Chapter 31 An American In Paris 3

• "I am at ease in my body," I say, wondering what I am going to say next. “Yes," I repeat, with a sense that my words are going nowhere at all, “with my body I am at ease.” And then I realize that the way has been cleared for me. It happens and it is so simple. “The shyness I feel? That exists only because of what I feel for you...”
• There is an infinity of silence; more than enough in which to die of shame. Suppose, I say to myself, she feels nothing like this for me? And then I notice she is no longer standing across from me. She has walked across the space between us, matching risk to risk. It is like the time I ran across the street from the Luxembourg to meet her for the first time. Now she has made the crossing to me.
• But I need time for the unique desire that is my desire for her, nothing in it borrowed from an impersonal need to possess a woman, to take her, to make her mine. I don’t want to make love to her, I can't possibly, |] am eight years old.