Perfect Day

them. Yesterday they held back from making love because it would have meant too little. Twenty-four hours later it means too much.
    She spoons coffee into a mug, fills it with steaming water and hands it to him. ‘I’m going to have to go soon,’ she says.
    There’s so many things she wants to ask him but he walks towards her and stops her with a kiss that feels like it’s answering all her questions.
    He takes off her T-shirt, pushes the lace strap of her underwear down over her upper arm.
    Instinctively, she inclines her head, trapping his hand for a moment with her cheek.
    He guides the other strap down. The top half of the teddy falls to her waist.
    She takes a step back so that he can look at her.
    They fall back onto the bed together, kissing. She’s on him, he’s on her, rolling one way and back.
    He draws away, looks at her. She wriggles out of her skirt, flops back on the bed, stretching her arms back behind her head, offering him every inch of her body, her ribcage taut, belly hollow, pelvic bones thrusting towards him.
    He kneels astride her, unbuttons his thick cotton shirt. She pulls the edges apart, kissing his chest as she spreads the fabric away, licking his fresh-smelling skin, unzipping his chinos, pulling the waistband down over his hips.
    ‘Put your hands on my back,’ he murmurs.
    She touches the sensitive bit at the back of his waist, feels him tense with pleasure.
    ‘Pull me inside you.’
    She feels the soft nudge of his penis pressing against her closed flesh, and the give as he pushes into her. She feels as if he’s inside the core of her self, as close as any human being could be to any other. They stare at each other, daring themselves to continue.
    He’s the first to blink. He withdraws, leans over to the sweet jar and takes the first condom that his hand touches, holds the packet in his teeth, rips it open, puts it on. It smells of Parma violets and plastic bags.
    She wants to say, just fuck me, please, please, but now he’s fingering her and her clitoris becomes liquid. She tries to pull him back on top of her, but he resists, and she feels his strength beneath the tenderness and abandons herself. Deep inside her an acuteness of sensation begins to build. A voice that sounds as if it’s outside her whispers, yes, yes! Her body feels as if it’s filling up with hot liquid from her clitoris to the top of her head.
    ‘Yes, yes, yes. Oh God!’
    He slips back into her like a pole. The inside of her leaps as he pushes in hard, harder. Her bottom rises off the bed.
    ‘I love you! I love you! I love you!’
    Her head’s going to go through the headboard if he thrusts any harder and just as she’s going to break, he spasms and pours into her.
    He pulls his head up from the pillow beside hers. His face is frightened now, as if he’s only just heard himself shouting.

    They lie side by side, taking turns to sip coffee that has gone cold.
    ‘That’s never happened to me before,’ she says after a while.
    ‘What?’
    ‘I’ve never... you know.’
    After all they’ve done, she’s still embarrassed to talk about it.
    ‘You’ve never made love?’
    She laughs, partly because he’s teasing her, and partly because she’s relieved that he said love and not something crude.
    ‘I’ve never had an orgasm,’ she says, looking the other way. ‘I have in dreams, because sometimes I wake up thinking, Mmmm , and I’m all twitchy down there, you know?’
    He laughs.
    ‘But never with a man.’
    He draws her closer. She senses that making her come has made him feel good. She never thought men cared about that one way or the other. She smiles into his chest.
    ‘ “ Perfect Day”.’
    She opens her eyes, thinking for a moment that she has dreamt the whole thing and she’s back to where she started, in bed, talking to Marie.
    Except Marie’s not here.
    He’s here.
    ‘What?’
    ‘ “ Perfect Day”,’ he says again, louder. ‘If you were a song, that’s what you’d be.’
    The piano intro, Lou Reed’s voice, almost a whisper. Lyrics she didn’t even know she knew. Park, zoo, home.
    Alexander puts his hand on hers. It’s a beautiful hand for a man, with long fingers. It doesn’t look right on top of her glittery nails.
    ‘It’s about heroin, that song,’ she says. ‘That’s what Marie says.’
    ‘That’s one of those facts that everyone knows, but nobody knows why they know,’ he says.
    ‘Like the swans?’
    ‘A bit like the swans,’ he says with a