The Final Judgment Read Free

held it out to him. “You’re on the pill,” he said. Brett stared at him. “I’ll put it on for you.” Watching her face, he said nothing more. Fragments now: sheathing him in latex, its oily slickness between her fingers. Clambering on her knees to mount
    him. The blunt feeling of him as he entered her. A fever on her skin, too clammy for passion. As James moaned, urging himself to climax, she thought of two dogs mating. She rode him out of stubbornness, fighting sickness. He did not come. Desperate, Brett wrenched him upward with her hands beneath his spine. He flinched beneath her; dimly, she realized that her nails had scraped his skin. His eyes opened wider. “I love you .... “he murmured. Brett stopped moving. Tenderness overtaking her, she touched his face. James was asleep. As she shivered in the sudden cool of night, he slipped from inside her. She stared at him, sick and stupid again, fighting the impulse to lift him by the hair. And then, abruptly, anger became sadness. There was still goodness in him, she knew, much that had not been Mined. He was tender with her, always. When she grew angry with him, he did not lash back; he watched her, puzzled, trying to comprehend. As if listening for music he could not yet hear. Gently, she laid his head down, turned it to one side. He slept with a child’s innocence.
    Lost in dope and darkness, Brett had forgotten the lake was there. And then it struck her: the cool water might clear her head. Rising, she turned to the water. It seemed opaque, a glassy rock. Brett clambered naked from the glade across the rocky shore, crying out as the sharp stones cut her bare feet. A splash, shocking coolness as she hit the water. Swimming felt hard and slow. Suddenly, she was swathed in blackness, swallowed by the lake. In panic, she flailed to keep from drowning, felt herself go under. ... And then, shivering and panting, Brett was lying facedown on the rough wooden planks of the diving plat-
    form. She felt surprise, then fright that she could not remember how she got there. Slowly, like a woman half drowned, Brett turned on her back. Her mouth had the brackish taste of algae and still water. Her heart throbbed in her chest. Gradually, her breathing eased. She had no thought of swimming back. Time kept slipping. Brett saw an image from childhood: her mother, calm and sure then, teaching her to dive, her grandfather watching with that air of pleased reserve. Brett stared up at the moon, so seemingly close that she could almost touch the craters on its face. And then the sense was upon her, primal and instinctive, that they were not alone. Brett trained her eyes on the water. Distances were lost to her. When she turned to the glade where James lay sleeping, it seemed to move away. The faint moonlight on the grass was like the glow of phosphorus. A sudden shadow rose from the grass. Brett sat up. “James ...” Startled, the shadow turned. Her voice echoed on the water. “James...” Abruptly, the shadow vanished among the shadows of her imaginings .... No. Brett stood without thinking and dove into the water. The shock of coolness felt real now. She was less afraid to swim than to stop and look at the glade. She rose from the water’s edge, trembling with cold. The glade was dark and silent. She walked toward the blanket, grass matting beneath her feet. James was not the shadow. He lay as she had left him, except that he was gazing at the moon. A sound came from his throat. Like snoring, Brett thought as she approached. Yet not snoring. In the moonlight, she saw that his mouth was open, heard ragged breaths.
    The sound again. A gurgling, Brett thought suddenly. Like the sound of a man whose lungs had filled with water. James, she thought with horror, was drowning in his own vomit. With quick, instinctive movements, Brett knelt beside him. As moonlight caught his face, she started CPR. She felt wetness on his lips, heard her own breath rattle in his throat. Her eyes shut tight. Like a