The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [95]
She studied him with alert amusement as his erection rose to hardened attention, stretched upwards at an incline towards the ceiling and reaching the space above his naval. He appeared unresponsive to this.
She’d given his new novel another try after their passionate last screw within the steamy shower cubicle to the right of the backyard poolside. She’d ventured upstairs to dry off and to succumb to another white line of instant wakefulness, but she was way too spun to pay reasonable attention.
She’d soon given up and ventured downstairs, to discover him here among the weight sets. She’d fixed herself a drink at the fully stocked private bar, and had climbed upon the bar itself to engage in a fanciful mental sideshow and for deep thought. All the while, she had the nagging tendency to engage herself in crossword puzzles.
And then the phone rang.
The broken silence startled the both of them.
Jessica dropped to her feet from the bar while Ralston watched unmoving, as she scampered to the cordless wall phone near the room’s entrance. She straightened her tank top and answered eagerly.
“Hello?” She waited, listened. “Who is this?”
“Who is it?” Ralston arched himself upwards in a mildly irritable curiosity to study her responses.
Jessica snickered into the receiver and proceeded around the pool table and towards her boyfriend. “Hold on,” she spoke to the caller, “I’m bringing him the phone as I speak, okay, so mellow out. No, I haven’t read much of it, I’ve been...kinda distracted...here he is...”
“Who is it?” repeated Ralston as he accepted the phone and muffled its lower half briefly to privately question her. “They better not burst my happy bubble, better be a broad hot for a threesome, ‘cause I ain’t...hello?”
Happy bubble, Jess mused.
“It’s Billy Behn,” Ralston then said to her, partially less stressed. “You shoulda said....”
Then, Ralston spoke into the phone, “Hey, William, ol’ pal ol’ pal. It’s past the witching hour. What’s up? You couldn’t put my new wonder of modern-fucking-imagination down, could you? Ask me about my latest project, go ahead. It’s about a threesome on a bench press with weed and wire and woody-wood wood like a lubricated Lincoln log to a couple of tinker toy twist-lock holes.”
Ralston then shut up as he began to listen, his feisty sense of humor retreating into the somber shades of undivided attention and then into mounting alarm.
Jessica watched with increasing concern as her boyfriend’s happy bubble burst. He became stern and then defensive as he bellowed into the phone.
“Of course I know my own fucking novel...no, it wasn’t co-authored...it’s about UFO aliens, whaddya think and it’s supposed to fuck with you. It fucked with you, apparently. How do you know that...? Listen, I wrote the goddamn book. You been talkin’ to Erlandson? We’ll discuss that later. Goddammit, Bill, what are you on? All because of a dream, for chrissake? Mellow out, take a valium. Get some sleep and finish the book in daylight hours, when the boogie man can’t get to you. Whaddya say, Uncle Bill, huh? Geeezus.!”
Ralston angrily switched off the connection and rather than return the phone to Jessica, he hurled it across the room. It landed intact between two treadmill bars.
“Just like my goddamn uncle,” Ralston breathed bitterly, “a paranoid know-it-all spaz case. They’re all my uncles, those manic depressive assholes who get delusional over their own professions.....they make it big with their dreams,