Ninety-Three Million Miles Away: Short Story Read Free

even though she knew that, very likely, he had simply been obliged to go to work, that his being home yesterday was a fluke. Forlornly she gazed at her painting. To her surprise she had accomplished something rather interesting: breasts like Picasso eyes. It is possible, she thought dully, that I am a natural talent.
    She put her brush in the turpentine, and her face in her hands. She felt the sun on her hair. In a few minutes the sun would disappear behind his house, and after that, if she wanted him to get a good look at her, she would have to stand right at the window. She envisioned herself stationed there all day. You are ridiculous, she told herself. You are unhinged.
    She glanced up at the window again.
    He was there.
    She sat up straight. Slowly she came to her feet. Stay, she prayed. He did. She walked to the window, her fingertips brushing her thighs. She held her breath. When she was at thewindow, she stood perfectly still. He stood perfectly still. He had on a white shirt again, but no tie. He was close enough that she could make out the darkness around his eyes, although she couldn’t tell exactly where he was looking. But his eyes seemed to enter her head like a drug, and she felt herself aligned with his perspective. She saw herself—surprisingly slender, composed but apprehensive—through the glass and against the backdrop of the room’s white walls.
    After a minute or two she walked to the chair, picked it up and carried it to the window. She sat facing him, her knees apart. He was as still as a picture. So was she, because she had suddenly remembered that he might be gay, or crazy. She tried to give him a hard look. She observed his age and his sad, respectable appearance. And the fact that he remained at the window, revealing his interest.
    No, he was the man she had imagined. I am a gift to him, she thought, opening her legs wider. I am his dream come true. She began to rotate her hips. With the fingers of both hands she spread her labia.
    One small part of her mind, clinging to the person she had been until yesterday morning, tried to pull her back. She felt it as a presence behind the chair, a tableau of sensational, irrelevant warnings that she was obviously not about to turn around for. She kept her eyes on the man. Moving her left hand up to her breasts, she began to rub and squeeze and to circle her fingers on the nipples. The middle finger of her right hand slipped into her vagina, as the palm massaged her clitoris.
    He was motionless.
    You are kissing me, she thought. She seemed to feel his lips, cool, soft, sliding and sucking down her stomach. You are kissing me. She imagined his hands under her, lifting her like a bowl to his lips.
    She was coming.
    Her body jolted. Her legs shook. She had never experiencedanything like it. Seeing what he saw, she witnessed an act of shocking vulnerability. It went on and on. She saw the charity of her display, her lavish recklessness and submission. It inspired her to the tenderest self-love. The man did not move, not until she had finally stopped moving, and then he reached up one hand—to signal, she thought, but it was to close the drapes.
    She stayed sprawled in the chair. She was astonished. She couldn’t believe herself. She couldn’t believe him. How did he know to stay so still, to simply watch her? She avoided the thought that right at this moment he was probably masturbating. She absorbed herself only with what she had seen, which was a dead-still man whose eyes she had sensed roving over her body the way that eyes in certain portraits seem to follow you around a room.
    The next three mornings everything was the same. He had on his white shirt, she masturbated in the chair, he watched without moving, she came spectacularly, he closed the drapes.
    Afterwards she went out clothes shopping or visiting people. Everyone told her how great she looked. At night she was passionate in bed, prompting Claude to ask several times, “What the hell’s come