Текст книги "Red Jungle"

Автор книги: Kent Harrington

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

SIXTEEN

There was a drought. Every day for weeks now, the sky had stayed viciously clear and blue. Someone at his office said that it was the result of global warming and that Mother Earth, who had been seriously screwed with, was now, finally, getting back at everyone.

It was very hot outside, thirty-five Celsius. Russell and the bellboy walked through the lush grounds of the hotel, the air redolent, the glare at noon unbearable even with sunglasses. Russell was wearing a white cotton suit and blue tie. The bellboy had insisted on coming with him to show him the room, insisted too on carrying his briefcase.

He’d gotten a five-hundred-dollar-a-day suite at the Hotel Santo Domingo in Antigua. Beatrice had come to the hotel for a tennis tournament; she’d called him at his office and pleaded with him to leave work and meet her there. He shouldn’t have come, as the well-known hotel was the playground of the country’s rich, and therefore very dangerous. He’d come anyway, because he couldn’t stop himself.

The room was huge, with a view of the hotel’s fabulous walled gardens. The bellboy opened up the minibar, then checked the bathroom, flicking on lights. He didn’t have to say what was obvious: that the American was here to meet a lover. He’d brought no luggage other than his briefcase. The bellboy asked Russell where he would like him to put the briefcase, as if it mattered.

“I’ll take it,” he’d said. He gave the boy a huge tip and told him to bring a bucket of ice. The boy came back with two buckets and put them on the dining room table.

“Will there be anything else, sir?”

“No,” he said. The bellboy smiled knowingly.

“Enjoy your stay,” the bellboy said.

The room was huge. He’d spent too much, but he wanted to impress Beatrice. He wanted her to believe that he could compete with her husband somehow. It was stupid; of course he couldn’t. But he needed to try. That’s what men do when they love a married woman whose husband is very rich. Russell felt in constant competition with Carlos.

There were several big windows off the main room. Some looked on the quiet manicured patio with its topiary and spilling fountain, pink bougainvillea painting the rough volcanic rock walls beyond. Across from that window was a cavernous bedroom. Out the bedroom’s French doors was a small private patio shaded by trees. It was just the kind of room he’d wanted. He was pleased, but uneasy.

We shouldn’t have agreed to meet here. I’ll have to tell her about her maid. Outside there was a breeze. moving the tops of the trees.

He watched Beatrice approach from the patio. She’d come from the tennis courts. She was wearing a short white tennis dress and white blouse, and carrying her racquet over her shoulder in one of those rakish nylon carry bags. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her face flushed from the tennis. A gardener stared at her, holding his rake. She made all other women in the world seem drab. She hurried across the big open patio that the hotel’s restaurant looked out on.

Russell watched her turn her face away from the tables. He wondered how many people eating at the restaurant would recognize her. She was—because of her great beauty—impossible to miss. No other woman carried herself like that. How many would be on their cell phones, making dangerous gossip about the general’s wife? He hadn’t bargained on being frightened every time they met.

De La Madrid’s words from an e-mail came back to him as he watched her: Thank you for the article. We’ve put the general on the run. Everything’s getting better. I look forward to discussing the campaign with you again. We should have lunch and talk about the privatization of the phone company. I’m convinced that privatization is the way to go and I should get your thoughts on how it might best be done, one economist to another.

When she knocked, it dawned on him that it was only the third time he’d been alone with her. It seemed he’d known her much longer. It had, in fact, only been a few weeks. They didn’t speak; they kissed. Maybe it was all the fear and the tension, but he felt that he’d never been more excited or more in need of a woman’s touch. You want to possess Beatrice. She’d been on his mind constantly since the moment he’d left her at the lake.

He held her tightly, felt her sweaty skin slip to the grab of his hands. He kissed her neck and tasted salt. He started to speak, but she didn’t let him. She covered his mouth with a kiss. He saw her tennis racket’s black case drop at her feet. He kicked it away from her, and reached under her blouse.

She seemed to come completely unglued, as if she’d not been fondled or kissed in years. As if he were shocking her body with his hand. He felt her ass move herky-jerky under his palm.

