Given my behavior earlier with the crossbow, I guess he had a right to look askance at me, to wonder about my hesitation. So I bit my lip and led him toward the one room I’d painted all by myself. As we went, I reminded him, “As you’ve seen, the furniture is all part of the house. So pretty much everything in here is … me.”
He nodded as he glanced through the arching doorway. Then he froze, and frankly gaped.
I knew what he was looking at. The beds. A pair of rounded mounds, each had a single dark brown cushion at one end that rose about six inches higher than everything else if you stroked them a little. Softly wrinkled, the pillowy masses were circled by smooth brown areolas and there was simply no mistaking what part of the body they’d been derived from.
To give him credit for having some sense, he didn’t comment on that. Instead, he inquired, “No blankets?”
“I’ve never needed them,” I said. Which was true. The beds were as warm as my own skin. They were my own skin. Normally, I didn’t bother with PJs either. Tonight, I decided, was different. I’d sleep in my clothes. I dug out a comforter for him, and we both more or less collapsed.
I woke in the dark, still exhausted, not quite certain what had roused me. Then I heard it—a slurping sound of mumbled contentment.
Sitting up, I peered at my unwanted roommate.
He was sleeping peacefully, sprawled on the other bed. His head had slipped off the cushion, however, and he’d wrapped an arm around it. In his sleep, he nuzzled it. As I watched, the nippillow grew firmer, rising, and so did its counterparts, on my own bed, on my chest. It’s hard to describe the sensation. Electric yet ghostly, unlike anything I’d felt before. I found myself stretching out, reaching out, longing for something I couldn’t name.
But even that much movement set off my skin. I wasn’t used to wearing clothes at night. They clung to me, the wrinkles leaving welts, rasping at my neck and my shoulders and hips, and I couldn’t help wrapping my arms around myself and digging in. Pretty soon, I was a ball of misery, tears rolling down my face. Every part of me that I could reach lay next to a piece that I couldn’t. I was so freakin’ miserable, I didn’t even know I was whimpering. I never heard him get up either. He was just suddenly there, beside me.
I sobbed. “I can’t stand it!” I dug in again, but he stopped me.
“Easy, now,” he murmured and called up the room lights. He slowly forced my hands down into my lap. He lifted my face, frowning as he caught sight of the multiple tracheotomy scars on my throat. He rubbed one thumb across them. Then he got behind me and began rubbing my back. My shoulders. My hips. And when the cloth got in his way, he eased the shirt off me and worked on my bare skin. It wasn’t the kind of massage you’d get at the spa, like I was a loaf of bread being kneaded. This was more like being stroked, over and over again. He did it just hard enough to move blood through my skin but without any hard edges. Slowly, the itching subsided, becoming a layer of heat, as if the whole outermost inch of me was slowly combusting.
Laying me down, he continued his work, down each arm and leg and back up again.
“You have such beautiful skin,” he said, breathing the words at my bare shoulder. “Beautiful. …”
“Yeah, sure. As long as I stay clear of plastic,” I whispered. Last time I wore rayon, I looked like a leper for most of a week, and Rick … well, Rick seemed to think he might catch it. When I reacted to his aftershave as well … I shuddered, trying to shake off the memory. “History,” I told myself.
Fox didn’t notice. He was too busy caressing the sensitive skin at the base of my spine, where tiny hairs had begun to tremble.
So long, I thought, since anyone touched me.
I sat up, turning to face him. He smiled. He’d taken off his borrowed shirt somewhere along the way. His mandala glowed, gently spinning. His hands kept on moving, caressing my thighs.
I looked down at the tent in his borrowed trousers. “Rub me all over,” I insisted.
The next time I woke, it was nearly dawn. I felt … human. I lay on my side and the warmth at my back wasn’t welts. It was Fox, his body spooned around mine. He was snoring, each breath ever so faintly stirring the hair on the nape of my neck.
I marveled, refusing to move. I wanted that moment to last. It might have to, the way things were going. My desensitization treatments had all failed. Unless and until something new came through, I’d be living like this the rest of my life.
At least I wasn’t allergic to him.
I smiled. With Rey, it was like bedding a virgin. I guess he was so used to having the piercings, the implants and such … well, for one thing, he had to be careful. Those things can tear skin off. But when he had to do without them, it seemed to throw him off his rhythm. His tentative moves were incredibly gentle, however, and I couldn’t help but respond in kind. His attitude, too, was so sweet. He was almost childlike about his discoveries. Lying there, I started feeling vaguely guilty about the whole thing, as if somehow I were taking advantage of him and his innocence.
A disturbing thought. It was interrupted by a tickle, then a sneeze. Then another. Monster sneezes. I wound up on the floor, with Rey’s arm around me as I convulsed again and again. As my Mexican yaya would say, “¡Que romantico!”
“What is it? You need something? Cortisone? Huh? Do you have an inhaler?” He was in full panic mode, ready to start mouth to mouth. “Is it … is it me?”
I shook my head. “No.” I was wheezing a bit, but it wasn’t because of congestion, which it would be if this were a chemical thing. It was more of a physical prickling, way up inside my nose somewhere. I blew my nose, hard, and got no relief at all. That’s when I remembered my skin itching so badly, all on account of the Bi’Ome’s infection.
What was happening this time? And where?
We found a good eighteen inches of snow on the ground when we tumbled out the front door. No fair. The snow should have been rain, this late in the season.
The drifts had nearly buried Rey’s bike, though the sky above us was perfectly clear by then. In the east, I could see dawn’s light edging the Sierra Nevada with an ethereal white lacework of fresh powder. Beautiful—almost beyond words.
Until, that is, something fluttered right into my face, grabbing at me with tiny claws. I flailed at it, knocking the thing off my nose. Then another one came at me.
What were they, owls? Bugs?
I snatched up Rey’s discarded, now frozen, towels and swung them at the pesky creatures, trying to keep them at bay. Not so, Rey. He climbed up on the porch railing, peering at the roofline as more of them fluttered around the house.
“What are they?” I whispered, half-afraid I’d draw them my way again if I spoke any louder. I could hear faint squeaking as it was, like tiny fingernails on a blackboard.
“Stay there,” answered Rey.
What?
He swung off the porch and climbed up the access ladder built into the siding. That took him up to a vent near the roof, a triangle opening into the attic space. Like so much of the house, the vent resembled its organ of origin—my nose. While I watched, the small fluttering forms flew at it. They folded up into smaller shapes as they reached its nostrils. Then they vanished altogether.
Scritch scritch … Achoo!!
I sneezed so hard, I blew one of the little airborn devils backward by nearly a yard. That finally scared the buggers off! They veered away from me and joined their fellows upstairs.
Rey climbed back down again. He was grinning.
I demanded, aloud this time, “What?”
He laughed, not exactly at me, but I still didn’t take it well. “Love,” he said, “you’ve got bats in your belfry. Your sinuses, anyway!”