Edward Lee - Slither

"Loren, I don't want to hear about your sex life!"

"Wow, you're really testy today," he said. "Guess Annabelle was right."

"What?"

"She also told her friend on the phone that you had permanent PMS."

Nora almost yelled, "That insufferable bitch! I'd like to mop my floor with her bleached-blond head!"

"Calm down," he urged, his finger daintily spreading the cool sunblock around her top straps. "Can I ask you a personal question?"

"No!"

"Are you a virgin?"

"No. Of… course not! And even if I were, it's none of your business. Just put the damn stuff on my back, mouth shut."

"Sony." His fingers paused. "Wait, take this off before I goo it up."

My cross, she realized. Her grandmother had given it to her eons ago at her confirmation. She rarely ever took the tiny golden cross and chain off. "You take it off, I can't reach, and I'm too lazy right now to sit up."

He carefully worked the tiny catch and slid it off. "I've been working for you over a year and never knew you were a Christian."

Nora thought about it. "In truth I guess I'm a pretty shitty Christian. My grandmother gave it to me and she was cool. I always wear it under my top."

Loren grinned behind her. "I like the dichotomy. The symbol of the man who died for our sins, and you keep it between your breasts, which are the symbols of female sexuality."

She rolled her eyes under closed lids. "Loren, my boobs aren't exactly pillows of carnality."

"Oh, that's right, I forgot. You did admit that you're a virgin."

Nora knew he was just pecking at her for fun, which normally she went along with. But now, here, the conversation filled her with dread. Throughout her adulthood, she hadn't even been "saving" herself for the right man. I couldn't GIVE it away… She didn't suppose she was downright ugly, and she was at least complex enough to realize that not all men went solely for Annabelle-types. Jesus, I can count my heavy makeout sessions on ONE hand. Then a worse possibility assaulted her.

Maybe Annabelle's right. Maybe I really am a great big case of permanent PMS. For one thing, what guy wants a woman whose career field revolves around worms? And for another, what guy wants a woman who's bitchy, unhappy, and cynical all the time?

But was that really her?

When she felt the cross slip out from between her breasts, she couldn't even remember if any man in her life had actually had his hands on them…

Now Loren was doing the backs of her thighs, multitasking the application of the lotion into a pretty good massage. Nora blanked her mind of all negativity… and felt better.

Her thoughts drifted to last night's dream: the crude sex-fantasy. It had been a gratifying dream, of course, until the end, when she'd wakened unfulfilled.

Just sex, she thought. She focused on the dream's details-the faceless night suitor with no identity. The rough, intent hands on her flesh, the urgent tongue that incited her nipples and her sex. That's what I need, she joked to herself, a man who's just a body.

A body for her.

She could almost fall back to sleep now. The Bimbo's right; Loren gives a killer massage… Now he was working her feet, firing nerves she didn't know she had.

"The feet are an erogenous zone, you know," he said.

"Your point being?"

"Clinical reflexology. As scientists, we should be intrigued by human reproductive response systems, and all their intricacies."

"Loren, please." Slippery fingers glided back and forth across her arches and insteps. "Just be quiet and keep doing it."

The sensations overwhelmed her; she felt woozy in some carnal way. Her buttocks clenched when his hands slid back up the calves, then thighs. She knew this was absurd: she was letting an innocent back rub become much more, she was stealing something from it. She tried to imagine Loren as the lover from her dream, but then some distant moral twinge disallowed it. More sensations flowed from her thighs to her groin, somehow squeezing her sex with a lewd, hot pressure, and in another mental recess, she imagined herself turning around in the sun and masturbating, or worse, brazenly inviting him into her.

The mental alarm bell clanged louder, and the fantasy dissolved with her realization of the truth. My teaching assistant is putting sunblock on me and I'm getting horny. Nora, congratulate yourself on a new low.

"That's enough, thanks," she blurted. She flipped back over quickly, assailed by an inexplicable guilt. At least if she were blushing, her sunburn would hide it. "I can do the front," she said.

"Damn, I was just starting to have fun."

Nora frowned. I'll bet. Probably musing over the Bimbo. She rubbed more lotion on her front shoulders and arms. The tingling between her legs mocked her; she struggled for a harmless subject. "So what's on the rest of today's agenda? Are you and Miss Priss going out for more worms?"

"You heard her," he said, lying back on his own towel. "She wants more underwater shots when the light is optimum, she said. And she wants to try to get some mating shots. Probably tomorrow afternoon."

Figures. 'Did you sex the samples you brought up?"

"Of course. All today's samples are back at our field lab. I've got them in some field aquariums." He chuckled. "And don't worry, I won't let Annabelle dupe me. Today she kept brushing against me-what a tease. I'll let her go on thinking I'm a virgin. Then she'll really want me, right? I mean it's true, all women want to crack a male virgin?"

She shook her head to herself. "How about if we stick to more professional subjects?"

"Come on, it's true, right?" he insisted. "Everybody wants to be somebody else's first. It's completely biogenic, it's got to be. In a sense, we're all still back in Neanderthal days. Part of our brains believe this."

"Remnant Darwinism in sexual function," she murmured, closing her eyes again and lying back. "Let's stick to scarlet bristleworms, huh?"

"I'd rather talk about sex," he thwarted. "It's fun. I'm going to play Annabelle's game, let her think what she wants, and execute my right to your remnant Darwinism in sexual function." He nearly giggled. "I'll wind up giving her the best balling of her shallow, insipid life!"

Nora looked over, shielding her eyes. "What's gotten into you? You never talked so-"

"Libidinously?"

"That's not quite the word I was looking for. 'Trashy's' more like it."

"Same thing. Why mince words? I don't know, it must be the environment, the air, the sun, just the four of us here in the cusp of nature's beauty. It all reaffirms my vitality as a sexual entity."

You sound like a horny redneck, Loren."

"I am a horny redneck, baby," he said, his giant Adam's apple bobbing. "And when I get back to the mainland, I'm gonna tear it up! Watch out, girls!"

Jesus, I've created a monster-nerd…

"And speaking of abandonment of modern morality," he said, "here's your cross back."

She'd forgotten about it-a symbol, perhaps, of her forgotten religion. She reconnected the chain and slipped the cross beneath the top of her one-piece. The tiny tidbit of metal felt cold between her breasts. "What about you?" she asked. "Are you spiritual at all? Do you have any religious beliefs?

"Sure," he answered at once. "I believe in scientific conclusionary phenomenalism."

Nora almost hacked. "What the hell is that?"

"Reverence to the acknowledgment of the contradiction that space and time are forms of intuition. Man's spiritual absolution can never be made manifest in our finite minds but in the genetics beyond the whole. Follow me?"

"No."

"What I mean is, salvation is a consistence of a judgment pursuant to other judgments, fitting in ultimately to a single absolute system."

Nora rubbed her eyes wearily. Never ask a genius what his religion is, she told herself.