“I thought about you all last night,” she whispered. There were noises outside the door. Men’s husky voices. “I kept waking up and thinking how much I needed you.” He felt her kissing his hand as he looked into the hotel room. He stopped for a second. He heard the voices pass in the corridor outside. She dropped to her knees and undid his pants. He heard the jingle of his belt buckle. “I dreamt I’d been doing this to you.” He felt his pants come down, the awkwardness of it. Her hand on him there suddenly.

“Are you afraid of him? Afraid it’s Carlos?” she asked, looking up at him, her face still flushed. She pulled her blouse off and looked at him, her expression somehow managing to be angelic, her eyes two jolts of blue. She seemed so out of place here in the tropics, her white skin, her English girl’s voice. She began to fondle him as he listened to the voices of the men outside the door. He looked down and watched her. It was like a dream, better than a dream, but with the extra intensity of a dream. She stroked him. He became erect. He heard her laugh and then the sound of that kind of lovemaking. He wanted to stop her and kiss her, but he didn’t. The voices outside got louder, very masculine voices coming back towards them. Suddenly laughing too, then they stopped, and it was very quiet again.

He suddenly felt the heat and the country in the room. No rain, his mind said. He’d been covering the drought that week in the Petén. He closed his eyes and saw the empty roadway in the jungle, the broken corn withered and blown down.

“Oh god, fuck.” He said it without thinking. She began to move his hips with her hands. The word lost came to him, with the vision of the road in the jungle as he watched Beatrice’s face. She stopped, looked up at him, and smiled. There was something so extremely intimate about the way she was looking at him. He was embarrassed. It was as if she weren’t the woman he thought she was. She was losing herself too, he realized. She was losing herself in the sex and the fear of what they were doing.

“Are you frightened?” she asked again. She had a look, happy, excited too. He was sweating now. He could feel the sweat trickling down his armpits. (He’d forgotten to have the bellboy turn on the air conditioning.) The men outside in the corridor started to move away from the door. He heard a cell phone ring and someone out there answer. Who were they?

“Are you?” she asked. He couldn’t speak. “I love to see you like this,” she said. “I do, but I could stop if you’re afraid.” She was teasing him, he realized.

“No,” he managed to say. He tried not to sound stupid. But it sounded stupid, as if he were a high school boy. He was too excited to joke. He just wanted her to keep doing it, and he wanted to watch her do it.

“No what?” she said, her voice garbled.

“No…I’m not frightened,” he said, desperate for her to go on. They both started to laugh. She began again. He wondered what the hell he’d gotten himself into, but he couldn’t stop or think. Nothing about her let him think straight, nothing. The way she made love, the way she looked, the way she moved. She had a regal, efficient, animal quality. The way she spoke English. The way she called him and the way she sounded on the phone when she called him. It felt as if his erection started all the way back in the middle of his head.

He looked down at her. Female, crystalline pure, somehow all pure blonde power refined down to this girl/woman thing giving him a blowjob on the floor of this hotel room at three in the afternoon in an antique city.

He wanted to come now, but didn’t want to come. Each time they met he was lost in a slightly new way. He’d never been lost psychologically like this, unbalanced, and it was getting worse. God I want to come. He was unable to see things the way they should be seen, he knew that. He was on this boat moving away from the dock of rationality, and he was glad of it. I’ve always been in control. I’d come to Guatemala to lose myself in that detached way, but I’d stayed in control all the while. Until now. I was the most in-control person you could imagine. I want to come. But she’d made him cede control.

Even today. He’d left work. He’d driven to Antigua when he knew he shouldn’t have. He’d called her cell phone to see if she’d arrived at the hotel. He’d spoken to her on the tennis court. All these things he knew he shouldn’t do, but did anyway. Then he was leaning against the wall on the two lane jungle/sex road, trying to hold back from giving longer thrusts in the warm room. Her mouth warm. She stopped and stroked him.

“I’m going to come,” he said. Please. Did she ask him if he was afraid again? He started to shudder, the climax starting from the middle of his head going down his throat, down to his navel, his hips. He heard himself cry out. Her blue eyes looked up at him, bemused. The sudden silence of the darkened room in the aftermath of sexual gratification, their hands clutching each other. He didn’t even realize he’d been holding her hand so tightly until he finally let it go. He’d gone somewhere very far away and come back. She had possessed him completely. She owned him. She wiped her face, grinning at him.

