Page 78 of Full Contact

While we waited for the delivery, Mark told me about the meeting. Somebody from partnerships had wanted to know whether Peaches could be shown wearing a sweater from a local company. He’d explained that she didn’t wear sweaters, and that she would leave the room if anyone tried. The man from partnerships had asked whether that could be filmed.

“Could it?” Mark asked.

“No.”

The food arrived. We ate at the table, with the containers open between us. Peaches made her usual rounds of the table legs and settled under Mark’s chair.

When we were done, I put the leftovers away and we moved to the couch. Mark took the end by the lamp and pulled the canal history out of his work bag, a receipt marking his place about two-thirds through. Then he took a pair of reading glasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on.

I looked at him.

“What?” he asked.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wear those.”

He opened the book. “They’re for small print and long days.”

They had thin dark frames. I sat at the other end of the couch and picked up the remote without taking my eyes off him.

He turned a page. He was smiling.

I put on “The Golden Girls” with the sound low and put my feet up on the coffee table. I’d seen the episode enough times to follow it without hearing every word, but I turned it up a little when Dorothy walked into the kitchen. Peaches took the cushion next to me.

“Did you know,” Mark said, “that a mule on the canal could be stabled on the boat? They’d switch teams every few hours and bring the tired ones aboard to rest.”

“So they rode the boat they’d been pulling?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a good arrangement.”

I nodded toward the television. “Sophia gets a room and meals and spends most of her time insulting Dorothy. She’s doing better than the mules.”

“You admire that?”

“No, just commenting. She’s eighty. I wouldn’t expect her to pull a boat.”

Mark turned and pulled his legs up on the couch, with his toes touching my thigh. I slipped a hand under the hem of his pants and rubbed a thumb along the ankle.

Mark stopped turning pages. I missed a joke on the show and didn’t bother rewinding. The lamp was behind him, and his reading glasses had slid down his nose. Every few minutes he looked at my hand instead of the book.

Before the credits, he closed the book on the receipt and set it on the cushion beside him. He took the glasses off and placed them on the side table. Then he moved down until his shoulder was against mine and his mouth was very close to my ear.

“Do you need to see how it ends?” he asked.

“I know how it ends.”

I put the remote on the coffee table and turned toward him.

He kissed me slowly at first. Then his hand flattened against my chest and he shoved. I landed in the corner of the couch and pulled Mark in with me. One of his knees pushed up between mine. I started to unbutton his shirt, and he exhaled against my mouth.

I’d spent over a month learning how he liked to be touched. He liked it slow until he said otherwise, and then he said so. He liked my hand in his hair. When I bit his lower lip, gently, he pressed his hips down against mine and held them there.

Peaches left the far cushion with dignity and settled in the armchair.

“She’s judging us,” Mark said.

“She’s seen worse.”