The Flame Alphabet - Ben Marcus [108]
For the rest of our time together, we lay on the bed listening to each other breathe. I would like to think that this was nice. A peaceful way to reconnect and feel our bond restoring itself. I would like to think that, but I’m afraid I cannot.
When the technicians knocked I was relieved.
At the door Claire and I exchanged a dry, glanceless kiss. The technicians hovered, faces hidden behind gauze.
Before she left I reached into my workbag, pulled out the Hebrew letter, a cold pelt of hairiness, and pressed it into Claire’s hand. My actions I hid from the technicians. I felt like I was handing off a shrunken father. Someone to look after her. The Hebrew letter was the only possession I cared about, and it fit into her hand perfectly. She could hide it there. It would not be discovered.
Perhaps it would read itself to her through her hand as she walked back to her quarters. If my work at the hole went well, we’d be back together soon. Oh, I had no idea how I would activate a wall of listeners I could not understand, especially when, according to LeBov, I had never even properly used my own. Already I was wondering how I could fool the man who seemed to be aware of my thoughts before I even had them.
He’d be ready for any trickery I could devise. He’d have planned for it. He was probably hoping I’d try to deceive him.
I watched Claire’s face when she took the Hebrew letter from me.
Thank you for the gift, she didn’t say. I will look at it later.
And it was only because Claire couldn’t speak that she didn’t say I love you. That was the only reason.
For a moment in the doorway the simple things between us went without saying. You could feel it.
She squeezed the Hebrew letter in her hand and I could almost hear it working. Almost.
What kind of shoes does Rothschild have?
Golden shoes!
Yes, but what does he do when it rains?
He does what we all do, I couldn’t say. Doesn’t he?
Then Claire was gone.
43
One more thing happened that night, but before it did, I fucked Marta again.
After Claire left my room, the Hebrew letter hot in her hand, speaking only to her the more she clutched it, I went back out and found Marta at the cart, spun her around to be sure it was her this time. I ignored the protocol of tapping and brought her back to my room, my bed still destroyed from the visit with Claire.
Marta could not know that. What happened with Claire happened in a different world. And what was fine about Marta was that she concealed her apparatus for caring. She had an expertise at hiding what mattered most.
In my room I experienced a surge of virility. My area was rigid, but it was also numb. Marta worked calmly at it, ferreting the difficulty, stared past my head and labored to ease the issue.
The room fell quiet and for a moment a trickle of wind intruded our space, as if a whip had been cracked and a sharp rope of air snapped past. It was cold and I thought I could taste it. The flavor of berries trickled down the back of my throat. My vision browned and when the completion came down below, the sudden sweetening, a feeling I could very nearly claim as my own, it flashed through my limbs. Flashed, spoiled, faded.
It was finally clear that I did not need a woman for this, or even a person. I needed a knife.
After she surrendered her hold on me, Marta quietly arranged herself on her side, curled into a ball, because from there she could most easily gain satisfaction, provided I supplied the labor. We could face the same direction, prone in my sweaty bed, as if we were traveling to the countryside, waiting for the piece of perfect scenery to explode before our eyes.
This felt fair, and for a while I spent energy on the project, I put time in. I owed something to Marta. Perhaps this was a way I could repay her.
Marta was silent, and I responded with silence of my own, but still I burrowed away behind her, working through repeated waves of exhaustion to deliver my favor. I kept my hands well free of her neck.
Finally Marta clenched,