Penn County

We are naked in her bed making love and the whine of the tornado siren mixes with the nasally cadence of John Darnielle, my favorite singer. She stops nibbling my ear to ask me:

“You think maybe we should go down to the basement?”

I’m amused, so I smile.

“There is no basement.” Her house has three rooms. We are in one. Another is the bathroom, basically an old rusty tub with no showerhead in it. Also, the kitchen, which is now the bedroom of her cousin Eduardo, whom I am not sure she is actually related to. Tall, slender and tanned, he speaks broken English. She tells me that he came north to get away from the drug wars. I believe it because to make relationships like this work, it’s best not to ask any questions.

She acknowledges my comments by putting her mouth on mine. I am on top of her and our hot, sticky sweat keeps us together. The breeze through the open window reveals the siren’s merit. We both stop and look out. I see the dark sky, the world turned green. Who knows what she sees.

“We’ll be fine,” she says.

“Will we?” I ask her, but she is grinding herself against me and her gasps are her response. Thunder cracks like a breaking bone but louder, so loud that it almost hides the siren. The pane of the window rattles and it is the pool of rain on the wood floor and the lightning. It’s her pale, beautiful face and the music, the tornado siren, and it is the sudden undeniable realization that none of this matters.

“Have you ever done it in the rain before?” I ask her.

“Like outside?”

“Just, in the rain.”

“We’re doing it right now, so I guess that I have.” She looks at me like I have ruined the moment.

“I meant before.”

“Before what?”

“With anyone else.” Now I must have insulted her.

“We are here right now,” she says, “and I am fucking you. What else do you want from me?”

“We are making love,” I correct her. She tries to get up but I grab her arm.

“Stop,” she says,  “I’m putting my pants back on.”

I let go. “If this is what passes for love, I will take freedom.”

She slaps me. Her fingernail leaves a thin line of blood across my cheek. I can feel it drip down my face. It’s like I’m crying out blood.

“I want you to leave,” she says, but I am already pulling on my pants. I leave my shoes, shirt, my lack of self-identity on her cheap hardwood floor. She says nothing when I twist the doorknob. The door pushes open from the other side and here is Eduardo, soaked with rainwater, dripping an unremarkable gray so unlike my crimson. We stare at each other until he nods.

I don’t care if they are cousins or not, I want them to do it in her bed while John Darnielle bleats on over the warning of the siren, while the rain hits the window pane and weasels its way through the screen. I want the world to keep turning on its unremarkable axis and follow the same predictable rotation that it has forever. Me, I step shirtless into the rain.