We did not speak as I moved to wash the towel we'd laid beneath us, and then the sheets. Rinsing away the blood of my body. He'd already washed the blood off of himself, back in the shower, alone. The look that he gave me when he saw the stains on the sheets made me tiny. And I walked off to wash them, strangely ashamed.

Intimacy only lasts so long, and climax is the death of desire. Climax was the end of his wish to deal with the difficulties that are the workings behind a girl, though they'd fascinated him so before. He turned away. We did not speak.

"We must trust each other an awful lot" he pondered, clothed by the time I returned.

Then why am I so worried about you going back to see her tonight?

"Yes," I answered. Yes we must.

He left before day break. He was on the plane by dawn. I slept on an uncovered mattress, clothed in bloody panties and an empty feeling that I'd made a terrible terrible mistake.