“He may kill us both,” she said. “We can’t really be safe. That’s what I’ve decided. We can’t be. He knows too many people. Where could we really go? I don’t care—”

She was right, of course. Carlos would find out. How could he not find out? “Make love to me,” she said. And he would kill them, he decided, falling down beside her. He had never felt so free as at that moment, holding her, feeling her body as he laid her down on the carpet and moved her legs apart, pulling her panties down, kissing her there, feeling the sun between her legs.

“I didn’t care, darling,” she said. “I don’t care anymore. I don’t care.” She picked up her hips and pushed.

He’d told the desk clerk that he would bring his passport down later. Of course he couldn’t, he thought, picking up his tie. Why should he cooperate with any of the systems? He felt outside all systems now. He had to protect them.

They were getting dressed. Beatrice was in the bathroom, the door open. He felt strangely alive, as if he could walk through walls. She’d given him a kind of bizarre strength. He decided, walking to the mirror, that he would find the Red Jaguar and take her away from Carlos. He could do it. He would find the Red Jaguar if it killed him. He had to, now. He had to have money to get her away from this place.

“He bought it for me,” she said, stepping out of the bathroom. “I own it. The club.” Her hair was wet. It had turned honey-colored again.

He wanted to know. He wanted to know why her husband would let her carry on the way she did, so he’d asked her.

“Yes, but I still don’t understand. Doesn’t he mind you being there?”

“Why do you have to understand?” she said. “It’s between him and me.” She said it in that very proper-sounding English manner/tone she could muster, which could freeze boiling water. She was just in her bra. She leaned forward and pulled on her panties, moving her hips.

He reached out and touched her. She was warm to the touch. The warm shower he thought. It was a lovely feeling, her skin warm and clean and red from the tennis-lesson sun. Did she know what she’d done to him? She’d collapsed any will he had to stay away from her.

He watched her dress as he stood, tying his tie standing in front of a big mirror. He saw behind her the trees outside, gathering themselves in the patio and letting themselves go in the breeze, the way she had when they made love. A hungry, not-much-time lovemaking at first. Afterwards, they’d ordered room service, eaten, then they’d started out again. This time she was desperately slow. She told him she wanted to see how long they could make love before they had a climax. They would stop and talk, or just stare at each other. It was harder for him; he had to let her talk him away from that moment, and she had. Until finally—in a twisting of sheets and strange music from the little clock radio—he’d reached a place he’d never ever been. And it had changed him. He wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone now.

“I wanted to disappear,” she said, looking at him as he came.

He started to wonder about her. She suddenly had a strange angry vacant pathetic look in her beautiful eyes. She’s a sex fiend, he thought. That’s it. The woman I’m in love with is a sex fiend. Okay. Fine. He remembered the Hemingway character who said there wasn’t an answer for everything. There was no answer for Beatrice. There was no answer for most things, he thought, when you really got down to it.

“I want to be like this forever. No London. No Guatemala. No anything. No anything but this. Right now. Nothing,” she said. “Just making love.”

He could see her in the mirror. Her back was still wet. She’d come and put her arms around him as he tied his tie.

“Are you in love with him?” he asked

“Why?” she said. She let go of him.

He had replayed the lovemaking. He wanted to pin her down. He wanted to get to who she was. Mother? Lover? Sex fiend? Oxford graduate? Stripper? Who the fuck was she? He wanted to stop the manic driving passion that had gripped him since the moment he’d met her, even slow it down for a minute. He realized she’d been pushing him back from really knowing her. Every time he was on the verge of getting a glimpse, she would push him back from the door. Only when they were making love did she stop defending.

Beatrice, that country, there behind the blue eyes, the country that was youthful, but distant. He wanted in. Like Cortez, he wanted to steal it all, take everything she had. Sex only the tool of his colonization.

“Because. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just trying to get my bearings. You know… in this Beatrice country I’ve parachuted into. I haven’t much to go on. You are good in bed. You are a beautiful woman. You’re from England. You went to Oxford on a scholarship. You stripped for a living because you didn’t want to become an investment banker. You married this big shot. You came here to the jungle. Now you’re fucking my brains out in this hotel room. I’m trying to catch up, that’s all,” he said.

“You have me. You have this afternoon to go on,” she said. “You can start there.”

