Untitled.FR11 by Unknown Author Read Free Book Online

survey of shelf space and filing cabinets. Movers ought to deliver his boxes by Thursday afternoon. A minor diminution in what he’d been used to at Iowa, but the view from his window was pleasing and it felt nice and intimate for whatever, intellectual or sexual, arose. New blotter, cool tight pseudo-leather desktop, dustless surfaces, fresh in cleanliness; there was even a vased bouquet of six pink sweetheart roses, a gesture he guessed from the department secretary, far too risky for Sherry to have dared.
    Katt smiled from the kitchen when he came in. “First impressions?” she said after their hug.
    “Are the best,” he completed. They laughed together, a good feeling, then he said, “Basically I took the stage, set The Bard on automatic, and wowed the audience. I kept all the road weariness inside, in a secret place, and they were none the wiser, fresh-faced dewy-eyed innocents all.”
    She hugged him. “Sounds like you’ve got it made.”
    “Yep, I feel on top of things, all right.” If Conner hadn’t come in at that point, back from a walk, Katt would have given him a nice close horizontal inspection of their bedsheets. But as it was, they had to wait for their son to fill his mom in on every mile’s doings between here and Iowa, a special dinner centerpieced by candles and flowers (he withheld mention of the office roses), and a blessedly brief after-dinner sit-about.
    When Conner, dead tired, dragged himself to his room, Ratt coyly cleared her throat, bent to embrace Marcus, and murmured, “Don’t you think it’s time we got reacquainted?”
    I sure do, he’d said, and they went upstairs and shut the door and eased away clothing and sampled secret flesh, as if the whole ritual were new again— which it was oh yes it was—her hands her mouth so incomparably good there, an intoxicating taste to her as she parted and lowered, knees denting mattress to either side of his head. And then she turned about, woozy after orgasm, and sank her heat around him, the incredible satin clutch claiming him, coaxing him heavenward, drawing him up little by little and out, throb of head and loins, the buck and weave. After a time, warm embrace and goodness of enclosure, she slid up and off and started to massage him, hands, arms, shoulders, neck, deep and drifty.
    “I’ll fall asleep,” he warned in a soft slur.
    “That’s okay,” she said. “You’ve had a long day.”
    She was right. She understood. He felt the soothing hands lull him, moving from neck to jaw to facial muscles, on up to brow and scalp, so good there, so easing. Sherry swam up as he drifted off, sweet harp-hipped Sherry, naked and bending for him and gazing back, begging for it, there beneath the soothe of Katt’s loving touch.
    Sometimes Katt had massage customers who fell asleep. Rare but not surprising. Grace Kantor, the woman with the mole from yesterday, had been one. There were others, the stressed-out businessmen who carried the twist of commerce in their necks,
    people who’d been stroked to sleep as kids and who fell naturally into their old pattern under Katt’s maternal touch.
    Now here was Marcus asleep on their bed, and here she was with her fingers resting upon his head. And the night was coming on behind windows and Katt had time and to spare to do what she would. Here lay a naked human being, entrusted to her care, the man she’d once loved and loved still. He looked so serene, so close and so distant to her, and without even trying, he was circumscribing her life, stifling her. They shared nothing, save for Conner. Marcus had his secrets, and she hers, but the freedom that she’d tasted for four months was suddenly shriveled, gone, familied and killed in the sudden mundanity of her brood’s arrival and settling in— eternal visitors who’d never ever leave, a pillow pressed over her nose and mouth.
    Divorce him. What was so difficult about it? People split up all the time. Write a note, no, take him to some nearby park,