She crouched down next to my table in the bar, the redhead I had flirted with two years ago before I had left town. See my necklace, she said, and I admired it. What are you doing after work I said and she said Nothing and so I came back at two and we had a drink on the house and left and walked to her apartment.

We sat on the floor and drank straight from the five-dollar bottle of wine she brought out from the kitchen. She described for me a strict Catholic upbringing and the parents that went off the deep end and joined a cult, her belief in God and the faith that it had brought her all the good in her life. I looked around for the good.

Hours passed and we slowed and softened, she laid back against the floor in front of me, propped her head against a pillow. Her shirt had hiked up and I sat there staring at that inch of skin. I tucked my hand under and laid it on her belly. I liked you back then, I said and she said I always had a feeling about you. You were right, I said. She laughed at that. I’m glad you came back, she said.

I held my hand there a long time and she looked up at me but she didn’t move. I looked up at her eyes. Can I open your shirt, I said, and she trembled a little. Yes, she said, and I opened each button starting at the bottom before I folded the shirt back. Her belly shone underneath like alabaster and air filled my lungs and my head floated a little. I laid my hand across her skin and pressed down gently to feel the firmness, to commit the curve to memory. She laid there looking up at me, open, still unmoving.

A minute passed, more, my eyes on my hand pressed down on her flesh, her eyes on mine. I looked up at her eyes. Can I take off your bra, I said, and she looked at me. Yes, she said and she sat up and pulled the shirt from her shoulders and reached her hands behind her back and the bra came loose. She pulled it away from her chest and laid down again and looked at me and I sat stunned, breathless at the sight of the smooth luminous skin glowing there in the low light of one lamp behind me across the room. You’re beautiful, I said and looked at her and she looked up at me still unmoving. I pressed my hand against her breast, flattened it under my palm, I had never seen anything so pale and clean and white and fine.

I held a bright pink nipple between my thumb and finger, swept my hand slow over her chest down her belly, slid my fingers under the waist of her pants, held them there for a long moment. She looked down at my hand, I looked up at her eyes, Can I take off your pants, I said, and she looked up at me. Yes, she said. I opened her pants and she lifted her hips and I slid them off slow. More skin glowed beneath me, an endless surface of legs almost translucent, panties the color of sin, bony ankles feet criss-crossed toes stretched for the wall. I pulled my hand upward from her knee, mesmerized by the course of my calloused skin against the impossible smoothness of her own. I tucked my fingers into her crotch and slid them slow over the fabric along the length of her crease. I looked up at her eyes. Can I take these off, I said and she was still a beat and said Yes.

She lifted her hips again and I curled my fingers over the waistband and pulled her panties down to her feet and she kicked them off and I looked back up at her lying there looking up at me still and somehow triumphant. Her red hair shone from between her legs and I combed my fingers into it. Like mine, I said, and she smiled. Turn off the light, she said, and I got up and switched off the lamp and came back, her body a beacon in the half- dark.

I stood before her and opened my pants and let them fall and pulled off my shirt and kneeled next to her and leaned down and kissed her belly and her breasts and her throat and her mouth and she kissed back up at me, stuck her tongue deep in my mouth. I put my hand to her and felt that she was wet and I looked at her and she was looking at my hand where it rested against her and I said Can I be inside you, and she whispered Yes.

I crawled over her and put my knees between hers and held myself above her in the dark for a long moment. I pressed my penis down onto that alabaster belly and the press of her cool flawless skin was so sublime I gasped. She looked up at me. I’m afraid of what God’s thinking right now, she said.

God is love, I said her eyes searching mine. And this is love, I said, and with the temerity of my own faith moved down and found her warmth and pressed against her wetness with my penis and slid into her slow. She lay still beneath me, her skin glowing bright her belly rising and falling quick her eyes locked on mine.

pressed against her wetness and slid into her slow