Battle

"What do you write?" she asked.
The red of the wine was reflected in the garnets that dotted her pale wrist.
"I write porn", he said.
She laughed, her hips swaying slightly, and in her smile he felt the undulations of purple waters.
"What do you write?" he asked.
"I write about sex", she said.
He laughed. She found the sounds too staccato for her taste.
"What's the difference?" he said.
"You write about body parts. I write about how people use sex to cover the loneliness inside them", she replied, and he saw her, sitting naked, crying, on an old floral couch by an abandoned guitar, as moonlight poured in from a white terrace. He pitied her then. She saw the pity, and put down the wine glass slowly. He remembered the day his mother sat him down when he was 13. "Pity is so unsexy", she said, right before giving him a slap. (God, even today, he shuddered at the oedipal implications - "Damn Freud", he'd always say, because it made the girls giggle.)

"I'm sorry", he said, as she pulled her seat apart from the table.
She shrugged. "For what?" she said, "You didn't do anything wrong."

Her shoulders reminded him of the second part of his mother's lecture: "All girls are liars", she had said, stirring the hot chocolate.

But by now he had learned to mix different kinds of drinks.

"I like you", he said, putting his arm on her white arm.

She laughed. "Am I supposed to find that flattering?"

"Yes", he said, and the look in her eyes changed for a moment.

He was reminded of the unsharpening of knives. He did not know, that at thirteen, her mother had sat her down, too. "All boys are liars", she had said, stirring sugar into the hot coffee, "but in bed they can be conquered."

She had grown to doubt the wisdom of this tale - too many nights had ended in tears - but in the tipsy vision of a piano-ed evening full of black satin ties, the little girl sharpened her battle knives.