The Surrendered

She had been fine since spending time with him but just last night she was whimpering in her sleep and Hector could not wake her and in a ghoulish state with her eyes open wide but unseeing she’d crawled on top of him and moved her hips until he felt her wetness painting him. He already loved the ready pliancy of her flesh, the faintly damp hand of her skin, the confected, buttery odor of her scalp and hair, all these combining in an insuperable womanly embrace, which was to him a true summons to rest. To sleep. With her racked expression he wasn’t sure if he ought to comply but after he did she slept the rare and peerless slumber of the gratified dead.

But he had not slept as deeply. Since hearing of June he was being hounded again by an old nightmare, the iron obstinacy of it like a railway spike fixed through his gut. The nightmare was not about June. Instead, still reigning in his thoughts was the sentinel of Sylvie Ta

I’m too warm, she would say, and his heart would begin to skip out of time.

Please don’t, he begged her.

Don’t worry, she’d answer. It’s okay. She would then scratch lightly at her shoulder, like she had an itch. But instead of simply scratching she would tuck her fingers beneath her fine skin and then, with no effort at all, no pain, peel it off as if it were a full-length glove. She’d do the same with the other arm, and then start in with her torso, pull it down with a terrible measure, down over her breasts, her belly, slowly ski

He had awoken hugging Dora’s legs, smothering his own face in her belly, as if to throttle himself in penance. She took his powerful grip for ardor and whispered that she ought to wash down there quickly but he only buried himself deeper and she let him, soon enough pulling and pushing him by his hair. He was more than glad; he wanted to be aligned with her good rhythms, to be her sightless, obliging implement. But could he devote himself to Dora, ongoing? Be good to her and adore her beyond his squalid little universe? He was almost certain he wanted to, and yet his fear of leaving her somehow in shambles ruled him, too, causing him to clam up in moments when he should have been sweetly generous, making him delay before meeting up with her, all of which, of course, only served to make her more unsure of herself than she was and seek his attentions all the more. Although she tried to hide her feelings he could see the welling anxiousness in her eyes, a grime of remorse freshly layering his heart whenever she peeped “It’s fine!” when he showed up thirty minutes late at Smitty’s, or said he had to get to work when he really didn’t. It wasn’t fine, not even close, it was rotten and cowardly and weak, and if such notions of his conduct hadn’t bothered him in years, they were bothering him now.

Yesterday he had tried to take a first small step toward being a respectable mate. Dora had been worrying about his fight with Tick, not mentioning it directly but sighing and saying again how it scared her when he got into fights, that she never wanted to see him hurt. He didn’t want to be hurt, either, not anymore, but it was giving-hurt that disturbed him most. Since the tussle with Tick he’d been thinking how pathetic it was for a fifty-five-year-old man to be so keen to mix it up, how sorry and shaming a picture, and then doubly so from the idea that Dora might have seen him that night standing over poor Tick, pummeling him monstrously and without pause. So at work he had roused Jung from his early-midday nap and told him they were going to drive to Teaneck, where Old Rudy lived. Jung naturally didn’t want to go, saying he had just over half the money together, and that in fact he was going to go there himself next week after he gathered the rest he owed. Hector knew that “gathering” meant “betting,” which would only end in more trouble, and like any comrade might he hoisted up the drowsy man by the collar and counseled him that partial payments were always accepted.

Jung cried out, “What, GI, you work for that old fuck now?”

“I’m working for you, friend.”

“Fuck that, I don’t want to go.”

“We’re going.”

“Don’t betray me, Rambo!”

“We’re going now.”

Jung saw that Hector was serious and relented, if unhappily, grabbing a fresh fifth of Chivas for the road. He cracked the seal and took deep slugs from it while Hector drove his fancy Lincoln coupe, heading them west on Route 4. Hector knew where the house was because he had been there once or twice, years back, to see Old Rudy’s daughter, and only child, Wi

Wi

In Wi

He hadn’t seen the man since the wake, and as Hector parked in front of the large whitewashed Tudor, he wondered if Old Rudy would even recognize him now, as sick as he purportedly was.

“This is your last chance to be my friend,” Jung said, taking a last drink. “Let’s go back and Sang-Mee will serve us food. I pay.”

“Just give me the money now.”

Jung took out a wad of bills from the i