Quiet Time

Sunlight poured onto Sari Siegel's face in the airless porch of their second-story apartment jutting out over Broadway. As she burrowed into her pillow Tim's arm tightened about her waist and he drew her close, clasping her small round buttocks and draping his thigh across her hip. The sweat from the copper hair on his chest tickled, and he moved his hand to her glossy hair, sweeping it aside to nuzzle her neck. She squinted at the alarm clock on the dresser across the narrow room. At a quarter to eight she could already hear Saturday-morning traffic in the street below, and the air was so arid her nostrils twitched. Her gaze wandered to the faded poster of the dove on the cracked wall above the dresser. END MASS MURDER IN VIETNAM. A relic from junior high school days, but it reminded her of home. Beneath it the lab manual for her biology class lay facedown beside a marbled composition book whose binding had not yet been cracked. She looked at Tim's arm, which had crept back to her waist. The silky hair was so red it glinted, but the T-shirts he'd worn framing houses over spring break had left his biceps and shoulders paper-white next to hers. His long limbs and fiery hair were an odd match for her petite build and olive complexion, but they fit together perfectly in bed. Breathing his familiar scent, she molded herself to his groin. When his fingertips began stroking her breast she blinked once and then her eyes fell shut. He knew what she liked, she never had to say.... As he entered her, a single thought shimmered in her head: One week from today she would be Mrs. Timothy Scott. The phone rang twenty minutes later while Tim was in the shower and she was frying his eggs over easy the way he liked them. After a brief conversation, she hung up and reached for the plastic pitcher in the cupboard over the sink. Pipes groaned on the other side of the wall as the toilet in the next apartment flushed, and she heard Tim yelp at the surge of hot water. When the shower stopped she twisted the faucet and began mixing his orange juice. As soon as school let out two weeks before they'd moved into the walk-up flat in this rambling house at Locust and Broadway, halfway down the hill leading from the University to downtown Stanley. Although Broadway technically divided the campus from the residential part of town, the University's tree-lined paths, sandstone buildings and tiled roofs blended into the surrounding neighborhoods abutting the foothills. Because of its size and location, 655 Locust could have housed one of the smaller departments of the liberal arts college or a professor with a large brood of children. Over the years, additions had been slapped on every which way and the interior divided into oddly configured units for students and the marginally employed, leaving them a kitchen just large enough to turn around in and a converted porch for a bedroom that was so cold in the winter, ice formed on the inside of the windows and froze them shut. But Sari fell in love with the apartment the moment they saw it. The sunshine in the alcove stained her supermarket coleuses magenta and chartreuse, and living on the Hill meant they were no longer just students. "It must be eighty degrees already." She turned to see Tim in the doorway in his denim cutoffs, sweat dotting the reddish stubble above his lip. He'd been trying to grow a mustache since school let out but his sideburns were more successful; the auburn growth reached from his temples to the milky knob of his jaw. The skin below was so tender, she would bury her nose in it while they were making love, feel it throb... "And a hundred in here," she replied. "At least." He grinned, knowing exactly what she was thinking. "When do you have to be at the rec center?Kane, Stephanie is the author of 'Quiet Time' with ISBN 9780553581744 and ISBN 0553581740.