“That’s the problem,” he said. “Belt’s too loose.”
“Does that mean I can’t exercise?”
“No. It means we should fix the belt.”
“Oh,” said Carla Sue. She gathered her lips into a classic pout. “Fix the belt if you want, but a real gentleman would hold my shoulders down.”
Reluctantly, Lance swung himself into position behind her. He hooked his feet to the bottom of the machine and placed his hands on her shoulders. He looked over at the chess game; Oyamo and Ramsanjawi stared at the board.
Carla Sue started to pull. Lance could feel the thin strands of muscle gathering and rolling beneath her skin with each repetition. He could hear the soft hum of her breath. He looked at the ceiling, at the other exercise machines, at the dart board, the chess game, anywhere but at the mane of blond hair and the thin thighs working below him. Chakra Ramsanjawi caught his eye and winked.
Lance felt something touch his hand. It was smooth and soft, with a hint of moist warmth. Carla Sue was nuzzling his hand with her cheek. He tried to move, but the pressure on his hand was too insistent.
At the urging of Freddy, Lance was wearing gym shorts and a tank top. He always hung loosely inside gym shorts and felt naked, as he often did in dreams. Now he was anything but hanging loose. He turned slightly so that Ramsanjawi could not see that he had an erection.
After the workout, Carla Sue suggested that they go to the observation blister.
“There is no better way to cool down,” she said, “than to watch a few thousand miles of Earth turning below you.”
Lance followed like a puppy dog.
They closeted themselves in the blister as Trikon Station passed over midday on the Indian subcontinent. Lance chattered about the jagged lines of rivers visible through large breaks in the cloud cover. Carla Sue dabbed a towel behind her ears. Whenever she moved too close to him, he seemed to drift away. But eventually, she maneuvered him to the edge of the bubble, against the bulkhead. Lance grew quiet, like a jackrabbit who senses a predator. Carla Sue hooked her ankle around his and, turning, wedged herself between him and the dome. He started chattering again, but she quieted him by pressing a toweled finger to his lips. She slowly withdrew her finger and replaced it with her mouth. He resisted with clenched teeth, but eventually he relaxed and accepted her tongue. She nudged her hand beneath the elastic band of his shorts. He tried to recoil, but there was nowhere to go.
“Feel good?” she said into his mouth.
“Uh-huh.”
“Just wait until I wrap my lips around it.”
“What?” A spasm coursed through Lance’s body, dislodging Carla Sue from her position atop him and tumbling her across the blister.
“Lance!”
But he was hitting at the doorlatch with the heel of his hand, his gym shorts riding low enough to expose a block of firm flesh. He pushed open the door and flew up into the Mars module, his feet fluttering like a bullfrog’s. “Well, I’ll be …” said Carla Sue. She felt like her grandmother.
Harry Meade poked his head out from the bristling shrub. The canyon wall was dark gray. Only a few bright stars and a smudge of moon were visible in a dirty sky turned orange by the distant lights of Los Angeles.
A breeze kicked up a dust devil near the footlights that fringed the driveway. Meade tucked his chin beneath the collar of his jacket, his two-day stubble grating like sandpaper on the leather. The days were hot, but the heat dissipated quickly in these canyons after dark. And everything was so dry. Even the plants seemed as dry and lifeless as theater props. They had spines and needles and branches that seemed to twist into barbs. One kept sticking him in the ass every time he moved.
The house resembled a Mexican hacienda, nestled between the loop of a circular driveway and the base of the canyon wall. A souped-up sport Jeep, its red finish reflecting the driveway’s footlights, was parked at the front steps.