Door Number Three by Patrick O'Leary

Author:Patrick O'Leary
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

Twenty

We were lounging on the bed, spent from sex, our bodies purring. Laura’s sweet scent (not a metaphor) was heavy in the air. It was one of the surprises of her body: all the juices tasted sweet. She was not an accomplished lover, but she had a curiosity, an eagerness and an eloquence with touch, as if she had thoroughly imagined every move. She lay on her back, her head at the foot of the bed propped up by a pillow, her brown hair strewn about her face. Her body was wonderful: the color of dark sand, smooth and hairless, full of burnished dips and mounds, rising and falling like a desert rippled by waves. The squares of her nipples seemed very natural now. My eyes traced them lazily with that odd detachment you feel when sated, amazed that you have no hunger for something so beautiful. I had expected more anatomical surprises than I found. The most noticeable was the charming absence of a belly button. Her hand lay on my leg, flicking the hairs back and forth. We kept passing each other silly smiles that bordered on laughter. I was sitting up, smoking. Imish was flying figure eights above us.

“Your body’s so different,” she said.

I had to laugh at that.

“It is!” she said. “The way your hair grows in one direction, like a cornfield.” She let her hand run down to my feet. “And your toes are so hard.”

“Calluses,” I said.

“You smell salty.” She breathed deep and exhaled. “And I love the way your—”

“Don’t!” I protested weakly. “You’ll kill me.”

“All those veins and ridges, and this … like a little toadstool.” She held it and looked at me. “It’s much bigger in the Memory Films.”

I chuckled. “I bet.”

“I liked it in me.”

I closed my eyes and groaned. It almost hurt to remember the pleasure.

“No more?” she asked, amused and disappointed.

“Not tonight,” I sighed.

“Why do you call it ‘fucking’?”

I giggled. “Geez, I don’t know. You want me to guess?”

“Sure.”

“Onomatopoeia. The sound of it. The tongue-clicking noise—like something plunking into water.”

She nodded. “It’s a wonderful sound.”

Imish was circling the room now, his wings making tiny helicopter sounds.

“What’s his problem?” I asked.

“Maybe he’s happy,” she answered.

We watched him for a minute. If you lived in Saul’s rectory for a few weeks, you got used to the bird being around, flitting in and out of rooms, fetching smokes, lighting on your shoulder while you read. There was something homely and reassuring about his presence, a little bit of strangeness that kept at bay the greater strangeness of the world around us.

“So how long have you known Saul?”

“Since I was five.”

“How could that be?” I wondered.

“He never told you?”

I shook my head.

She smiled, remembering. “He was my imaginary friend. One morning I woke up and he was there. I couldn’t see him, but his voice was in my head. It felt like a candle between my ears. This warm little voice that called me ‘Princess.’

“‘Morning, Princess. What’s cookin’?’

“I thought I was dreaming. I didn’t answer him right away.

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.