Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work Read Online Free Page A

face tied in a knot, biting her lower lip, eyes pulled into her skull, as he lowered himself.
    In our minds love had gone bad, but not in theirs. “No,” she said, pushing off his chest. “Not here. I want it to be perfect.” He didn’t understand, though he obeyed her, and she pulled him back against her on theseat where they lay together, her lips traveling over his face. “Just hold still,” she said. “I always knew,” she said, “it would be like this.” He didn’t know what it was or what this was, only that he had been chosen. He closed his eyes as she pressed his face against her sweater. All he could smell was her. “I love you,” she said again and again until the sound of her voice covered him like a blanket. “I want to hear you say it.” He said he had already said it, but she wanted him to say it again, so he did, repeating it into her sweater, into her breasts. “You do,” she said, “don’t you?”
    She told him to hold his hands at his sides no matter what she did. He smiled at her, as if she was kidding. You trust me, she said. It was a question. He nodded in a way that made her love him even more. He was her child. He asked her what was the matter. Her eyes had watered. She told him nothing and ran her hand over his eyelids, smoothing them closed. “Hold still.” He nodded. “You nodded!” she scolded and he tried not to smile. She sat on his lap, feeling her shorts ride up. She ran her finger along his forearm. His fingers twitched. Abruptly she laid her palms flat against his chest and pushed, angling her chin up. She took one shoulder in each hand and ran her hands down his arms as if she were wringing out wet clothes. He grinned. “Stop that!” she said. She undid her blouse and bra then put one hand on his shoulder, one against the side of his cheek, and lowered her chest against hisface wrapping her arms around the back of his head. He raised his hands, she pushed them back down; he raised them again, she took them and sat on them. “There,” she said. She leaned forward, pulling his nose between her breasts, his mustache tickling her skin, and found the edge of his knuckle between her legs.
    They rocked together as if in an embrace of grief until her breaths came in quick, panicked bursts, as if she was short of breath, not him. She squeezed the back of his head so tightly he yelled into her chest. She rolled off him, backing against the far door, pulling her blouse over her chest. Her face was scrunched up, smeared.
    â€œDon’t tell anyone what happened,” she mumbled.
    His mind raced for something to say, not the wrong thing. “What?” he said. “What happened?”
    She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. Whatever had happened it wasn’t his fault. It was hers. She was cold. The windows had steamed up but were now frosted over. “It’s all right,” she said thinking of the movies, TV. It had all gone just like that until now. She tried to think of what would happen next. “I’m scared,” she said, trying to follow the script. “Hold me.” He moved over on the seat. Already, part of her didn’t want him to touch her, but this couldn’t be true.
    She knew when she fell in love with him that she would be in love forever just as she knew when she woke up in the backseat the next morning, cramped and headachy, and looked at Dion sleeping with hismouth open that she was no longer in love with him and never would be. She opened the door and stepped out into the damp morning air. She began to think of Ron’s long fingers resting on the steering wheel of his father’s Mercury, his thin legs and gray slacks as they drove to the movies and held hands in the dark. She thought of his thin lips brushing against hers, his hand resting carefully on her shoulder, and of his parents reading in bed waiting for