Beyond Limits

You shouldn't go that far in love. You really shouldn't.

But she held me, and when I finished the call, I put my phone down and I put my arms around her and I held her back, and the snow blowing off the cornices of the building next door sent wispy shadows over ours as we stood there in the room with the dead man and held onto each other, each for our own reasons.

In time I let go of her and went out to my car. I hid the two vials in the trunk, under my spare tire. I knew her fingerprints were all over them. The heroin inside was what had killed Cormac. It was almost 80% pure and I'd gotten it for him. I'd killed him, just as if I'd handed him a loaded gun and told him it was filled with blanks. But the vials bore Lexi's fingerprints. If the cops ever got their hands on them, she'd be accessory to murder. She'd be ruined.

Now I held the aces. Cormac was gone and I had Lexi.

I went back into the apartment. She was standing in the corner, arms around herself, crying.

"Come here, baby," I said, and I put my arms out. "Come here."

The tears started again and she came to me. She put her arms around my waist and buried her face in my chest and held me. It wasn't the right kind of love but it would do. For now, it would do.

—

You never know why someone's holding you, what you are to them and what they're getting from you. You may think you do but you're wrong, you're wrong, and that wrongness is finally why we hold so tight to each other—that great, arching, hollow wrongness and misunderstanding. It's what's unsaid and unsayable: what you'll never understand and what you'll never even ask, and finally—lost by the mad complexity of words, you'll just plunge your hard and hungry dick into her and that'll have to do. That thrill of fleshy delight will have to pass for understanding and acceptance.

Only I didn't know if I had that option any more with Lexi. I don't know if things could ever be that easy, if the ignorance between us could ever be seen as romantic anymore or was just tragic stupidity.

__

Belpierre Harbor has a real harbor and at one time it sent wood and lumber down the great lakes to Wisconsin and lover Michigan and Illinois, but it's all silted up now and only pleasure boats use it and they've built a park around it, a good place for Belpierre College to have their picnics and meet-and-greets. I liked the harbor too. My apartment was right there, and I'd set up my desk so I could see a bit of the park before gazing out over the flat, vast expanse of Lake Superior with its galleon-like clouds riding so tall on the autumn breeze from Alberta and the great plains of Canada and the American Midwest. I'd lucked out in a big, big, way, landing a one-year Summerhill Grant as visiting artist-in-residence at Belpierre—room and board and a little cash for listening to kids read their writing, the rest of the time mine to work on what I pleased and watch the clouds over Superior. At my age, thirty years older than the kids at the college, it was a great job. And right below me and four doors down was the most interesting little bar, called simply Seymour's.

Like all towns in the Midwest it seems, Belpierre was dying, but going out in style. It still had the college, small, ancient, and exclusive, and the town still had its handsome old buildings from its shipping and manufacturing heyday that went for a song. Seymour's had been a waterfront bar—proud gothic exterior, brick interior, hardwood floors, a hand-rubbed maple bar—now lovingly restored and gleaming with polish and leaded glass, and an eccentric owner with an independent income who ran it as a lark. A kitchen that served real Lake Superior whitefish and cheeky Michigan wine. Dr. Hasmonian, The head of the English Department, chose Seymour's as the place to introduce the artists-in-residence to students and faculty.

There were four of us in all, rather a large number of artists for such a small school, and maybe thirty people at the gathering in this big, cavernous room with a low, tin ceiling. I was impressed by the turnout, since it was the kind of thing I never would have attended if I hadn't been compelled to. It smelled like wet sweaters and cigarette smoke, a smell I'd come to associate with Belpierre college, along with the close, peculiar odor of steam heat. No one knew who I was, and it became pretty obvious to me from the herd behavior of the packed-together students that they'd been made to attend.

I knew one of the other AIR's by reputation slightly, a harried, New York poetess named Jean Kringle, a recovering alcoholic to judge from the anxious way she nursed her soft drink. Me, I was thrilled anyone had hired me to do anything, and I was determined to make a good impression. I don't know what I was thinking. My father had just died and for all my bitterness and cynicism I was raw, skinned. I was alone in the world now, divorced, defenseless, and just starting to realize it. These people and their good opinion of me were all that stood between me and penury.

