Part 16 (1/2)
He swung off the cloak and folded it over me, then holding me inside it and against him.
”I'm afraid I don't have any body heat to keep you warm.”
”I don't care.”
We kissed each other quietly, and then I said, ”Don't ever make love to me if you don't want to.”
”If you want me to, I shall want to.”
”I just don't believe that. There may be times-”
”No. My emotional and physically simulated equilibriums never alter.”
”Oh.”
”I also swallowed a couple of dictionaries someplace.”
We dragged the mattress off the couch. The bed under it had a padded top-surface and was less used. I pulled the almost new, dappled rugs, faintly scented from their recent cleaning, over us. Under them, I lay a long while, caressing him, exploring him, making love tohim .
”Do you mind if I do this?” I asked timidly, quite unable to stop.
”Oh, I mind dreadfully.”
”I'm probably clumsy.”
”Far from it. You're becoming a wonderful lover.”
”How would you know? It can't mean anything to you.”
”Not as it would to a flesh-and-blood man. But I can still appreciate it.”
”Artistically,” I sneered. ”When the proper circuits are put in action.”
”Something like that.”
”Egyptia-” I murmured, drowning in his hair, the taste of his skin-unmortal and yet flesh-the flesh of a demon-”if you didn't find pleasure with Egyptia-”
”You make it sound like a cafe we were looking for. I did.”
”Yes... She'd be terribly clever.”
”Egyptia is totally pa.s.sive. The pleasure is in finding what pleasesher .”
Minutes later, as the strange wing-beats began to stir inside me, I couldn't prevent myself from saying, ”I wish I could find what pleasesyou . I wish, I wish I could.”
”Youplease me,” he said. It was true. The delight mounted in his face as my delight mounted within me-different, yet dependent.
”You fool,” I gasped, ”that isn't what I mean-”
When I fell back into the silence, the room of the apartment thrummed gently. It had the scent of oranges, now, and glue, and paper bags...
”I can stay here with you,” he said, ”or I can start work on this place.”
”I want you with me,” I said. ”I want to sleep next to you, even if you can't-don't-sleep.”
”You mean,” he said, ”you aren't going to ask me if I wouldn't rather be anywhere except beside you?”
”Am I as paranoid as that?”
”No. Much worse.”
”Oh.”
”Your hair's changing color,” he said.
”Yes. I'm sorry.”
”Are you? I think you may be quite pleased when the change is complete.”
”Oh, no. It will be horrid.” Curled against him, lulled and childishly almost asleep, I felt safe. I was whole. We were in a boat, or on the back of a milk-white bird.
”Birds?” he asked me softly. ”As well?”
”Yes,” I said. ”And a rainbow.”
He must have left me at some point during the night. When I opened my eyes in the effulgent, now- curtain-filtered sunrise, there was blue sky on the ceiling, blue sky and islands of warm cloud, and the crossbow shapes of birds, like swifts, darting statically between. And a rainbow, faint as mist, yet with every transparent color in it, pa.s.sing from the left hand corner by the door, to the corner nearest the window. It was real. Almost.
He was sitting on top of a rickety old chromium ladder he must have borrowed from somewhere in the building, from the bad-tempered caretaker perhaps. He was taking a devilish joy in my amazement as I woke and saw.
”But you're a musician, not an artist,” I said dreamily.
”There's a leaflet in with the paint which explains how to do this sort of thing. Being a machine-well, it's easy for me to get a good result.”
”It's beautiful-”
”Then wait till you see the bathroom.”
I ran into the bathroom. The ceiling was sunset in there, soft crimson nearnesses, and pale rosy distance.
A white whale basked in the shallows of the clouds.
”Awhale in the sky?”
”Make the metaphysical a.s.sumption the bath is the sea. And that the whale's a d.a.m.n good jumper.”
Five days later, you came up the cracked steps, opened the door, and walked into somewhere else.
He would ask me what I wanted, and we'd work on it together. Ideas escalated. He worked most of the nights, too. Once I woke up in the dark, crying for some reason I didn't remember, and he came back into the bed to comfort me, and in the morning we and the rugs had become glued together and had to soak ourselves apart in the bath. His invention, and his mechanized knowledge of the city and its merchandise and price ranges, meant that fantastic things were done for very little outlay. I only cut a small way into the three hundred I.M.U. Admittedly I lived on sandwiches and fruit and wonderful junk foods found in sidewalk shops. My mother's thorough understanding of nutrition, demonstrated in the perfectly balanced meals served from the mechanical kitchen and the servicery at Chez Stratos, the awareness of the best times to eat what, and why, and the grasp of vitamins, in which she had tried to educate me-all that stayed with me like a specter. But I didn't get pimples or headaches, or throw up.
Probably she'd nourished me so well that I was now immune. The way I ate and lived, of course, the way I slept and worked and made love, all these were enormous barriers against my ever calling her, although: ”Hallo, Mother, this is Jane,” I said, over and over in my head a hundred times a day. Once I said to him, ”I think I'm afraid of my mother.” And he said, holding my hand as we walked up the stairs, ”From the sound of it, it could be mutual.” Puzzled, I demanded an explanation. Smiling, he sidetracked me, I forget how- What would she say about this apartment? She wouldn't cry out with delight, every time she came into it, as I do. ”How beautiful!” No, she wouldn't say that. Even the bra.s.s bed, with the headboard like a huge veined leaf, wouldn't impress her, and anyway, the bra.s.s bed came later...