Weep for Me Read Online Free Page B

coolness and objectivity I kissed Jo Anne, every sense alert to her reactions. I forced her lips apart and felt the new quickness of her breathing. Her fingertips were sticky-warm, but lax at the back of my neck. I undid a few buttons of the cardigan and she sensed what I was doing, caught my wrist, murmured against my mouth in a protesting way. She pushed my hand away, but I brought it back quickly, slid it through the gap in the front of the cardigan. Still I was cold, inquisitive, objective. When the roundness of breast-warmed nylon filled my hand to overflowing, I felt her stop breathing. She was utterly still and then she murmured against my lips in adifferent way and with one hand she forced my hand harder against her breast. With her other hand she pulled my head down harder so that the pressure of her lips became bruising. She was trembling.
    And I could not lose myself. A tiny part of my mind was faintly contemptuous, condescending. I took my hand from her breast, put it firmly on her knee, ran it with slow hard pressure up under the wool skirt, along the rounded outside line of her thigh. Her trembling grew more intense. I stroked her thigh and she made a tiny moan.
    And suddenly something twisted convulsively in my brain. Reality was gone and now this was Emily Rudolph in my arms on the dark porch. Though I could not see her eyes, I knew they were wide, mocking, wise.
    In that crazy moment, I turned Jo Anne and forced her back onto the couch, hearing the faint tearing sound of wool.
    She cried out and the crazy moment was gone. Laughter came from the TV studio audience in hard, prolonged bursts. I walked over to the steps. When I turned I saw that she was standing with her back to me. By the motion of her arms I knew she was buttoning the cardigan. She turned and braced her hips against the porch railing, her arms folded across her breasts.
    “Kyle,” she said softly. “Oh, Kyle.”
    “I know. Not when there’s so little time to wait.”
    “Why do you sound so hateful when you say that? You tore my skirt, Kyle.”
    “Maybe we waited too long.”
    “If you stopped wanting me, Kyle, that would mean we waited too long.”
    And I couldn’t tell her that in some funny way I had stopped wanting her, that all the wanting had somehow been diverted all at once, as though an earthquake had changed the course of a river. I couldn’t tell her that I had lost control only when I had imagined that she was a girl to whom I had talked for not more than twenty seconds, a girl whom I had seen but once. It didn’t make sense. Not to me. And it wouldn’t to her.
    “I guess you’re right,” I said, dulled now, apathetic,anxious only to go home and fall into the forgetfulness of sleep. I looked at her. She was a good girl. Good and sweet and generous and loyal. What more did I want? Or maybe I had suddenly got weary of goodness and sweetness and loyalty and generosity.
    “I’m so shaky I can hardly stand up,” she whispered.
    “We can wait,” I said.
    “Oh, I know, Kyle. Say, you’re going to miss your bus!”
    “Tell the folks good night,” I said. I tilted her chin up and kissed her and told her I loved her and almost believed it myself. I walked down the dark sidewalk and looked back, and though I could not see her, I knew she still stood there, watching me walk away, and I knew that my actions had puzzled her.
    I had a five-minute wait for the bus. I had my token in my hand. And then when I saw it coming, I pocketed the token and turned away. I walked the three full miles to my place. I took long strides and walked as fast as I could.
    The night does funny things to your imagination. I thought of Emily Rudolph as a dark whirlpool. I was caught in a current that was dragging me toward the funnel-shaped heart of the whirlpool.
    And I laughed at myself. This was stupid. Take a look at a girl with an exciting body and wise eyes, and your tongue starts to hang out, Cameron. Tomorrow she’ll be just another girl,