Body

Finished, panting, he rolled onto his side. Trying to catch his breath, he stroked the red blotch between her shoulder blades. She was thin, and her shoulder blades protruded from her back like boat rudders. The red mark between her shoulders extended from the base of her neck halfway down her back and arched over her protruding shoulder blades. He traced the red with his index finger.

“Don't,” she said.

“I like it,” he responded. His finger moving on the surface of her skin made her shudder. He imagined that the red mark was a landmass, a continent full of people making love and never worrying about mundane things like jobs or paying bills or whether there was money left in their account, or where their children were. The people on the red continent just made love with one another over and over. Her shoulder blades were mountains, and her white skin was an ocean teeming with life.

“You're the first,” she said. “Most people find it off-putting.”

People? Who else had seen it, the older man wondered. Who else has explored the human continent? Who else has traced its shores and walked its beaches? Who else had waded in its waters? Her comment stung him a little, but he chose to ignore it.

“It's unique,” he said. His nail traced gently around the western edge of her private continent. Red islands sat just off the main coast. There were dozens of them, some large and some small--all sizes of red islands set against ivory skin. He imagined little fishing villages of people making love in their little fishing huts and making love in their little fishing boats. And he thought of fishes making love even as they became entangled in nets and hauled onto the boats; and making love even as they were gutted fried and sauteed in little pans and consumed by little people making love as they ate.

In the center of red, bisecting the east and west hemispheres, her vertebrae formed a line of hills. He imagined intrepid pioneers, the first tiny people, scaling the hills and making love at the summit. Perhaps they built cabins and started a life there on the top of the hills, where they could look down over the expanse of the red continent and watch other people making love.

Moving his hand to the southern tip of her red continent, she shivered under the touch. She wanted to pull the sheet over her body and hide herself in guilt and shame, but she let him continue touching her. His finger rested in the small of her back, beneath the rounded bottom of her body continent. Then, he traced up along its east side, pausing at two peninsulas reaching out into the ocean. The sea surrounding them was smooth and milky. Swimming in her sea, floating on her thin frame as if she were a boat, he traveled her body like a lost sailor searching for truth.

Truth is always hiding, and it must be found. It is a necessary condition. Lying in bed, the graying old man searched for truth in her. She was his illusion of a world only of love. He imagined running away with her, taking her to a place where they could love unencumbered. And she would love him unconditionally and offer her body as a token of love.

“It's the most interesting birth mark I have ever seen,” he told her quietly. “It's like another whole world supported just by you.

“You're weird,” she said, sitting up in the bed.

Like a shifting cloud, the shape of redness changed. Upright, her body continent changed into a headless prancing deer, the continental peninsulas morphing into legs kicking into the air, giving life to the image. The islands became tufts of hair tossed into the white skin night, or forest burrs riding the wind and seeking a body. He thought she was a skittish animal. You could see her ribs, like she had almost starved through winter. Now that spring had arrived, she feasted on flowers, embraced the new season with a sense of duty, and mustered energy for him. He felt like a hunter of love, and he had conquered his prey. He imagined a quiet life in the forest with her, a forest where everything made love and lived in peace. They walked silently together on a carpet of moss, holding hands and smelling ferns and listening to acorns falling.

Foregoing her bra, she pulled her shirt over her head, hiding the red mark from him forever and shattering his illusions. He knew it was time to go. With a deep breath he began to dress as well from the opposite side of the bed. They no longer looked at one another.

“Was I good?” she asked without turning around. “Did you get everything you want? Did I earn an A?”

“Almost,” he said. The illusion was now just a lump in his throat. “I'll change the grade as soon as I get home.” Then he picked his phone up from the nightstand to send a text to his wife.