 |
|
|
|
|
 |
They were strangers, barely acquainted, at a conversational impasse. So the topic turned to sex. There followed the accustomed narratives: numbers, genres, props, disguises, geometries arranged and improvised.
My host was the friend of a friend. Goddess glittered across her shirt. As she mugged suggestively, bits of her bosom flaked into my beer.
OK, she announced. What's the craziest thing you've ever done in bed? The ellipse formed by our seats grew ragged with gestures of attention.
Halfway around, the guest who had brought me was teasing the mouth of a bottle with a carrot stick. Distracted, his fingers let the carrot drop into the dregs of his lime and beer.
Our hilarity was muted by a sudden gust of wind. Lamps flickered then failed altogether. Someone tried coaxing flame from a lighter. In the intermittent dark, I could have been anywhere; the streets outside were indistinguishable from the starless sky, the surrounding walls, the glasses poised blindly in front of us.
From the crash and spatter of rain, the sift of bare legs emerged behind me. Lightning illuminated the edge of my pillow, casting your hair in dark tendrils against the wall.
Are you awake? you asked.
Yes, I said. Another crash. The rain fell harder.
I felt your arm thread softly around my stomach. Are you scared?
No, I said.
A flash. A long silence.
Maybe, I said.
The lights returned. The party celebrated with a toast before picking up from where the storm had left us.
Pedro Ponce teaches at St. Lawrence University. His fiction has appeared recently in Many Mountains Moving, Marginalia, and Tin Parachute Postcard Review. His story, Industry, was a 250-Word Bookmark Contest Finalist in Opium6.
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|