Read Online The Incrementalists by Steven Brust, Skyler White - Free Book Online
Authors: Steven Brust, Skyler White
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eyes.
We’d cleared a space in the flowers for the bowl of oranges, but he was framed on either side by the extravagant color and smell of bloom, stamen and leaf. His face could have been veiled too, for all I could read in it. “Can you trust me?” he said at last.
“Probably not.”
He nodded.
“I have to touch you.” It wasn’t desire in his voice. Almost regret. “It’s the only way I know how to get into your experience enough to shape it for you. It’s not something I can do with language.”
“Oh,” I said.
“It’s—” I could see, in the tiny muscle tic over his left eyebrow, what it was costing him not to drop my eyes. “It’s intimate,” he said.
“I’ll close my eyes and think of England.”
His smile only reached half his mouth. “Not like that.”
“Okay.”
“More.”
“Stop it!” I snapped. “I said okay.”
He walked into the living room like a man on the way to his own embalming. I followed too quickly and had to wait on the rug like an idiot while he found a CD and put it on. It was something low and wordless, all cello, or at least all strings. I’ve never been good with picking out instruments, Mom’s efforts and Prokofiev’s aside. But I thought it was odd, with everything he must know about me, that he wouldn’t pick a music matzo ball. But maybe this was one of his.
He held his hands out in the universal symbol for “dance?” And I stepped into the hole his arms made, my right palm in his left, my left on his shoulder. He closed long, cool fingers over mine and rested his right hand lightly on my waist. Our feet made a slow, shuffling orbit around the empty space between our bodies, and for a long time, we just danced. My mind spun down, stopped grappling with what I’d heard and said, and finally quit listening to my thoughts. He brought the crown of his head to mine and rested it there, but none of the tension left the shoulder under my hand. He turned his head, and pressed his temple against mine, the way he’d done after he’d kissed Celeste on my mouth.
Wanting to articulate the magic of what I felt, and to share its power with the man who held me, I said, “Oh.”
He pulled me against him.
“Close your eyes,” he whispered.
The music held my feet and kept their little steps stepping, but everything that wasn’t my body was soaring. My knees wove between Phil’s. Our bellies, and his hips and mine floated over our feet and knees like boats in deep currents. My breasts against him made two polestars of white light. Our temples touched; we danced. And our dancing didn’t matter. Our bodies were extraneous. Symbolic.
“Oh,” I said again.
“Get to this place first, and the dreams slide through you,” he said.
“Oh,” I said.
“Can you tell me what you see?”
“Zombies,” I said.
“No, love. That was just a game you were playing. Look.”
I wanted him to call me “love,” again, but there were definitely zombies lurching my way. They shambled and shed bits of themselves in obliging conformity to type, with one flagrant violation. “They’ve got guns,” I mumbled.
“Ren,” Phil’s voice was calm, but louder. “Keep dancing with me.”
“They’re going to shoot me,” I said.
“No one is going to shoot you.”
But all I could feel of my body against Phil’s was my heart banging its way toward my teeth. “She’s going to shoot me, and you can’t reason with her because she thinks brains are food.”
“You’re sticking bits of different memories together, Ren. None of this is real.”
But it was real and what was stuck together were bits of rotting flesh. Celeste’s body decomposing.
Phil’s hands were hard on my back and my fingers. “Ren!”
The zombie raised its rifle to its shoulder and sighted down the barrel at me. It closed one eye, cocked the hammer and its eyebrow—Phil’s one emotional eyebrow. I stepped back from his arms into the blank white of someplace inside my head.
“You wanted
We’d cleared a space in the flowers for the bowl of oranges, but he was framed on either side by the extravagant color and smell of bloom, stamen and leaf. His face could have been veiled too, for all I could read in it. “Can you trust me?” he said at last.
“Probably not.”
He nodded.
“I have to touch you.” It wasn’t desire in his voice. Almost regret. “It’s the only way I know how to get into your experience enough to shape it for you. It’s not something I can do with language.”
“Oh,” I said.
“It’s—” I could see, in the tiny muscle tic over his left eyebrow, what it was costing him not to drop my eyes. “It’s intimate,” he said.
“I’ll close my eyes and think of England.”
His smile only reached half his mouth. “Not like that.”
“Okay.”
“More.”
“Stop it!” I snapped. “I said okay.”
He walked into the living room like a man on the way to his own embalming. I followed too quickly and had to wait on the rug like an idiot while he found a CD and put it on. It was something low and wordless, all cello, or at least all strings. I’ve never been good with picking out instruments, Mom’s efforts and Prokofiev’s aside. But I thought it was odd, with everything he must know about me, that he wouldn’t pick a music matzo ball. But maybe this was one of his.
He held his hands out in the universal symbol for “dance?” And I stepped into the hole his arms made, my right palm in his left, my left on his shoulder. He closed long, cool fingers over mine and rested his right hand lightly on my waist. Our feet made a slow, shuffling orbit around the empty space between our bodies, and for a long time, we just danced. My mind spun down, stopped grappling with what I’d heard and said, and finally quit listening to my thoughts. He brought the crown of his head to mine and rested it there, but none of the tension left the shoulder under my hand. He turned his head, and pressed his temple against mine, the way he’d done after he’d kissed Celeste on my mouth.
Wanting to articulate the magic of what I felt, and to share its power with the man who held me, I said, “Oh.”
He pulled me against him.
“Close your eyes,” he whispered.
The music held my feet and kept their little steps stepping, but everything that wasn’t my body was soaring. My knees wove between Phil’s. Our bellies, and his hips and mine floated over our feet and knees like boats in deep currents. My breasts against him made two polestars of white light. Our temples touched; we danced. And our dancing didn’t matter. Our bodies were extraneous. Symbolic.
“Oh,” I said again.
“Get to this place first, and the dreams slide through you,” he said.
“Oh,” I said.
“Can you tell me what you see?”
“Zombies,” I said.
“No, love. That was just a game you were playing. Look.”
I wanted him to call me “love,” again, but there were definitely zombies lurching my way. They shambled and shed bits of themselves in obliging conformity to type, with one flagrant violation. “They’ve got guns,” I mumbled.
“Ren,” Phil’s voice was calm, but louder. “Keep dancing with me.”
“They’re going to shoot me,” I said.
“No one is going to shoot you.”
But all I could feel of my body against Phil’s was my heart banging its way toward my teeth. “She’s going to shoot me, and you can’t reason with her because she thinks brains are food.”
“You’re sticking bits of different memories together, Ren. None of this is real.”
But it was real and what was stuck together were bits of rotting flesh. Celeste’s body decomposing.
Phil’s hands were hard on my back and my fingers. “Ren!”
The zombie raised its rifle to its shoulder and sighted down the barrel at me. It closed one eye, cocked the hammer and its eyebrow—Phil’s one emotional eyebrow. I stepped back from his arms into the blank white of someplace inside my head.
“You wanted
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