The Lear Library

“Come on,” Santiago had said, leading her to the rudimentary dance-floor in the small apartment. Kamila, however, was too distracted by the coffin.

Her mother had explained a few days before.

“Your grandmother was a little Romani, my pet,” she’d said, “and always did love the traditions.”

And so Grandma Jirina had a Romani open-casket funeral. All the weeping of the household passed before, and then she was seen off the mortal coil by the loudest, most raucous party that could be managed.

Kamila just thought it was… morbid.

Still she acknowledged that Santiago, bless him, was trying to honour her family’s wishes, and perhaps cheer her up a little. But the feeling just wasn’t there. Part-way through her uncle’s reel on the fiddle she disentangled herself from the line of dancers and slid over to the casket. She looked down at her grandmother – on her father’s side, and her father already looked a lot like her in old age. They both had bronzed, sun cracked skin with laughter-lines generously applied around their mouths and eyes.

Grandmother Jirina’s eyes were open. It was quite a surprise, but it brought the situation crashing back to Kamila as she saw them. Grandmother’s eyes had always been full of life and mischief, even when admonishing Kamila for not respecting her elders or her heritage enough. Never a bad word against Santiago though. Kamila had come to her once and asked why she never had anything negative to say about her boyfriend, even when Kamila’s mother sometimes did. With typical frankness, Grandma Jirina had asked,

“Why, do you want me to find fault?”

“What? No!”

“Because i can, if you need your family to disapprove, heh?”

“Grandma, no!”

“Okay, okay, is question not ulterior motive.” Grandmother had chuckled.

“That’s right, just a question.”

“Well… he makes you happy.” Her grandmother shrugged, “Just you be careful, heh? And use protection.”

“Grandma!” Kamila yelped, colouring. ”We’re not doing that!” Yet, she added in the privacy of her thoughts.

“Yet,” said her grandma, then cackled merrily as Kamila coloured further.

***

It was only when Santiago touched her hand that she realised she was on the verge of tears. Not wanting to disrupt the wake, she gave Santiago a significant look, and then headed for the apartment door. When they left, few people noticed them do so, and those that did nodded in understanding and sympathy.

They wound up in Santiago’s room, two floors up from Kamila’s home. The unkempt clutter on the floor and surfaces seemed to comfort Kamila a little, a point of stability in the world. She sat on the unmade bed, looking over at the cluster of archery trophies that were arranged proudly on a shelf. Santiago handed her a glass of water and she drank, feeling his arm slip over her shoulders.

“You feeling any better?” He asked, his voice soft and low. Kamila nodded a little.

“Sorry… was all a bit much, suddenly. I mean, everyone’s down there laughing and talking like nothing and -” Kamila felt her throat tighten involuntarily. Santiago’s arm squeezed her shoulders and his other hand took hers.

“I know,” he said and Kamila felt that he really did. The young man had not been without loss himself when Grandma Jirina had died. For Kamila, though, there was a sudden void in her world and she wondered if she’d ever grow accustomed to that yawning absence. She felt scared and oddly cold and she turned to slide her arms around Santiago’s waist.

He felt so warm.

“We don’t have to go back any time soon,” Santiago said, cradling Kamila’s head against his chest, stroking over the young woman’s dark hair as if he was calming a spooked animal. “Hey, you’re trembling,” he began, but Kamila’s lips found his in a sudden kiss. She WAS trembling, slightly and subtly, but it suddenly wasn’t grief that moved her. O at least, not only grief. he was just so… warm. A warmth that somehow soothed and agitated her at once. Her body felt like it was screaming out to have her share that warmth, to drink it down until the cold pit in her stomach was drowned and filled with Santiago’s fireplace glow.

“This isn’t right,” part of her said. “It was meant to be perfect and beautiful.” But other parts of her forced down that shrill thought. This was something, she told herself, that could be beautiful. And it was more than cold, artificial perfection; it was NECESSARY.

“Kamila,” Santiago gasped as he broke the kiss, and Kamila noticed in an abstract kind of way that she’d pushed him onto his back on the bed. His hands were placed with adorable chasteness on her waist. Kamila paused, flushed and looking embarrassed. A look at his girlfriend’s eyes, though, let Santiago understand a little more, and he nodded.

“Bottom drawer,” he said with equal embarrassment, and Kamila was very glad for the young man’s foresight.

The first time was too fast, she reflected; too driven by that lonely, howling need in her gut. She had slid down onto Santiago and held herself close to his shoulders so that his arms could encircle her. She had been close enough to feel every breath of her young love, their hips working in tandem as she grew warmer, burning fiercely against the cold around her. They exhaled breathless vows of love, and she took comfort from his hands in her hair, on the small of her back. She laid on top of him now, her head buried against his neck, her body burning now strong enough to drive back the chill of her grief. Santiago stroked a hand over her cheek and gently coaxed her out of hiding. He kissed her cheek, her lips, and she smiled. It hadn’t been perfect, it had been right. Desperate and animal and so very right.

Twenty minutes later, their second coupling HAD been perfect. Kamila remembered it afterwards only as disjointed images. Santiago’s strong, calloused fingers on her thighs, squeezing gently. Her own hands feeling the smoothness of his chest, running through his sweat-slick hair. The contrast of his tanned skin against  her paleness. Glimpses of the bed, the sheet slipping onto the floor, half-obscuring her discarded wake-dress. She’d realise later that she didn’t remember removing it at all. The smell of fresh, fevered sweat. The taste of lips. A feeling of happiness and the pleasure of wildfire in her veins that radiated outwards, curling her toes and stealing her breath. An odd sense of pride too, though at what she was uncertain.

They lay in bed, side by side. Kamila’s head rested on Santiago’s shoulder, her hair partially covering her face, her modest breasts pressed against his side. They talked in soft, murmured voices until she lost the thread of the conversation. Her mind drifted and her vision grew dimmer until slowly, reluctantly, she drifted away from the perfect moment snatched from despair.