Metallic Love

“You want me to be strict?”

“No. I want—”

“What, Loren? Tell me. I can be—do—anything.”

“I know. You can even screw me in another shape. Like the kite? Or can you do wheels and discs—”

He pulled me round, ungentle. He took my head in his hands and brought my mouth against his. This time I shut my eyes.

He asked, “Am I improving?”

I dragged myself away. I wanted to hit him. He knew. He caught my hand before I’d raised it. “Don’t. Remember what I’m covered with. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“You hurt me.”

“Not intentionally.”

“You.”

He pressed me backwards, and there was the trunk of one of the trees against my spine. I felt his tongue over my neck, my breasts. The iron inside me whitened. The iron said to me, Let him, you want this, too. Don’t stint yourself—enjoy.

When I struggled he held me, kissing me, his hands on my body. When he pierced me, I could only struggle towards him. Why lie to myself? He knew.

“This,” he hissed into my ear, “this—is us. Believe this—You and I—I and you—Loren —”

The world dissolved. Real or pretense, it shattered into glittering blue-black diamonds. A cry came out of me. It sounded like a bird screaming in the sky. And over the sinewy river, miles away, some music started for anyone who wanted to dance.

He picked me up and carried me into the block, and stood in the elevator, holding me, kissing my hair, my eyelids. When we were in the circular apartment, he put me on a couch, lowering me like something very fragile. Then he lay on me, heavy, every outer atom of our bodies in contact. He was inside me instantly.

His face, when he raised it, was alight with feral agony. I said he can climax, like any ordinary man. Jane taught Silver… Silver taught Verlis.

“More?” he asked me.

“Not yet.”

“Your hair pours over the end of the couch in a flood and lies along the floor. You have lovely hair, Loren. And your skin… You don’t know you’re beautiful, do you?”

“No.”

“And I’d never be able to convince you.”

“No.”

He lay beside me, drew me in close. “The reason I haven’t seen you more often: There have been things to do.”

Beyond our lampless windows, lampshine, peaceful starry night.

“Because the city authorities are now sending ultimatums or mounting an attack.”

“They won’t do it like that,” he said. “They’ve already hushed everything up. Like the last time. The fire at META was an accident. I must show you the news bulletins.”

“But you still have to be stopped.”

“It goes without saying. There’s been no communication between them and us. But we can pick up most of their own computerized dialogues, even the ones put out to mislead us should we do so. They had several plans, none feasible. One of their problems is that they want to keep this place intact for themselves, in case they ever need it—a handy bolt-hole for war or plague, if the Asteroid disaster never happens. They will think of something eventually. Human beings are ingenious. But we know that, they made us in their image.”

“So you are more ingenious.”

“We have,” he said, “an ace card. Or will. Until everything’s set, I don’t want to tell you too much.”

“Don’t trust me?”

“I don’t think of you either as a potential captive under torture, or a traitor.”

“Then why not tell me?”

He said, “If you can’t read my mind, you’ll have to wait.”

More perverse playfulness? I took a breath. “Let’s see if you’ll tell me this. Is Jane down here?”

“Ah,” he said. I looked at him. “Glaya said you’d finally bring yourself to ask me that. Do you want me to answer?”

“Presumably, or why did I bring myself to ask.”

“If I say she isn’t, all the responsibility for dealing with my immature sexual obsession falls on you. And yes, Loren, it has to be, even now, immature. Despite his memories, you are still my first. On the other hand, if I say yes, Jane is here also, what? Insecurity? The idea you owe me nothing and should accordingly elude my clutches?”

I struggled again and now he let me go. I stood up and shook myself like a dog coming out of water. Most of my clothes were off me. I turned my back to him.

“Come on, you, or someone, already took care I met her before. So is she here?”

“Since you refer to your meeting… you could say she is.”

Silence dropped painlessly down and down. It covered us up.

“Do you often see her?”

“I’ve seen her. She isn’t here for that.”

“Was she on the plane that night—”

“No, Loren.”

“Then—”

“Loren, I’m not ready to explain to you. I will. Not yet.”

“Fuck you.”

“I won’t insult you with the inevitable cliche.”

I moved across the circular room. I’d reached a window.

“How’s this for a cliche? Let me go,” I said. “Let me go away.”

“I can’t. Even if I wanted to. Right now, on your own, you couldn’t even get off the mountains onto the highway. They have patrols lower down—”

“I know. And those fuelless robo-copters.”

“They’d pick you up the moment they registered you weren’t one of the deer. You don’t know how to protect yourself.”

I gazed back at him. Did I hate him? Yes, I hate him. Love and hate all mixed together, a new emotion. Shall I call it Have or Lote?

I said, “Don’t tell me to come up here to you anymore.”

He lay on the couch, not looking at me. He was naked. He was as Jane describes him. I can’t match her descriptions. She was new at it all, back then. You can’t beat originality.

“If you don’t want, don’t,” he said.

“Give me some clothes,” I said. “You’ve torn these.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re always sorry.”

“Very likely, yes. There’s clothing in the bathroom.”

I walked around the curve of the windows and came to the blank wall where the emerald bathroom opens, and went in. I shut and locked the door, for what that was worth, and sat against it on the floor.

Did I sit lamenting there? I don’t cry, remember?

After a while I got up and put on the fresh white underclothes, the white linen top, and the white jeans. Like a bride.