Robert Onopa: The Pleasure Tube

“You’re one of those rare people,” she tells my reflection in the window—I can see her looking at me—“who go to the stars.” I look directly at her and her vision shifts, she looks out to the night sky. She slowly spreads her arms and stretches them above her head. “To fly,” she says, and she turns to me, “to fly like a god.”

Her halter has risen and I can see her naked belly, a flat expanse. She closes her eyes and hugs herself. When she opens them I look out at the taxiing shuttle, a little embarrassed.

“Don’t you find me attractive?” she asks; she has a kind of nervous glow. She spreads her arms again, and as I watch her she brings them down as a dancer might, her hands coming across her body—they seem to linger for an instant at her breasts.

I tell her, “Yes, of course. Very.” I laugh and add, “Collette,” only then notice that her name tag is gone.

“You remembered my name,” she says, smiling broadly. “You really are rare. I went through your program, everywhere you’ve been.”

She moves even closer to me, or I to her, and I am near enough to see the glistening of moisture on her lips, to sense a weight to her breathing.

“Listen,” she says, “we have some time.”

I want to look at my watch, my wrist naked. I remember that my instructions were to pack the watch in my luggage. “Time… for…”

“Here,” she says, tugging gently at my arm to draw me against her. She has soft lips, her lipstick is flavored cinnamon.

I am grinning, my mouth has gone dry, her warm body is pressed against mine, and my hands pull flat against the small of her back. “Can we do this?” I wonder, half to myself. “What if…?” My hands are on her bottom, she is silky and firm at once. Her curves are breathtaking, as if beneath my hands her shape conforms to a dream I’ve never quite had but now want.

“If we’re quick we won’t get caught,” she whispers. “Before you go.”

When I kiss her again, her tongue outlines my lips. I can feel her body trembling, no dream but alive. She pushes me away, smiling.

“Wait,” she says quietly, unbuttoning her skirt. “I want to show you something.” Her skirt falls to the carpet. She wears tiny black panties whose lower edges she traces with the tip of each index finger before she slips them off, saying as she lets them fall on her skirt, she is giggling, “Part of my uniform—they make ticket agents wear satin so we feel sexy. I…”

She doesn’t let me undress. She straddles me as I lie back on the recliner. Her halter falls open and I see her moving breasts, full and real, her rhythm and mine accelerating, like the whine of the space shuttle thrusting off beyond the darkening window in a blur of light and motion, lifting higher in the blackness of the sky.

Moments later I am waiting for the energy to move again, the quease entirely gone from my stomach. I think Collette is moving my belt in a notch, but then she says, “Welcome to thePleasureTube,” and I see that her hands are at my waist, adjusting a safety belt—no, a liftoff rig.

“To the…?” I can feel the jiggle of hydraulics, the entire lounge is moving. Lights through the window slip by, some disappear—we are being moved into a ship.

Collette strokes my forehead and offers me a drink that looks like orange juice. “Take some of this,” she says.

“I, mmm, don’t think I need…”

“Take it,” she says; “you’ll feel better.”

The lounge thumps into position, loose equipment rattles, she giggles and kisses me. She puts her tongue between my teeth, then moves away toward her clothing. I want to say thank you, but my mouth is going numb with a feeling that is spreading through my body. I am blacking out even as I feel the pressure of a vast and tidal acceleration.

I am asleep but then vaguely aware of a sensation in my fingers and palms. I inhale the rich odor of gardenias and come awake enough to make out Collette kneeling beside the recliner, massaging my hands. Through ship noise I can hear Bartok violins—my own favorite from the Daedalus library.

“Time to get up?” I say, though the room is dim, and no light comes through the window. The ship vibrates with the low howl of sustained acceleration.

“No,” Collette says. “I’m going to bed. I just wanted to tuck you in.”

I rise on an elbow. “What are you doing here? Are you coming along?”

“I’m your service.” She grins. “Lie back.”

“I’m not sleepy.”

“You’ve passed through five time zones and you surely are sleepy. The computer and I know all your body rhythms. Just listen to me.”

“My service?”

“Mmmm. You like to touch, too. I think we’re going to enjoy each other. I like you,” she says, her hand drifting up, stroking my temple. “The way your hair curls here at your ears.”

The lounge has changed—my recliner doubled into a bed, the couches rearranged, draperies along the window/wall. A light illuminates the large painting of pink, fleshy women in an embrace.

“Do I—I mean, is this my cabin?”

Only when she puts her hand on my shoulder to make me lie back do I realize that I am naked. I inhale deeply, and the rich, sweet odor of gardenias fills my lungs.

“Drink this,” she says, passing me the orange juice again.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see tomorrow. Where doesn’t matter, does it?”

For the moment I can’t think of an answer. I close my eyes as Collette makes me promise to tell her stories from my trip, where the Daedalus expedition went, what we saw on survey. Her asking me, the Bartok, this peculiar motion, tug at my concentration, and for a frightening moment I feel myself on the precipice of my nightmare on the Daedalus, my mind’s eye beginning to shape the awesome figure of a howling, whirling sun….

As I struggle for consciousness I breathe an odor of Guam, tropically rich, ripening. Guam: the drowsy questions, the limpid air. Knuth smiling at my requests for leave, not a smile of sympathy, but a smile of collusion with a pattern that will not let me go. I cannot rise past the same numbness I felt weighing on me then.

“The exact position of the thrusters?”

“No readings on any of the mag sensors, Rawley? Let’s go over them one by one.”

“Don’t blame me, Rawley, this is a slow process. This is how it has to be.”

“Let’s consider analogies, Voorst. What was your personal relationship with each of the other members of the dome crew? How would you describe your feelings toward the Committee Pilot? Let’s begin with them.”

I feel about them as I feel about you, runs through my mind. Don’t you ever act?

“Dead in Houston,” Taylor says finally to a question about Cooper one day, his voice flat and even, his gold lighter hissing as he pauses to light his pipe. “Cached his drugs.” The news of Cooper’s suicide slices through my numbness like a razor through my flesh, Cooper perhaps psychotic, I believe, but suicide doesn’t seem right; and Taylor had known for two days.

I can feel anxiety rising as a presence within me, my heart is pounding, and Yes, I want to say to Collette, it does matter where, I want to wake….

Then I feel her silky hand slipping across my chest, a satin sheet pulled across my midsection, her lips beginning to nibble at my thighs.

The image of the cold, howling sun, the memories of Cooper howling at Committee Pilot from Damage Control, of Guam, recede from my mind and I am transported. I smile a smile of satisfaction which Collette could only partially translate, as the last music I remember from the lull becomes, not a vivid memory, but simply present Bartok and the piercing sweetness of violins.