“Does that mean I’m a fuck toy? Is that the answer? I don’t mind. I just want to know, as I believe I’m risking my life.”

She looked at him. He hadn’t meant to joke like that; it had slipped out. But they both knew it was true. They were risking their lives. “Besides, isn’t that what someone does who’s in love, get to know the beloved?” he added quickly. “I want to know you. Why won’t you talk to me about yourself without getting angry?”

“You don’t like Carlos. I can tell. You should like him. He’s a good man,” she said, ignoring his questions, turning away from him. She went and picked up her Nikes by the bathroom door. “And he loves me.” She sat on the bed and put on her shoes, looking like a teenager. Moving her hands quickly. Her shoes looked brand new.

“I was frightened by what you did on Saturday, at the lake. And now today, when you called me at the office,” he said. “It was so . . . I don’t know, I didn’t know what to make of it. I don’t know what to make of you.”

She’d ignored what she’d done at the lake. She hadn’t spoken of it again.

“You made rules and then you proceeded to break them right away. You broke them again today, this morning, when you called me at work from your house. We were supposed to meet at my apartment on Friday. That’s how we’d left it, remember?”

“The rules won’t save us,” she said. “Nothing will keep us safe. Do you understand? This is doomed. It’s a small country. You have to accept that. Anyway, I don’t care if we’re caught. I need you.” She hadn’t gotten up off the bed.

“The fact is we barely know each other,” he said.

“You know that’s not true.” Her eyes searched his. “Not true. You. . . . We know each other, people like us. The moment we saw each other, you know that’s the truth. . . . The moment I saw you with that book. I knew we were alike.”

He thought for a moment about what Katherine had said about Nineteen Eighty-Four, and about Orwell. They had discussed Orwell on the way down from the city that day. Were they—he and Beatrice—Winston and Julia from 1984? Was Guatemala’s New World Order—its maquiladora, its uncontrolled diesel spew, its secret policemen—the future? Was that waiting for everyone now? Hadn’t Winston, in fact, been a journalist? Was he, Russell, now part of the memory hole and the newspeak? Of course not, he told himself. How could he be? He was fighting for something now. It was why he’d agreed to support De La Madrid. And he was also going to steal a treasure, which might not be morally right. What was he exactly? Adventurer? Journalist? Fuck toy?

He was all those things. How could anyone be only one thing in life?

“I want you to leave Carlos,” he said. He’d finished combing his hair, and he went to the chair in the other room and picked up his cell phone.

“I can’t,” she said.

He left a few minutes later. On the way back to the city, he knew he was being followed. It was a white Toyota with two men in it. He was sure of it.

SEVENTEEN

He’d agreed to meet Katherine at a tapas bar in the zona viva. She’d called him several times since she’d come back from Chicago; seeing her number, he hadn’t picked up. He’d been avoiding her. She’d called him that morning at work and he’d answered without looking to see who it was.

“I have to see you,” she’d said. “Please.”

“All right,” he’d said.

The few tables on the front porch of the restaurant/bar in the zona viva were packed, but Russell knew the owner and had called ahead for a table. Not seeing Katherine, he sat at a table in the corner near the entrance and ordered a glass of wine. Right away young boys—glue sniffers—descended on him, selling roses. The children leaned over the low railing of the restaurant’s deck, the kids’ pale faces disturbing. Russell bought some flowers and laid them on the table. He doubted the boys would ever learn to read, but they would hear about Harry Potter and dream of other children’s lives.

Two boys stared at him. He gave them a ten Q note, hoping they would leave him alone. One of the boys grabbed it before the other could. The smaller boy with no T shirt, just an open wool jacket, stared at Russell for a moment, stunned at the size of the bill, then turned to grab it away from his friend. The boy with the money was already halfway across the empty street by the time the other one realized what had happened.

The running boy dropped his roses as he made for an alley, the scattered red flowers ominous and beautiful in the street light.

“You haven’t returned my calls,” Katherine said, sitting down.

“I’m sorry,” he said. She looked at him for a moment. The waiter, who knew Russell as a heavy tipper, was there in a flash, his starched white apron food-splattered.

“What will you have?” the waiter asked.

“A glass of wine,” Katherine said.

“The Chilean for the young lady,” Russell said. He took a sip of his drink.

