“Ha! The imperfection, the wonder, remember?”
“Touché, Lorna.”
“Where are you booking Engels?”
Lorna saw my face cloud over. “I don’t know,” I said.
We stared at each other, and I knew she knew. Her whole body stiffened and she painfully hoisted herself to her feet and said, “I’ll get dinner started.”
Lorna hopped the ten or so steps to the kitchen without her cane. I stayed on the couch. I heard the refrigerator door open and shut and the clatter of cooking utensils being pulled out of cupboards. There was a nervous silence, and when I couldn’t take it any longer I went into the kitchen, where Lorna stood leaning against the sink, distractedly fingering a saucepan. I wrenched it out of her hands. She resisted, but I was stronger. I hurled it against the wall where it clattered and fell to the floor. Lorna threw herself at me in a fierce embrace. She pummeled my shoulders with her fists and moaned deeply. I pried her chin from my chest and kissed her, lifting her off her feet. She started to resist, banging my shoulders even harder, but then thought better of it and stopped. I carried her into the bedroom.
Afterward, after the coupling, sated and aware of a new beginning, I started to search for words to make the future right, to make it multiply endlessly on this moment. “About Eddie En–” was all I got out before Lorna pressed gentle fingertips to my mouth to stop me.
“It’s all right, Fred. It’s all right.”
We held each other, and I played with Lorna’s big, soft breasts. She held me there, wanting to play mother, but I had other ideas. I kissed my way down her stomach toward the scar tissue that covered her pelvis. Lorna pulled away from me. “No, not there,” she said, “next you’ll be telling me how you love me for it, and how you love my bad leg. Please, Freddy, not that.”
“I just want to see it, sweetheart.”
“Why?!”
“Because it’s part of you.”
Lorna twisted in the darkness. “That’s easy for you to say, because you’re perfect. When I was a girl, all the boys who wanted to play with my big fits tried to get at them through my leg. It was very ugly. My leg is ugly and my stomach is ugly and I’ve got no uterus, so I can’t have children.”
“And?”
“And I used to cover my stomach with a towel when I slept with men so they couldn’t touch me there. If there was a way I could have covered my leg I would have done that, too.” Lorna started to cry. I kissed away her tears and bit at her neck until she started to laugh.
“Is it Freddy and Lorna now?” I whispered.
“If you want it to be,” Lorna said.
“I do.”
I got up from the bed and went into the living room. I found the phone and called Mike Breuning at his home. I told him not to pick me up in the morning, that I would meet everyone on Sunset and Horn at the specified time. He gave me an “Oh, you kid” chuckle and hung up.
I went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. I found a bag of ice in the freezer compartment and extracted a half-dozen cubes. I walked back to the bedroom. Lorna was lying on her stomach, very still. I approached the bed and dropped the ice cubes onto her shoulders. Lorna shrieked and threw herself backwards.
I leaped onto her, burying my head in the dead flesh of her abdomen. “I love you,” I said. “I love you, Lorna, I love you, I love you.”
Lorna squirmed and twisted to extricate herself. Her dead leg flopped uselessly in her efforts. I grabbed it and encircled it tightly with both my arms. “I love you, Lorna. I love you, Lorna. I love you. I love you.”
Gradually, Lorna relinquished her fight and began to sob softly. “Oh, Freddy. Oh, Freddy. Oh, Freddy.” Then she pressed both her hands to the back of my head and held me strongly to that part of herself she hated so terribly.