King of the Worlds (21 page)

“Actually,” he corrected her, “Andrew Marvell is considered a metaphysical poet.”

By now they had arrived at the edge of the moss, that threshold between the (relatively) ordinary world and the ecstatic one they'd be a part of in a moment. They unpeeled some tendrils and kicked off their shoes. Wendy righted one of hers and gently placed Cane in it.

Dylan made a suggestion: “What do you say we take off
all
our clothes this time?” Even if they couldn't make love like proper lovers, they could at least enjoy each other's warm-blooded bodies to some frustrating degree.

“Okay,” she said.

“Really?”

“You go first.”

“Much obliged.”

So he began, and she proceeded to match him article for article until they were both
au naturel
. She was pretty and pink-brown and in far better shape than he was.
Ye Gods! Annihilate but space and time, and make two lovers happy
.

He held out his hand. “Ready?”

She smiled impishly and took the hand. They swung their arms, counted down from three, and leapt.

And the flora met them halfway. In a matter of seconds, Wendy lay supine on the moss bed, squirming and delirious, and Dylan watched as the forest insinuated itself into each of her available orifices. No one had ever accused Ascension Forest of subtlety.

Dylan, for his part, had fallen to his knees and the vines were having their way with him too. A couple of tendrils had crept around his waist from the back and were massaging his scrotum; another had wrapped around his penis and tightened like a spring; yet another was shimmying, not ungently, up his asshole.

All of which was pleasant enough, though it was frustrating too. He and Erin used to let these plants simply
complement
their lovemaking; the idea that he and his inamorata were going to fuck the forest but not
each other
was rather hard for his machismo to digest.

By now Wendy had done a little crunch, grabbed hold of the liverwort nearest her clit and begun giving it some tutoring. Evidently this lusty superorganism of a forest wasn't quite making the grade, and if that wasn't Dylan's cue for an intervention, then nothing would ever be.

He walked on his knees until his shadow consumed her. “Allow
me
,” he said, and he began to peel away all the relevant vines.

She grabbed his shoulder and gave it a shove. “Dylan, please. We've discussed this. Just watch.”

He backed off and did her bidding, watching, merely watching, as the vines re-insinuated themselves and her smile distorted, her eyes narrowed, her breath quickened. He watched her, yes, but he also watched
her
watching
him
, and he watched
her
watching
him
watching
her
, and the feedback loop grew so impossibly complex so fast that it was difficult to feel they were in any meaningful sense separate entities anymore.
The object and yourself must become one, and from that feeling of oneness issues your poetry.

So he approached her again and finished the job of peeling away the vines.

She cocked her head, his coy mistress: “
No
, Dylan.”

But some force of nature was pulling him toward her,
into
her, and resisting it did not seem to be an option.

He drank the sweat from her neck.

“Dylan,
don't
.”

This force was every bit as fundamental as gravity or electromagnetism. Maybe it was love, or poetry, or just the procreative instinct. In any case, he was powerless to fight it. He grabbed each of Wendy's slick, sinewy thighs and pulled her body toward his…and then all at once her eyes turned to ice and his gaze slipped off.

“Coy” was too generous a word. His mistress was
frigid
.

He put down her legs and backed away. He was eager, yes, but he was not a rapist, and he didn't seem to have any choice about that either. Maybe if he'd been abused as a kid or something, he could do it, but he hadn't, and he couldn't.

“How can you possibly be serious?” he complained. “Do you really expect me to just jerk off again? After all we've been through?”

She leered, but not in the sexy way.

“I mean I get your whacko religion and all,” he continued, “but do you really think God's going to split hairs like this? Aren't we basically guilty already? You're the one who said ‘All or nothing at all.'”

“I never said that.”

“Didn't you?”

“That was Sinatra.”

“A technicality.”

“I suppose you're Andrew Marvell then?”

“You better believe I am. I'll tear ‘thorough the iron gates of life' the second you give me the go-ahead.”

She shut her eyes. He shook his head and swatted at some nettlesome moss.

When she opened her eyes, it was clear she'd found something back there behind her lids. “Dylan?”

“Wendy?”

“Are you John Coltrane too?”

“Sure.”

“I mean, do you understand now that what we have here truly is a love supreme?”

“I think I do, yes.”

“So if I give you the most precious gift I have to give, will you make me a promise?”

“Anything.”

“I mean it. An honest-to-God covenant.”

“I mean it too. Anything.”

She took a deep breath. “All right then. I want you to leave your family for me. If you promise me you'll leave them, I will let you do anything you want with me for all eternity.”

And there it was, as naked as their bodies.

He couldn't act surprised exactly. This had to arise sooner or later; she'd already declared him her future husband after all. But still, how conniving! Had this been her plan all along? To get him all hot and bothered and then either blackmail or blueball him? To turn this bed of moss into a bargaining table? How reprehensible! But also: how sexy! It had been a long time since anyone had made him feel so desirable.

Clearly he needed to cool off, to walk away, to clear the pipes himself and then consider all that had transpired in the cool light of reason.

But then wasn't that the mistake he'd always made? Hadn't he decided just last week that reason was overrated? That, in the end, a cool light didn't make for much of a guiding one? Wasn't
passion
the thing so sorely missing from his life? And wasn't that precisely what was on offer here?

These, then, from his current—naked, throbbing—vantage point, were his options: either he could embrace: a) reason, predictability, and death, or b) passion, adventure, and life. An fMRI, of course, would show that his neurons had made this monumental decision seconds, if not minutes, ago. The take-home lesson of brain science was simply to relax; which was not to say you were free to do so if it wasn't in the cards, but for Dylan in this moment, it
did
seem to be in the cards. “Okay,” he said.

