Read Online Untitled.FR11 by Unknown Author - Free Book Online

had an extra tinge to it; the anxiety of Marcus’s being in the study and quite possibly walking in on her while the steam rose from her PC—private erotica on parade—made her keep a finger by the Page Down key. But he didn’t disturb her. Most likely, stealing time from his new book on Massinger, he’d been composing one of his letters to Sherry, the kind he “hid” with the attrib command, the kind she wwhid, when alone, easily with XTreeGold on a floppy, and read.
    The waitress returned, Katt ordered, and watched Love Bunny’s lips move as she ordered. Odd, how complex Katt’s emotions were. Those same lips had loved her mate not two days before, a quick tryst after class, prompting also one outrageous outpouring of prose in praise of them. And yet her anger toward the redhead seemed not at all to diminish her attraction to her; it was as if Love Bunny, pure mind, were indeed distinct from Sherry Feit, The Other Woman, an easy split between them. One began these silent, in-depth friendships on BBSs or via e-mail, and it was inevitably a surprise, and no surprise at all, when you finally met. A connection formed, a deep fancy of thought and desire.
    “What’d you tell your husband?” Eggs Benedict lay on her fork, held before the hint of a smirk.
    “That I’d follow my usual Sunday routine, The Rainbow and a walk to Old Town Square,” Katt said. “He’s . . .” She stopped herself from revealing anything. “He has some about-the-house sorts of things to do.”
    “It’s so easy to fool them.”
    “I suppose.”
    “The trusting ones, anyway.”
    “Yes.” A certain unflattering lack of compassion had its hold on Sherry, but Katt went with it. Her friend had had, after all, a mean-streaked sadist in her past whom it must have felt good to deceive. Marcus, by contrast, held a special place in her heart despite his betrayal, despite hers, despite the terrible nudge she’d given his potential Huntington’s disease six days before. She hadn’t dared to probe him since. But under her sunny exterior, she’d kept watch on him, attempting to detect aberration in movement, a falter of purpose, a hint of self-doubt. Maddening, her not knowing, not daring to ask; she’d carried on normally, insatiable curiosity fury-ing within.
    Her shared space with Love Bunny soon became an oasis of calm. Katt relaxed into it, trading impressions of her job and Sherry’s, both of them keeping things vague—yes I teach at CSU (department omitted), I do software at HP (no need to narrow it, even though Marcus had said very little about his family in the time Katt had monitored him).
    Over hazelnut coffee and cheesecake, there in the sun of a beautiful day, Sherry said, “Would you feel all right about using first names?”
    It came out casual, just before a two-handed sip, her lips at the rim; but it felt crucial. In the messages she had spied upon, Marcus had always called her “my mate,” he so hated the word “wife”—but never had he named her. Still there was no way of knowing if he’d let it slip during his four months in Iowa. Katherine? Katt? If he’d mentioned it at all, it had been the latter.
    She thought of offering Katherine, a more common name and more likely to be written off as coincidence. But she could not lie to this woman, her electronic friend and her soon-to-be fleshly lover. And Katherine, a name nobody at all had ever used on her, not even angrily toward her as a child, would be a lie. “Mine’s Katt,” she said, detecting no spike of panic across the table.
    She breathed freer.
    “Sherry,” said Sherry, “but no fair combing through a university directory for more.”
    She agreed not to. It was a trivial thing, this name exchange, but some sort of watershed had passed. Although Katt still held back a major secret from Sherry, their BBS masks had been compromised. “I like your name,” Katt told her, meaning it.
    “So did you walk or drive?”
    “Walked.” Perhaps not the wisest