He grabbed her wrist, both calm and firmly.
He didn’t know how or why but he put the other hand on her hip bone, and without thinking, he held her and kissed her. Her forearm was wet, her clothes were wet, just in that patch of shirt—and he took the cloth hard, and made a fist.
“Jesus, I’m sorry, I—”
And Penelope Lesciuszko, she gave him the fright of his life:
She took his wet hand, put it beneath that shirt—the exact same place, but on skin—and delivered him a phrase from the East.
“Jeszcze raz.”
Very quiet, very serious, almost unsmiling, like kitchens were built for this.
“It means,” she said, “again.”
It was Saturday—the halfway point to the Murderer’s return—and Clay walked the road from the property, in the dark of just turned night.
His body was part elastic, part hard.
His hands were blistered raw.
Inside he was ready to burst.
He’d been digging alone since Monday.
The depth to the bedrock had been nowhere near as deep as he’d feared—but at times, even inches were hard labor. Sometimes he thought he might never hit it at all—but then, the ache of stone.
* * *
—
By the time he was finished, he couldn’t recall anymore which nights he’d slept a few hours inside, and the ones he’d worked till morning; often he’d woken in the riverbed.
It took a while now to work out it was Saturday.
And evening, not dawn.
And in that state of delirium, and those bleeding, burning hands, he’d decided to see the city again, and he packed only very lightly: the box, and the favorite of his bridge books.
Then he’d showered and burned, dressed and burned, and staggered, like that, into town. Only once, he wavered, to turn, to look back at his work, and that was all it took:
In the middle of the road, he sat down, and the country surged around him.
“I made it.”
Just three words, and each one had tasted like dirt.
He lay for a while—the pulsing ground, the starry sky. Then forced himself to walk.
That first night, at 37 Pepper Street, when she left, it was agreed.
He walked her home and said he’d come down to her apartment, on Saturday at four o’clock.
The road was dark and empty.
Nothing much more was said.
On the return visit, he’d shaved, and brought daisies.