a seashell, thought for a moment it was her blood flow. She hooked her boots behind his kidneys, expert at this, like a circus performer, with a photographer’s grace and objectivity.
“Hold still,” she chided. She spun the fan to slightly off-center the grip light over the bed. The swirled pattern of the woman became even more distinct, the shadows deeper, the peaks glowing.
Klinsman straightened a bit, startled. His neck pushed into the zipper of her jeans.
“Hold still, chingadero,” she whispered. She pressed her belly against the back of his head, leaned over, and took pictures of the imprint, no flash.
He tried to look up, inadvertently pushing his brow into her breasts. She tapped his throat.
“No. No. Still. I almost got it perfect.”
He braced himself, her.
“How strong are you?” she asked.
“Pretty strong,” he said. “Real strong.”
“There’s a lot of me up here.”
“No. You feel good up there.” He sensed what she was about to try. “Really.”
She ponied herself up, digging the toes of her boots into his lower back, hardening her thigh muscles against his ears, and leaned way over, bending him with her.
She managed two or three captures before he lost his balance and let her fall onto the bed. After the mattress stilled, she smoothed the loose strands of hair from her face, lifted her brow, and opened her mouth like a boxer testing her jaw. She scooted herself back on her elbows and took in the room once again, the little squares of black tape here and there, glinting shardlike under the gauzy wash of the grip light.
“You were right,” she said. “It’s like a crime scene. But for a crime that never happened.”
“Or one that hasn’t been invented yet.” He stretched out next to her, on elbows, shouldering her. He wanted to share her exact view of the room. He looked at the squares of tape. “They’re like markers, no? For staging. Perspective. I figured you could tell.”
“Yes,” she said. “They look like that.”
She removed her camera and lens pouch and placed them gently on the nightstand, rolling her hips away from him. She looked back over her shoulder at him, caught him looking, held still. He hooked his fingers about her hip and spun her to him, her softness tumbling up under him, her hair whipping in tails across his neck. They used their teeth to feel their way to a kiss, their tongues going into each other too fast, before first pressing lips.
She pulled away quickly and swung herself off the bed. He thought she was hurrying away, but she was only checking the door to make sure it was locked. Then she drew tight the curtain string, sealing the window completely. She removed the square of black tape from the little knob at the end of the curtain draw. She stuck it to the tip of her finger and waved it at Klinsman.
“We should keep one of these.” She smiled and came back to him, jumping vigorously onto the bed, bouncing him into her.
He pulled her jeans down first, yanking them to the tops of her boots. She wore nothing underneath but her brown skin, paled there into a V, a milky outline. He put his head back where it had been before, when he’d had her on his shoulders. The light seemed to shudder. He kissed her thighs, holding them. She tasted like water from a metal cup, his tongue beneath the brim.
She tried to move her legs, raise her knees, lift herself more into his face, but she was bound by her jeans. She kicked at them, then at his shoulders, pulled off her boots and pants. He tugged her blouse over her head, thrashing most of her hair loose from its clasp. She pulled back, her lips parted. He removed her bra, eased it from her breasts, then kissed gently between them, grazed the stretch of his palms over her.
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s right. We have time. We have seven days. Somewhere between now and seven days is right for us, Aaron.”
7.
She held his hips firmly to the bed, hooked her thumbnails. He felt about to slide and skitter over the silvery bedcover, about to be pressed through surface tension. She pushed her hair over to one side as she moved her lips about him, hummed deeply, something he sensed to the base of his spine. Her tongue was rough in the center, soft at the edges. When she scraped her teeth against him, he almost let himself go, but she stopped him by biting down and creating a diverting pain, triggering something else in him. She drew off him, her lips remaining close, keeping him at bay.
He took deep, controlled breaths and tried to see behind the veil of light to the dark ceiling, but it appeared as though only black space loomed beyond. He imagined the two of them as sea creatures encased in white light on the powdery desert floor of the deep. Again she clamped her teeth into him when she sensed him about to lose control, then drew back, tapped him delicately with her fingers, blew a cooling breath. This calmed him for a brief moment. She glared up at him.
He reached down and took gentle hold of her head. He lifted gently and continued rolling her back, holding fistfuls of her hair, his fingers lost in there. He rolled with her, guiding her backward, himself over her. He straightened her leg, held her foot high by curling his fingers behind her toes, then drew his free hand along the back length of her thigh, the cusp behind her knee, the stretch of her calf. He pinched her Achilles, dug his fingernails in behind her toes. She turned her face to the side, into the swell of her hair, her throat stretched.
He eased his face down to her, guiding hands along the insides of her thighs, his thumbs pressing to find her pulse. He tasted her, water from metal again, still cool. He kept trying to do deliberate things with his hands and fingers, his lips and tongue, in order to steady himself. But it felt as though she were somehow still enveloping him. And putting the bridge of his nose against her, his tongue to her, only increased that sensation. He tried thoughts. This is Margarita Antonia Valdez. My colleague. My friend. This only made things more intense, made it real. A kind of distant rushing noise rose about him, as though the motion of their bodies had created a building static. He could feel it on his skin.
He gave up trying to distract himself, let something give at the base of him, a hard, sharp flint of pleasure, and hoped it might stay back a while. He glanced up. Wild tendrils of her hair seemed to be rising on the static, reaching toward the grainy light, probing a current.
Her taste, too, intensified things, fueled that building flinty stab inside him. It was a spark on his teeth, a pearliness on his tongue. He felt her foot brush his ribs, her heel digging back into his armpit. Then her thigh lay heavy over his shoulder as her foot pushed down along his side. He slid his hand along her side. She kneed her way beneath him, her toenails brushing along his belly. With her toes she found him, curled her instep around him, gave a little kick.
She brought her grip light into the bathroom with them and clamped it to a towel rack. This put a sideways glow in the small space. They left the towel draped over the mirror after considering it together with confused expressions. Before getting into the shower with him, she lightly adjusted the toothbrush on the sink counter, considering it with an inquisitive turn.
She pushed the shower curtain aside and stepped into the stall with him.
“Shower curtains,” she said. “You ever see a shower curtain in Mexico?” She shoved it away.
The water hit their
