Ways to Leave Your Lover” without missing a line.
For the first time in five years, she could think of Jimmy and still
feel like singing.
They lived in Laguna Niguel, south of Laguna Beach, on the eastern side
of the coastal hills, without an ocean view but with the benefit of sea
breezes that moderated summer heat and winter chill. Their
neighborhood, like most south-county developments, was so meticulously
laid out that at times it seemed as if the planners had come to
community design with a military background. But the gracefully curving
streets, iron streetlamps with an artificial green patina, just-so
arrangements of palms and jacarandas and ficus benjaminas, and
well-maintained greenbelts with beds of colorful flowers were so
soothing to the eye and soul that the subliminal sense of regimentation
was not stIfling.
As an artist, Lindsey believed that the hands of men and women were as
capable of creating great beauty as nature was, and that discipline was
fundamental to the creation of real art because art was meant to reveal
meaning in the chaos of life. Therefore, she understood the impulse of
the planners who had labored countless hours to coordinate the design of
the community all the way down to the configuration of the steel grilles
in the street drains that were set in the gutters.
Their two-story house, where they had lived only since Jimmy’s death,
was an Italian-Mediterranean model-he whole community was Italian
Mediterranean with four bedrooms and den, in cream-colored stucco with a
Mexican tile roof. Two large ficus trees flanked the front walk.
Malibu lights revealed beds of impatiens and petunias in front of
red-flowering azalea bushes. As they pulled into the garage, they
finished the last bars of “You Send Me.”
Between taking turns in the bathroom, Hatch started a gas-log fire in
the family-room fireplace, and Lindsey poured Baileys Irish Cream on the
rocks for both of them. They sat on the sofa in front of the fire,
their feet on a large, matching ottoman.
All the upholstered furniture in the house was modern with soft lines
and in light natural tones. It made a pleasing contrast with-and good
backdrop for the many antique pieces and Lindsey’s paintings.
The sofa was also hugely comfortable, good for conversation and, as she
discovered for the first time, a great spot to snuggle. To her
surprise, snuggling turned into necking, and their necking escalated
into petting, as if they were a couple of teenagers, for God’s sake.
Passion overwhelmed her as it had not done in years.
Their clothes came off slowly, as in a series of dissolves in a motion
picture, until they were naked without quite knowing how they had gotten
that way. Then they were just as mysteriously coupled, moving together
in a silken rhythm, bathed in flickering firelight. The joyful
naturalness of it, escalating from a dreamy motion to breathless
urgency, was a radical departure from the stilted and dutiful lovemaking
they had known during the past five years, and Lindsey could almost
believe it really was a dream patterned on some remembered scrap of
Hollywood eroticism. But as she slid her hands over the muscles of his
arms and shoulders and back, as she rose to meet each of his thrusts, as
she climaxed, then again, and as she felt him loose himself within her
and dissolve from iron to molten flow, she was wonderfully, acutely
aware that it was not a dream. In fact, she had opened her eyes at last
from a long twilight sleep and was, with this release, only now fully
awake for the first time in years. The true dream was real life during
the past half-decade, a nightmare that had finally drawn to an end.
Leaving their clothes scattered on the floor and hearth behind them,
they went upstairs to make love again, this time in the huge Chinese
sleigh bed, with less urgency than before, more tenderness, to the
accompaniment of murmured endearments that seemed almost to comprise the
lyrics and melody of a quiet song. The less insistent rhythm allowed a
keener awareness of the exquisite textures of skin, the marvelous
flexibility of muscle, the firmness of bone, the pliancy of lips, and