Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Vol. 05: The Perfect Host [S.S. Col.] by Sturgeon Theodore

Author:Sturgeon, Theodore [Sturgeon, Theodore]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Modern Classics, Sci-fi, Short Stories
ISBN: 9781583947494
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 1998-01-15T02:00:00+00:00

The Dark Goddess

… More to a Marriage …

AGNES VAN CREEFT moved noiselessly to the doorway and peered inside. Jessie was lying quite still—no, not quite; her long nervous hands palmed and stroked the blanket as if they could not get enough of the touch of it. Jessie had lived every hour of her forty-odd years in this same hungry, tactile way, and she would, to the end. There were few enough hours left. The electric vitality of the woman was dimmed, but definitely present in the room; a glowing rebellion, a refusal to accept—not death; she seemed not to mind that—but dying.

The corners of Jessie’s deep-set eyes told her, apparently, that there was more in the doorway than the bulk of drapes. Her head jerked to it, swift as always.

Agnes was tall, large, with a soft face and a hard mouth. She came into the room with small motions of silent feet. “Jessie?” she murmured. “You’re awake?”

Jessie turned on her side and propped herself on one elbow. “Agnes! Well, what do you know. Where’s Tommie? Come in, girl. Sit down. No, here on the bed. Smoke? Oh, that’s right; you don’t smoke. Or drink. Or—what was that other thing?” She grinned up puckishly.

“I suppose you mean dance,” said Agnes. She sat carefully on the edge of the bed. “I sent Tommie on an errand. I wanted to talk to you.… Really, Jessie, you should take better care of yourself—bouncing and shouting like this.”

“What for?”

“You’re a very sick woman,” said Agnes. “I think you should have stayed at the hospital.”

“What for?” Jessie said again. “I want to be here with my own things while I—wait. You’re sitting between me and my ashtray.”

Agnes turned troubled eyes to the wide night-table. On it was a black-enamelled, pedestalled figurine of softly gleaming bronze—a seated nude, with the legs crossed above the knees, the shoulders tilted, the arms raised, bent, holding the palms out to right and left, delicately. The face, bland and secretive, pouting, would have been staring straight into Agnes’s had the carven eyes been open. Agnes made a small grimace and reached around the thing, being careful not to touch it, to get the heavy smoking-set which lay beside it.

With the tray in her hand, Agnes checked herself. “Jessie, do you think you really ought—”

“Give it here,” said Jessie, scooping it up and thumping it on the sheet beside her. She thumbed out a cigarette and lit it, drawing quickly and hard with her cheeks. The pulsing hollows and the surmounting double arches of her deep eye-sockets stressed her emaciation, and Agnes felt the familiar helplessness which had keyed her regard for this swift, slender, wiry creature ever since they had met. “Jessie, smoking can’t possibly—”

“Can’t possibly make me any worse than I am unless I set fire to my bed, and I can’t do that while I’m chaperoned. Now, Aggie, what’s on your mind?”

Agnes made her mouth even smaller. “Well, I—it’s a delicate sort of—I mean, I don’t want to intrude,

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