BOOK ONE : LISTENERS AND READERS

:: SPRING 2001

46 :: assessment over breakfast :: 5/25/01

They woke up next to one another this morning. The soft, tiny hairs on her breastbone golden with light. He was suffering the dull pound of hangover; his mouth was dry and the tissues in his head felt swollen; he'd slept in his jeans and they'd gotten twisted and bunched in the night. But he was next to her, his arm across her belly, his hand on her far hip, his skin against hers. He'd smiled. Nuzzled his face into her neck and kissed it.

Now they are at the pancake house on the corner, taking thin bitter sips of their coffees and looking at one another across the table. Hispanic and Greek men at the tables around them eat toast, complain about traffic court, read the Sun-Times. Jakob's on summer vacation and Freya has the day off. He yawns, scratches at his stubble, and looks out at her groggily.

—Oh, he says.

—Drink your coffee, she says, smiling.

He nods, wraps both hands around his cup, guides it to his mouth, and sips. She watches him and she keeps smiling. The morning after she hooks up with someone is always a strange time for her: she always reassesses the other person a bit after knowing what they're like in the sack. And she assumes that the other person does the same to her. This process can make things stilted, uncomfortable, especially if the assessments go in different directions. Too often, guys have gotten what they wanted from her— a quick-and-easy fuck —and then decided not to put in the effort necessary to insure the availability of a repeat performance, making awkward gestures of distance as early as the following morning. She's also experienced the reverse with surprising frequency: making the decision to hook up with a guy with her 2am bar mind, having a pleasant enough time, but finding the guy suspiciously effusive and clingy in the light of day— desperate, in a word. Desperate for someone to hang on to. The more the guy praises her— undeservingly, she feels, cause half the time she hardly knows the guys who do this —the more she feels like nothing more than a replacement mother, just the closest set of available big breasts.

With Jakob things seem OK. She still likes him, and he seems to still like her. Maybe it's because they didn't have sex. They began kissing on the couch about halfway through Instrument, and, uncomfortable there, they moved to the floor, and grew tangled. Legs between legs. His hand up her shirt. His mouth moving over her neck, jaw and ear. His breath, its sound. The hot scent of beer on him. Drunk and hurried, she'd thought. She likes men that way. It reduces them down to an intensity of focus and she finds that desirable. To see Jakob, normally so diffuse and abstract, behave single-mindedly, like an animal: that is what she wants.

Come to bed with me, she'd said, and he'd followed her in there. She lit a candle and they got back into bed and made out some more: they took off one another's shirts. She teased the dark whorl of hair on his stomach, ran her tongue along the sensitive inch of skin between his navel and the band of his jeans. But when began to unzip him he tensed. You okay with this? she'd asked, gently, and he held the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes as though he were ashamed and said I just don't know if I'm ready yet.

It's OK, she'd said, it's not a problem. Don't worry. And she kissed him some more and after about two seconds of that he was back into it. Eventually she took off her pants— she asked first— do you mind if I take these off? He didn't. In fact he seemed happy to go down on her. His tongue and fingers there—intensity of focus —and a pair of her own fingers in her mouth brought her to orgasm. A series of contractions yielding sparks. They kissed for a while more and things tapered down into sleep.

She doesn't think he ever came. If it doesn't bother him— and it doesn't seem to —then it doesn't bother her. She'll give him one when he wants one. But she wonders how it might be affecting the way he thinks about her during this assessment period. In a way it eclipses one of the normal questions that hovers over the morning-after breakfast: what's next? Once you've had sex with a person the questions that arise tend to fall into the "relationship" category: will we have sex again? When? Will I need to make concessions in order to continue this? Am I willing to make those concessions? What concessions will you be willing to make? Etcetera. After thinking about it for a moment, she supposes that receiving oral sex is a type of sex, but she has trouble seriously thinking that she's had sex with a person who hasn't even taken all his clothes off around her. So those questions, for the moment, seem precluded.

She closes her eyes for a minute, listens to the sizzle and clatter of the space.

—Oh, she says, that reminds me.

—Mm?

—Did this guy Thomas ever call you?

—Thomas, Jakob says. —It's not ringing a bell.

—It's this guy I know through the record store, Freya says. —He's working on this project that I thought might interest you, something about mapping the sounds of the city.

—That does sound interesting, Jakob says.

—Well, I know that's the kind of thing you're interested in, so I gave him your number. But that was a couple of weeks ago.

—No, Jakob says. —I haven't heard from him. You say his name is Thomas?

—Yeah, Thomas. Thomas Wakatami. He does a website on drone music; dronescape.org or something like that. Actually, he gave me his e-mail address to give to you, I left it at my desk, in the store. If you're interested I'll get it to you.

—OK, says Jakob.

The waitress comes by, places plates of eggs and potatoes and bacon down in front of them. —Here ya go, she says. —Enjoy.