Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

As her excitement mounted, she raised a soapy hand, fingers probing for the lip of my shorts. I lifted them off disdainfully. “Keep your hands to yourself,” I said.

“Please,” she said in a whisper. “I’ll go if you don’t behave yourself,” I answered. “Have a bath with me, Daddy,” she moaned. I cupped her neck in my right palm and invaded her with the left hand. She planted her feet on either side of the faucet and arched her middle. “I can’t,” she pleaded. “I want you inside.”

I leaned over, pressing my cheek against hers, my mouth to her ear. “Let yourself go,” I whispered, my thumb on the quickening pulse in her throat to check on the work of my other hand. “I can’t like this,” she said desperately.

I watched shadows move across the amber light on the tile, learning the rhythm of this woman. Around once slow, quickly across. Side to side. Up and down. Pause. Hard on the nub … “Let me touch you,” she begged.

“No,” I said. Around and around. Pause. Depart. Let her think you’ve quit until her belly asks for more. Then fast and rougher.

Her warm dripping hand came up to grab my thigh. I stopped pleasing her, pulling her fingers from my skin, and pushed her hand into the water. “Lift your behind,” I said harshly. She obeyed. I pinned her hand beneath her. “You’re not clean yet,” I said.

“Let me kiss you,” she said, her lips blindly touching my face, searching for my mouth.

“Let go,” I said. I tightened my grip on her neck to keep her head still and searched with my middle finger for the pressure point at its base, applying a light but persistent touch. She relaxed, passive again. I resumed playing the instrument, stroking her thighs, stomach, and around her breasts before I returned to her sex.

My eyes adjusted to the amber light until even that seemed bright. I listened to the bubbles subside while she whispered, “I can’t … Please … I can’t. Please … Let me touch you.”

I took her earlobe between my teeth and bit lightly. I whispered, “But this isn’t for you, my little baby. This is what I want.”

“You want me like this?” she asked plaintively. I changed rhythm. She moaned in a deeper tone. “This is for me.”

She trembled, breathing rapidly as if she were having a fast and shallow orgasm. I didn’t believe in it. She was eager to be rid of the attention. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she said and then exhaled loudly to signal it was over. She whispered, “Thank you.”

“You’re a bad little girl,” I said. “Don’t try to fool Daddy.” I slid the tip of my pinky into her other, dry hole. She was startled, then curious. With the rest of my hand I continued to play the central chord, as if I were at work on the crescendo of a Beethoven sonata.

She looked surprised as she felt a true orgasm begin. Her reactions were quite different than during her mock ecstasy. She arched against both ends of the tub, body rigid, no breathing, then a sudden release, sagging down into the water and up again taut, an irregular undulation. She cycled that way more than a dozen times — fighting and losing, fighting and losing to herself.

As she surrendered to the climax, pushing against both rims, she levitated out of the water. When I believed the momentum was too strong for her to stop it, I whispered, “Gene loved you. He loved you so much he preferred to die than live without you.”

She turned her face to me, eyes glazed, listening hungrily while she grunted with pleasure. At the peak, as her body shuddered, her breaths deep, slow and long, I said, “He died for you.”

She bucked so violently I was drenched. I left the bathroom immediately.

I paused briefly in her living room to take another look at the eight-year-old copy of my book. I found what I was looking for on the inside of the back cover. I ignored her puzzled calls asking for me and left for my sublet. My clothes dried quickly on the hot streets.

I DIDN‘T RETURN THE MESSAGES HALLEY LEFT DURING THE FOLLOWING two days. She appeared in the lab — much to the surprise of my fellow geeks — on Wednesday morning and asked to see me in my office. “I want your opinion on the ad copy,” she said in public, namely in front of Andy Chen and two others standing nearby. “See if we’re brainwashing the consumer right,” she added with a smile. “I could use your expertise.”

Tim Gallent, the overweight debugger with a habit of screaming at Andy, said, “Whoa. No kidding, Doc. You brainwash people?”

“Every day,” I said. “I don’t have an office,” I told Halley.

“Come to mine.” She turned halfway, not sure if I would obey.

I didn’t seem to have a choice — how could I explain a rude refusal to Andy and the others? I tried a compromise. “Andy, may we use your office?” I asked.

“Mi casa es su casa,” Andy said. He didn’t look happy. I’m sure he felt he had a right to see the ad copy for the machine he was building.

I led the way into Gene’s old office. The significance would be lost on her. I knew from Andy that Halley had been to the labs only once, her first week on the job, well before Gene had been promoted.

Still, Halley should have been impressed by my changes. At this point in my tenure, I had convinced Andy to allow the maintenance crews in to clean during the three days a week I was there, with a promise that I would supervise them. Andy trusted me to make sure the staff didn’t disturb work in progress. I arranged for them to vacuum and dust in two shifts, accommodating the odd hours of the technicians. I had dealt with the office furniture bureaucracy. The broken chairs and desks were replaced. I bought as many plants as the guys would tolerate. I convinced Stick that spies were unlikely to be crouched with binoculars in the woods across the road and thus the shades could be opened. I arranged with two of the cleaning staff — Rose and Fred — to do so each morning; the technicians couldn’t be trusted to remember. Since the windows had to remain shut, I was reduced to buying air filters and dehumidifiers, not without a lot of worry and memos from different divisions, including one called Technical Integrity, claiming that I was somehow going to destroy every microchip in the building. I found a lab in California which used the same method to freshen their sealed-air supply; that silenced Technical Integrity. So far, no disaster had occurred. Joe Stein’s mother would have been proud of me. The place still wasn’t spotless and it was far from beautiful, but the air was breathable, there was some light, and the leafy green plants were a reminder that the world has parts not made of metal and plastic.

As for Andy’s office, now the chess set, the prototype and his Black Dragon terminal rested on different tables. I brought in a separate desk for the rare occasions he used paper. I requisitioned a small refrigerator and stocked it with Coke. I discovered he liked apples and sharp cheddar cheese; a supply of both was maintained. Since Andy was a Michael Jordan fan, on the wall opposite his desk I hung a poster depicting the Chicago star making a twisting layup between two mammoth defenders.

Halley entered, ignorant of my domestic touches, opened a large manila envelope and pulled out several pages of elaborate typefaces. “These are rough,” she said. “I hate most of them. There’s one that may be it.”

“I don’t know a goddamn thing about advertising,” I said.

“You can read and you can react,” she said. “That’s all I need.”

I proved to her I had no feel for promotion. The one I liked (We made Centaur Fast, Flexible and Smart. All you have to do is make a Lap.) was among her least favorite. The leading candidate was — Don’t Take Your Troubles Home From The Office … Take The Solution.