Wendy went all lips and teeth and lips. He scooted forward, placed her dirty feet on his shoulders and fit the head of his cock to her nether lips, which, truth in advertising, were about as thick as her mouth ones. She held him at bay by a single shoulder.

“You promise?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” he said.

“Then come on in,” she said, letting go of the shoulder, and he plunged toward the celestial heaven inside of her and for a split second all was Meaning and Goodness and Love...

But then that split second passed and Dylan understood that sex with Wendy wasn't going to be anything very special after all. What's more, she was going to bleed all over his penis, which, as far as he was concerned, was more turn-
off
than -on.

How was it that he kept falling into this trap of believing that sex might confer some sort of immortality on him? That the impassioned movement of bodies in space might have some bearing on their movement in time? Granted, Einstein, relativity, etc., but that didn't seem to be what he meant; he seemed to mean something more along the lines of magic.

Not that he wasn't enjoying this—it was
nice
—but it was all just a matter of so many nerve endings and the release of pent-up urges, and it was as clear as bankruptcy that he would no more find magic in
this
than he would in, say, urination.

Anyway, he pulled out and came in her mouth. She swallowed.

In the smoldering afterglow, Dylan lay on his back, legs crossed at the ankles, staring up at the boughs of the sentient trees while the moss massaged him toward what might have been sleep were he not so wound up. Wendy's heavy head lay on his chest and he stroked her sweaty hair.

“I'm so happy,” she said.

She did seem to be.

“I waited so long,” she said.

She had.

“My celestial husband! My love supreme!”

Good God, what had he agreed to? If he'd had a laser-juicer handy, he'd have taken it to his nutsack then and there.

She glanced up at him and smiled wide, her lips huge and dark and forever.

“Let's sleep awhile,” she suggested.

“I'll need to go soon.”

“Why?”

“Erin will be expecting me.”

“Forget about Erin. You're mine now.”

“Still, I'll need a little time to work things out.”

“How
much
time?”

“I don't know. Weeks. I have a certain responsibility. I don't want my family to be hurt unnecessarily.”

“Why not? It's not as if you love them.”

Dylan quit the perfunctory stroking and propped himself up on his elbows. “Why would you say such a thing?”

“You don't even kiss Junior good night.”

“I do too.”

“Okay, well not
every
night.”

“And how would you know that?”

“I spied on you,” she said matter-of-factly.

“You
what
?” He yanked his legs out from under her.

“Remember last week when you dropped me at the teleport?”

“Of course.”

“Well I decided I wasn't quite ready to go yet, so I hailed the androcab directly behind yours and had it follow you.”

“You came to my
house
?” His jaw hung slack.

“It was surprisingly easy really. Isn't there
any
crime on this planet? Because you've got such a nice house and no security to speak of besides your fancy doors which you don't even lock. I started out just peering in windows, but then while Erin was in the shower scrubbing her stretch marks and the kids were playing with Legos in the basement, I came in through the laundry door and crawled under the master bed. Do you know that you and Erin didn't exchange a
single
word before going to sleep that night? Not a single word! That's when I knew for certain I wasn't crazy: Your marriage is a four-dimensional tomb. You
need
me.”

“You shouldn't have done that,” Dylan said. It was all he could think to say.

“Really?” Wendy said. “Because I think you're actually pretty impressed. We both know Erin would never do such a thing. I love you more than she ever has. I have been obsessed with you since I was a little girl, and I think that, despite yourself, you rather like that, no?”

“All the same,” Dylan said, “You shouldn't have done that.”

“So you keep saying.”

Dylan began pacing, processing. As maddening as anything she was saying was the nonchalance with which she was saying it.

“Do you know who I had my cabby be?” she asked.

“Who?”

“Sting. Ask me why.”

“Why?”

She began to sing. It was weird.

Every breath you take
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I'll be watching you

It had to be admitted, though, that, weirdness notwithstanding, she was quite a good singer, with an impeccable sense of melody and an odd Celtic inflection.

O can't you see
You belong to me
How my poor heart aches
With every step you take

“You know that song?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“Well, lots of people think it's a love song—they play it at weddings and such—and then they're shocked when they learn it's about a stalker. But I've always found that to be a false dichotomy, don't you think? If you really love somebody, why
wouldn't
you obsess over them?”

“I'm leaving now,” Dylan said. “I'll need to think over everything that's happened here.” He got up, peeled off some creepers and began putting his clothes back on.

Wendy stood too. “Don't you even
think
about backing out on me, Dylan Greenyears.”

“Are you joking? Of course I'm going to think about backing out on you.”

“But you promised before God.”

“I didn't exactly have all the information then, did I?”

“We
never
have all the information, Dylan. Only God has all the information.”

“Omni's pretty close,” Dylan said, setting off toward the cab.

“I gave you my most precious gift!” Wendy cried after him.

A dagger manifested in his throat. He foisted it: “I've had better.” He didn't even turn around to face her.

“I forgive you,” she said. “I know that wasn't you speaking just now.”

Damn it! Now he'd really have to turn around. “Who was it, pray tell?”

“The Adversary.”

“The
what
?

Her face was as red as his bloodstained penis now. “Lucifer. Satan. The Devil. Sometimes he goes in the guise of Reason, but make no mistake, it's the Adversary!
Out
, Adversary!”

Then she did something exceedingly strange: she tore at her breasts, really
tore
at them with her fingernails, so that soon she had drawn blood from her sharp nipples and was smearing it across her ribs.