Выбрать главу

And a woman such as Clara had many such needs. But of course she'd filled that gap — no pun intended — with all the other guys, unbeknownst to poor little Howard.

No problem.

But he took too damn much attention. Smothering her with flowers and sticky displays of affection. She got sick of it.

So they'd had their little "spat." That was what Howard called it, anyway. She'd stood him up for dinner, then ducked his calls for a week, hoping he'd catch the drift.

No dice.

Howard was not only dull, he was often perfectly dense. He'd appeared at her dorm, actually curious at first, concerned, thinking that maybe something was wrong with her. And then, understanding, ludicrous in his ninety-pound-weakling rage.

"What the hell's going on?" he demanded.

She was cleaning up the room, faking a kind of nervous energy combined with a forlorn expression and, well, maybe a little cocaine. Double-whammy. It pretty much worked every time.

She picked up a stocking, worried it in her hands a little — though not enough to run the damn thing — and turned to him, sighing. "Oh Howard," she said. "I don't know what I want."

"After six months? You don't know?"

"Has it been that long?"

"Yes. It has."

"It's just that the things I like to do you seem to hate…"

"What things? I love being with you."

"I know you do — if it's dinner and long walks or sitting by the fire over sherry or playing chess. But you know, I like to go places, I like the clubs. I like to go dancing."

"Dancing!"

She did not appreciate being yelled at. She yelled back.

"Yes! Dancing! And you can't dance! You don't even try! You won't dance and you won't even go to a movie unless it's got subtitles and twenty old Frenchmen sitting around drinking wine. Do you even know who the hell Arnold Schwartzenegger is for chrissake?"

Of course it wasn't the dancing. Howard Moley was just a card-carrying nerd. Polyester slacks. Button-down shirts with a pocket full of pens, an academic scarecrow. Plus, he had long stringy hair which Clara hated on men. And he fucked like he danced — like a puppet on strings.

Howard was incredulous. "You want to break up with me because of dancing? Isn't love more important than dancing?"

"Howard, I never said I loved you."

"Of course you did!"

Clara remembered. "That was different. I was…drunk."

"Drunk, great. That's just great!"

He stomped back and forth across her room, waving his skinny arms. A plucked chicken reciting his litany of grievances.

"You lead me on, you sleep with me, you say you'll marry me, you tell me you love me…"

"Oh, Howard, I did not."

"And now all of a sudden you don't know what you want, you think you'd rather go dancing. That's just great. That's very mature. You'll go really far in life with ideals like that."

To hell with this, she thought. Enough's enough.

"Howard."

He stopped at her tone and looked at her. The tone was a very cold one. It was very, very easy for her to make it that way.

"Just leave, Howard," she said. "Just go away."

She watched the color drain out of his face and the thin lower lip start to tremble. And then he was jerking past her toward the door.

"Fine! I will. Have fun on the dance floor, Clara."

She opened the door for him as he babbled his way out into the hall. "I know you'll find lots of genuine fulfillment there. Absolutely. You'd rather dance than be in an honest, mature relationship with someone who really loves you. That's great. That's…"

She slammed the door.

"Wonderful!" she heard him through the door. "Go ahead. Dance your life away. See if I care!"

Jesus, Howard, she thought. You can't even make a decent exit.

And now, musing as she douched out the sperm Johnny had left in her last night, she wondered how decent an exit he'd made out there in the Rain Forest.

She wondered why she was even thinking about him when she could be thinking about Johnny. Johnny with the great tan and the runner's body. Whose I.Q. was probably close to his penis size — about a twelve.

But who was counting?

She appraised her nude body in the mirror — high breasts and puckered nipples, the dark-blonde pubic plot — but still her thoughts drifted.

She refused to feel guilty about Howard. He'd been dead for over a week now and their relationship had been dead for over a month. She was sorry he was dead, naturally, but it really had nothing to do with her. Sometimes a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do, she thought.

How dumb could a guy be? All those silly, drippy love letters he'd sent her from Brazil. As though she hadn't made herself perfectly clear that night.

The schmuck had gone to his grave thinking they were still in love.

I love you so much. The words drifted back. They were the last words he'd spoken to her. He'd called from the airport, just before his flight. She'd said nothing. Hung up.

The Rain Forest was burning, its systematic destruction exposing new botanical phyla every day. The government had issued grants to get as many experts down there as possible. Every bionerd's dream, she thought. Howard was a mycologist, an expert on fungi of every category.

She also considered what else he was, or had been. Kind. Considerate. Generous.

Shit. There I go. Feeling guilty again.

Okay, maybe she had led him on a little, said she loved him once or twice when the subject of marriage happened to come up, maybe even indicated a kind of enthusiasm for the idea.

Hey, there was a lot of money involved. A lot to consider.

And she'd been pretty damn good to him all told, hadn't she? For a while?

She stepped naked into the bedroom. Her eyes went to the little box of letters on the bureau. Like a miniature coffin.

Howard had been cremated. The letters were all that remained of him now. They made her feel suddenly sad.

To hell with that, she thought.

I sure hope Johnny calls.

* * *

He was a drunk but he was gorgeous and at least he liked to dance. The more she tried to focus, though, away from Howard, the more precisely she envisioned the skinny, knob-kneed little nerd.

It was happening to her a lot lately. She'd be lying in bed masturbating for god's sake, a kaleidoscope of sweat-sheened studs writhing and panting through her brain, plugging all three orifices at once…when in walks Howard.

Jesus!

She guessed she did feel a little guilty. Poor guy. All alone in the Rain Forest, with his mushrooms and his fungus, his sample bags and his mosquito nets. He'd died loving her…

My god. She was about to start crying.

Over Howard!

The phone rang. She lunged for it.

"Johnny!"

The voice on the other end was loaded to the gills but she was still perfectly glad to hear it.

"Go for a ride, babe? A little dancing maybe, then maybe a little…”

“Get your gorgeous ass over here right now," she cooed.

* * *

Approximately one month previous, Howard Moley, mycologist, botanical scholar, and jilted lover, looked down in dismay at the dead ocelot. Creek scum filmed the animal's fine spotted fur. It had crossed the river just east, which struck Howard as odd. Why? he wondered. Why did you cross the river?

Ocelots were known to avoid water in all but life-threatening situations. This seemed strange. Stranger still were the dozens of bright and nearly blood-red bracki??? that studded the animal's hide. Most brackets or shelf fungi were saprophytic — they grew on stumps or dead trees. But this one clearly demonstrated a mammalian-capable mycelium, meaning that its food-support could be absorbed from dead animal tissue. This was very rare among stemless mushroom phyla.