"Sean."
"Yeah."
"Più piano. Sì. Così." Slower. Yes. Like that.
I am as slow as she asks me to be.
She comes with her hand at the back of my neck and her mouth against my jaw. I follow her a moment after, hard enough that the granite would have bruised me if I had been the one with my back on it.
I look down.
The dressing on my side has bled through. A spreading circle that has been happening for the last half-hour without either of us paying attention to it.
She sees it at the same moment. Puts her hand flat over the dressing and presses — automatic, the same way she did it in the Catskills kitchen.
"You bled on my counter."
"I'll replace the counter."
"It is Italian marble."
"I'll replace it."
She almost smiles. The almost-smile she does not let turn into a smile. I have been collecting these since the cabin.
"Shower," she says. "Now."
The bathroom iswhite tile and steam glass, and the kind of unrelenting cleanliness a woman keeps when she lives alone and cannot afford to be careless about a single thing.
She turns the water on without looking at the dial. She already knows the temperature.
She peels the dressing off my side the way she peeled the first one off in the Catskills. Clinical. Quick. The gauze comes away with my blood on it.
"It needs Bellevue."
"Monday."
"Today."
"Monday."
She walks me into the shower, one hand flat against my body. The way you guide a man who has been wounded and is still standing because you decided he was going to be.
She steps in behind me. Naked.
She washes my back slowly. Her fingertips find the Ranger tattoo at the top of my left shoulder blade. She traces the outline. She does not ask what it means.
"How old?"
"Twenty."
"Before you were old enough to drink legally."
"Barely."
She says nothing. Keeps her hands moving.
I turn around. Take her face in both hands. Run my thumb along her lower lip. Slowly. She lets her mouth open under my thumb. Her tongue touches it once. Just enough.
