Quiver

The second man crouches by a record player, his long arms wrapped around his knees. He rocks himself backward and forward to the vibrations he can feel through the worn floorboards. He knows that the room is filled with the sound of a woman’s orgasm. Her cries fuse with the violins, bounce off the high plaster ceiling and pour out onto the street.

POMEGRANATE

The house has white Grecian pillars and a small front yard with a pomegranate tree. I was attracted to it because of the tree; I remembered that pomegranates symbolize fertility. When Adrian heard that he said, “Sweetheart, we have to have it.” Before we moved we had an apartment in the city, one of those thirties places, all white plaster and curved balconies. It was beautiful, except for the constant sound of traffic throughout the day, then at night the transport trucks would start up. I’d lie there imagining it was the sea, but it didn’t work. I’d wind up tighter and tighter, my jaw clenched, muscles aching with exhaustion. Adrian said that’s why the baby thing wasn’t working. He thinks eggs and spermatozoa need sunshine and peace. Otherwise we’d end up conceiving an insomniac and that would be worse than no kid at all.

Adrian is a senior accountant. I have a job at Belle’s Beauty Parlor, along the highway. I do facials, bikini waxes and the odd pedicure.

From where I sit I can see the long backyard with two rows of citrus trees planted to hide the back fence. If I turn around I face the door of the veranda and our newly renovated open-plan kitchen and dining area. I feel safe here and sort of ripe, like a pomegranate—when its skin splits open you can see all the juicy red seeds bursting to get out. When we first moved in I painted the small bedroom pink, then drew a mural of cartoon characters around the border. Adrian hated it. He thinks children shouldn’t be spoilt. But then Adrian was brought up in a poky little house with linoleum floors and a gas fire while his mother slaved her guts out to send him to boarding school, sometime in the fifties, long before I was even born.

I painted the house six months ago and I’m still not pregnant. We’ve done all the things we’re meant to do. I’ve got a fertility chart pinned up on the fridge: red for ovulation, pink for just before and orange is time out.

It’s great, except that Adrian is color-blind and sometimes mistakes orange for red. When we first started it was kind of sexy, like tightrope walking without a net. Adrian got really scared. He said it reminded him of his own mortality. He thinks a lot about his own death. I don’t, I think a lot about giving birth, and feeling the tug of the baby’s lips on my nipples. Sometimes I have this fantasy when I’m trying to get to sleep. I travel down my own bloodstream, imagining that I’m an egg, all fat and juicy, just being released from the ovary. I’m floating along the fallopian tube, bouncing gently against the soft, spongy walls feeling really relaxed and really horny when along comes this sperm, its tail swishing behind it like a long whip. It stops and sniffs and comes plunging straight for me with this really determined look on its face. I reel back as it burrows into my side. I usually have an orgasm then. The trouble is none of the sperm look like Adrian. They all look like film stars or rock singers or ex-boyfriends.

Afterward, when I open my eyes, I feel ever so slightly guilty. I look across at Adrian, his great cliff of a chin pointing up toward the ceiling, those slightly bulging eyes closed and twitching in his sleep, and I think, fuck it, it’s not as if they can get into your head, is it?

I’ve explored most of the house, except the attic. I went up the ladder once but I got frightened. When I was a kid we used to go on expeditions up in our attic. My brother would lead the way, pretending he was a great explorer, picking his way carefully over the ceiling beams and over great wads of insulation material. Dad had told us that if we stepped between the beams we’d fall through the ceiling and back into the house. All the history of our parents’ marriage was packed up there: photos, a moldy piece of wedding cake, an old plastic breast pump of my mother’s that we thought was a piece of obscene torture equipment. I stole some of the cake once and kept it for years in a locket for good luck. It went green.

My father left when I was seven. It destroyed my mom. Be

ing Catholic, she was too ashamed to demand a divorce. I haven’t seen him since. I think they’re still married. After he left I refused to go up into attics anymore.

Adrian’s been up into ours. He said it was small and dirty. He brought down a small, battered leather suitcase. Inside was an ancient wedding dress. It looked like a 1920s design, with seed pearls sewn into the neckline. There was even a tiny crown of flowers, woven around a tiara of cut glass. Adrian wanted to sell it. But I’m superstitious, so I had the dress dry-cleaned, folded it up with mothballs and packed it into the bottom of a cupboard.

We’ve been married for three years. Since I was twenty-one and Adrian was thirty-nine. I had to play all sorts of games to get him to marry me. I don’t believe in people just living together—the girl’s got no security. It wasn’t easy, I tell you, this being Adrian’s second marriage and all. Still, I got him in the end.

