A silver beam from
the moonrise sliced through the darkness of her room. In shadows bled of color,
Josh stood, the light falling across his face. He tugged his t-shirt off, the
beam illuminating a slender chest and burying itself in his dark hair.
“Why are you here?”
Jeanne asked, feeling her voice shake.
He met her gaze,
his youthful face serious. “For you.”
Jeanne muttered. “I
don’t need you,” and turned toward the door to flee.
“You
misunderstand.” A smile flitted across his face; the light showing a dimple
incongruous to the moment. “It’s my need.”
“No,” Jeanne shook her
head, grasping for the door frame to steady herself. “If you haven’t noticed,
I’m old enough to be your mother. If I’d started late. This is impossible.”
“If it’s happening,
it’s not impossible.” Josh held a hand out --
Jeanne bolted
upright from her bed, squinting at her clock’s luminous numbers in the dark.
3:00 AM, the perfect time to have a haunting dream. Josh? She took a panicked
breath. And her?
If it’s happening,
it’s not impossible, she recalled from the dream.
If it’s happening …
What the hell was
happening to her that she began to dream about Josh, that quirky young man she
had become friends with?
She knew. He had
become more than that quirky young man to her.
He had become
compelling to her, and she tried to deny it. “I don’t need you,”
she had told him.
But perhaps she
did, and he would reject her instead.
********
My subconscious informed me that, in editing Gaia's hands, I had lost an important aspect of it, the tension (in part sexual, in part fear of rejection) between Jeanne and Josh.
Let's see Josh's point of view:
Josh wanted. It
seemed a perpetual state for him, so much so that he wondered whether he wanted
to be Jeanne’s friend or to bed her. Or both. Or everything. He leaned close to
his notepad and wrote automatically, ignoring the lock of hair that habitually
fell out of place.
I want to be reckless;
he wrote. I want to kiss her with everybody watching in the middle of the
cafe. I want to take her clothes off in a room where there are thoughts of only
us. I want to know her twenty-five years down the road, even though
she’ll be seventy-five to my 47 years.
I should care
about the age difference, but it doesn’t bother me. It probably bothers her. I
would be her child’s age, if she’d chosen to have children. She’s never
married. Maybe she didn’t want to get married.
In my most
intimate fantasies, she waits for me. In reality, she holds me at arm’s length,
and I don’t know if it’s for now or forever.
I want a
guarantee where there are no guarantees.
The vision came to
him, the garden in its fullness, and Jeanne standing within, naked. All
bountiful curves and sags like an ancient goddess. Does one dare to approach a
goddess? He walked toward Jeanne in the garden, slowly and deliberately, each
footstep pounding in his ears. He reached out –
The vision drifted
out of his grasp.
*****
Why does this come from my dark side? It's a reflection of how I struggle with my age and face the invisibility that women "of a certain age" (I hate that phrase!) experience. The book is, in part, a biological fantasy about outliers -- Jeanne, despite her age, represents a fertility goddess with her preternaturally prolific gardens, and Josh, despite his youth, makes a convincing god of the hunt with the inevitability of his pursuit. That's in addition to the fantasy elements of Josh's visions and Jeanne's preternaturally prolific gardens.
I have to edit this book, bring back to it the tension between the two protagonists, add it to the other tensions and menaces. This is my job, to make these fantasies real and complex.
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