The street was quiet now. It was a time of night he liked. During the day he was nervous, waiting for Carlos’s men to pick him up from his office or wherever he ate lunch, and kill him without saying a word. He was being followed everywhere now. He wondered if he would be brave when the time came, or if he’d spill his guts and cry and carry on like a coward. He wasn’t sure he could be brave after a beating.

“How about the shrimp? They’re good here,” he suggested.

“I’m not hungry,” she said. She was dressed nicely, and he wondered where she’d come from. A white blouse and black skirt. Her hair glistened in the harsh light from inside the restaurant. The waiter left them.

“Carlos will kill you. You know that. I wouldn’t like that,” she said.

“I’ll get a better gun,” he joked.

“Don’t be a fool,” Katherine said.

The waiter brought her drink. Suddenly Russell was hungry; he’d had nothing to eat since lunch and suddenly he was hungry. He ordered a plate of shrimp and a plate of Serrano ham and Manchego, and another glass of wine for himself.

“I’m waiting for the click. Remember Paul Newman in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof? Newman’s character was right when he said there’s a click, and then you feel better,” he said. “It takes me three drinks. Just like in the movie.”

“She’s just using you. I’ve heard stories about her. She’s crazy. The drugs she took in London. She’s not all there, Russell,” Katherine said.

The waiter brought their food. A car came slowly down the street. Russell turned to look at it. It was a green Chevy Suburban, its windows tinted dark. The passenger’s window cracked open a bit as it drove by. Russell felt his heart rate jump. He touched his hand to his chin, feeling the stubble of his beard.

“I’m aware of her reputation,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter to me.”

“Why were you so mean to me?” she asked. He hadn’t expected that question. “That night. Why didn’t you just come out and say what you wanted from me?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and meant it.

“You’re sorry?”

“Yes. I am, believe it or not. I apologize.”

“You’re a prick,” she said. She looked away for a moment. The other tables on the little porch were empty now. Russell didn’t answer. “I think you’re crazy. Why are you doing this?”

“Look. I don’t know what good this is going to do. I said I was sorry.” He started to get up.

“Sit down, Russell.” She took his hand. “Please.”

He glanced inside. There were a few people at the bar, three men and their girlfriends. The women were talking together. One of them glanced outside at them. He wanted to go, but he told himself he owed Katherine this for what he’d made her do that night at the Q Bar. The fact was he was ashamed of himself, deeply ashamed of the way he’d treated her.

“All right,” he said, and sat down.

“I’m in love with you,” she said. “And I’m worried about you. What you’re doing.”

“Don’t be. I know what I’m doing. I’m the last person in the world you want to fall in love with. You said so yourself once. I’m a prick. Remember? A capitalist free trader.”

“Do you know what you’re doing?” she asked.

“Yes. It’s all under control. We’re having a quiet affair in Central America.”

“You think so? I saw you at the hotel the other day in Antigua. I was in the restaurant with the general. She had lunch with us.”

“You’re lying,” he said, shocked. “Carlos was in Honduras that day.” The idea that Beatrice would lie to him had never crossed his mind.

“You met her there at the Santo Domingo, didn’t you?”

“Yes. If you have to know. But I’m an adult, and I didn’t. . .”

“Stop it! Don’t you see, that woman’s crazy. He was there. Carlos. We had a meeting. She got up from the table and made some lame excuse about a tennis game. I knew right away where she was going. I knew you must be there waiting for her,” Katherine said.

“I don’t see what business that is of yours,” he said defensively.

“I’m making it my business. I don’t want anything to happen to you,” she said. “You have to stop this. Do you want me to beg you?”

“Nothing is going to happen to me.” He picked up his drink and drained it. He reached for his cigarettes, pulled them out, and lit one. She watched him light it. He felt the third drink’s effect, but it didn’t stop his heart from racing now that he knew Beatrice had lied to him.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” she said.

“Listen. I’ve been thinking, my mother’s place. The place on the coast. Maybe you could go build some houses there.”

“Don’t change the subject. Why do you want to die?”

“I don’t,” he smiled, trying to put her off.

The shrimp came, a huge platter. He wasn’t hungry anymore. He put out his cigarette, and picked up a shrimp, and put it on his plate. He could feel her watching him. Katherine ordered another drink, and the waiter left.

