Cindy came over to help me paint my new apartment. The city was sweltering. When we pried open the window a cloud of white pigeons whooshed up. “Neat,” Cindy said. “Maybe they’ll come back. You can wake up every morning to cooing.”

We painted for a while. I poured fresh paint into Cindy’s trough. “Yum,” Cindy said. “I just love the fresh creaminess of it.” She dipped her brush in. She worked the brush back and forth against the bare wall. Foop foop. Foop foop. Back and forth. Then up and down. I watched her slender arm, the motion of her wrist, the grip of her fingers on the handle. Foop foop. “This sound really makes me hot,” she said. “Whew.” She set her brush in the tray and in a single motion drew off her jersey. “Catch,” she said, tossing it to me. Ignoring the brush, she picked up the roller, and I thought she would go back to painting, but she didn’t. She brought her fingers up, pinched her nipple. “Do you like the color?” she asked.

“I have to pee,” Cindy said. It was our first night. The mattress on the floor. No other furniture.

“Were you listening?”

“Sound travels at night. I couldn’t help it. It’s a nice sound.”

Cindy laughed. “Before freshman year we had adventure camp. Canoeing. Mountain climbing. Sleeping under the stars. The guides were this young couple. They both had tongue piercings. The sound at night was so clear I was afraid to get up to pee. I lay tight holding myself. I could hear the guides. The kiss of their tongue jewelry. The shy squeak of his cock going in.”

Cindy’s little sister came down from Boston. “She’s sad,” Cindy told me in the kitchen. “She needs someone. Someone like you.” Her hand crept under my pants as we kissed.

Just then Cindy’s sister came in. “Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry.” “It’s okay,” Cindy told her. “We’re just getting ice.”

We took blankets down to the park like everyone else. A perfect evening, not a cloud in the sky. Soon it would be dark. Soon the fireworks would start.

Cindy shivered with the first blank boom. I held her shoulders and pulled her back against me. Orange spiders shot up and spread out directly overhead. We lay back. “This is so neat,” she said between bursts of blue and green. “It makes me want to come. It makes me want to have you in my ass.”

My erection was instantaneous. I looked about. Everyone was looking up. Everyone was oohing and ahhing. I shifted myself so I was sitting under Cindy. “Could we?” I whispered. Cascades of red and orange. A million embers dripping. She did something. For a moment I was free, and then I felt the hot velvet. Tight, so tight. “Wait,” Cindy said. She turned and dipped and made me slippery with her mouth. “Now try it.” I pushed in. “Ahh,” said Cindy, an impossibly soft syllable filling the two seconds of silence before white hot eyes exploded black and heaven burned the earth.