Part 19 (1/2)
He walked stiffly across the hearth with her, trying to keep his snowsuit from falling down, and dumped her on the bunk, where she lay flopped like a puppy with her knees open and her little flat belly going in and out, in and out. There was an emerald b.u.t.terfly on her ash-blond m.u.f.f.
”All right,” he said firmly (but nicely). ”Now look. Who are you?”
Her mouth worked silently and her eyes sent Love you, love you, love you up to him. Her eyes didn't seem wild or druggy, but they had a funny deep-down spark, like something lived in there.
”Your name, kid. What's your name?”
”L-Loolie,” she whispered.
”Loolie who?” He said patiently.
”Loolie Aerovulpa.” Somewhere in his head a couple of neurones twitched, but they didn't connect.
”Why did you come here, Loolie?”
Her eyes glistened, brimmed over. ”Oh, no,” she sobbed, gulped. ”It's been so long, such a terribly long, long, way-” her head rolled from side to side, hurtfully. ”Oh, Dovy, please, there'll be time for all this later, I know you don't remember me-just please let me touch you, please-it hurt so-”
Soft arms pleading up for him, little b.r.e.a.s.t.s pleading with their puckered noses. This was getting more like the script. When Dov didn't move she suddenly wailed and curled up into a fetal ball.
”I've sp-spoiled everything,” she wept, burrowing wetly in the Hudson Bay blanket.
That did it, for a nice person like Dov. One of his hands went down and patted little Tarbaby's back, and then his other hand joined the first and his snowsuit fell down. Her back somehow turned into her front and curled up around him, and his knees were feeling the bunk boards while two downy thighs locked around his hips and sucked him in.
And he got a shock.
The shock came a bit late, the shock was wrapped around him and thrusting at him so that he had no choice but to ram on past her squeal-and after that he didn't have time to worry about anything except letting the sun burst in.
But it is a fact that even in Calgary you don't meet many maidenheads. It says something for Dov that he knew the way.
Now, a twenty-first-century maidenhead isn't a big thing, socio-psychologicalwise. On the otherhand, it wasn't exactly nothing, especially for a nice person like Dov. What it did was to move the episode one step out of the fantasy cla.s.s-or rather, one step into another fantasy. Particularly when Loolie said what girls often do, afterward. Looking at him anxious-humble, stroking his stomach. ”Do you mind? I mean, my being a virgin?”
”Well, now,” said Dov, trying to think decisively while peeling a squashed green b.u.t.terfly out of his neck. ”Truly, honestly, did you mind?”
”Honestly, no.”
He balanced the b.u.t.terfly on her head. ”It did hurt a little... oh, ooh,” she cried distractedly, ”your blanket-”
They were deciding the blanket didn't matter when Loolie looked at her little fingernail and started kissing his stomach.
”Dovy dear, don't you think, couldn't we,” she mumbled, ”I mean, it's only the first time I ever-try again?” Dov found himself agreeing.
The second time was infinitely better. The second time was something to challenge fantasy. It was so good that the sc.r.a.p of Dov's mind that wasn't occupied with the electric baby eeling under and over and around him... began to wonder. Virginal f.u.c.ks did not, in his experience, achieve such loin-bursting poetry, such fitting, such flowing surge to velocities sustained beyond escape, such thrust and burn and build with the first-time f.u.c.kee sobbing rhythmically, ”Love you, Dovy, Do-o-ovy,” giving everything to it in the best position of all until all the stages went nova together- ”... Don't sleep yet, Dovy, please wake up a minute?”
He opened one eye and rolled off; he was a very nice person.
Loolie leaned on his chest, wors.h.i.+pping him through her pale damp hair.
”I almost forgot.” She grinned, suddenly naughty. He felt her hair, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s move down his belly, down his thighs and s.h.i.+ns to his feet. Sleepily he noted a warm wetness closing over his big toe. Her mouth? Some kind of toe joy, he thought-and then the signal made it six feet back to his brain.
”Hey-y-y!” He smacked her b.u.t.t. ”That hurt! You bit me!”
Her face came around laughing. She was really neat-looking.
”I bit your big toe.” She nodded solemnly. ”That's very important. It means you're my true love.”
Her eyes suddenly got wet again. ”I love you so, Dovy. Will you remember, I bit your toe?”
”Well, sure I'll remember,” he grinned uneasily. The neurones that had twitched sometime back, boosted by stimulation from his toe, finally made connection.
”Hey, Loolie. What you said... is your name Aerovulpa?”
She nodded, yes.
”The Aerovulpa?”
Another nod, her eyes glowing at him.
”Oh G.o.d.” He tried to remember what he'd seen about it. Aerovulpa... The Family... Mr.
Aerovulpa, he gathered, was not in tune with the twenty-first century- maybe not the twentieth, even.
And this was an Aerovulpa virgin all over his legs. Ex-virgin..
”By any chance is your father sending a private army up here after you, Loolie?”
”Poor daddy,” she smiled. ”He's dead.” The far beacon in her eyes was coming closer. ”Dovy. You didn't ask me my whole name.”
”Your what?”
”I'm Loolie Aerovulpa... Rapelle.”
He stared. He didn't get it at all.
”I don't-are you some kind of relative?”She nodded, her eyes enormous, weird.
”A very close relative.” Her lips feathered his cheek.
”I never met you. I swear.”
He felt her swallow. Loolie drew back and looked at him for a couple of long breaths and then glanced down at her little finger. He saw she had a tiny timer implanted in the nail.
”You haven't asked me how old I am either,” she said quietly.
”So?”
”I'm seventy-five.”
”Huh?” Dov stared. No geriatrics imaginable could...
”Seventy-five years old. I am. Inside, I mean, me, now.”