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<\/a><\/p>\n“The Kiss” was published in the journal,\u00a0Kalliope<\/em>, Jacksonville, FL, 1997.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
They always ran out of ice.<\/p>\n
It was her way, perhaps, of disowning the parties.\u00a0 There were moments during every one when she\u2019d retreat to a quiet corner, puzzled at being somehow vaguely in charge of all these people.\u00a0 It was a feeling she also had occasionally about her husband and their six children, who seemed to her at times like a dark bruise whose origin she couldn\u2019t recall.<\/p>\n
Her best friend’s husband drove her to get the ice.\u00a0 He also had six children, but they didn\u2019t baffle him.\u00a0 They were voices at dinner, backseat wrigglings in the car’s rearview mirror, characters in the little stories his wife told him before he fell asleep.<\/p>\n
Both sets of children were sleeping at his house, two blocks away from the party.\u00a0 She wanted to stop by to check on them.<\/p>\n
The children were all in one room, some asleep on the floor, the rest tangled together like dirty laundry in two twin beds.\u00a0 Someone had draped a green scarf over the lamp.\u00a0 She removed it and caught the smell of burnt hair.<\/p>\n
She stepped carefully around the children on the floor, touching each one on the shoulder as if they were good luck charms.\u00a0 He pulled blankets over the children on the beds, tucking in one arm that dangled over an edge.\u00a0 At just that moment, she turned off the light, so he couldn’t tell whose arm it was.\u00a0 He felt an indistinct affection flowing out to all of them.<\/p>\n
She waited for him in the dark hallway downstairs, silhouetted against the screen door by the porch light.\u00a0 There was something vacant in her stance, as if she were expecting to wait a long time or had already been waiting a long time.\u00a0 He was seized with the desire to kiss her.\u00a0 She saw it.<\/p>\n
She had once come upon her husband and his wife in a passionate embrace at one of the parties.\u00a0 They hadn’t noticed her, and she had never said anything.\u00a0 It was just the way they were, her husband and his wife.\u00a0 It didn’t mean enough, or it meant too much, to sort out.\u00a0 The marriages stayed marriages.\u00a0 The friendships stayed friendships.<\/p>\n
She wondered if he knew and if that was why he wanted to kiss her.\u00a0 She wondered if that was why she was going to let him.\u00a0 She didn’t care.<\/p>\n
When he approached, she felt a quiver deep inside her, like the leap of a small fish.\u00a0 He placed his hands flat against the sides of her head, blocking out all sound except her own breathing.\u00a0 She watched his mouth lower slowly to hers.\u00a0 His lips were soft; she felt them tremble.\u00a0 Then came the press of his teeth, the prowl of his tongue.\u00a0 The kiss slid languidly down their bodies and then faded away like an echo.<\/p>\n
They drew apart, still watching each other’s faces, and laughed.\u00a0 It was the freest laugh she’d had in some time.\u00a0 He liked the sound of it.<\/p>\n
They left the house.\u00a0 He caught the screen door so that it wouldn\u2019t slam into the children’s dreams.<\/p>\n