The place where she had been joined to his chest was a raw wound between her shoulder blades. He himself was as intact as ever. Her buttocks were warm, sweaty, against his loins, and he drew back from her. His member was as beautifully relaxed as that of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. As her own life awoke in her, she began to stir. Adam looked around quickly to see if he might have a daylight glimpse of God himself retreating from his handiwork, perhaps stepping into the deep shadows of a grove of trees. Always, always before now, God had come to Eden in the cool of the evening, in the hushed mystery of dying light, when dusk veiled vision. But the God of his childhood, for whom Adam still longed, had been a forthright god of sunshine, or rain, and diurnal weather. That God of childhood had wanted the brightness of noonday about him—that pinnacle in time when equality spread out on all sides, and objects tucked their shadows under themselves as securely as hens sat on their nests.
