Prologue: The Plastic Still Warm
The plastic under her shoulders had gone warm from the sun and from the weight of bodies that had already been on it. Water ran in a thin sheet from the hose someone had left open, sliding under her spine, collecting in the hollow at the small of her back before it spilled. Tess lay with one arm across her eyes. The light was too bright even through the skin of her wrist. Her other hand rested open on the tarp, fingers slightly curled, as if she had been reaching for something and then forgotten.
Marlene knelt between her knees. Not touching yet. The pause was the thing. Tess could feel the heat of her there, the shift of air when Marlene’s breath moved, the faint smell of the hose water and of the skin underneath it. A drop fell from Marlene’s wrist onto the inside of Tess’s thigh and stayed. Tess did not brush it away. Her legs had opened when Marlene settled, and they had not closed. The muscle in her left thigh jumped once, then went still.
Around them the afternoon continued without asking permission. Someone laughed, short and low. The hose knocked against the edge of the plastic and the sound changed. A car went by on the street; the engine rose and fell and no one moved to cover anything. Tess felt the passage of it in the slight cooling of the air across her stomach. She kept her arm where it was. If she looked, she would have to decide what her face was doing.
Marlene’s hand came down at last, palm flat, low on the thigh the water had already marked. The touch was not a question. It settled and stayed, the way a hand settles on something that has already been handled. Tess’s breath caught on the inhale and did not finish. Under the arm across her eyes her lashes were wet. She could hear the small, ordinary sounds of the yard—the hose, a plastic cup set down, the creak of someone shifting their weight—and under those the quieter sound of her own pulse in her ears.
Marlene’s thumb moved once, a slow stroke along the tendon. Nothing more. The rest of her hand remained still, possessive in its refusal to hurry. Tess’s hips lifted a fraction and settled again. Between her legs she was already slick, the wetness distinct from the hose water, warmer, and she knew Marlene could see it. The knowledge sat in her chest like a held breath. She did not speak. Speaking would have made the afternoon into a thing that required an answer.
Another drop fell. This one landed higher, just where the thigh met the softer skin. Marlene’s fingers flexed, barely, and the pressure changed. Tess’s mouth opened against the inside of her own arm. The sound that left her was small and involuntary and immediately swallowed. From somewhere to her left a voice said something about the cooler. No one answered it. The hand on her thigh did not lift.
She could have closed her legs. The thought arrived and left without force. What remained was the weight of the palm, the slow leak of water under her back, the bright pressure of sunlight on the arm she would not move, and the certainty that whatever happened next had already been paid for. The hose kept running. Her thigh stayed open under the hand that had chosen not to ask.
