The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [103]
His desire for her rekindled until its fuse was snipped short by one simple, terminal thought: Bari’s been probably watching him.
Several minutes later, Melony stirred and arose and shut the bedroom window herself. Andrew winked his eyes open and remained relaxed and still as he observed and admired her nude silhouette in the curtained moonlight. She then looked upon him and he shut his eyes just enough to see her through a blurry forest of eyelashes. He regarded her this way while she stretched her arms out and arched her body backwards with an accompanying yawn. She afterwards slumped forward and over Andrew’s desk, until she was scrutinizing the tops of the piles of paperwork and manuscript drafts and the titles of the reference books above.
And then she lost interest and exited the room.
Andrew shut his eyes and repositioned his body comfortably, though his ears were intent on keeping a close listen to any hint of what Melony was up to.
***
Melony was thinking of going home.
Politely, of course.
But she had to go home some time, and she was beginning to experience the do-this-don’t-do-that thing, as though her own devil likeness and her own angel likeness were teetering upon each of her shoulders and debating persistently about what she should do. This was not the time to be plagued by responsibility and marital loyalty, it was a wee bit late for that, but it rendered hen torn between guilt and lingering passion.
Yes, perhaps, she should be heading home about now.
Or very, very soon.
She was aware that Andrew might’ve been watching her, but she hoped not, for she would much rather leave him undisturbed and with the courteous favor of a letter rather than having him witness her departure. The attraction she felt for him had been a prelude to feelings, and now that all was said and done, though done more than said, she wanted nothing more than to place a harness on the evening and contain it for a sober review later. Somehow, she wasn’t sure he’d understand, what with her journalistic intentions and all, and how they clearly confused him.
She could rightfully claim to have sobered up by now, and that was a relief.
She crept languidly down the hallway and out into the living room, into the flickering light of the MTV upon the muted projection television, abandoned earlier for her and Andrew’s climactic bedroom excursion.
Her clothes lay in a dispersed heap amongst UNO cards near the sofa at the far wall, but her purse remained upon the black leather recliner and she went for that first.
She knelt down before it and slid it yawning open on its side, and fumbled through it for a notepad and a pen and a breath mint. She recovered one of ten pens within the purse outright, removed her Nikkon and an address book and a pager until her microcassette recorder and a few more pens avalanched down her knees to the carpet. Rather than tending to them, she checked her pager for pages, snickering once in recalling how Max disliked pagers. There were no pages. Then she proceeded to gather her items from the carpet.
When she picked up the microcassette recorder, she gazed at it.
She wasn’t going to leave yet, not that second, she was in no hurry and if Andrew came forth from the hallway before she was fully dressed....then fine. She would gather up the UNO cards, compose for Andrew that letter unless he in fact come out to her, but before all that, she thought, let’s hear a concluding portion of that interview. Just to hear it, just in retrospect.
But when she lowered the volume control, pressed the rewind and waited, depressed the rewind and pressed play, she took it for granted