Thy Neighbor Read Online Free Page B

that is.
    And ain’t that love?
    By definition?
    Or something like that?
    Maybe. But I couldn’t have said so.
    She had been through way too much already in her young life, or so it seemed, to tolerate romance. Hadn’t I? She had a soured view at twenty-something. Long before that, probably.
    I didn’t ask her how old she was. That was damning frivolous speech, or so her poise implied. If you can’t deduce even the obvious, buster, don’t advertise your ignorance.
    But I did deduce enough. She had those wisps of golden hair all over her belly and her inner thighs and forearms, the ones that line with tiny bubbles in the bath, and turn coarse and black or break off on a girl’s thirtieth birthday, so I knew she was well south of that mark.
    She also had that soft, forgiving roundness in all her limbs, all the way down to her knuckles, which were plump and barely creased and which, if this weren’t worldly Monica we were talking about, you could still almost see clutching a purple pen and writing, “Dear diary.”
    But that innocence was long gone, or time-lapsed in the past-life portion of her brain, inaccessible to the adult.
    So what do you say to someone like that? Seeing the scar tissue and the baby fat both at once, or thinking you do?
    You say something tired, of course, but something you actually mean, so it’s not a total disaster.
    â€œAre you okay?” I said to her figure in the window, knowing full well that, where it counted most, she wasn’t.
    She didn’t answer.
    â€œMonica?”
    â€œYes, yes,” she said, annoyed. “I’m fine.”
    â€œDid I hurt you?”
    â€œOf course not.”
    There was a long pause, and then, more softly, with kindness in her voice, she said, “I’m glad we met. I’m glad we did this. It’s good.”
    And then she eased herself away from the window and began putting on her clothes. I watched her. Every motion, every choice of garment, and in which order.
    She put her socks on first, which I’d never seen anyone do, especially after sex with a stranger, and she sat to do it, very deliberately, raising one foot at a time to the seat of the chair, resting her chin on the bent knee, exposing the cleave of her vulva without modesty or guile. She gathered each sock with her thumbs and forefingers into concertinaed rolls around the toe, then unfurled them gingerly, hunch by hunch, over the arch, around the curve of the heel, and up the bend of the ankle, straightening her leg for the last pull, like a ballerina at the barre.
    I loved it that she wore socks, plain black socks that she’d probably bought at a street fair in packs of six. And I loved it that her bra had no underwire or clasp. She slipped it on over her head and slid the stretch cotton over her breasts, untwined the slender straps across her shoulders, and wrestled abruptly into her shirt, a tank, formfitting, flattering, but in no way crude like the hooker halters the sluts wore at the Swan.
    Her underwear was as sensible as the rest. Hipsters, white. Probably also bought in packs. Her jeans were loose and worn, hanging low and boyish on her narrow hips and ripped around the hem where they’d dragged on the ground. Her sneakers were black and plain, canvas slip-ons with a white rubber sole.
    All simple easy wear. No advertisement for any kind of cool or attitude or need to be seen. Still she was beautiful, and she made you look. The kind of person who could wear a sack and have allure, because the signal was coming from her mind and beaming right to your mind, if you had one, or bouncing off and bewildering the vacuum it found there instead.
----
    It was the same every time we met. The sex that somehow retained the anonymity of the first attempt, but also gained familiarity over time, and then the sitting mostly in silence—we did this, as I did almost everything else, in my study—she at the window, I on the couch