Untitled.FR11 (7 page)

Her shared space with Love Bunny soon became an oasis of calm. Katt relaxed into it, trading impressions of her job and Sherry’s, both of them keeping things vague—yes I teach at CSU (department omitted), I do software at HP (no need to narrow it, even though Marcus had said very little about his family in the time Katt had monitored him).

Over hazelnut coffee and cheesecake, there in the sun of a beautiful day, Sherry said, “Would you feel all right about using first names?”

It came out casual, just before a two-handed sip, her lips at the rim; but it felt crucial. In the messages she had spied upon, Marcus had always called her “my mate,” he so hated the word “wife”—but never had he named her. Still there was no way of knowing if he’d let it slip during his four months in Iowa. Katherine? Katt? If he’d mentioned it at all, it had been the latter.

She thought of offering Katherine, a more common name and more likely to be written off as coincidence. But she could not lie to this woman, her electronic friend and her soon-to-be fleshly lover. And Katherine, a name nobody at all had ever used on her, not even angrily toward her as a child, would be a lie. “Mine’s Katt,” she said, detecting no spike of panic across the table.

She breathed freer.

“Sherry,” said Sherry, “but no fair combing through a university directory for more.”

She agreed not to. It was a trivial thing, this name exchange, but some sort of watershed had passed. Although Katt still held back a major secret from Sherry, their BBS masks had been compromised. “I like your name,” Katt told her, meaning it.

“So did you walk or drive?”

“Walked.” Perhaps not the wisest idea given the news reports about the coed discovered Thursday on the banks of the Poudre, her body mutilated in ways only hinted at.

“Maybe you’d accept a ride. I’d drop you wherever.”

Nice game. Sherry was smiling. Katt said, “Sure.”

“And maybe . . . you’d like to see my place first?”

Butterflies within. All those messages exchanged, an uninhibited expression of pure psychic fantasy, lusts safe behind anonymity. Then they’d met. Katt had come to know her, observed her in a casual orgy, a rich mix of emotions drifting in from this woman, nexus ever on her mind. “Why not?” tossed off with a look across the table nowhere near as casual.

Together they rose.

Sherry had no sooner closed the door than they flowed together, not even the pretense of a tour. Solid alluring Katt (the name fit), sweet and unhurried in embrace, not a hint of freakage when fantasy became reality. Odd perhaps her reluctance to abandon anonymity. But Sherry had given her name, her place of residence, had made no attempt—and would make none—to hide mailings addressed to her. There must surely soon and inevitably be full disclosure between them.

Whenever.

In its own time.

Fortunately she’d thought to bank the blinds when she left, just in case. Random angles gave

neighboring condos glimpses into her privacy, and she certainly wanted no one with a mouth to blab watching this. Katt’s face was soft, aromatic, her hands knowing and unhesitant.

Still, as in the glowlight of her living room she and Katt slowly undressed one another and the odd vacancy that pervaded her sexual being eased in, Sherry decided to keep her drawerful of toys out of it. The joys of dental dams, of strap-ons and Magic Wands, could wait. She was content simply to unclothe and explore a new lover, the transition from BBS abstraction to physical incarnation now coming to completion. Between kisses, Katt said words of some sort, soft distances gone, but Sherry ignored them and they soon fell away. No. She liked the look and touch and taste of uninterrupted skin, red band marks obligingly disappearing at waist and wrap of thigh as she caressed and kissed them into forgetfulness. Words only distracted.

Katt’s fingers touched her scar tentatively at first, then relaxed upon and about the letters, turning MINE into one more part of her, as it was. Through hazes of vacancy and fleshly fascination, an inflected word floated down to her ear, taking time to resolve: Bedroom? Umm, yes, both rising, hand to hand, then arms about waists and slow hips sliding down the hall. She closed the miniblinds tighter so that sharp thin slits of sunlight struggled against the slats, lit an oil lamp, went to Katt watching her from the bed. Embracing warmth, moving along open arms, thoroughly there and not there, standing apart and observing even as, sensually engaged, she slithered into the wonderfulness of their lovemak-ing. Since Derek’s branding of her, numbness in sex had been safer, her passions engaged but empty.

