She was so soft. The way a cloud might feel if given the slick warm flesh, the angles, of a goddess. He pulled her close to him in the water, the steam rising in lazy coils to the riveted steel ceiling above.
Her hair hung in locks, drifts of golden seaweed. The low
light gilded them, made him think of pagan deities, things of olde for whom the
splitting of calves and oxen was commonplace; and seeing her, as he was seeing
her now, would have caused those barbarians to castigate themselves, to fall
prostrate in a display of mortal weakness—a beggary of flesh, offering alms
ultimately irrelevant.
He looped a thick coil of hair behind her ear, looked into
her eyes. “You know, I think I love you.”
She stayed quiet, as was her way. No talking. Talking ruined
things. Clogged them up with too many ideas, too many functions. Humanity’s
evolution complicated things like love and war and lust and death, a layering
of morality that left the rituals joyless. Communication was more important
than talking.
He kissed her with the slow, prodding force of a stone
sinking into mud. They collided, pushed closer until it felt as if his
molecules would merge. And wouldn’t that be something? To sink there, in that
face. To call it home for a time, and look out to see the world as beauty might
see it. The mirror of adoration staring back from a thousand passing faces.
But thinking this was a mistake.
In that moment he imagined his own mirror, the glances and
disbelieving double-takes, the derisive laughter hidden beneath a delicate cupping
hand; or even worse—the overpass of eyes that looked but did not see; an
affectation of apathy.
“I’m not invisible,” he told her, and her head rolled the
other way, a porcelain cheek framed there, backlit by watery light. “They say things behind my back. Things about us. You’re not ashamed of
me, are you?”
She didn’t want to talk. She’d transcended his driveling insecurities,
his need for praise. She was a Goddess, while he was still just a man. Once a lonely man. But no more. Not ever again.
“Why won’t you look at me?” He pulled her close until the
pale eyes stared back. “I love you. I told you that. You love me too. Admit it.”
He thought she nodded, gave himself that little victory as
he released her from his grip.
She floated like Viking burial, the flames of golden hair
stretching out in twists, a living starfish, the underwater lights throwing her
shadow against the ceiling, so that it seemed a faceless Gorgon moved closer
along the rivets, watching this, waiting for the perfect moment to
peel its eyes, to make stone of his awkward fumbling.
There was a thump as her head hit the steel rim of the pool.
“I’ll let you be alone,” he said, taking hold of the steel
ladder and hoisting his naked body onto the platform. He climbed down to where
his clothes were waiting below. A sign passed his periphery, but he paid it no
mind:
SPECIMEN TANK 4
He got dressed and called up to her, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
And after a self-conscious pause: “I’ll miss you!”
Then he gripped the handle of his janitor cart and moved off
toward the basement hallway.
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