In her body I see none of the imperfection that made her mind
such a puzzle. Perhaps that is why I loved her body first.
But, yes, I loved her mind.
I thought I knew her mind. We allow such illusions to lull us;
there was much I didn’t see until that gloomy November evening.
I was going to see her at her apartment that evening. It was
early, and the sky was gray with the anemic fall light that
shines between rains. I was expected; I was almost always ex-
pected, always welcome, so I wasn’t concerned when she didn’t
answer my knock at the door. Most probably she was upstairs in
her bedroom, and hadn’t heard me. I let myself in.
Sixth sense. There are those who laugh but I have felt one at
times. There was nothing out of the ordinary, nothing out of
place in her apartment, no more so than usual. She had often
told me that she and I are complementary beings: I am neat and
she is not. The disarray, she said, comforted her. Nothing
complicated about that, and nothing unusual about the drift of
objects accumulated on the table. Nothing unusual in the way her
work was strewn about, drawings and sketches arranged in some
crazily logical assembly across the floor.
So how did I know that something was very different? I felt it
somehow, but I knew it when I heard her cry out. I’ve said that
I know her body. I know the way it moves, the way it accommo-
dates, the way it welcomes, and the way it reacts. The way she
reacts. I knew that cry, knew it as almost a trophy that I had
always been smugly proud of producing, of possessing.
Ann has never been a quiet lover. (more…)
