He meant about wanting him. She told him the truth, as she would from now on. “I haven’t. I never said I don’t want you.”
His jaw tightened. “I remember statements to that effect.”
“I only lied to you about that once, Farooq. Anything I said or implied since then was because it seemed best not to complicate matters by bringing up what I thought you no longer wanted from me.”
“So you want me.” She came up on one shaking elbow, reached out a hand in confession, in supplication. “No. I must have more than silent invitation and surrender. More than my name all over your hands. Say it, Carmen. I must have the words. The words you once lavished on me.”
And she gave them to him. “I wanted you from the moment I saw you. I never knew there was wanting like that, that I was equipped to feel something so fierce, so total. I never stopped, and I can never stop craving you, Farooq. God knows how hard I tried. Whatever I said since we met again was me trying to spare myself pain and humiliation.”
His pupils, his whole body expanded in affront. “You’re saying I hurt and humiliated you?”
“No,” she cried out. “You only ever gave me every satisfaction and consideration. Even when you found me again and had every reason to feel betrayed and insulted, to exact punishment, you still treated me with restraint, gave me rights another man would have considered forfeit. You even wanted to give me much more than I could ever accept. I wasn’t protecting myself from you. I realize now I never feared you. I feared circumstances, reality, your complex status and existence, my own hang-ups. But I knew I would be injured anyway. I couldn’t afford to get hurt when I must be the mother Mennah needs and deserves.”
His teeth scraped together, his nostrils flaring. “So again I ask, what changed your mind?”
“Everything sank in,” she said, coming to terms with her own feelings and decisions. “The depth of your feelings and commitment to Mennah. Then last night I realized you still want me, and not just as Mennah’s attachment, as you at first made it sound.”
The ood trilling in the background launched into a haunting passage, as if scoring her words, underscoring the silence that expanded between them in their wake.
Still standing there like another wonder from the hyper-reality of this place, a colossus carved by gods of virility, he said, “Do you remember the night you walked out on me?”
“God, don’t…”
He cut across her plea. “Do you remember what I said?”
She fisted her hands on the lace cover trying to alleviate the stinging that felt like her nerves had turned into hot needles, all trying to burst out of her skin.
“I remember what I said,” she moaned. “Do you know how many times I wanted to take it back? Every moment I was myself, and not the single, working mother, that’s how many times. Every time I imagined how I would explain my behavior then, how you trapped me when you wouldn’t let me walk away without explanations, that I considered pretending to take your offer, pretend that had been my objective, but couldn’t do that to you. Not after you gave me a glimpse into what being you means, what kind of segregation and alienation you live in, unable to trust anyone’s feelings and intentions toward you…”
Something burst out of him, too furious and abrasive to be a laugh. “So you thought it better to let me think you were a promiscuous wretch than a mercenary bitch? You decided to stab my emotions as a man, my ego as a male, rather than consolidate my paranoia as a prince? Only you could think of something like that.”
“At least I retained part of the truth,” she quavered. “That my desire was real and for you, not what you can provide.”
His hands fisted. “While it lasted, you mean.”
So he still wanted more…assurance? No. That implied emotional involvement, and none of this had been about that on his side.
But…he’d said she’d “stabbed his emotions as a man.” Did that mean…?
No. No. Don’t even go there. Don’t even think it.
But the way he’d said it all…“You talk as if you bought my act, when the first thing you said was that you saw through it.”
“You keep putting the weirdest things in my mouth. When did I ever say anything to that effect?”
“You kept saying things like ‘save it,’ ‘more acts’ and commenting on my acting abilities.”
“The act I was referring to was that of the unbridled lover who couldn’t get enough of me. Now you tell me that was the truth. The only truth. I believed you the first time, every word, every touch instantly and completely. This time, I’m in need of proof.”
And she wanted to give it to him, wanted to give him everything in her. If he wanted it. It didn’t matter for how long.
She held out her arms to him again, shaking with the enormity of her love, the jump she was taking, the depths she was exposing. “Make your demands, Farooq. I’ll meet them. Whatever they are.”
He bared his teeth on a silent growl, his body tensing as if at the shock of a lash. Did her offer, the echo of his all those months ago, in words if not in meaning, hit him that hard? Because she was matching his material offers with the one thing she owned, could give, herself? Did he even want that much of her?
He still wouldn’t move, his eyes becoming almost scary in their focus. “I asked if you remember what I said. Not what I said after your dropped your bomb. What I said when I came in. That I was almost afraid to touch you, that I thought it would take us to the edge of survival, after two days of deprivation.” She lurched under the power of memory, the potential of reality. He started to move then, in steps laden with the danger of ebbing control, of near-explosion fierceness. “Use that insight of yours and picture how I feel now, what it will be like, after sixteen months.”
Her senses ricocheted within a body that felt hollow. Every breath, every tremor, electrocuted her. Every heartbeat felt like a wrecking ball inside her chest. He kept coming, cruel in his slowness, blatant in his intentions.
“I don’t need to picture anything,” she gasped. “It’s been tearing at me all that time, it’s tearing me apart now. Please, Farooq, show me what the edge of survival feels like…”
He gave a rumble that traveled through the mattress then through her, made her feel she was lying on a livewire. Still rumbling, he stopped above her, looking at her like a lion deciding which part of his prey he’d devour first. Then he started to undress. The sheer injustice overcame her enervation, sent her surging up to snatch the privilege for herself.