The Painter: a Novel
“Woke with the first halting tattoo on the metal roof tap tap taptap taptaptaptap tap fingerdrumming, tentative, a few scattered drops, pause, then a clatter like someone throwing a handful of seeds, speeding up until the beats ran together, then the onslaught. A rush, a dark flood that silenced all thought.
Inside the roar I spooned her. Cradled her breasts in my left arm, pressed my cheek into her hair, curled around her warmth and let the wind that came through the screen door wash me. Inside... the roar and the dark and the currents of cool wind we floated.
I could die now. My one thought. Somehow complete. With the Ocean of Women back on the easel and the dead man in the creek and my friend in my arms and the rain at last reaching the ground and drenching the country.
I Woke again with the knocking. Not tentative. I woke and I realized I was expecting it.
I untangled myself, slipped to the floor, pulled the Hudson’s Bay blanket that came with the house over Sofia, pulled on a pair of paint smattered khaki shorts that were hung over the rocker.MoreLess
Inside the roar I spooned her. Cradled her breasts in my left arm, pressed my cheek into her hair, curled around her warmth and let the wind that came through the screen door wash me. Inside... the roar and the dark and the currents of cool wind we floated.
I could die now. My one thought. Somehow complete. With the Ocean of Women back on the easel and the dead man in the creek and my friend in my arms and the rain at last reaching the ground and drenching the country.
I Woke again with the knocking. Not tentative. I woke and I realized I was expecting it.
I untangled myself, slipped to the floor, pulled the Hudson’s Bay blanket that came with the house over Sofia, pulled on a pair of paint smattered khaki shorts that were hung over the rocker.MoreLess
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