“You must want to die . . . or is it because she’s so beautiful? Is that it? Is that what you want? Is it because I’m not?”

He put down his fork. She had a pained expression on her face, on the verge of tears, her narrow face cut by the shadows of the candlelight mixing with the shallow wan lights of the street. He hadn’t believed her when she said she was in love with him. He’d heard that before from women who just felt bad that they’d lost out to someone else. But suddenly, looking at her, he thought it might be true. She seemed changed.

“I don’t fall in love every day,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “These things, they’re not reasonable. You know that. Attractions are not predictable.” He didn’t know what to say.

“Okay. But I can’t stand the thought of what you’re doing. Why don’t you help me with that?”

He picked up his fork, stabbed a piece of cheese, put it on some bread, and put it in his mouth. He wanted to go home. He didn’t want to hear any more questions he couldn’t answer. He didn’t have any answers for her. He knew now he was going to leave the paper and search for the Jaguar. And when he found it, he would take Beatrice and her children away to Europe or America. He wanted to marry Beatrice and make her his wife.

“Waiter!” She ordered another drink by holding up her glass. The waiter inside nodded. He’d been leaning against the bar, relaxing. Russell watched him move behind the bar, grab a bottle of red wine, and come out to them.

“You’ve gone crazy. You didn’t strike me as the crazy type,” she said. “I know a lot of gringos come here and go crazy. Let go, I guess you’d call it. Let go of their self-respect, but I didn’t think you were the type. ”

“All right. You’re hurt. I understand that.” He decided he wouldn’t get up and leave no matter what she said. Maybe she was right. Maybe he was losing himself. Was that it? Was he losing his mind? Did he want to die?

The waiter filled their glasses. He noticed the look on their faces and asked if everything was all right.

“No, it isn’t. The Americano is crazy,” Katherine said. The waiter looked at Russell and smiled.

“He’s fucking someone’s wife, and they will probably kill him,” Katherine said in Spanish. The waiter, trapped now by their argument, didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t funny anymore.

“I think we’ll have the bill,” Russell said.

“Which one?” Katherine said. “This one? You mean mine or his? I’m not finished yet,” she said. “I’m going to lose my self-respect, too. Maybe that’s what you like? Or maybe you just want to fuck me in the ass, or put a gun to my head while we do it. Is it danger you’re after? Is that all it is? I can do that too. If that’s what you want. Is that what you want?”

“I think we should go,” he said, shocked. “I think you’ve had enough to drink.”

“No!” she said. “No, I don’t think we should go. I think you should explain why I have to fall in love with a worthless shit like you. Can you?” She started to cry.

Russell almost didn’t see the green Suburban stop and discharge a short Indian man, very young and natty-looking, wearing a gunman’s vest. The man walked toward them, then past them and into the bar, his right hand holding a pistol.

Russell watched as he approached one of the men at the bar. He put the pistol right to the back of the man’s head and fired. The man’s skull seemed to come apart. And then the gunman turned and jogged past them, not looking at them.

Katherine had stopped crying and stared, as Russell had, as the Suburban pulled away from the curb. All they heard then was the screaming behind them in the bar. Just one woman, framed in the window, screaming at the top of her lungs.

They got a cab down the street in front of the Camino Real before the police came. Katherine hadn’t spoken since the moment the shot was fired. Even in the cab, when he was asking her the exact address of her place, she didn’t answer him. So they’d gone to his place instead.

He’d put her in the guest bedroom, but in the middle of the night she came into his room and asked if she could get in bed with him, because she was scared. He said that she could.

She slipped into his bed and put her arms around him. He liked it. He liked her, and he wondered why he couldn’t let Beatrice go. Was it, he wondered as he held Katherine, the fact that Beatrice was so beautiful? Was that all it was? Or was it that he was stealing Beatrice from someone else, someone he’d been jealous of? He wasn’t sure anymore. Or had he simply come back to this country to die? Why else had he come back here after all those years?

He’d never really asked himself that question before. What possible reason had he to come back? He felt Katherine’s arms around him, and she kissed the side of his neck, touched his stomach. She tried to kiss his mouth. He didn’t let her at first, not wanting any more trouble. And then he did, because he wanted to, and she wanted to. They made love tenderly, like young kids, but he didn’t love her. He knew that.