"David Gerrold - Love Story in Three Acts" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gerrold David)

want? Do you Want to go to bed?"
John looked at her. Who was this woman who had suddenly become a part of his life? Where had
she come from? Why was he so reluctant even to touch her? He shoved the thought out of his mind. "I'm
tired," he said.
"No, you're not," she snapped. "You don't want to. You always say you're tired when you don't want
to." She pointed toward the bedroom, "Well, that thing's in there now, John—and it's not going away
either. Sooner or later, you're going to have to see how it works. Why not tonight?"
He looked at her for a long moment, as if trying to remember the girl she had once been. Finally, "All
right I'll turn out the lights…"
She waited and they went into the bedroom together, without words. She started to help him out of
his clothes, but he pushed her hands away and shrugged out of his shirt without letting her touch him. He
unloosened his belt and let his pants drop to the floor.
And then, suddenly, she was standing in front of him—he hadn't even noticed when she'd shrugged
out of her dress, but here she was, wearing only bra and panties. In the dim light she was only a silhouette
and he had to rely on his memory to tell-him what she looked like.
She slid into his arms and they stood there for a moment, without effort, without moving.
After a bit, she broke away and began looking for the wires and bands. "The pause that depresses…"
she smiled at him, but he did not smile back. Instead, he sat down on the edge of the bed to wait.
She handed him the ankle and wrist bands and showed him how to attach the wires. "Mr. Wolfe
showed me how, but it's also in the instruction book. Bend down, so I can do your head." He did and
she did.
"My turn now," she said. "Come on…"
He stood there, looking at her, conscious of the wires trailing from his wrists and ankles and from the
top of his head. But she did not laugh. "Aren't you going to help me?" she demanded instead.
He glanced around and found that she had stacked her bands neatly on the night stand. With a
minimum of effort, he clipped them to her forearms. He did not resist when she kissed him affectionately
on the ear, but neither did he react. Marsha caught at his hand and held it, "It'll be good, John. I know."
For the first time in a year, she looked into his eyes, "Trust me."
He looked back at her, this strange woman who was his wife, and his first impulse was to snap, "I'm
doing it, aren't I?" But something in her glance held him back, and he just nodded instead.
Being careful of the wires, they climbed into bed.
For a while they lay side by side, she looking at him, he looking into the darkness. They listened to the
sound of each other's breathing, like two titans in the dark. Finally, impatiently, she moved into his arms.
"They say you should relax," she whispered. "Let the machine do the guiding. But you do have to start
it, John. You have to give the feedback and reaction systems something to start with…"
She lifted her face up, wanting to be kissed. He kissed it. He let his hands move incuriously over her
body, feeling how her once-trim form had begun to pile up layers, had begun to turn to fat; the
once-smooth skin was beginning to go rough and there were wrinkles. But he let his hands roam across
her anyway, without direction, not noticing how they had already begun to quest and probe.
Marsha's hands too were moving across his body, through the sparse hair on his chest, up and along
his never well-muscled arms, across the uneven pimple-stained skin of his back. Yet, he noticed, her
hands seemed to be more gentle than they had seemed in the past, more sensitive, more knowing and
more active. She was beginning to caress parts of his chest and legs, places that seemed to be more alive
than he remembered them.
His hands too had taken on a life of their own—and yet, they were still his hands. He stroked, he
fondled, he caressed with a technique and a skill he had never noticed in himself. And Marsha was
reacting, responding, giving with an enthusiasm he had never before seen in this woman who was his wife.
Now he was moving and thrusting with a wholeness of being that had to be shared—it was too big
for any one person—and he moved and thrust at her all the more willfully, trying to push his sharing all the
deeper into her. Marsha too seemed to be arching, thrusting, giving—as if she too had something