Free Plague by Graham Masterton

smiled.
    ‘I’d like to
say thank you,’ she said softly.
    ‘You don’t have
to.’
    ‘But I would.’
    She took his
hand, and stood up. ‘Come on,’ she said, tugging him.
    He thought for
a moment. Then, without a word, he laid down his drink, and followed her. They
walked across the soft, silent carpet to the main bedroom.
    On the wide,
tapestry-covered bed, she sat him down and undressed him. First his shoes, then
his short black silk socks. He started to loosen his own necktie, but she
wouldn’t let him, and picked at the knot herself with her long dark-red
fingernails.
    Soon he was
naked. His body was white and plump. There was gray wiry hair around his
nipples, and his legs were thin and stick-like. He lay there, bald and old and
unprepossessing, with his eyes closed. He knew what he looked like, but he also
knew that when his eyes were shut, and the reality of age and unfitness were
blocked out, there was a warm world of fantasy waiting that was more than
nourished by Esmeralda’s arousing treats.
    Like a great
blue-green moth, she mounted him. Her hand sought his hardened penis, and. guided it up between her wide-parted thighs. She
eased herself back on him, and she sighed a distant,
muted sigh, as strange as the cry of some satisfied bird. Ivor kept his eyes
tight shut, and said nothing.
    Time passed.
The apartment was quiet, except for the smooth rustle of Esmeralda’s negligee,
and their tense and excited breathing. Then Esmeralda started to tremble and
shake. She sat in her stepfather’s lap with her hands clenched tight against
her breasts, feeling the deep, dark ripples of her own orgasm.
    They lay side
by side in silence for nearly half-an-hour. Ivor felt himself drifting into a curious sleep, and awoke after five minutes with a headache,
and a metallic taste in his mouth. He sat up, and reached for his black silk
bathrobe.
    Esmeralda, her
negligee spread romantically around her, opened her dark eyes and grinned.
    ‘We’re a
strange pair, you and I,’ she said, as Ivor walked across to the mirror.
    He raised his
head and examined her for a few moments in the glass. Somehow, she seemed less
beautiful when her face was transposed by a mirror. But that didn’t make him
love her any the less. He loved her more than any possession he had ever had. Almost as much as his work, and far more than her mother. To
fuck a daughter after fucking her mother is like buying your first new car,
after you’ve had second-hand models all your life.
    He brushed his
few curls flat, splashed on some aftershave, and turned back to his
stepdaughter with a serious face.
    ‘I guess we
are. Strange, I mean. Sometimes I can’t believe it’s really happening.’
    ‘Isn’t that the
way with everything wonderful?’
    Ivor nodded.
‘It is. But it’s the same with terrible things, too. When something truly
terrible happens, you can never believe it’s for real. You keep smacking
yourself and hoping that you’ll wake up.’
    Esmeralda
stretched luxuriously. ‘Pa,’ she said. ‘What in the whole world could possibly
happen to us that’s terrible?’
    On the floor
above, in apartment 110, a tall man of sixty years old sat in a large Victorian
spoonback chair, in almost total darkness. The heavy drapes were drawn over the
windows, and the condominium was rank with cigarette smoke. The man had a
handsome but heavily-wrinkled face, a white mane of leonine hair, and he was
dressed in a light blue nylon jersey jumpsuit that was absurdly young for his
age. He held his cigarette in a long ivory holder, and the ribbon of blue smoke
rose rapidly up to the ceiling.
    He had been
watching home movies. An expensive projector on the small inlaid table beside
him had just run through, and the stray end of the film was still flicking
against the spool. On the far wall of the sitting-room was a blank movie screen
– an incongruously modern intrusion in an apartment that was crowded with
antiques.
    The man seemed
to be paralyzed, or