Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [65]
Maybe there was such a thing as being too forgiven.
Random thoughts began to bounce to their own rave in his head. Oh dear he was feeling the buzz. Could one get away with just one night of sex without consequences? Go out to Black’s Cliffs, for instance, and then later pretend it was just an aberration or had not happened at all? Marta had certainly done that before. It was pretty much a modus vivendi for her. But practical problems—she had rented a house with Yann again, Yann would know: bad. He didn’t have a hotel room to go to, and didn’t want Marta to know that—bad. So—no place to go, even though the cliffs would have been so nice, a trysting place of spectacular memory, in fact he had gone out there with two or three different women through those undergraduate years, among them some of the nicest of all the women he had ever met. It had been so nice, it would be so nice, it was all jostling in his head, Caroline, Diane, the dance, two young beauties nearby, groping each other in the crush of bouncing bodies, oh my, it was having an effect on him—an unusually vivid effect. Not since a well-remembered dance in a bar on the Colorado River during spring break of 1973 had he gotten an erection while on a dance floor dancing. It was not the effect ecstasy usually had on him. He really must be feeling it, Marta and her vibe, and her butt. And yes, that was her pubic bone too.
Maybe that was the cause of the erection. He turned to her again, and naturally now when she bumped against him she hit something else, and felt it, and grinned.
They had to shout in each other’s ears to be able to hear each other within the surround sound of the crunchingly loud bass line.
“I guess you liked the tab!”
“I don’t remember ecstasy doing this!”
She laughed. “They mix in Viagra now!” she shouted in his ear.
“Oh shit!”
“Yann’s friends make them, they’re great!”
“What the fuck, Marta!”
“Yeah well?”
“No way! You’re kidding me!”
Angry, even fearful, he stopped dancing and stared at her bopping in front of him. “I don’t like it! It’s making me feel sick!”
“You’ll get used to it!”
“No! No! I’m gonna go, I’ll see you later!”
“Okay go then!”
She looked surprised, but not horribly displeased. Amused at him. Maybe it really was just the new dance drug. Maybe it was revenge. Or an experiment. Or that for Marta there would still be a lot of potential partners there, for dancing or anything else, so it didn’t matter what he did. Who knew San Diego could be so depraved? People were totally making out right in front of his eyes. There were so many doing it they had a kind of privacy in numbers.
“See you then!” Marta said in his ear, and gave him a swift sweaty hug and a kiss, already looking around for Yann or whomever. Happy, he thought—maybe even happy at becoming free from her anger at him—or happy at her last little tweak of revenge. Happy to see him go! Maybe all the prurient thoughts about the two of them together had been his only and not hers. And the pill just the new dance pill.
He pondered this as he walked through the dark gravel parking lot to his rented van, cooled swiftly by his sweat and the salty night air, his erection like a rock in his pants. She didn’t care!
The erection was not a comfortable feeling, not a natural feeling, not a sexual feeling. Normally Frank was as happy as the next guy to have an erection, meaning very happy, but this was ridiculous. He was drugged by drugs, it had no connection to his feelings—he might as well be at the doctor’s, undergoing some horrible diagnostic! People were so stupid. Talk about technology replacing the natural pleasures, this really took the cake!
He cursed Marta viciously as he drove. Marine layer gusting in, lit by the city from underneath, then out over the sea darker, lit only by moonlight