Read Online Homing by Henrietta Rose-Innes - Free Book Online

pressing into her skin. Coarse damp hairs from his armpit pushed against her cheek and ear. Everyone was shouting, the pool thrashed into a glittering tumult: Give us an A give us an R … She pressed closer and breathed him in. Slipping her arm shyly around his waist, she felt his skin along the whole length of her body: smooth across his back, goosebumped on his arms and thighs, still cool from swimming. The gooseflesh left his skin and swarmed over hers. A jolt passed through her stomach, her chest and throat, all the way up the back of her neck and into her scalp.
    It was over soon. As the race ended, he mashed her nose into his chest in a full-body hug, then pulled away and left her burning.
    Afterwards, she couldn’t find him in the crowd or in the press for the school buses. But for weeks afterwards, she could close her eyes and smell his sweat, feel the prickle of his hair. Spiky, with that snaky tail at the nape – not a style that would be tolerated at her own rather prim school. It was enough to shake her, sitting in class; to make the whole left side of her body tingle with confusing heat and coolness.
    The men were, of course, disappointing. There were only seven of them to the ten women, and the one obvious catch, a tall photographer with cheekbones, was already looking bored and restless. There was a red-faced man with a Father Christmas beard, who’d had too many cocktails by the time they arrived; a worn ex-surfer who kept making nervous, risqué puns; a pointy-featured stockbroker who seemed angry to be there at all. The others were unobjectionable but bland. One, a doctor, had features so unmemorable that every time Erin tried to focus on them his face seemed to blur and swim. There was a swarthy guy whose blunt, forceful build was not, in theory, unattractive, but when she approached him she met a blank in his eyes, as if she were a boulder blocking some more interesting view. After the two of them had stood for a minute or two staring sightless over each other’s shoulders, she drifted on with an acid smile.
    Erin noted with fatigue that a certain amount of pre-selection had occurred for this event: everyone was white, middle class, of an age. That was, she supposed, what people requested. She’d known these people all her life.
    Alice gave her an encouraging wink – clearly, man number seven was one she thought Erin would like. So he had the disadvantage, like all set-ups, of demonstrating much too clearly the kind of man one’s friends think one deserves. Nobody, that is, they might actually want for themselves. This one was a round, reddish guy with no straight edges in his tight-packed body. As they stood at the braai, she watched his plump Elvis lips and felt herself sinking into wordlessness. Her mouth glued shut and she had to take sips of beer just to keep it from sealing over completely. It wasn’t shyness, as it had been when she was a girl – just a terrible sense of predictability that made all words seem already spoken.
    Erin sighed. These men were probably pleasant enough, but who could tell? She was so often wrong about people.
    She closed her eyes and tried to remember with her body: the fizzing anticipation, the ache at the back of the throat, the need to touch.
    My god, she thought, I used to tremble with desire .
    Laughing quietly at herself, she looked down at the glass of beer growing warm in her hand. If she drank enough she’d be able to pretend, to read her body’s blurred and softened boundaries as something like lust. But right now, here with these people, she didn’t want to allow that. So she backed away from the scene, moving to the edge of the deck. The air was cool there, beyond the glow from the fire.
    “Are you that bored?” Alice joined her, and together they stared out at the darkening lawns. Erin could hear frogs, nightbirds; she’d forgotten that they were in the countryside.
    “Not your type, then? That Michael,” Alice ventured, lighting up a