The Lowland

cottage had belonged to her grandparents. She’d spent time in it as a young girl.
    After the stew there were slices of an apple cake and mugs of lemon tea. As the rain fell harder, lashing the windowpanes, Holly spoke of Joshua. She was worried about how the separation was affecting him. Since his father had left, she said, he’d turned inward, anxious, frightened by things that had not frightened him before.
    What things?
    He’s afraid of sleeping alone. You see how close our rooms are. But he’s been coming into my bed at night. He hasn’t done that for years. He’s always loved swimming, but this summer he’s nervous in the water, afraid of the waves. And he doesn’t want to go back to school in the fall.
    He swam at the beach the other day.
    Maybe because you were there.
    Chester began to bark and Holly got up and clipped the leash to his collar. She threw on her rain jacket, and picked up an umbrella by the entrance.
    You stay where it’s dry. I’ll only be a minute or two.
    While he waited for her to return, he went to the sink and washed the dishes. He marveled at the self-sufficient nature of her life. And he was also slightly nervous for her, living alone in such a remote place, without bothering to lock her door. There was no one to help her, apart from the babysitter who looked after Joshua while she worked. Though her parents were alive, they had not come to take care of her.
    And yet he himself did not feel completely alone with her here. They were accompanied by Chester, and Joshua’s clothes and toys. Even a picture of the man she’d once loved.
    That’s the first night in a long time I haven’t had to do the dishes after dinner, she said, joining him again. The plates and glasses had been put away, the dish towel was drying on a hook.
    I don’t mind.
    You’ll be all right, driving home in this weather? Can I lend you a jacket?
    I’ll be fine.
    Let me walk you under the umbrella to your car.
    He put his hand on the doorknob. But he didn’t want to go; he still didn’t want to leave her. As he stood wavering, he felt the side of her face, which she’d turned against the back of his shirt, pressed lightly against him. Then her hand, resting on his shoulder. Her voice, asking if he’d like to stay.
    Her bedroom was the mirror image of Joshua’s. But because the bed was larger there was room for practically nothing else. Inside this room he was able to forget about what his parents would think, and the consequences of what he was about to do. He forgot about everything other than the body of the woman in the bed with him, guiding his fingers to the hollow of her throat, over the ridge of her collarbones, down toward the softer skin of her breasts.
    The surface of her skin fascinated him. All the minute markings and imperfections, the patterns of freckles and moles and spots. The range of tones and shades she contained, not only the inverse shadows from tanning, highlighting portions of her body he was seeing for the first time, but also an inherent, more subtle mixture, as quietly variegated as a handful of sand, that he could discern only now, under the lamplight.
    She allowed him to touch the slack skin of her belly, the coarse mound, darker than her hair, between her legs. When he paused, uncertain, she looked up at him, incredulous.
    Really?
    He turned his face. I should have told you.
    Subhash, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care.
    He felt her fingers clasping his erection, positioning it, drawing him near. He was embarrassed, exhilarated. He felt and did what he had only imagined until now. He moved inside her, against her, unaware and also aware, with every nerve of his being, of where he was.
    The rain had stopped. He heard the sound of water, from the leaves of the tree that spread over the roof of her house, a sound that was like sporadic bursts of applause. He lay beside her, meaning to go back to his apartment before the next day began, but he realized after a few minutes that Holly was not simply being quiet. Without warning, she had fallen asleep.
    It felt wrong to wake her, or to go without telling her. So he remained. In the bed that was warm from the heat of their bodies, he was unable at first to fall asleep. He was distracted by her presence in spite of the intimacy they’d just shared.
    In the morning he woke up to the sound of Chester’s breathing, to the smell of his fur, his paws