Filaria - Brent Hayward [75]
And now a rather pleasing aroma drifted into the duct, the likes of which he could not identify. He waited, a metre or so from the lip of the grille, listening, blinking, tingling all over. His muscles sung with tension. His elbows had been at his sides for an eternity.
The voices again. To his relief, one was a woman’s. These were not dark gods, waiting to trap him. This woman was talking, in low, placid tones, with what sounded to be a child, though it became evident to Tran so that the child might be chastising or instructing the woman. Odder still, the younger voice rang with tones of familiarity. Unable to hear clearly any of the words, he shimmied a little closer to the grille, trying to be as silent as possible.
Soon he was able to peer over the lip:
He discerned little, except glare. He managed to rub the corners of his bleary eyes with dusty knuckles, one at a time, and, as his vision cleared further, he saw a room beneath him, a sleeping area, similar, yet more opulent and spacious than those he knew back in Hoffmann City. There was one large bed, covered by a thick red duvet and red fitted sheet. Plumped up by the ornate headboard, two red pillows. The entire structure of the bed was elevated off the floor, and the walls were decorated with designs that moved and undulated as he watched. How he wanted to bust out of the grille and lie supine on that bed, limbs outspread.
Despite the decadence, Tran so detected a general patina of age over everything down there, an overall yellowed tone of disuse and neglect.
Positioned directly over the bed, Tran so could not see the full extent of the room, nor could he see the persons — if they were indeed people — who had been speaking. He thought he heard them moving, but they were no longer talking.
The floor was a pale brown shag. Tran so had seldom seen carpeting before; it was a luxury where he came from, a sign of wealth and corruption —
The woman came into view. Bent over the opulent bed, she brushed at it with her hands. Looking down, Tran so could not see her face, but he knew immediately that she was young, and beautiful beyond words.
Just the cant of one arm, as she flattened the duvet, the shape of her leg as she placed it down to steady herself, was too much. Mingled with arousal was a familiar, bittersweet sadness: pining for Minnie sue, for vanished passion, for concepts as great as his own aging and mortality.
She was twenty years old, at most. Black skirt and black top, with a white apron over it all that had seen better days. A uniform of some kind? He thought at first she was also wearing a helmet but soon realized netting had been tied around her brown hair, containing it, holding it away from her breathtaking neck.
Tran so Phengh saw no one else in the room. Unprepared to move his head out too far over the opening for fear of being seen, or maybe moving dust or other debris forward with his body so that it rained down on the girl and gave his position away, he watched as best he could for a long while.
Her collarbone, exquisite, her smooth skin flawless and translucent. He imagined her body, lurking in the clothes that only hinted at its form.
Could she perceive him, he wondered, even if she did happen to look up from whatever strange toil it was she performed down there, to that soft bed?
He was getting a hard-on. He had not been aroused by a woman other than Minnie sue for a long time. He squeezed his eyes shut and mouthed a silent apology to his dying wife, yet grinding his own body against the ductwork all the while.
The woman below started to hum an innocent tune.
Scents he had earlier detected wafted up again. These were coming, he saw now, from a tube that the girl gripped in her left hand. He had not seen this apparatus at first but he regarded it clearly now as she raised it to spray, in a fine mist, the red linen of the bed. This dispensing hose led back to a tiny buggy on wheels, which she pulled now, and the buggy creaked farther into the room.
Tran so’s eyebrows cocked upwards.
“Can you smell the