“What?”
Again she took me by the hand. We walked farther downtown, our fingers interlaced. My hand was sweating, and even though I always thought that holding hands meant something close and special, I didn’t feel the closeness that I had on that sunbathers’ lawn. It was just two hands and some fingers pressed together on a day that was too hot.
“What’s this?” I said, holding back at the outside escalator.
“The ferry,” Chai said. “The Staten Island Ferry. It only costs fifty cent. Don’t worry, I’ll pay for it.”
We held hands up the escalator and through the swinging glass doors. She had to let go in order to pay at the kiosk. We came into a cavernous room that was over a hundred feet across, and just as long. There was a magazine stand in the center of the room and wooden benches along the walls.
“Good, it’s pretty empty,” Chai said.
Now she held my arm. I still didn’t feel that closeness I craved, but there was security in the touch. I’d never been to Staten Island and said so. She told me that her cousins lived out there in Saint George. She used to visit them when she was a girl.
At the far end of the large waiting room was a huge door that sat on wheels. Through the door we could see a crowd of people all walking in one direction, toward the exit and the city.
“That means the ferry is unloading. When they’re finished and when the cars are all off, then we can get on.”
“They take cars?”
“Uh-huh. Right down below us.”
The door was pushed open from the outside by an older, red-faced white man. The color reminded me of the man who was so angry when his girlfriend looked at me.
“Great, it’s one of the old ferries,” she said as we walked up the ramp.
It was like one of the old barges that my uncle Lon used to take me on off of Redondo Beach. Lots of old wooden benches and a galley where you could get hot dogs and sodas.
Chai ran, dragging me along, to the front of the boat. There we looked out over the watery expanse.
“I used to love this when I was a kid,” she said. “Thanks for coming with me.”
The horn sounded, and the big boat lurched out into the water. Six or seven others came out onto the prow with us.
Chai grabbed my hand again and said, “Come on.”
She led me back into the boat and up a flight of stairs that went above the galley. Up there was another room full of old built-in benches. On either side was an outside area with a long bench that looked out to the water. On one side an old couple sat, and on the other two little kids looked out from the front.
Chai took me to the aft part of the side where the children were. We sat and looked out for a moment or two. We were going to pass Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. I was about to say how great it was when Chai kissed me.
What I remember most about it was her tongue. It was very large and muscular. My old girlfriend, the only girlfriend I ever had, Rachel, had a small tongue. When we kissed, Rachel opened her mouth, but her tongue didn’t do anything. But with Chai it was a real physical experience. The boat ride was smooth, but that kiss was like stormy seas. It still wasn’t the intimacy I had experienced on the promenade, but it was overpowering.
Chai laid a hand on my thigh, right on my erection. She didn’t move the hand or squeeze but just let the weight sit there. After a moment I was kissing back. Every time my tongue pushed into her mouth it was pressed back. It was almost like the tongues were engaged in a war or maybe a war game. My chest started to hurt, and there were sounds coming from my throat. Chai used her other hand to caress the back of my neck.
When I started to come, Chai moved back from the kiss to watch my face. Her hand was still just weight, but it was enough. I struggled not to make too much noise. I could see that there was someone down on the other end of the bench; I could see their form in my peripheral vision.
My body tensed, and my legs went straight. I wanted to cry.
It was then that Chai whispered, “So much.” Then she leaned closer and spoke right into my ear, “Don’t stop,” and I had another orgasm and I thought I was going to die.
There it was, cast in something stronger than stone, the intimacy, and the closeness I had always wanted but never suspected until that day. I panted like a dog, and Chai grinned broadly. My body was still shaking.
“That was good,” she said, and then she curled up beside me and put her head on my shoulder and her hand upon my chest. We sat there looking out at the water. The ferry slowed for landing and then jarred against the wooden pylons of the pier.
Whoever it was at the other end of our bench got up and left. I think Chai fell asleep. I did too.
“So I told my mothah I didn’t care what the hell he told huhr,” a woman said. It was real, and I heard it, but I was still asleep.
I felt a forward pitch of the boat and awoke. An old woman was sitting next to me. A man in some kind of uniform was next to her. Two young women were standing at the railing looking out over the water. It was one of them who had been talking about her mother.
Chai was asleep. Just seeing her seemed to fill my lungs with air. This time I watched the water and the sights.
It might have been eight o’clock. The sky was still light, and the ferry was full of Staten Islanders going out for the night in Manhattan. I stayed still, hoping that Chai wouldn’t rouse.
“Hey,” she said, when we were close to shore.
“Hey,” I said in a new voice, one that echoed the intimacy I craved.
She sat up and said, “I got to get home.”
“Can I call you?”
“I don’t really have a private line. But you give me your number, and I’ll call you, OK?”
There was a yellow nub of a pencil in her bag and the inner side of the ingredients flap from an empty package of trail mix that had been thrown away in the terminal building. There I wrote my full name and the phone number of my temporary desk at work. I hadn’t gotten a phone in my house yet. I didn’t have the deposit.
“Goodbye, Rufus Coombs,” Chai said after she kissed my cheek. “I’m gonna call you and see how your diet’s comin’.”
I wanted to walk her to her subway station, but she said she needed to walk alone.
The first time I woke up it was because of that pain in my chest. I guess I got excited in my sleep. The pain turned into fear of a policeman who found out that I had been kissing his woman. That fear gave way to fear of an ex-convict, a murderer, who would kill me for the same reason. I fell asleep again only to awaken to a phrase, AIDS kiss. I wondered if I had heard those words on the radio or read them somewhere. The thought of the disease crawling through my veins got me up out of bed. I went to my tenement window and looked out over New Jersey. I wondered if she would call me. It would have to be within the next six weeks, because that was how long I’d be in the claims department.