Read Online Homebody: A Novel by Orson Scott Card - Free Book Online

little crinkle in her eyes. "Sounds like you care about keeping clean, Mr. Lark," she said.
    "Live in a truck long enough, a shower is like a miracle," he said.
    She laughed. "A miracle with a drainhole." Then she brushed past him and led the way out of the tight hot bathroom.
    Upstairs, the three apartments were smaller than the downstairs ones, and they all shared a bathroom. Even when the house was first cut up into apartments it would have been an old-fashioned, cheap arrangement. By the time the house went vacant, it must have been hard to find anybody willing to put up with sharing. The bathroom was at the end of the hall, right at the back of the house.
    Don guessed that originally the back stairs had been there, narrower than the wide front staircase, and when the bathrooms were put in that staircase was taken out and the plumbing was run up through the space where it had been. Modern people needed toilets and showers a lot more than they needed a stairway for the kids to get down to the kitchen without being seen by guests in the front room. So the back stairs wouldn't be restored.
    This shower still had a curtain hanging in it, spotted with ancient mildew but not disgusting. And the tub was pretty clean, not even as dusty as he would have expected. No sign of leaks in the tub; he'd be able to use it as soon as the water was hooked up and he replaced the rusted shower-head.
    "This where you're going to put the Jacuzzi?" asked Cindy.
    "No, I'm going to keep it simple up here. I'm making the back of the south apartment into the master suite and the fancy stuff goes there."
    He didn't even have to squat down to look at the toilet. A big crack in the bowl and serious waterstains around the base of it were all the information he needed.
    "Toilet doesn't look good?" she said.
    "It ain't a toilet anymore," said Don.
    "What is it?"
    "Sculpture."
    She laughed. "I can see it on a pedestal downtown in the Arts Center."
    He liked her laugh. He wanted to listen to it again. He wanted to see if that moment would come again, when he'd actually want to be close to a woman, when the memory of his wife would disappear and he could see Cindy Claybourne as herself. "Listen," he said, "you want to meet sometime, not in a bathroom?"
    "I don't know, I was just thinking that you bring a special
je ne sais quoi
to the discussion of plumbing fixtures."
    "OK, how about dinner in a place with really nice sinks?"
    "The bathrooms at Southern Lights really have character," said Cindy.
    Don had taken his wife there the first time they went out to eat after the baby was born. He didn't think he could go there without picturing that baby seat on the floor beside their table, the little face in repose, breathing softly as she slept. He quickly ran down the list of restaurants that he had gone to with clients but not with his family.
    "Cafe Pasta," Don said. "Art Deco."
    "I'll go there, but only if you promise to share the sausage appetizer with me so both of us have garlic breath."
    Again she stood in front of him, looking up at him, smiling, and this time he seized the moment, reached up and touched her cheek, bent down and kissed her lightly, so lightly it was almost not a kiss, more of a caress of her lips with his. And then again, just a little more lingering, lips still dry. And a third time, his hand now around her waist, her mouth pressing upward into his, warm and moist. They parted and looked at each other, not smiling now. "I was just thinking that there's more than one way for us both to have the same breath," said Don.
    "Who's bending who, that's what I'd like to know," said Cindy.
    "Bet you say that to all your clients."
    "After we close tomorrow, you're not a client," she said. "In fact you never were—you were a customer."
    "So what will I be when we go to Cafe Pasta?"
    "A gentleman friend," she said.
    He liked the sound of it.
    "When?" she asked.
    "I'm not the one with an appointment book," said Don.
    "Tomorrow night?" she