eXistenZ by Christopher Priest Read Free Book Online Page B

stopped off at a Perky Pat to buy some takeout burgers, then rented a room at a place called the Salmon Falls Motel. The ill-lit room was furnished with old, dark wallpaper, a grimy carpet that once had been colored orange, and two large double beds. They each sat on one of the beds, putting the paper bags and food containers on the floor between them. They ate hungrily, dropping pieces of salad and gobbets of relish on the floor.
    Neither of them said anything. Pikul was thinking about the rest of the night and having to share a bedroom with a woman who looked and acted the way Allegra Geller did. Even tired, injured, and frightened as she undoubtedly was, she acted casual, often affording him quick little smiles he found tantalizing and enthralling. He couldn’t figure her out, though. She wasn’t leading him on: nothing in anything she said or did gave that impression. She was just . . . good to be with. She seemed relaxed and familiar in his company, taking him for granted. At the motel office he’d asked for two separate rooms, but Geller intervened and told the clerk they wanted only one room.
    “You bodyguard,” she’d said by way of explanation, as they headed down to find the room. “Me potential victim. Like it or not, you don’t leave my side tonight.”
    Pikul had come to the conclusion he could put up with the situation.
    As soon as she was through eating, Geller went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She pushed the door behind her, but neither locked nor closed it properly. The sound of rushing and splashing water drifted sensuously into the room. Pikul sat quietly on his bed, picking at his teeth with a fingernail and thinking about the most beautiful woman he’d ever met, naked and wet only a few feet away from him. Practically in the same room with him.
    Then, a few minutes later, she was in the same room with him, her legs and shoulders still glistening with droplets. Allegra had wound a damp, inadequate motel towel around her body, and wrapped an even smaller one about her hair. She paced restlessly around the room for a while, dabbing the water off herself. Her thoughts were obviously miles away.
    The towel was thin and threadbare from years of use, and clung to her body revealingly. To Pikul, she was a vision of naked arms and legs, and temptingly hinted at curves, at which he hardly dare glance.
    The wound in her shoulder was still exposed, but it had stopped bleeding and the hot water had helped clean it up a little. At her suggestion, Pikul went out to the Land Rover and found the small onboard first-aid kit. He helped her place a dressing on the wound: an antiseptic lint pad held in place by two large plasters.
    The physical nearness of her dazzled him; she smelled wonderfully of soap and shampoo. Water dripped from her hair onto his knee. As he placed the dressing on her shoulder she inclined her face, and he almost went mad at the shapes she made: the cool angles of collarbone, neck, throat, cheek, lips, soft skin, fair hair, gentle womanhood.
    Afterward, he cleaned up the mess they had made with the food, while Geller sat across from him in the middle of the other bed. She had placed her game-pod on the towel covering her lap and jacked the UmbyCord into the bioport in her back. Her eyes were closed and her fingers twitched delicately over the sensitive surface of the game-pod. She seemed to be in a kind of trance, her body moving voluptuously in time to some unheard rhythm.
    Pikul stared, entranced by the stresses her movements were causing on the too-small towel that so inadequately covered her body. The knot she’d tied in the towel under her armpit was working loose, as he’d secretly hoped all along it might. He watched with close interest as the edge of the piece of cloth slipped with maddening slowness, millimeter by millimeter, down the curve of her left breast. He was torn with indecision: Should he be the perfect gentleman and look away? Should he gently cover her? Or