Woman on the Edge of Time

They stumbled together along a path and up two steps to his door that opened with a tug. Slam of the screen door behind them. He groped at the wall. “I’ll get the light.”

“No. Please. Let it stay dark.” She did not want to see his space, the strangeness of another time. She wanted to be in the simple space of bed, the space of body against body, constant in any time.

“However you like. I can see you with my fingers.”

She felt frightened when he said that, as if he could read her mind, her need, her memories. How much did Luciente absorb and know of her? Yet she felt his kindness radiating toward her and she relaxed and accepted it as she accepted the breeze flowing through the open window.

“What’s that out there?” Bird in the night.

“Whippoorwill.” His arm came around her, he was leading her to a low firm bed covered with softness, silky and clinging but thick, as if there could be satin pile. Kneeling, he drew her down and she half fell onto the invisible bed. As he helped her free of the flimsy and nestled down beside her he was naked himself, vastness of his body all about. The substantial velvet shock of skin on skin. Her head fell in. She grasped his back in handfuls. He slowly began to build her body out of the dark, painting her touch by touch so that each windowpane of skin glowed from inside.

Once more night gave her a big, generous mouth in her arched throat, her breasts burning like bonfires, her belly rolling under his hands. The head was different, smooth as warm rock. Flesh where no flesh had been. Skin smooth against her thighs as his head rested there, lips and tongue into her there where only Claud had done that before, so that the pleasure came down wet and she melted into him even before he took his mouth away and moved up on her and entered her. So full she felt. The salty sticky taste of herself on his mouth. Never again had she imagined she would feel that weight, the other, heavy body everyplace upon her, the tongues joined and moving as their sex moved together. So good, so good, every last finger spread on his big firm high buttocks, every finger alive to the tip and sunk in his sleek flesh. She felt huge and swollen with pleasure, so sensitive to each slide of his shaft and head as he rode into her, she felt as if she too were sunk into him. Once again to move joined and whole, full with him, open and throbbing, once again to feel the hot flooding rush of his coming, once again to tighten around him, still big enough, and feel him begin to move for her, moving up into her to increase contact, once again to feel her pleasure deepening and spreading like a chord struck in all octaves at once, sustained, played, and then held and held till it slowly faded into its overtones.

Her hands loosened and fell from him. He slowed in her, waited, ceased. Weight collected on her. They worked loose, eased into separation side by side. When she opened her eyes, she could dimly see objects, shape of table, chair with something slung over it. Trees rippled their leaves with a wet sound outside.

“Soon I must go back. Sleep. They wake us early every day. To nothing.”

“Each time when you leave us, we regret. We sadden not to help you.”

“This helped.” She sat up on an elbow. “But … how can I still be here without Luciente?”

“Luciente is helping.”

“Helping us … ?”

His knuckles gently trailed along her cheek. “How not? How else could we be together?”

She sat up straight and clutched the cover around herself. “Aware of us … in bed?”

“Pepper and Salt, don’t be silly. We all care for you. But you’re of a society with many taboos. It’s easier for me to hold you for all of us.”

“You’ll tell me next you planned this.”

“No, no.” Bee chuckled, caressing her shoulder. “But we commune running well with each other.”

“She … you … were giving me back Claud for a night.”

“I’m not Claud. Maybe I look like Claud did. Maybe I move like per. You feel so.” His voice rumbled. “Maybe I am potentialities in per that could not flourish in your time. But I am also me, Bee, friend of Luciente, friend of yours.”

She touched his chest lightly. “For sure. However you do it, whatever it means, it was fine enough. You know.”

In the morning she felt groggy and hung over when the Muzak came over the PA system with the male voice saying that it was time for patients to get up. As she stood in line for the showers, sensual memories played over her thighs, her belly. His hands upon her, his mouth, the weight and heft of him, the sleekness of his beautiful skin. Joy cut through the scum of the morning. She felt sleepy, fatigue whined in her skull, but she did not mind. The day for once beckoned. The day had a shape full of hope, the afternoon like a hill with a fine view that she would slowly climb.