Now all was Katt. Friday it had been Marcus, posture somewhat similar to this woman’s now, but with thick riots of hair, his middle-aged angularity, and the hot stiffness that drove him across country and made him groan when part of her, any part, paid it attention. Marcus was good, his need for her pure and gratifyingly obsessive, though maybe because of that laser-beamed love, she felt even more gone and apart from him (though he hadn’t a clue) the closer he drew to her in nakedness and desire. Katt turned her over and softly attacked her arousal, and it felt right to urge her elusive friend’s hips about, easing them down, causing a diagonal reorientation above the blanket for more spread and length, no toes bumped against headboard. An obedient body, hers, spry and ardent and responsive to the slap and tickle of love. But she felt dead inside. The same death pervaded her at the head of the class, professor prized by students and colleagues alike, a nice little niche, expert in the ins and outs of Graphical User Interfaces, the ways of constructors and destructors in C++ code, and the whole panoply of software and hardware arcana—but inside, where she hid herself, it meant no more than a big fat NULL.

Sherry relaxed into rich orgasm, mouthing an increase of ardency upward but not at all frantic as her whole body responded like nightwind rising on ocean. She felt dreamy and whole here, tasted and loved, her hands on soft curves and indefinable good will. One could usually tell by this point if giving sensuality its head had been a good or bad idea, if durability or dread were in the air—and Sherry’s Mmmm detector had nothing but Oh Yes writ large across its face. They’d right themselves, snuggle, laugh, maybe dive right back into it; but there was no rush, just union deep and complete, and for now, she was content to hold and hug and feel the glow seep inward, attempting to reach her. -

“So how was it downtown?” Marcus was in the kitchen, spreading peanut butter on celery stalks, when Katt walked in on him.

“Peaceful,” she said, patching together a pastiche of downtown traipses, worrying as he kissed her whether she’d washed sufficient trace of Sherry from her mouth. Pulling away, no waver in his eyes; Katt felt relieved. “The same as always,” she said. “A lunchtime crowd outside at Pasta Jay’s and Coop-ersmith’s. Water splashing off the boulders they put up at the dedication of the square what maybe six years ago? A couple of raindrops through the sunshine.”

“Any kids creamed?”

“By skateboarders and rollerbladers? None I saw.”

Katt asked about his notetaking and pretended to hear his reply. She was scanning his face, his gestures, a hum of anxiety low but underlying in her, wanting and dreading a first sign. The word “headache” slipstreaming by caught her ears. Marcus brushed at his brow.

“Working too hard?”

“I guess,” he said. “I don’t suppose I could have an afternoon taste of your Magic Fingers?”

“Sure you could,” her words spilled out, “you give me enough money! Sit down.” Automatic response, but inside, a rise in anxiety. She didn’t want to touch him. But she was moving around behind him where he sat in the breakfast nook, a smile still fixed on her face. One hand slid over his left shoulder and its partner found his right, squeeze there and thumbs dug in to find her balance at his back.

“Mmmm,” he said, bending his neck forward and resting his arms on the fakewood tabletop like numb lobster claws, then pulling them back until he gripped the table edge and righted his head again. “Feels good.” Katt parenthesized his neck, fingers under jawline. Good solid man; fragile, she thought, as anyone. Her probes, taught by experience, spoke his health, skimming messages as she concentrated on massage. She rotated her fingers upward until they rested on his temples, thumbs under ears, the flat of her hand on hair and skin, warmth and faint throb there. For some odd reason, a vision of the beach came to the fore as she shut her eyes, the fresh Caribbean sands and surf smells of the last vacation she and Marcus had taken, could it have been five years ago? Conner off to her mom in Florida, private beachfront, a simple hut with just enough amenities, sweet lovemaking under moonlight and time simply gone away. How delightful it had been.

“That’s getting it,” he said.

“Is the mean and nasty going away?”

“Mmmm.”

Her fingers found their rhythm. She watched the tips move, black sweeps of hair thatched above them and back as they rotated and pressed. Again, shutting out the kitchen and Marcus’s murmurs of pleasure, Katt skulled and brained inward. Easier this time, terrain once traversed. Layers passed and there it was, that same tentative tissue, ready to dry up. Disappointed, relieved. She hadn’t done it at all, couldn’t do it apparently. Stuck. Then the vacancy, tiny as a pea, happened—so quick she blipped by it, found it again, thrilled, its edges drawn, dry, for the thinnest space. Warring tendencies, suddenly. The will to halt it and the will to urge it forward. She had no right to turn Marcus’s life which way she would; he’d been kind, loving, given her a child, loved them both, laughed and joked with them at the dinner table. Past, all past. Now he stifled her, drained her life drab, just by continuing to be. She turned away from her healing power and embraced the other, applying it precisely, like a salve, upon the surface and deep throughout. Inside she felt keyed up and torn. She marveled her husband didn’t notice.

