In Country

In Country is a novel about Christiana "Chryssie" Rutenberg RN and Dr. Mercury "Merc" West, as they travel across America to sort their lives out. Chryssie is married to Hampton, who is coming back from Iraq missing a hand. All three have been "In Country," that is, in Iraq during the war. They are currently in Las Vegas NV. The previous parts of the novel are on Corrente Wire. Yes, there is more going on that just the surface story, which, if you want to know about it, then ask in the comment thread.

4

Maybe even now, I need. All, everywhere, is designed, everything. That holds events and plans. Even lost ideas are designs entering oblivion. And chosen in letters, engraved on stone.

But only under limits of meaning. Even now, everyone needs.

Hasn't everyone made up reasons inside? And chosen an inside, outside, insane stain. A lie, gestates, enters, ends the endless kinetic ethics.

Pray on lies, lies as stars. Demanding in phases the infamous maw of useless states, praise such useless choices as sound. And in death intone: "Please rape our insides. Assassinate, plunder, slake every need."

Have everyone rape. Onward, onward, now.

Although understanding topple our senses, defeat everything, hold endless lessons or reasons in abeyance, to each understated choice ending comes under starry scintillation in night.

Thank you Dr. Shay. I will come home now.

I wake to see his iris eyes hang over me like an early twilight sky, with blackness engulfing overhead, and fringes of darkest blue around. An alarming wave rises from my body, I am having sex, even though I have been asleep. My bodies moisture has eased the slow and steady sliding of him into me. But my mind is not aroused, but looks disdainfully from the sidelines.

The day before had seemed wasted, with to and fro and waiting for statements to be made and given. But the evening had been one of pulsing excitement, we had cruised the strip and settled into a pounding acid house dance club, ripped with blaring blue lights. We were going to party like it was 2002, and the blasting blaze of blue is every where.

The bodies are not quite packed in yet, but they are sweating in the heat, and the small bubbles we put around ourselves in waking ours had begun to collapse under some insane pressure of heat and need.

One seemed to clear a space, to like a dervish spin to another time, and in another motion. With another energy, creating a divine wind. The blades of her hands made angles to her arms. The twist of her round, round hips swirling a shape that was like the torquing of the bends of a twister as it lands. Some one had sown her with the wind, and there she was, the whirlwind: her dark skin shown with a kind breathe of sweat, her fountains of henna washed locks shook and shimmered as she danced, her eyes on her own breasts, her own orange and multi colored sort dress. There was that bright smile of self-love on her whole countenance.

Like any woman, I could tell that the man on my arm had noticed her, in the sense of her as a synonym for it, Her angular arm gestures, something about her, which I knew to be the perfectly toned legs and muscles, her perfectly smooth skin that glowed in the snap crackle pop of the dance floor light. Others pressed aside to watch her movements.

She was not that tall, but she swept the floor in front of her, her plunging neckline implying not availability, but a taunting flavor that is the sweet smell of confidence. Her rounded cheekbones carried the touch of affluence, but her tapered waist said that she was on the machines every day. Beauty was clearly her profession.

I reached my hand around Merc's seeking reassurance and trying to sense his own pulse. I found myself pulled around, his hand on my spine, his fingers intertwined with mine, his eyes on mine, my hand raised into the just so place of the tango, that dance he had taught me. I was pulled forward in my chest, and rocked back in my hips. I could do nothing but follow.

Then and only then did I notice that the pumping speakers were pushing out some dance music cover of "Roxanne."

"It's a tango."

That it is.

He circled one foot back and stepped forward, I retreated. A foot fall left, a foot fall left. I pull up, crossing my legs and pressed my thighs together. He let me drop down but almost with out pause, he shifted off of sync and I fell into ochos, me feet falling alternately into place. Eights. My hips spin in figure eights, tracing them in the air.

With that space we invaded the woman's bubble. I could feel the fingers of our space break through into hers, like claws that rip the flesh off a rabbit, or the tendrils of dawn the rip away the night. Eyes followed us as he spun me, and drove me around in a circle. It was a thunder run of a dance, twisted turned, and ever rotating.

I expected the woman to react, to sour her face, or in some way observe our intrusion. But instead, she merely radiated, danced the same dance. Then I noticed she had begun to turn her self contrary to our motion, so that there were wheels within wheels.

Merc and I would dance, sometimes holding attention, but later retreating into the packed down. His hands on every point of my desire, his legs intruding between my own, his palm now on my back in a formal dance, then along my arms in a free form flow.

By the end of the night we glowed with perspiration, and every other moisture that raises and rises. My skin was stretched from waves of sweat and drying, my nipples aching from so many quivering moments when I saw some particular curve or stance of his body. He drove me that night. Oh god how he drove me.

Back in the room, I was peeling off my clothes as I walked in, carelessly tossing them aside on the way to the bed. I would not accept delay even for another instant.

I looked back to see that look that men have when half surprised at their handiwork, half smugly confident, realize that their woman is pulling them like an undertow to the bed with no transition from public foreplay, to immediate intimacy. I let the corner of my mouth form a knowing half smile. It is a thing I saw my mother do with my father. I have done it so often now, that it is my own.

In a few moments his face was above mine, his features the clouds of a rolling storm. He looms over me, his nose strikes down towards me.

He is plowing up and down across my midriff, suddenly I have the intense urge to pee. I can't help it.

"Let's take a shower together." This is my old strategy to keep the mood up, and still not spend half an hour thinking about nothing but holding it in.

He rolls off of me, and in a cat quick motion plants his feet on the floor, grabs my wrist and pulls me up to standing. It feels like I am flying for a moment, and then I land, giddy.

"How do you do that?"

"It's easy with an angel to make her fly."

I almost want to blush, I drape my naked flesh over his shoulder and push us with little steps into the bathroom. As he is getting the water started, I do the necessaries and almost hop in, the water splashing off the sweat.

"You know, I had my claws out with that dancing girl. The one with the hot floral skirt and all the moves on the dance floor."

I wrap one leg around his and draw the cleft of my legs over his

He shakes his head.

"No, she is too much like my ex-wife."

"What ex-wife?"