Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [107]
A red light stopped him. She had stopped too, and was not crossing with the green to him. Apparently they were to walk in parallel for a while, west on G Street. It was a long light. If you felt each second fully, a lifetime would become an infinity. Maybe that was the point of being in love, or the reward. Oh my. He could feel the knock of his heart in the back of his nose. He followed her down G Street, past the Watergate complex, and across the Parkway, through the boating center parking lot, down into the trees at the mouth of Rock Creek, where finally they could converge, could crash into each other’s arms and hug each other hard, hard, hard. Ah God, his partner in exile, his fellow refugee from reality, here at last, as real as a rock in his hands.
“What’s up?” he said, his voice rough, out of his control. Only now did he feel just how scared he had been for her. “I’ve been scared!” he complained. “Look—I have to have a way to get in touch with you, I just have to. We have to have a drop box or something, some way to do it. I can’t stand it when we don’t. I can’t stand it anymore!”
She pulled back, surprised at his vehemence. “Sorry. I’ve been working out my routines, figuring out what I can do and what I can’t. They’re still after me, and I wasn’t totally sure I could stay off their radar, and so—I didn’t want to get you caught up in anything.”
“I already am caught up in it. I am fully caught up in it!”
“Okay, okay. I know. But I had to make sure we were both clear. And usually you’re not. They know about that Khembalung embassy house, and their place in Maryland too.”
“I know! They know all that! What about now? Am I clear?”
She took a wand out of her pocket, ran it over him. “Right now you are. It happens most often right when you leave work. The chips are mostly in stuff you leave at your other places. But I had to see you. I needed to see you.”
“Well good.” Then he saw on her face how she felt, and his spirits ballooned: at this first flash of reciprocation, the feeling blazed up in him again. Love was like a laser beam bouncing between two mirrors. She smiled at the look on his face, then they embraced and started to kiss, and Frank was swept away in a great wave of passion, like a wave catching him up in the ocean. Off they went in it, but it was more than passion, something bigger and more coherent, a feeling for her, his Caroline—an overwhelming feeling. “Oh my,” he said over her shoulder.
She laughed, trembling in his arms. They hugged again, harder than ever. He was in love and she was in love and they were in love with each other. Kissing was a kind of orgasm of the feelings. He was breathing heavily, and she was too—heart pounding, blood pulsing. Frank ran a hand through her hair, feeling the tight curl, the thick springiness of it. She tilted her head back into the palm of his hand, giving herself to him.
They were in a dark knot of trees. They sat on the previous year’s mat of leaves, burrowed into them as they kissed. A lot of time was lost then, it rushed past or did not happen. Her muscles were hard and her soft spots were soft. She murmured, she hummed, she moved without volition against him.
After a while she laughed again, shook her head as if to clear it. “Let’s go somewhere and talk,” she said. “We’re not that well hidden here.”
“True.” In fact the Rock Creek Parkway, above them through the trees, was busy with cars, and in the other direction they could see a few of the lights of the Georgetown riverfront, blinking through branches.
When they were standing again she took his face in both hands and squeezed it. “I need you, Frank.”
“I knee woo too,” he said, lips squeezed vertically.
She laughed and let his face go. “Come on, let’s go get a drink,” she said. “I’ve got to tell you some stuff.”
They walked up to the footbridge over Rock