Silent Echo

I only nod and smile. Her smile does not contain sympathy or pity, as most other smiles do these days. Her smile conveys…

I swallow.

Hard.

Her smile, I’m certain, conveys love. Real love. Romantic love.

Jesus, I think. The woman is crazier than me.

She takes the corkscrew from me and proceeds to open the bottle. Her hands are strong, lithe, dexterous. I want to do something, to help even in a small way, and so I reach for two wine glasses. My shaking hands nearly drop them as I set/slam them before her. Surely she sees my shaking hands, sees me struggling, but she says nothing. She simply purrs and smiles. I sense raw sexuality coming off her in pulsating waves. She does not comment that I shouldn’t be drinking. She pours and smiles and radiates… love.

We take our drinks back into the living room. I’m feeling more alive than I have in a long, long time. A dead part of me is awakening, too. I’m astounded at that stirring of my body. We sit closer to each other than we ever have before. I’m in love with her and I’m living on borrowed time. I am euphoric that Mary is here with her too-long nose and her straight blond hair and rose-petal lips. She’s here with me drinking wine and caring for me and loving me. There is nothing else in this moment that I want. Nothing but Mary.

Her delicate skin is flushed as she glances away shyly. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have come,” she says. “I… I wanted to see how you were doing.”

I don’t buy it. I think she wants something else. I say, “I can’t tell you how glad I am that you did. Mary…” My voice trails off. Not because I don’t have the strength, but because I don’t want to waste time with blather. I just want to take in her fragrance. Interestingly, even as my strength wanes, my senses seemed to have heightened. Her sweet perfume awakens within me a hunger that I had shut down months ago, seemingly years ago. Mary has stepped out of her professional role and into my life, my personal life, and I am not sure what to do with her. It had been so long. So very, very long.

I swallow. I’m suddenly not sure what do with my hands. My aches and exhaustion disappear into the background. But they are still there, always there.

I wrap my brain around the situation again. Mary has come to me. Mary has come to my home when she wasn’t required to. Nobody does that anymore. Nobody except Numi. And Numi is the furthest thing from my mind right now.

“Mary,” I say again as I finally decide to lay my hand on hers. I decide to open with a joke. “What brings you here?”

Mary’s blush deepens slightly. She is not the case worker now and I like her self-consciousness even more than I like her professionalism. “I was in the neighborhood.…” She trails off and I actually laugh. She laughs, too. Two normal people enjoying wine, laughing, life. No one facing imminent death.

Except I am facing imminent death, and with each passing breath, it’s coming closer and closer. No time to play coy. No time to court her. Only us, now, in the moment.

“You wanted to see me.”

Mary downs a little too much wine. She’s nervous, but not unsure of herself. I sense that her feelings for me are real. “Yes, Jimmy. I came to see you, and only you.” Mary looks down at our now-entwined hands and I look, too. I am surprised to see—and feel—her own hand shaking slightly. This isn’t easy on her, either. How is it easy to fall in love with a dead man walking? I cannot afford sorrow, especially not from Mary. I don’t have time for sorrow.

I reach for her face with my other hand and draw her chin up and she looks deep into my eyes. We do not speak because there are no words that will change anything. Not my disease or the fragile state of my body. Words will not change the love I have for this beautiful woman who had the courage to accept her feelings for a dying man. And come to me without her notebooks or any pretense. She was here. For me.

I gently wipe away a tear that has beaded in the corner of her eye. Surprisingly, my hand is not shaking as I make the gesture. She gives me strength. As I do so, Mary leans in and her extraordinarily soft lips brush my own.

Our brushing, curious, timid lips take on more courage, and soon they press harder and harder.…

She is taking a chance kissing me, I know. There are no documented cases of AIDS being transferred through saliva, through kissing, but I know—and suspect—it is a fear for many people.

But not Mary, not now. She has no fear. Not as our lips press harder and harder.

I would not kiss her if I thought I would harm her or make her sick.

Our lips press harder. Our tongues find each other. Our hands find each other, too, exploring. I’m afraid of what she might find. Bones and flesh and emaciation.

I’m still me, I think. Still me… I think positive about my flesh. I will it to rise to love.

We kiss and explore and taste and weep, and I am not very surprised that soon I taste our salty tears, too.

Mary is lovely in sleep.

Her blond hair is now silver in the soft moonlight and spreads over her shoulders and breasts. Her blue eyes are closed and she rests her head on my pillow. I ask myself again which is more beautiful, the lovemaking or Mary asleep beside me, her hand resting on my chest.

We had been gentle, at least at first. Mary’s tenderness as she undressed me and kissed every part of my body before opening herself to me filled me again with a desire that I had never known in my life. I relive now every detail and realize it is joy that I am feeling as I envision again my mouth around her hard nipples as she cried out with pleasure. I actually ache at the memory of entering her carefully, my erection protected in not one, but two condoms. She was so fearless, so bold, and I was so careful. So very, very careful. I often checked on my wrappings. They held in place and she was safe and I held her close to my heart and soon we both orgasmed. My own briefly took me out of my body. I was in no condition to orgasm. I might have briefly died. I don’t know. But one moment I was there, and the next, I was briefly hovering above us, looking down, seeing us together, me on top and panting. Her beneath me and panting, her fingertips pressed deep in my back. My too-thin back. I could see every rib, every bone. My ass was nonexistent. I was not much of a man anymore.

The sensation only lasted a heartbeat or two, and then I was back on top of her, still inside her… very much a man.

Now I lay next to Mary—my Mary, at least for now—and I let the tears come quietly so as not to wake the delicate angel next to me. I weep because I know that I cannot handle another lovemaking session. That much I know. My next lovemaking session would kill me, but I cannot think of a better way to go.