She stood smoking by the bar. She was just slightly shorter than me, dark hair, her face looked haunted and brave and ready for more. Not masochistic, but she knew the price of getting what she wanted was pain and she was willing to pay it—as I say, brave. I was sitting at a table. Our eyes met and she caught me in a vacant moment when the beast in me was stirring, turning from Jean Kringle with badly-hid contempt as I envisioned myself substituted for her bottle and just fastening my eyes on the ass of the wife of a junior member of the English Department, not intentionally, but hard to resist—a gorgeous ass. That's how Lexi first saw me, with the eyes of a jungle animal, a thief, and being caught like that, I couldn't help but meet her gaze in reproach, not protesting my innocence, but confirming my guilt. I wasn't ashamed.Yeah, I was ogling her ass,my look said.What's it to you?

Our eyes met and we saw into each other. We recognized something in each other and neither turned away.

Nothing, she answered, raising her drink to her mouth.She has a nice ass. Ogle away.

I'd been caught so red-handed that the only thing to do was to refuse to apologize, which I did, looking right back at her, and Lexi seemed terribly amused at having caught me and wouldn't let me off the hook. Standing up as she was , she had an air of authority, and we stared at each other as a knowing smile slowly crept over her lips.

I felt the sudden rush of adrenaline you get from direct eye contact and realized this wasn't just about my voyeurism anymore. Something was passing between us, something was being exchanged, then she slowly turned her face away, her eyes remaining locked on mine, till finally she tore her gaze away and she was pulled into the crowd and disappeared.

At the time I had already met my landlady and heard about her book club and been cordially invited to drop by—a writer for them to talk to, thirty-somethings, townies, I figured I'd do my sexual grazings among their likes and end up with one of them for my carnal needs. It was perfect for me, pseudo domestic, warm meals, warm beds, no compromising entanglements. I'd already made a date with a girl named Jennifer, a single mother who worked as a barmaid and was part of the book club. I wasn't even remotely thinking about students for sex, I really wasn't. I didn't want to get involved with students. The look we'd shared had been interesting, that's all. Freakish the way our eyes had met, our minds behind the eyes touched one another.

The skin on her face—even across the room, I knew what it felt like. I knew the size of her breasts, where her nipples would have hit my palms and the sounds she would make when they did. I searched the crowd but she was gone. A hallucination.

It was raining lightly when I went outside for a cigarette, my head heavy with beer, so I stayed under the canopy. The rain fell on the thick pines on the edge of the park, the chill, wet air heavy with the smell of their resin. A rainy dusk on the edge of the Michigan desolation. My breath steamed in the air.

I knew it was her when I heard the door open behind me. I heard her stop, surprised, then slowly strike her lighter. I smelled her smoke like it was perfume. The rain drizzled in the puddles. It was cold enough to make my nipples hard.

We were both stuck out here with our cigarettes. I had to say something, put on some kind of face. I turned to her and smiled. It wasn't necessary. "I'm Russell Backuss," I said. "I'm the AIR in creative writing?"

She looked at me and thank God she gave me a smile, though it was an indulgence. "Glad to meet you. My name is Lexi Samos."

She held out a slim hand and I took it. Her fingers were long and lax, beautiful nails.

"You're a student?"

"Oh. Oh, yes," she smiled. "Yeah. I'm a returning senior. Double major, drama and art."

"No writing though, huh?"

"No, no. I'm afraid not. Too bad too. I imagine it'll be an interesting class."

"Yeah. I'll try."

The look that had passed between us earlier hung there now like a previous love affair. She was ready even then to be kissed. It was that strong.

"Returning senior? What does that mean?"

"I was off for three years, working theater in New York. I decided to come back and finish here."

She's telling me she's older than her classmates. She's not of the school exactly.

"The drama department's really excellent. My teacher in New York talked me into coming back."

"Yeah," I said. "It's a good school, for being way out here."

"Oh, the town's not bad either. It's got a kind of rust-belt chic. Where else can you get absinthe in Michigan?"

"Absinthe?"

She smiled at me. She was getting cold. In those days you could still smoke inside anyhow, and we'd just stepped out to get away from the crowds. She pulled the door open and gestured with her head.

