The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [146]
Would she have ever thought to act on it? She could not deny the possibility, for she had already found herself capable of a variety of actions she would never have imagined herself taking.
But—
“It was funny, you calling me Linda. I just saw her a little while ago.”
“Linda?”
“Linda Robshaw. Hugh’s been going with her lately. He went out with her the first time the night before you were over at our house, that was why I made my brilliant foot-in-mouth play. She’s nice, I think. But I get very uptight being with her.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know exactly. I don’t think it’s anything that she does, but she makes me feel like a kid.”
“That’s funny.”
“What is?”
She started to moisten her lips with her tongue, then stopped herself when she realized what she was doing. “That she makes you feel like a kid. You make me feel like a kid.”
“How?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Maybe because you know what this is all about and I don’t.”
“Don’t you, Melanie?”
“No.” She reached for a cigarette, lit it. “Would you like some more Pepsi?”
“I still have some. What sign are you, Melanie?”
“Capricorn.”
“Sure, that figures.”
“It does? I don’t know much about it.”
“Tenacious, stubborn, honest, hardworking toward a goal. I don’t know much about it either but those are the main tendencies. I’m Virgo on the Leo cusp. Virgo is honest and direct and literal-minded and Leo is dramatic and sort of loud. It’s supposed to be kind of an interesting combination.”
“I guess it would be.”
“I’m also devious, though, and that doesn’t seem to fit in. Virgo and Capricorn are supposed to be compatible.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Yes, I think it’s very interesting. Why don’t you sit next to me, Melanie?”
She looked into those steady eyes and felt her own face softening, melting.
“Sit next to me.”
“I don’t know if I should.” She hardly recognized her own voice, so soft and liquid, so young.
“It’s not what you should do. It’s what you want to do."
“I don’t know what I want.”
“Come over here.”
“Yes, all right. Maybe I should have a drink. Maybe we should both have a drink.”
“Afterward.”
“How pretty you are. Karen? Have you ever—”
“Yes.”
“I never have.”
“I knew that.”
“How can you tell?”
“I don’t know. I just can. You’re very beautiful.”
They kissed. She expected it to be strange and was struck by the familiarity of the experience, one she had never had before. It was not a feeling that she had done this before but that she had known all her life what it would be like. She felt the tips of Karen’s fingers trace a line down her cheek and across her shoulder, felt Karen’s hand close around her breast.
Not excitement but longing, yearning. How different. How utterly different.
“Kiss me some more, Melanie.”
“Oh, yes. Yes.”
‘You don’t need a drink now, do you?”
“No.”
“You need me. We need each other.”
“Yes.”
“You’re like silk here.”
“God, how that feels.”
“So soft and silky.”
“Someone once wanted me to shave it”
“A man?”
“Of course a man. I never—”
“God, don’t ever do it.”
“I won’t. Oh, Karen.”
“Can we go upstairs now?”
“Yes.”
She worried on the way to the bedroom that she would not know what to do, but it turned out that there was very little for her to do. Karen undressed her, positioned her on her back on the bed. Karen talked to her, talked gently, feeding her lines to which she could respond without thinking. Karen stripped and joined her on the bed, their bodies barely touching at first. Karen kissed her, long deep kisses, and Karen’s hands touched her body with the special knowledge male hands could not have. She had touched her own body in this fashion, with this same special knowledge, and Karen’s hands were like her own hands and yet they were not her own hands, they were Karen’s hands, and they worked magic upon her skin.
Karen’s mouth kissed her breasts, then burrowed downward, not too quickly, not too slowly. Karen knelt between her legs so that only Karen’s mouth touched her, Karen’s mouth upon her