WHAT IS THIS THING

She glared at the high arched ceiling.

After a short time, she realized this was accomplishing nothing, (clarity of thought had always been one of her virtues) and so she shifted under the covers, rolling over onto her side. Only slightly more productive, but an improvement. Now her blue icepick-eyes were stabbing at the man sleeping next to her in the bed .

Under her slashing eyebrows, her expression soured further as she deployed the mental white-out, made the needed correction.

The scrawny little twerp sleeping in the bed next to her. She began sorting through all the men she’d co-mingled with over the years, pulling their memories out of her filing cabinets, marshaling them into rows and columns. Julio and Howard and Maurice and What’isface back over on the Eastside, back in ancient history. One or two of them had come close to being physical gods (ah, sweet dumb-as-a-post Julio...) and all of them, even What’isface, had been better than the current specimen. Why had she settled for this?

And she had settled, hadn’t she? She hadn’t even been out anyone else for months now. Worse than that.. the two of them were practically living together. She was letting some.. other person.. any other person.. into her home on a regular basis.

She could end this. She should end it. She would end it. Cut it off, clean and sharp, right now, and resume her focus, laser-like, on the important things in life.

She sprang into resolute action, pushing him, physically pushing him from the bed, banishing him forever from her presence with a single imperious flick of the

She didn’t move, apart from a slight clenching of her fingers against her side.

She glared at the scrawny balding nearsighted little twerp.

She glared, and she felt something.. deep inside her.. twisting around itself, twisting around her, its coils thick and heavy.

Pinning her arms in place.

Keeping her from doing what rationally needed to be done.

She growled, a deep noise just on the edge of hearing. Fine. She was never ever one to back down in the face of a challenge.

So. What was this thing inside her, wrapped so snug and warm, that she had never experienced before?

She glared at the head occupying the pillow, and it got stronger.

She pulled a new set of memories, flicked through them. Meeting him for the first time, when he accosted her right there on the sidewalk in front of the Ludmenkov Building. OK, yes, she had certainly noticed him sitting there in that grubby little cafe, he had stood out, but still...

Onward.

Talking. Getting to know each other.

A meeting in a better-class cafe.

Going on dates.

Strolling in Lancaster Park as the leaves were turning and the chill winds blew through the benches surrounding the empty duck-pond. Attending Rule Ensemble performances with someone who actually understood classical music. Conversely, absolutely no relatives demanding visits during The Holidays, and no absolutely prospect of any squalling brats blurping about underfoot. But she had had all of that before as well, with Maurice, for one, and he had been fairly broad-shouldered and handsome.

But..

There was more.

More memories.

Spending more and more time together. More meals in restaurants or in Flint’s, trips to the theater.

Practically living together. She had never lived with anyone since storming away from her parents (idiot mother, unpleasable father whowantedaboy) at the age of fifteen..

Eating and sleeping and

One last set of memories, not in a file-cabinet, but in the vault at the very back of her mind, behind the tripwires and the lasers.

Taking baths together. Endless baths, when before she always took showers, quick and efficient. Sinking into that enormous white tub, resting the back of her head on his scrawny hairless useless muscle-free chest.

His fingers coming up.. touching her skull.. tracing slow patterns on her skin

Floating. Endless floating.

His long dexterous fingers..

Endless patterns..

The thing inside her pulled tighter and she made another noise, not quite a growl this time.

Not really a growl at all.

Her eyes did not change.

More like a plaintative whine.

She made it again.

She couldn’t help herself.

He opened his eyes, blinked the sleep out of them, looked over at her. He smiled sadly, with one corner of his mouth, extracted his hand from the covers, pushed aside some of her jet-black hair..

Touched her skin.

Traced patterns across the surface

Her eyes smoothly rolled up in their sockets, and she was glaring now, white hot, at the patterns he had slowly carefully etched

across the entire surface of her mind

inch by painstaking inch.

week by week

He spoke, not with his reedy voice, but with his marvelous fingers..

“The thing you feel is love. No, you’ve never felt it before. I calculate in another.. three or four years of daily sessions.. you’ll be able to completely accept that fact.”

She twitched, her whole body.

“And the fact that it will take all that time.. it just wraps it tighter around my heart..”

A last stroke, and the patterns all glared white in return.

When she came out of the bedroom, drying her hair from her shower, he was finishing making breakfast. She sat at the round wooden table, and he desposited a full plate in front of her. A mushroom omelette, oatmeal, toast made from the bread he insisted on buying fresh from that bakery, Daphne’s or whatever it was called. Off to one side, some fresh-squeezed orange juice. She forked off a piece of omelette, tasted it and favored him with a fairly genuine smile.

“I knew there was a reason that I keep you around.”

He returned the smile, and sipped at his own orange juice.