"Come on, I'll show you."

Seymour's did stock absinthe and we sat at the bar and she showed me how to drink it, pouring it over sugar and adding water, and as we played with the thick green liquid, the words spilled out between us, half-teasing at first, testing each other, remembering the look and skirting around it, but it was as if as we sat there threads were binding us together, wrapping themselves around us, so the darkness seemed to be drawing us into our own cocoon and the rest of the party and crowd faded out till she and I were there together sitting in a cone of light and heightened, concentrated awareness. The smiles, the words, the little connections and revelations that drew us to each other and built tension around things still waiting to be said as the mist came down outside in the Michigan woods.

Lexi had to call some people and I heard her begging out of the dinner she was supposed to attend. Something with a guy named Seth. Whoever she was talking to was going to have to make some excuses to this Seth on her behalf. It was apparently a bit more awkward than she'd expected and I went to the bathroom to leave her alone so I wouldn't embarrass her.

We ate at the bar, picking at fries and fish chips, drinking and not getting drunk on the liquor. The conversation got deep and surprisingly intense. I told her things I never would have told anyone else. I told her why I wrote.

"I learned I could turn life into art. I can make just what we're doing now into something beautiful and lasting and extract meaning from it or put meaning into it. I can stretch life out and compact it. Bind the time and make it last. Someone said we write so we can taste life twice, but it's more than that. It's so we can even taste it at all before it slips down our throat and is gone. The richness, the actuality of it that we never have time for. Understanding, knowing..."

We must have been drunk—the way she leaned her head against the hand that held the cigarette as if the smoke were her thoughts. I felt like we were on fire with each other. "I act for the same reason. Because I get to feel things twice. When things happen to you, you're never in control of them, but when you act, you are. The emotions may not seem real but they are and they're under your control. You get to experience that character's emotions night after night. You get to be her."

I was working on a book then calledLucky Ace about a synesthesiac, a young man who's senses were all crossed and tangled together, He could taste sound and hear sights and see the posture and movements of his body as colors and hear them as words and sounds, and he called himself Lucky Ace because the sound of those words made him feel strong and indestructible. He saw them as a lemon yellow aura with a pinkish orange glow, depending on how he said them.

I told Lexi about synesthesia and Lucky Ace now and she laughed. "You should make him so anyone he touches has that power as well," she said. "No—better, that anyone he touches sees and feels what he does. Think of the intimacy, to share someone's perceptions like that, to know their feelings."

"Not just to know them," I said. "But to feel them. To experience them. To be sharing the same life."

She was looking at me through the smoke and something was passing between us, something thick and fluidic.

"Come on," I said. "It's late. Let's get out of here."

We bought a half pint of whiskey, an insane thing to do but the night wanted whiskey, wanted something hot and raw like that, something primal and golden, and we got into my car and she showed me where to drive in this dark college town, out of the park and through the foggy wet streets, by the old mansions, headed down for the empty immensity of Lake Superior.

Down by the lake, by the docks where the big ore freighters tied up, by the yards fenced off in chain-link fence with barbed wire and rusting light towers with standing water in the parking lots and fog blowing in. I kept the engine running and the heat on and here we drank the whiskey and talked more, listening to a late night jazz program from the college in the soft warm heat of the car. It was close in there like a cave, and yet I was so intent on what we were saying that it never occurred to me to kiss her or touch her. I was too taken with her, and the things she said . It was like I was already kissing her with another part of myself; we were already rubbing up against each other with delicious friction and warmth. She didn't talk like a college girl, but like someone who understood people and men in particular, and pretty soon I was telling her about my divorce and my failure as a husband, and my father's death and my failure as a son, telling her a lot more than I'd ever told anyone, staring off into the fog, surrounded by fog, staring off over the great shroud of fog over the lake, that huge empty immensity torn in the world by Lake Superior, a vast, thunderous nothing, yet she was there with me, close, warm, accepting.

"I'd better get you home."

The fog over the eastern part of the lake was starting to grow milky from the rising sun. My throat was raw from whiskey and cigarettes.

