Read Online Tanner's Virgin by Lawrence Block - Free Book Online

do.”
    I had never thought of it that way. The fire had died down again, and Julia crossed her arms over her breasts and gripped each elbow with the opposite hand. She had clutched herself thus in the bedroom on Old Compton Street, but there the chill had been emotional.
    â€œIt’s so damned cold,” she said. “I ought to be in bed but I can’t sleep. When will you go to Kabul?”
    I turned. “I don’t know. As soon as I can. A day or two, I suppose.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œDepending on visas and—”
    She stood up abruptly. “Could we make love, do you think?”
    â€œUh—”
    â€œI hate being so awkward about it, but there’s so little time.” She was facing away from me. I looked at the khaki robe and imagined the body beneath it. “This ought to be romantic, and instead it’s a damp morning with a dying fire and a memory of nightmares and death.”
    â€œJulia.”
    She turned to face me. “And I feel neither passionate nor in love, which is an awful thing to admit at such a moment, and I look a fright—”
    â€œYou’re beautiful.”
    â€œâ€”and perhaps it’s obscene to use sex as therapy, but I do want to be in bed and I don’t want to be alone, and I’m not saying this at all well, I know that. When I close my eyes I see that wretched man’s finger. I never actually saw it, I rushed through there without looking at him, but with my eyes closed I see it dismembered and flapping about on the floor like a bisected angle-worm. I shouldn’t talk about this, it’s as romantic as a stomach pump—”
    I took her arm. “Be still,” I said.
    â€œEvan—”
    I kissed her lips. She said, “I wish we were on a hill in Macedonia. In a little hut in the middle of nowhere eating charred lamb and drinking whatever they drink. I wish—”
    â€œDon’t talk.”
    â€œI wish I were ten years younger. Children take this sort of thing so much more casually. I wish I were either more or less emancipated. I—”
    â€œBe quiet.”
    â€œAll right.”
    Â 
    Her room was small and dark, her bed narrow. We kissed with more love than passion. I felt the warmth of her flesh through her robe. I touched the belt of the robe and she stiffened. “Oh, damn,” she said. “You mustn’t look.”
    â€œWhat’s the matter?”
    â€œOh,” she said. “Oh it’s so bloody unromantic. If you laugh I shan’t blame you, but I’ll never forgive you.” With a defiant flourish she opened the robe. Beneath it she was wearing a one-piece suit of red flannel underwear. I didn’t laugh. I just asked if the outfit had a drop seat.
    â€œDamn you,” she said.
    I told her she would look pretty whatever she wore. She said it was bad enough that I was seeing her like this but that she couldn’t let me watch her remove the garment. I turned around and got out of my clothes. By the time I had finished she was in bed beneath a mountain of quilts and blankets. I joined her, and we huddled together for warmth and love.
    I held her close. She pressed her face to my throat while my hands stroked the smooth taut skin of her back and bottom. This, I knew, was what mattered—the warmth, the closeness. Whether or not we consummated the morning’s entertainment was immaterial. There was no urgency to it, and might not be, and it hardly mattered.
    â€œI won’t be able to bear you a bonnie English bastard,” she whispered. “I take the pill.”
    â€œGood.”
    â€œWouldn’t you care for an English bastard?”
    â€œYou talk too much.”
    â€œSilence me with a kiss.”
    And it was slow and thoughtful, a sweet sharing with little love and less passion and worlds of warmth and tenderness. Kisses both long and slow, and bits of whispered nonsense, and the comfortable touching of secret flesh.
    A