“Oh, come now.” He laughed. “I’ve painted about twenty portraits of you.”
Juliet shook her head. “You’ve never painted anything for me and you know it.” His gift had emboldened her. She could sense how much he wanted her to like it. By now, Juliet knew that Marchant had two gazes: the artist’s gaze that glossed over her like an object, and the gaze of a man. As he looked down at her, this was the latter. The weight of the rain rattled the window. They stood silently, looking at each other, knowing what was about to happen next, but neither making a move toward it.
Then Juliet observed his leg twitch, causing his pant leg to rustle. In one movement, he picked her up and carried her over to the daybed, gently laying her on it and sitting on the edge next to her.
Juliet’s body memorized all of the places where their bodies met, her hip, his thigh, his stomach, her rib. He leaned over her, bracing himself up. His hand brushed her breast as his arm moved across her, all decorum about asking to touch her now swept away.
“I’ve never been kissed,” she said, touching his lips with her finger, surprised that she felt entitled to do so. “For my birthday, I might like that.”
He leaned down and his lips touched hers. His beard was softer than she’d imagined it would feel against her cheek. The kiss was light and when their lips parted, Juliet looked into his eyes. He drew her face toward his and their kisses began with a soft rhythm that Juliet picked up and matched until his tongue parted her lips and the kisses became deeper. Juliet tugged at his hair and his neck and he at her clothes.
Breathless, he finally pulled away from her. Juliet found herself pulling upward to stay connected to him. “I want you to stand,” he commanded.
Juliet shifted her position and stood in front of him, her legs weak and shifting, her torso twisting. Marchant remained seated on the daybed. They touched now at every opportunity, his hand, her leg—the tangle of them, this new, sudden intimacy.
He looked up at her and pulled her toward him. “Do you want this?”
Juliet nodded, but he shook his head.
“No. Tell me,” he said. “I need to hear that you want this, that you want me. Everything changes with this. Do you understand?” His hands held her firmly away from him, as though he might push her off and run free. “Do you understand, Juliet?” He shook her once to get his message across.
Juliet thought Marchant looked wild and tortured, like an animal in a trap.
“I want this.” Her voice was clear. “I’ve never wanted anything more.”
“Let me see you,” said Marchant, and his gaze shifted to her body. “I need to see you.”
She undid the button of her cotton shift and let the dress fall off her shoulders and onto the floor. Under the dress, she was naked. He looked at her and pulled her toward him, his head coming to rest on her stomach. Then Marchant lowered her back onto the daybed. He’d tried to explain to her that everything would change, but neither of them could know how true that prophecy would turn out to be. All Juliet knew as he entered her again and again was that, there would be no marriage to the Busson boy now, no chopping leeks and feeding chickens. She was ruined for that life now. After a few moments, Marchant collapsed on top of her, and she knew they were bound together, forever.
7
Helen Lambert
Washington, DC, May 25, 2012
Helen? Helen?”
I heard Sharlene’s nasal voice and smelled the rubber of new carpet. As I shook myself, I realized I was facedown on the area rug with a pool of blood underneath me.
“What the…?”
“It’s a nosebleed,” said Sharlene, efficiently handing me a bunch of scratchy, not-quite-white napkins from the drink station. “I get them all the time. You fainted.”
I sat up. My head was pounding. The dream I’d just had was so vivid.
“You need to go home and rest.”
“No,” I snapped. “I’ll be fine. The air in here is dry. I’m sure that’s it.”
Sharlene frowned. “Your phone has been ringing nonstop. Everyone was looking for you.”
“You all weren’t looking on the floor then, it seems,” I said with a laugh. I’d never had a nosebleed before, so I was a little rattled, but I chalked the whole thing up to seasonal allergies. People fainted. Noses bled. It happened. I was trying to not connect this nosebleed to my recent dreams.
The video, showing the confused senator against the In Frame backdrop forever, had gone viral. I spent the rest of the day taking calls and watching cable news light up with the story that Asa Heathcote had “taken ill” during an interview, where he’d admitted to being asked to be on the Republican ticket and to fathering a child with a staffer. He’d checked into George Washington University Hospital, where he was under observation. Virginia was spinning it as a fit of some sort. I knew this gave Heathcote a way to save face to the party. They’d chosen him carefully, but now they’d have to go back to their short list of candidates. And those candidates would now know that they were the second choice to be on the ticket. Heathcote was done as the vice presidential candidate and possibly as a sitting senator. By afternoon, the news that he’d suffered from dehydration from playing golf too rigorously the previous day had begun to circulate. Reporters had also located the former employee and had been camped outside of her house for hours. I wasn’t sure what had happened to Asa Heathcote this morning, but I didn’t think it was a simple game of golf. This was my doing, even if I had no idea how I was doing it.
I arrived home just as it was starting to get dark. I was contemplating various microwave meals in my freezer when I heard a light rap on my door.
Standing out on my step was Luke Varner, although I knew I hadn’t given him my address. It was a warm night on Capitol Hill, and Luke stood at my door facing East Capitol Street with his hands in his pockets. When I turned the door handle, he looked like he was turning to leave.
“Oh. It’s you.”
“I was just wondering if anything strange happened to you today.”
“Such as?”
“Strange things. Things that are strange.”
I eyed him suspiciously. “You mean besides you on my doorstep?”
He smiled. Originally I had thought he was rather ordinary looking, but now I found myself looking at his dark-blue eyes and smirk, which was oddly sexy. Otherwise, I probably would have shut the door.
“I deserve that.”
“I will probably regret this,” I said as I moved aside. “But come in.”
He was growing on me. There was something about him, like when a man looks a certain way and you don’t know why that look appeals to you so much, until you remember the look is exactly like someone who lived next door to you when you were young. It’s as though that type of handsome has left an indelible mark on your tastes, shaping them early. “I have some wine.” I walked into the kitchen beyond the foyer.
Luke followed me. “Whatever you have.”
“It isn’t French,” I warned as I poured him a full heaping glass of Cabernet and slid it across the counter. “No one ever asks me about my day anymore. That’s one of the things that happens when you get divorced.” I poured myself an equally full glass. “It’s kind of nice so I’ll start at the beginning. Colors.”