I haven’t really had a lot of men. Actually only four and a half. The first was Robin. We never did it until right at the end; mostly we just kissed and touched a lot. Mom brought us up to believe that sex was a spiritual and holy act. I believed that right up until I was eighteen. Then I had my first orgasm and thought I saw God.

We were in the mountains. It was just after the end-of-year exams. Robin had told his father he was going down the coast with a few surfing mates and I’d told Mom I was going to spend a night at my best friend’s parents’ holiday house. That part was sort of true, I mean I was at Anne’s house, but her parents were away in Europe and it was just me and Robin and Anne and her boyfriend.

I’d lied to Anne and had told her that Robin and I had been screwing for months. So she’d put us in a bedroom of our own. It overlooked a gully and had windows from the ceiling to the floor, with no curtains. Anne’s father was an architect and he’d designed the house so that the surrounding forest seemed to grow right into it—leaves curled in through the windows and around the arched balconies.

Robin and I had spent the night naked, lying wrapped around each other, both of us touching and caressing until the early morning. I remember staring out watching the moon fade into the sky. Then, as the bellbirds began echoing across the valley, I fell asleep.

I was woken by this delicious feeling. There had been a bar of chocolate beside the bed and Robin was running the melted chocolate down from my belly button. It tickled, I laughed, Robin looked up at me. His concentration was intense. Crouching by my side he placed a hand between my legs. I resisted, then shyly let him push my thighs wide apart. He sat there, kneeling between my open legs gazing down at me in wonder. He traced the chocolate across my belly and down toward my pussy. Carefully he ran the chocolate across my lips, barely touching me, the lightest of caresses flicking across my clit. I groaned and tried to move away, but his arms held me down. He gently pushed the bar into me, the chocolate was warm and trickled down. He moved it backward and forward, lubricating me. Then pulling it out, he slowly ran his tongue along the path of the chocolate, around and into my belly button, down the center of my stomach, then, still holding me wide apart, started to lick the inside of my thighs. I’m twisting and groaning and thrashing around in pleasure. His tongue licking everywhere but where I wanted it to be. Slowly he moved toward my clit. Flicking it lightly with his tongue, then fastening onto it with his mouth, sucking hard. I started to shake with excitement. I was out of control. I pulled Robin up by the hair. His sex nudged against me, the tip of it just resting inside. He slid in, it didn’t hurt, I was well prepared, but the size and shape of it filled me in a way I had never imagined. He rolled over and pulled me up over him, so that I was sitting above him. Instinctively, I started to slide up and down his cock. I felt like I was being impaled every time he slid into me. It hurt slightly but the pleasure made me forget the pain.

I remember looking across the dawn sky as I rode him. The bed was right against the window and I felt as if I was riding into the sunrise like some mythical figure. The sun had begun to fill the sky with a rosy light. My pleasure grew with the flooding light. The more furiously I rode, the higher the sun rose. I felt as if I was in control of the sky, that if I stopped the sun would drop back behind the earth and all would sink back into darkness. Soon I could feel the ripples of intense pleasure contracting upward. As I screamed in the throes of my first orgasm I thought I saw a translucent bluish shadow race across the huge red orb of the sun. At the time I thought I had seen God. I know now that I did see something, because I’ve seen other things since.

Last night was amazing! I didn’t think Adrian could perform like that. Not that he’s a lousy lover or anything. Far from it, I mean for his age he’s incredible. He’s even had a second erection on a couple of occasions. But last night was truly unbelieveable!

I still can’t believe it, so I’ll get it down in writing. Adrian came in late after a board meeting. I’d prepared his favorite dish, spaghetti marinara. We ate in silence. I tried making conversation but Adrian was too tired to respond.

“Honeybun, do you like the meal?”

“Too much tomato.” He reaches across for the cheese and sprinkles copious amounts onto his plate. I pretend not to notice. I wish he’d say something, anything to let me into his day. He picks up the business section of the paper.

“Dollar’s down again. Damn Wayne!”

“What’s Wayne done?”

“Told me to buy Ampol. They’ve dropped four points.”

“Fascinating, darling.” A party starts up next door and I wonder about all those warnings my friends gave me about marrying an older man.

“I’m off to bed.”

“But it’s only nine o’clock. Do you know what day it is?”

“No, I haven’t had a chance to look at the damned schedule, Jodie.”