The Dragon

They’re messing around in her car, with the passenger seat all the way down. The engine is turned off and they stay warm from the steam that’s rising off their bodies and coating the windows with an opaque screen. There are people coming out from the bar, smoking cigarettes and shuddering in the cold. They notice movement in the car, but avert their eyes.

“We can’t make it another late night again,” he groans, “I’ve got to go to work in the morning.”

“I know,” she says, “I can’t show up with bloodshot eyes again.”

But she keeps straddling him, her leg jammed against the gearshift. She unzips his jeans and lets her fingers creep in through the opening. He looks around, thinking suddenly about the smokers outside and about how he’s showing skin.

“Don’t worry,” she says, “They can’t see us.” She turns and purses her chapped lips to breathe new frost onto the window. She is like a dragon from medieval Japan, smoke tendrils curling out from her nostrils.

He thinks about his wife at home and for a moment has the inexplicable urge to tell the story about how his wife almost caught him once, making out with a girl from the martial arts center. He draws his lips together to keep the words from coming out.

She tugs the hood of her coat up, so that a vast blanket of material covers their bodies. Her face disappears into darkness and the cloak begins to rise and fall. Her back and shoulders seem continuous with the outside, with the line of loitering smokers who clutch at their bodies and rock against the tipsy wind.

Soon, she crawls up the length of his body and whispers, “Next time, let’s do this at your place. I’ll spend the night.”

“Promise?” he murmurs. Then he studies her face for faults and resolves to slay the head of the dragon. Outside, the smokers shift in place, stumbling drunkenly against one another.