of him in my socks, and he did not move.

"Hands," I said.

"Yours to say."

I took his wrists, one in each of my hands, and put his palms on my waist, over the flannel.

He closed his fingers slowly.

Then I kissed him.

I had not kissed him since the wedding night.

I had forgotten, or I had never known, that he kissed with his whole attention.

His lips were dry and careful.

I opened mine against them, and he made a sound low in his chest that I felt in my own.

The care came apart a little at the edges.

I pushed his coat off his shoulders.

I undid his shirt one pearl snap at a time, and he held his breath for every one.

Under it he wore an undershirt, gray and old.

When I slid my hands under the hem he caught my wrist, gently, in his scarred fingers.

"Not that," Anton said. "Not tonight. Please."

I looked up at him.

His face had gone shut, and I could see what it cost him to ask.

"All right," I said, and I kissed his jaw. "Keep it on."

The breath went out of him.

He rested his forehead against mine and said nothing for a while, and his hands on my waist were no longer testing anything.

I took off my own flannel, and my jeans, and the rest, standing in the light of the stove.

I am not small anymore.

My breasts had grown heavy and my stomach had a hard round curve.

I had spent a month hating the mirror in the cafe bathroom.

Anton looked at me, and I watched his face, and I stopped hating it.

He looked at me slowly and completely, from my hair to my feet and back, and when his eyes came up they were wet.

"You're beautiful," he said. "I don't say it well. I mean the whole of it."

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