Rapture by Susan Minot Read Free Book Online

three weeks of sleeping together, Mark suddenly went cold. Familiarity didn’t warm him up. Just the opposite. Mark turned out to be one of those guys who’d gotten so used to living alone he couldn’t adjust to having a person around. One night after making love he retreated to the other side of the bed and explained that he couldn’t sleep if he was touching someone. This hadn’t been a problem for the previous three weeks which she pointed out and he said he was aware of that and actually that had surprised him, too. This, needing to be apart, was how he really was. Kay didn’t take it too hard since she’d always felt like a sort of impostor with him, though it didn’t prevent her from taking great comfort in the way he wrapped himself around her.
    Now that she was beside Benjamin again, it was hard to believe she’d been with anyone in between. But then it was pretty much impossible to think of how it was having sex with someone other than the person you were with. You could
think
of another person, but as long as your senses were occupied like this, you couldn’t really recall the details of another person, or really conjure up that other sex. It was like trying to remember an obscure melody with a marching band blasting in front of you.
    She had to laugh at herself, though. A week ago when she ran into Benjamin she’d felt so unsusceptible. It had been a year since she’d touched him—a
relatively
long time. She’d run into him at a screening—that was how he got here. They had both come alone, to one of those converted buildings over by the river, so they sat together. She found with enormous relief that she was able to sit beside him and to watch the movie and to reflect on the fact that the man who had spent so much time occupying her mind was now sitting unthreateningly next to her, perfectly normal, wearing a sort of army jacket speckled with rain, not causing her distress.
    The movie was one which left the audience feeling hopeful about life and it further buoyed her spirits. They walked out together, agreeing about the movie (which they usually did), about how the main guy was great but the woman miscast. They chatted like old friends.
    â€˜So you’ve been good?’ he said.
    â€˜I have, yah.’
    â€˜Good. That’s good. Me, too. I’ve been pretty good.’
    â€˜Good,’ she said.
    â€˜A little crazy maybe. But good.’
    â€˜Crazy’s good.’
    â€˜Can be. Unless it’s too crazy.’
    â€˜That’s true.’
    It was friendly and normal. She felt as if she were coming out of the other side of a tunnel with him. It was like the last scene in a movie when the two lovers meet again and show a tenderness for each other, despite all the hell they’ve been through, or in this case, the hell that their relationship was, and humanly accept each other’s imperfections and let bygones be bygones. He smiled at her with a full beaming smile, and instead of loathing him for it, as she certainly had in the past, she felt perhaps for the first time with Benjamin a grateful wave of goodwill toward him, an emotion untainted by lust or anger.
    They walked a few blocks together, stopping and starting—they both had other dinners to go to—and nothing could have been more natural as they shuffled along smelling the river air and the rain on the tar than for her to suggest that maybe they should get together sometime and have him say yes right away. It reminded her of one of the things she’d always liked about him, that he didn’t hesitate, that when she invited him someplace he never said he wasn’t sure or that he was too busy or that he’d call her later, but always let her know right then and there if he could make it or not, and if he couldn’t make it, would immediately suggest a time he could. Not a few of her friendships in the city had languished, then dissolved for lack of