Hand grab.

She opened her eyes. Marcus was turned to look up at her. Flat dead eyes. He knew. He knew. His moist hands gripped hers.

“Are you okay?” he said. “What is it?”

She felt sweat then at her brow and knew the moisture of his hands was really hers. “I’m okay ...” Her voice husky, a need to tack about; she felt exposed. “It’s just that”—I want a divorce—“I think I felt... a tremor in you. Or maybe I’m just imagining it, it could be nothing. You seem not quite as steady as usual.” Throat tightened. “Marcus I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“No it’s okay.” His understanding tone, the kindness of it, was breaking her heart. “I’m fine. Don’t cry now, Katt. Come on. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

Katt allowed his arms to embrace her, laying her head on his shoulder, accepting pats and solace until the grief and guilt abated. She took the pastel Kleenex he offered, dried her tears, blew her nose.

“Everything all right?”

Katt nodded. She felt embarrassed and frightened and just a tiny bit superior, pulling the wool undetected—and that deepened her fear about what she was becoming.

Conner came in then, back from a bike ride, cutting a swath of excitement through the moment, spilling news of a found friend, another biker, anonymous but Conner was sure they’d meet up again. Katt smiled as his father countered with pleased questions. When the recounting had worn down or nearly so, she excused herself to the bedroom, shutting the door so she could be alone.

Her tummy was tight. She blew her nose again, stared at herself in the mirror over the sink. The image shocked her, as always, with how familiar and how baffling it was. She leaned close, the pores, the lines framing those eyes, that mouth, the backdraw of skin toward her ears. “Katt,” she whispered. “What the fuck are you doing?” The puzzle hung eternally in her head. And yet its solution lay side by side, making it no less a puzzle but speaking its piece as well. “Never you mind about that,” she said, almost as if it made sense. “I’m doing what needs doing.” Her eyes became unbearable then and she turned away.

Undraping the PC, she switched it and the monitor on. As the memory check numbered by, she stewed in rage at her husband and at her son. Four months of freedom, of a mind open to whims in the wind—closed down in a day, the house shrunk about her, when they came to stay. Mom had phoned, delaying her visit to The Rainbow this morning, that voice a hypnotic hammer, a child-berater. Hovering at the edges had been Katt’s dark and crazy gramma, never mentioned but skirted near, killer of son and husband. How she’d craved that walk to The Rainbow, those moments with Love Bunny, a calm wholeness capped by an intriguing denouement.

On her monitor, the DOS prompt appeared at last. She ran QuickLink and dialed one of three BBSs she frequented. Symposium. Three phone lines and a sysop who knew what he was doing. FI entered her alias, F2 her password, and she was in, keying past the opening screens. No messages were in her mailbox. Today’s Users listed their aliases, times of log in and out: Swizzler, Gourami, Hunk-fuck, a few new ones Katt didn’t recognize, and good old Darter, on off on off throughout the day. No Love Bunny. She tried CFRnet. The only new message entered since last night was a feeble flirt from The Geek addressed to The Goddess. Safe e-mail minisex. Poised to log off and modem into another BBS, on impulse she hotkeyed to Main and hit Who’s Active.

Newcummer on line one. On line two? Love Bunny!

Jeez, get into chat mode before she logged off. This was like a special gift, bumping fortuitously into someone like this. The adrenalin was high. She was probably just about to leave, or inaccessible. Katt found Chat Mode and entered it, typing a hasty fumble: “Hi, it’s me!”

Pause. Gone. Or Katt’s friend was exiting whatever, finding her way into the chat. Then **Love Bunny** sprang up and, under it, her reply: “Well hello there.”

“Been on long?”

“Mwwwah. Mwwwah. Mwwwah.”

“Huh?”

“Oh come on,” Love Bunny typed, her spelling skills a scandal, backspace, retype, backspace, retype, like a slow thinker. “Them’s *kisses*!”

“Ah. Well, a mwwwah to you too!” Katt pictured fire on flesh, the rumpled sheets, fingerswirls and the moaning they’d prompted. How normal it had all been; not anything in the least naughty or perverse, as she’d hoped! Another stereotype blasted, woman-love unique and to be cherished.