Читать книгу Panopticon - David Bajo - Страница 11

The door was exactly as he had left it. They knocked anyway, and after no response from inside, they gently pushed it open. He let Rita try the wall switch, then watched as she fished a grip light from her lens pouch and filled the room with an undersea glow. She had Klinsman reach up and clamp it to one of the overhead fan blades. She gazed at the room, brow flexed, seemingly unsure if there were really anything to see. He gently stayed her from absentmindedly sitting on the bed.

“No,” he told her, then, motioning to the imprint on the milk-skin bed cover, “look.”

The swirled form confused her further, lured her into bending over the bed, tiptoe, keeping her knees from brushing the cover. She looked as though she were about to dive in.

The grip light toplit everything, kept black the walls and floor, put Klinsman and Rita and everything in the motel room under a kind of bathyspheric probe.

“Put me on your shoulders,” she told him.

He knelt and from behind put his head between her legs. He braced the tops of her thighs with his hands and stood, taking her weight as she clenched herself about his head. He felt her leg muscles like bands across his ears, heard the cupped rush in a seashell, thought for a moment it was her blood flow. She hooked her boots behind his kidneys, expert at this, like a circus performer, with a photographer’s grace and objectivity.

“Hold still,” she chided. She spun the fan to slightly off-center the grip light over the bed. The swirled pattern of the woman became even more distinct, the shadows deeper, the peaks glowing.

Klinsman straightened a bit, startled. His neck pushed into the zipper of her jeans.

“Hold still, chingadero,” she whispered. She pressed her belly against the back of his head, leaned over, and took pictures of the imprint, no flash.

He tried to look up, inadvertently pushing his brow into her breasts. She tapped his throat.

“No. No. Still. I almost got it perfect.”

He braced himself, her.

“How strong are you?” she asked.

“Pretty strong,” he said. “Real strong.”

“There’s a lot of me up here.”

“No. You feel good up there.” He sensed what she was about to try. “Really.”

She ponied herself up, digging the toes of her boots into his lower back, hardening her thigh muscles against his ears, and leaned way over, bending him with her.

She managed two or three captures before he lost his balance and let her fall onto the bed. After the mattress stilled, she smoothed the loose strands of hair from her face, lifted her brow, and opened her mouth like a boxer testing her jaw. She scooted herself back on her elbows and took in the room once again, the little squares of black tape here and there, glinting shardlike under the gauzy wash of the grip light.

“You were right,” she said. “It’s like a crime scene. But for a crime that never happened.”

“Or one that hasn’t been invented yet.” He stretched out next to her, on elbows, shouldering her. He wanted to share her exact view of the room. He looked at the squares of tape. “They’re like markers, no? For staging. Perspective. I figured you could tell.”

“Yes,” she said. “They look like that.”

She removed her camera and lens pouch and placed them gently on the nightstand, rolling her hips away from him. She looked back over her shoulder at him, caught him looking, held still. He hooked his fingers about her hip and spun her to him, her softness tumbling up under him, her hair whipping in tails across his neck. They used their teeth to feel their way to a kiss, their tongues going into each other too fast, before first pressing lips.

She pulled away quickly and swung herself off the bed. He thought she was hurrying away, but she was only checking the door to make sure it was locked. Then she drew tight the curtain string, sealing the window completely. She removed the square of black tape from the little knob at the end of the curtain draw. She stuck it to the tip of her finger and waved it at Klinsman.

“We should keep one of these.” She smiled and came back to him, jumping vigorously onto the bed, bouncing him into her.

He pulled her jeans down first, yanking them to the tops of her boots. She wore nothing underneath but her brown skin, paled there into a V, a milky outline. He put his head back where it had been before, when he’d had her on his shoulders. The light seemed to shudder. He kissed her thighs, holding them. She tasted like water from a metal cup, his tongue beneath the brim.

She tried to move her legs, raise her knees, lift herself more into his face, but she was bound by her jeans. She kicked at them, then at his shoulders, pulled off her boots and pants. He tugged her blouse over her head, thrashing most of her hair loose from its clasp. She pulled back, her lips parted. He removed her bra, eased it from her breasts, then kissed gently between them, grazed the stretch of his palms over her.

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s right. We have time. We have seven days. Somewhere between now and seven days is right for us, Aaron.”