Murder For Love

I turned away, toward the windows.

We were coming through a stretch of farmland, lights only in the far distance now, nothing close to the tracks. The single closed window reflected Dominique in black lingerie from my grandmother's "Flirty Flapper" line, rolled black seamed silk stockings, black lace-edged bra designed to flatten her breasts, black lace-edged tap pants.

The blackness of the night reflected her.

"Pour me some more gin, please," she said.

Softly.

I spooned ice into her glass, unscrewed the flask's top, poured gin over the ice. Silver spilled from silver onto silver. Behind me, there was the rustle of silk.

"A little lemon, please," she said.

In the reflecting window, she was naked now. Pale as starlight.

She took a nightgown out of the suitcase.

I squeezed another quarter-lemon, dropped it into the glass. I squirted soda into the glass. She dropped the nightgown over her head. It slid down past her breasts and hips and thighs. I turned to her, she turned to me. In the nightgown, she looked almost medieval. The gown was either silk or rayon, as white as snow, its yoke neck trimmed with white lace. My grandmother's "Sleeptite" line.

I handed Dominique her drink.

"Thank you," she said, and looked at my empty glass on the table. "None for you?" she asked. "I think I've had enough."

"Just a sip," she said. "To drink a toast. I can't drink a toast all alone."

I dropped some ice into my glass, poured a little gin over it.

She raised her glass.

"To now," she said.

"There's no such thing," I said.

"Tonight, then. There is surely tonight."

"Yes. I suppose."

"Will you drink to tonight, then?"

"To tonight," I said.

"And to us." I looked at her. "To us, Richard." "To us," I said. We drank.

"Doesn't this table move out of the way?" she asked. "I think it folds down," I said. "Can you fold it down?" "If you like."

"Well, I think it's in the way, don't you?" "I guess it is."

"Well, then, please fold it down, Richard." I moved everything from the table to the wide sill just inside the window. I got on my knees then, looked under the table, figured out how the hinge and clasp mechanism worked, and lowered the top.

"Voilà,!" Dominique said triumphantly.

I picked up my drink from the windowsill. We both sat, Dominique on one bed, I on the other, facing each other, our knees almost touching. Outside, the countryside rolled by, an occasional light splintering the dark.

"I wish we had music," she said. "We could dance again. There's enough room for dancing now, don't you think? With the table down?"

I looked at her skeptically; the space between the beds was perhaps three feet wide by six feet long.

"Without being interrupted this time," she said, and tossed her head and began swaying from side to side.

"I shouldn't have let him cut in," I said.

"Well, how could you have known?"

"I saw his eyes."

"Behind you? When he was cutting in?"

"Earlier. I should have known. Seeing those eyes."

"Dance with me now," she said, and held out her arms.

"We don't have music," I said.

She moved in close against me.

The soft silken feel of her.

"Ja-Da," she sang.

Slowly.

Very slowly.

"Ja-Da…"

Not at all in the proper tempo.

"Ja-Da, Ja-Da…

"Jing… jing… jing."

I thought at first…

"Ja-Da…"

What I thought…

"Ja-Da…"

Was that…

"Ja-Da, Ja-Da…"

Was that a fierce thrust of her crotch that accompanied each…

"Jing… jing… jing."

I was flamingly erect in the tick of an instant.

"Oh, mon Dieu" Dominique whispered.

Whispered those words in that rumbling sleeping compartment, on that train hurtling through the night, speeding us southward and away from all possible harm, lurching through the darkness, causing us to lose our balance so that we fell still locked in embrace onto the bed that was Dominique's, holding her tight in my arms, kissing her forehead and her cheeks and her nose and her lips and her neck and her shoulders and her breasts as she whispered over and over again, "Oh, mon Dieu, oh, mon Dieu, oh, mon Dieu."

We brought to the act of love a steamy clumsiness composed of legs and arms and hips and noses and chins in constant collision. The train, the track, seemed maliciously intent on hurling us out of bed and out of embrace. We jostled and jiggled on that thin mattress, juggling passion, sweating in each other's arms as we struggled to maintain purchase, "Ow!" she said as my elbow poked her in the ribs, "Sorry," I mumbled, and then "Ooops!" because I was sliding out of her. She adjusted her hips, lifting them, deeply enclosing me again but almost knocking me off her in the bargain because the train in that very instant decided to run over an imperfection on the track which together with the motion of her ascending hips sent me soaring ceilingward. The only thing that kept me in her and on her was the cu

Although, in retrospect, the train did all the work and we were merely willing accomplices.

Up and down the train went, rocketing through the night, in and out of tu

And then we lay enfolded in each other's arms and talked. We scarcely knew each other, except intimately, and had never really talked seriously. So now we talked about things that were enormously important to us. Like our favorite colors. Or our favorite times of the year. Or our favorite ice-cream flavors. Or our favorite songs and movies. Our dreams. Our ambitions.

I told her I loved her.

I told her I would do anything in the world for her.

"Would you kill someone for me?" she asked.

"Yes," I said at once.

She nodded.

"I knew you were watching me undress," she said. "I knew you were looking at my reflection in the window. I found that very exciting."

"So did I."

"And getting bounced all around while you were inside me, that was very exciting too."

"Yes."

"I wish you were inside me now," she said.

"Yes."

"Bouncing around inside me."

"Yes."

"That big thing inside me again," she said, and leaned over me and kissed me on the mouth.

Vi

"In the car, Grandma," the ski

He was the one with the crazy eyes.

That's the way my grandmother later described him to Vi

"He had crazy eyes," she said. "And a knife." The fat one was behind the wheel of the car. My grandmother described the car as a two-door blue Jewett coach. All three of them sat up front. The fat one driving, my grandmother in the middle, and the ski