Bone Fire by Mark Spragg Read Free Book Online Page B

thing it is you’re doing.” She held the glass out to him, her arm dripping on the bathmat.
    “All right.”
    He leaned over and took the glass from her and she slid back into the water, her knees folding up out of the bubbles. He took asip, holding it in the back of his mouth, wondering if Kenneth was having trouble with the dams.
    “It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” Her face was turned toward him, watching as he swallowed.
    “It’s good.”
    “Just good?”
    “I thought it might be better.”
    “It’s not a crime to enjoy yourself.” She turned the hot-water faucet with a foot, until it started drizzling. “If you’re done you can set it there on the floor.”
    He placed the glass on the bathmat, the sides already slick with condensation.
    “The ranch looks better than I remember,” she said.
    “You were only gone three weeks.”
    “It always looks better than I remember.”
    “I might open this window a little,” he said. The boy was probably now at the headgate. He imagined the water boiling in the chute as the slide was raised, the smell of alfalfa and clover.
    “If you’re hot you could always take off those heavy clothes.”
    She was widening and closing her knees, the movement stirring the bubbles into islands.
    He pushed the bottom sash up a couple of inches, watching the steam bleed out through the opening. “I’m okay.”
    “I forgot,” she said. “I forgot we don’t do that anymore.” She leaned over the side for another sip, the water sheeting and finally beading across the blues, reds and yellows of the tattoo that covered her shoulders. Then she slipped back into the water, with her head gone under and her feet up against the tiles by the faucets.
    When they were new to each other, right after Kenneth was born and Paul was the age Kenneth is now, they’d settle the older boy in his bed and skid the cradle into the hallway outside the bathroom door where they could hear the baby cooing and check on him if he wasn’t. She’d take him by the hand, leading him in tosit with her while she bathed, and they’d talk about how both boys might turn out, and what she imagined she’d do with her life, asking about his past but rarely speaking of her own. When they ran out of conversation, she opened her legs and let him watch as she languidly caressed herself, one hand slowly circling, the other fingers pressing against a nipple and finally squeezing the whole breast, then the other, and he unsnapped his shirt and lowered his pants and pulled at himself just as slowly, watching as she stiffened and rose against her hands, imagining them as his own.
    Afterward he cleaned himself at the sink, gaping stolidly at the big, grateful, unmarried son of a bitch in the fogged mirror, still fumbling with his pants and shirt and feelings of mild indecency. He never once believed it would go on like this forever, thinking of it as a sort of prelude, but after two years it finally occurred to him that nothing more interesting was likely to happen, that their evenings together in the bathroom held no more significance for her than the occasional load of laundry she washed and dried. She was just helping out.
    He still masturbates, alone at night in his bed, but not for the pleasure of it. Now he jacks off so he can sleep.
    She rose up out of the water sputtering, smoothing her hair back, and drank from the glass again. “I’ll bet you’re wondering what the Guides are thinking,” she said.
    “I wasn’t, but that’d be fine.”
    She settled and closed her eyes, pinching her nose and then inhaling through the left nostril, clamping it shut, exhaling through the right. Back and forth. It’s a technique she’d spent some time trying to teach him, but it only left him feeling uncomfortably lightheaded.
    She dropped her hand away, breathing in heavily. The bubbles were completely gone from the water’s surface and her breasts bobbed in front of her tucked chin. “They’re ready.”
    “I guess I