Free Body of Glass by Marge Piercy Page B

aren’t too anything, Gadi.”
    “You say that now. Do you think we’ll be like other married couples? Fighting and jabbing at each other. My parents weren’t like that, if I really remember how it was. They used to speak their own language, top speed. They’d work together all day, and then at night they’d talk nonstop as if they hadn’t seen each other for weeks.”
    Gadi’s home smelled like a clinic. It was unnaturally quiet. She was used to a more cheerful and pragmatic atmosphere. Malkah believed in the creature comforts: good food, pretty dishes, curtains on the windows, comfortable healthy posture in front of the computers, the plugs kept polished, sterilized. “I wish we could live in my house.”
    Gadi kissed her lightly, just a brushing of the lips. “Your house is the good place of my dreams. It’s always been like that.”
    “Because of the courtyard. It’s like the synagogue.” A whole meekro within the walls of her house, all green and flowering, like paradise itself. “I wish we dared be there right now.”
    “We’ll have it someday. We’ll take off all our clothes and lie on the grass under the peach tree. You’re my peach. I could eat you all up.”
    He was kissing her again, harder now, their lips soft and moist and avid, snatching at each other, sucking, their tongues entwined. Lately their bodies created a fierce intense place between them. For years they had been holding each other and sometimes kissing, but that part was growing stronger and more powerful. He pushed her sweater up to touch her breasts. They were growing, and he liked to play with them. It made her feel molten and as if the weight in her were shifting downward. Kissing used to be part of pretend, part of the games, but lately it was its own thing.
    He fell back from her, smiling now. “Close your eyes, Shira. Close them tight. I’m closing mine. Now feel. We’re blind. We’re going to be eyeless. We’re two blind creatures meeting to explore each other. And we speak different languages, so we can’t talk. We can only touch and make noises.”
    Slowly, slowly, she built his body out of the ruddy darkness of her pinched lids. The buttons of his shirt felt huge. The closure on his pants was prickly and rough to her grazing fingers. It took them what felt like hours to undress each other until they were sleekly, hotly naked together. Her breath pushed in and out of her quickly. She could feel his heart racing against her cheek. Hot and cool, curly and sleek, firm and silky, wiry, metallic. His body was a city, vast, filling her head.
    His hand came between her legs, touching her there where he had the week before when they were in the warm shallow water of the bay, dangerously swimming in defiance of sharks, finny and human, who hunted for flesh. They were defiantly swimming without protective grease, naked to the poisonous sun and the poisonous air. Then she had kicked him in surprise. Now she burned and her flesh roared around him like a fire gone wild in the wind. She pressed against his hand. He unclenched her fingers from his penis and began sliding it against her. At first he could not get in. She was frightened but she could not break the game, she did not ask what he was doing or protest. She never broke the game. It was a charm. This was where they had been leading, they both knew it.
    He groaned. It was hurting both of them. They ground their bodies together in grim concentration, trying. At length he managed to push most of the way in, but then she cried out in pain and he went limp inside her. He slid out. They both laughed, holding each other.
    “It’s not as easy as it feels in the stimmies.”
    She snorted. “How would you know? Your parents have yours coded, same as Malkah does.”
    “I reprogrammed it. I can have any cast that comes through.”
    “Do I feel as good as those actresses?”
    He laughed. “Only you know how you feel. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
    “It’s not serious pain. Do