Jack felt the weight of her breasts on his stomach as she slid his penis into her mouth. Looking back, Jack would concede that Mister Penis had been a bit reckless ever since. The corresponding movement of Jack's hips was involuntary, but his excitement wasn't entirely pleasurable. (The boy was afraid that Mrs. Machado might swallow him!) "What's happening?" he asked her.
Perhaps Chenko had been wrong to assume that Mrs. Machado wasn't very agile, because she shifted her weight and changed her position so suddenly that Jack was unable to respond with any movement of his own. Surely Mrs. Machado was not a magician, but Jack didn't see her take off her tank top or her bra--and how she managed to remove her powder-blue gym shorts and her panties would remain a mystery to him. He got only a glimpse of the huge hairy place between her legs--that is, huge in comparison to his earlier sightings of Mrs. Oastler's and Emma's places of business. And if his mother's tattoo of a Rose of Jericho was artistically consistent--that is, the flower within the rose was always the same--Jack realized (at the moment Mrs. Machado mounted him) how the real thing was remarkably different in each case. On the irrefutable evidence of these formative examples, it would be Jack Burns's unfortunate fate to believe that every vagina was unique.
When Mrs. Machado straddled him, holding his hips between her thighs, he asked again but more urgently: "What's happening?" Jack
would have been more frightened (when she guided the little guy inside her) had he not been so familiar with those intricate folds of the flower hidden in a Rose of Jericho. At least he knew where he was going. The boy's remaining fear was that all of him would somehow slip inside Mrs. Machado--he felt that small.
His hips still suffered the involuntary urge to move, but he couldn't move with Mrs. Machado's weight on him. A rivulet of sweat ran between her breasts, which surrounded his face. "What ees happening, my dahleen Jack, ees that Meester Penis ees going to cry."
"Cry how?" he managed to ask, although his voice was muffled between her breasts.
"Tears of joy, leetle one," Mrs. Machado said.
Jack was familiar with the expression, but its application to his penis was alarming. "I don't want Mister Penis to cry," he said.
"Eet ees happening any meenute, dahleen. Don't be afraid--eet won't hurt."
But Jack was afraid. (Hadn't Chenko warned him about ending up underneath her?) "I'm scared, Mrs. Machado!" he cried.
"Eet's almost feeneeshed, Jack."
He felt something leave him. If he had tried to describe the feeling to The Gray Ghost, she would have told him that he'd lost his soul. Something momentous had departed, but its departure went almost unnoticed--like childhood. Jack would imagine, for years, that this was the moment he turned his back on God--without meaning to. Maybe God had slipped away when Jack wasn't looking.
"What was that?" he asked Mrs. Machado, who had stopped grinding against him.
"Tears of joy. Eet's your first time, I theenk."
Not his first time, in fact. (The first time, Jack's tears of joy had hit Penny Hamilton in the forehead.) "It's my second time," the boy told Mrs. Machado. "But the first time I forgot to breathe. This time was better."
"Ha!" Mrs. Machado cried. "You can't keed me, dahleen."
He didn't try to persuade her. When a hundred-and-fifty-pound woman is sitting on you, and you weigh only seventy-five pounds, you don't argue. Besides, Jack was fascinated to watch Mrs. Machado dress herself. She did such a leisurely job of it, especially when you consider how quickly she had undressed. Mrs. Machado continued to sit on him while she put on her bra and tank top; finally she had to get off him when she put on her panties and the powder-blue gym shorts.
There was a wet spot on the bed, which Mrs. Machado wiped away with the towel. She put the towel in the laundry hamper and filled the bathtub only half full, instructing Jack to wash himself--Mister Penis in particular. Jack was aware of a strong, unfamiliar smell, which went away in the bath. What was strange about the smell was that he couldn't decide if he liked it.
The wet spot was still damp when Jack got back in bed, but Mrs. Machado had fetched a pair of clean boxers, which she told him to put on. He lay down--not on the wet spot, but near enough to it that he could touch it with his hand. The spot was cold, and Jack felt a chill--as if he were kneeling on the stone floor of the chapel with his back turned to God, or maybe one of those women attending to Jesus in the stained glass above the altar had slipped into bed with him.
He knew that the stained-glass woman was a saint, because she was invisible. Mrs. Machado couldn't see her, but Jack could feel the coldness coming off her unseen body, which was as hard as the stone floor of the chapel and as forbidden to touch as the stained glass above the altar, where she had come from.
"Don't go," he whispered to Mrs. Machado.
"Eet's time to sleep, my dahleen."
"Please don't go!" the boy begged her.
Jack was somehow sure that the stained-glass saint was waiting for Mrs. Machado to leave. He didn't know what plans the saint had for him. He touched the cold, damp spot in the bed again, but he didn't dare reach beyond it, not knowing what he might feel.
"Tomorrow we'll wrestle like crazy," Mrs. Machado was saying. "No more keecking, just wrestling!"
"I'm afraid," Jack told her.
"Does eet hurt, dahleen?"
"Does what hurt?"
"Meester Penis."
"No, but it feels different," he said.