She lived in what had been a sorority house but was now a residence for senior art and drama majors. We parked outside and still the words wouldn't stop. We were dizzy with words—drunk with each other. The world was gone, everything was milky gray and some birds made half-hearted attempts to greet the invisible dawn when finally I leaned over in the seat and kissed her and she immediately she opened her mouth to me and the world opened—warm and soft, grabbing the front of my coat, pulling me to her. She found the release on her seat and it fell back with a jerk. We laughed, but now I could lean over her and kiss her right, and she arched her body up against me—the warmth of her breasts, the way she moved, wanting more. She held onto my coat and the leather creaked as our tongues found each other and she was shameless. When I put my hand on her hip she took it and slid it around between her legs and pressed up against me, showing me where it was, whimpering, showing me she needed it. She was hot and moist and my head began to throb. She put my hand where she wanted me and showed me how to touch her and then put her mouth against my shirt and began to breath with soft moans as her hips lifted against my hand with fine, strong urgings of her thigh muscles. She inflamed me.

My hand was behind her shoulders and I grabbed her farther wrist and held it, holding her down. I kept my hand pressed against her and let her work, wanting her to do it herself, and she did. She ground her pussy up against me, her head turned to the side. My fingers were caught between the moist folds of her panties and pressed into the crease of her sex. I felt her thighs shudder. "Oh Yes!" she moaned. She spit the word like it was something filthy. "Yes!"

I couldn't take it anymore.

"Come on. Let's get inside."

She looked at me in shock. "All my roommates are inside."

"They must all be sleeping by now. There must be someplace."

"I don't know, Russell..."

"Come on—"

I pulled her out of the car dizzy with lust and dragged her to the front door. It was open, and no sooner were we inside than we were locked in a hungry, ferocious kiss, my hands on her ass, her arms around me, our kisses feverish, famished as we pulled at each other's clothes. The inside of the house was deathly silent and thick with shadows and our kissing had a wet and furtive sound, slick and viscous, my moans muffled by the fabric of her clothes; everyone was asleep.

I pulled Lexi over to the nearest sofa and tried to drag her down but she resisted, a look of near panic on her face. There were people sleeping right upstairs, we could hear them breathing through the floor, but I held her wrist and pulled her again and she fell to her knees on the floor and I pulled her shirt up and her bra down and started sucking her breasts and biting her nipples just like that, her warm, soft flesh, exposing her to my need, my hunger, and she wrapped her arms around my head and gasped in her throat again, "Yes! Yes!" her litany of desire, all she could think to say. For several minutes we were frozen like that, she on her knees on the carpet, panting for breath and me sucking and licking the heat of her tits like a gargoyle, my hands down her panties, my fingers inside her where she was soaked, and then, without even looking up she lifted her skirt and pushed my hands away, wiggled out of her panties and pushed me aside. She climbed onto the sofa and lay down on her back and it was just that simple and just that direct. There was no need to even talk about it or negotiate or discuss things or even use our mouths or our brains for anything besides sucking and licking. This was between our bodies and our organs and they'd already decided and it was stupid to try and argue with them, stupid to do anything except get out of the fucking way of what was so obviously meant to happen.

I stood and opened my belt and dropped my pants, then knelt between her thighs.

The stairs going up to the bedrooms were right there, a black zigzag ascending into shadow, and anyone could have come down and seen us, and me a visiting Artist In Residence, having sex with a student. It was unthinkable. It was forbidden, not allowed, grounds for dismissal. It was impossible to resist.

"Ah, Jesus, Lexi! Christ!" I slid myself right into her, achingly hard, my hands holding the arm rest on either side of her head as if to keep her prisoner. She gasped, pulling my mouth to hers, and no sooner had I thrust two or three times than I was pulling out of her in a panic, trying to stop it but it was too late.

"Fuck! Oh, God! Damn it!" I shot a massive amount all over her skirt and her stomach, growling in frustration and pleasure as I came again and again, unable to control it, come spilling out of me, overflowing. I was so primed for her there was nothing I could do, and I'd never been so premature in my life, humiliated, helpless in my release. She lifted her head and groaned in astonishment, watching my cock as I ejaculated all over her, rubbing the semen into her skin as the spasms slowed, then ceased, and I was left there with my embarrassment.