A Friend of the Earth by T. C. Boyle

Author:T. C. Boyle
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2000-09-10T04:00:00+00:00

Andrea murmured something, a snippet of dream dialogue, and rolled over. The windows were infused with the green light of seven–thirty in the morning, and when Tierwater lifted the covers and slid in beside her, the tranquil hot familiar odor of the nesting animal rose to envelop him, the smell of his wife’s body, her beautiful naked slumbering body, rich in all its properties and functions. He nuzzled at her ear and worked an arm underneath her so he could cup her breasts in both hands. He was excited. Burning up with it. She murmured again, moved her buttocks against him in a sleepy, precoital wriggle. ‘You’re back,’ she said. ‘I am,’ he whispered, and felt her nipples harden. He was thinking of Jane and Sherry and half a dozen other girls and women he’d known, and then she turned to face him, to kiss him, and he was thinking of her, nobody but her.

Afterward, they lay side by side and stared up into the rafters as the house began to stir beneath them. There was the sound of a flushing toilet, then the wheeze of the refrigerator door and the low hum of Sierra’s tape deck as the muted throb of gloom and doom filtered up through the floorboards. Voices. Sierra’s, Teo’s. The swat of the screen door, and then Ratchiss’ ‘What ho!’ and Teo’s whispered response.

‘You smell like smoke,’ Andrea said.

‘Me?’ Tierwater knew he’d gone too far, knew they’d suspect arson once the machines went down, and he’d heard the first of the planes rumbling in to attack the fire even as he legged it on up the trail home. The lookout at Saddle Peak or the Needles must have been up early, because the helicopters were in the sky before he’d had a chance to catch his breath, and within the hour the drone of the bombers saturated the air and he looked up to see three of them scraping overhead with their wings aglow and their bellies full of fire retardant.

She was up on one elbow now, watching him. ‘You didn’t start a campfire out there last night, did you? Because that would be stupid, really stupid – ‘

‘Are you kidding? It went great, every minute of it. I was like the Phantom and the Fox rolled into one, so efficient it was scary. It was a rush, it was.’

He could feel her eyes on the side of his face, the eyes that brooked no bullshit and reduced every complexity to the basics. She was sniffing – first the air, and now him – hovering over him, her breasts soft on his chest, ruffling his hair, sniffing. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but you smell like you spent the night in the chimney.’

‘Maybe that’s it,’ he lied – ‘I started a fire when I came in, just to take the chill off the morning.’

That seemed to satisfy her, at least for the moment – until she heard the bombers for herself, that is, and walked down

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.