The Second Coming

again.”
    â€œMe neither. I, that is, you.”
    â€œMe too.”
    â€œWell well,” she said later. Her back and legs were strong as a man’s. “That was not in the book either.”
    â€œWhat book?”
    â€œThe pine-tree book. Or the picture book.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œNever mind.”
    â€œI’ll tell you what let’s do,” he said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œLet’s get a house and live in it.”
    â€œOkay. Can we make love like that much of the time?”
    â€œAs much as you like.”
    â€œFor true?”
    â€œFor true. Would you like to marry?”
    â€œUh, to marry might be to miscarry.”
    â€œNot necessarily. I’ll practice law. You grow things in your greenhouse. We can meet after work, have supper. We can walk the Long Trail or go to the beach on your island. Then go to bed irregardless.”
    â€œPerhaps crash in a shelter?”
    â€œWhat?” he said, laughing. “Crash?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œIt is a good regime. Perhaps with you to marry would not miscarry. Is it legal to do this at four o’clock in the afternoon?”
    â€œYes,” he said.
    â€œNow I know what was wrong with four o’clock in the afternoon.”
    â€œIt would be nice to have two children and walk to school with them in the morning.”
    â€œYes,” she said.
    They stayed in bed all day and all night except for meals, loving and laughing, frolicking, exchanging many a kiss and smacks on the ass while carts creaked outside and maids tapped on doors with keys. Frowning, she peered closely at his cheek and squeezed a blackhead. He straddled her thighs and rubbed her back, sore from hoisting, pressed his thumbs in the two dips at the bottom of her spine, marveling at how she was made. Each tended to the other, kneading and poking sore places. She examined him like a mother examining a child, close, stretching skin, her mouth open, grabbing hair to pull his head over to see his neck, her eyes slightly abulge with concentration, checking his cave wounds, picking at scabs. When her eyes happened to meet him, they softened and went deep. Eyes examining are different from eyes meeting eyes. As she would say, a look at a book is not a look into a look. Then she smiled and flew against him again. Her supple bent-back strength and coverage astounded him.
    7
    She had brought his razor from the greenhouse. It felt good to shave.
    After they dressed, they ate a huge breakfast of grits and bacon and scrambled eggs in the Buccaneer Tavern, came back to the room and opened the drapes to the morning and the Smoky Mountains, which humped up like a blue whale in the clear sky. He sat her down across the round black woodlike table.
    â€œLet’s get down to business.”
    â€œOh, look at you in your dark suit.”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œYou look nice around the neck and head.”
    â€œThank you. You look good all over.”
    â€œCome here,” she said.
    â€œI’m here.”
    â€œYou’re nice here around the ears, too.”
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œLet’s go to bed.”
    â€œBut we’re dressed.”
    â€œUndress.”
    â€œOkay.”
    Afterwards she said: “Good gosh.”
    â€œYes.”
    Again at the table he said: “Now ah—”
    â€œThe business.”
    â€œYes. Let us speak of one or two things.”
    â€œRight.”
    It had come to pass, for reasons which neither could have said, that he now knew what needed to be done and could say so and she could heed him, head slightly cocked, listening carefully. She looked like a survivor on the mend. Could it be that her thin face was already fuller?
    â€œHere is what I intend to do,” he told her, “and what I hope you will wish to do. If you do not wish to do so, will you tell me?”
    â€œAssuredly.”
    â€œI propose that we marry. Wait. I don’t think I am saying this right.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œPerhaps I’d better ask you.”
    â€œVery well.”
    â€œWill you marry me?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIt is possible that though marriage in these times seems for some reason to be a troubled, often fatal, arrangement, we might not only survive it but revive it.”
    â€œYes, we could survive and revive it.”
    â€œI presently have very little income of my own. I’m not counting Marion’s estate, which I inherited from Marion