They finished with her on her stomach and static on the radio. His arms were laced between hers and he held her head between his hands, planting kisses on the back of her neck. He looked down at the blessed curve in the small of her back and the Adinkra symbol adorning her spine and whispered profane offerings to her. She smiled beneath him and sighed her assent. He was quietly proud that he had finally figured out how to talk to a woman when he was inside her. She pushed back against him and his breaths had become quick and shallow. He spilled seed in her and kneeled between her legs to blow cool air on her back.

It had been nine days since the last cycle of pills ended. They were officially Trying. He had come in from work and washed the cigarette smoke, the hustle, the false truths and bad poetry from his pores. It was nearly five in the morning and he was wide awake. He had passed up the smoke that usually took him down just enough to get to sleep. “You know, me and Keva is trying to have a baby.” His boy looked at him blank as a new notebook. “I heard something about weed and drink making for slow sperm, you know, we might mess around and have a fat kid or some shit,” he laughed.

He left the shower and tuned the radio to the oldies slow-jam station and came to her bed naked. He woke her with a kiss on her belly button and promises to do more. Eleven minutes later, the radio, absently kicked to the floor, offered a blend of slow jazz and static.

He’s going to short me on my six minutes, she thought to herself. Laying on her side, she leaned over and kissed him on his forehead.

“How you feelin’ baby?”

You’re beautiful, he offered her lazily.

She had thought to compliment him for their accomplishments that night, but decided he was a lost cause. He had sworn to give a minimum of six minutes of post-coital convo as a compromise for these middle-of-the-night sessions that kept her up long after he’d found the sleep of innocents. Forty-five seconds later he was breathing deep breaths into his pillow.

She found the tub still wet from his shower and thought of the first months, when they had been reluctant to wash off each other’s scents after sex. They’d met at First Friday, where he was working as a photographer. He’d taken her picture and slipped her a card saying: “This is my camera and I have your beautiful smile inside here. You should call me so I can give it back to you.” She’d turned out not to need it; they talked all night between shots. When the party ended, she’d taken him home and promptly screwed him in the closet of her new condo. The strange thing, though, was that afterward they’d kept talking. When the sun came up, they’d walked down to the promenade in Brooklyn Heights to watch the ships and then had breakfast at a place he knew off Washington Avenue. Eight months later, her closet was full of his cameras.