gold cloth shade. The soft amber light lent the room an aura rather like that of
a place in a dream.
For a while they lay on the bed, talking, laughing, touching, kissing, then
talking less and kissing more.
Gradually, Travis undressed her. He’d never before seen her unclothed, and he
found her even more lovely and more exquisitely proportioned than he had
imagined. Her slender throat, the delicacy of her shoulders, the fullness of her
breasts, the concavity of her belly, the flair of her hips, the round sauciness
of her buttocks, the long smooth supple sleekness of her legs—every line and
angle and curve excited him but also filled him with great tenderness.
After he undressed himself, he patiently and gently introduced her to the art of
love. With a profound desire to please and with full awareness that everything
was new to her, he showed Nora—sometimes not without delicious teasing all the
sensations that his tongue, fingers, and manhood could engender in her.
He was prepared to find her hesitant, embarrassed, even fearful, because her
first thirty years of life had not prepared her for this degree of intimacy. But
she harbored no trace of frigidity and was eager to engage in any act that
‘flight pleasure either or both of them. Her soft cries and breathless murmurs
of excitement delighted him. Each time that she sighed climactically and
surrendered to a shudder of ecstasy, Travis became more aroused, until he was of
a size and firmness that he had never attained before, until his need was almost
painful.
When at last he let his warm seed flower within her, he buried his face in her
throat and called her name and told her that he loved her, told her again and
again, and the moment of release seemed so long that he half-thought time had
stopped or that he had tapped an inexplicable well that could never be
exhausted.
With consummation achieved, they held each other for a long time, silent, not
needing to talk. They listened to music, and in a while they finally spoke of
what they felt, both physically and emotionally. They drank some champagne, and
in time they made love again. And again.
Although the constant shadow of certain death looms over every day, the
pleasures and joys of life can be so fine and deeply affecting that the heart is
nearly stilled by astonishment.
From Vegas, they hauled the Airstream north on Route 95, across the immense
Nevada barrens. Two days later, on Friday, August 13, they reached Lake Tahoe
and connected the trailer to the electric and water lines at an RV campsite on
the California side of the border.
Nora was not quite as easily overwhelmed by each new scenic vista and novel
experience as she had been. However, Lake Tahoe was so stunningly beautiful that
it filled her with childlike wonder again. Twenty-two miles long and twelve
miles wide, with the Sierra Nevadas on its western flank and the Carson Range on
the east, Tahoe was said to be the clearest body of water in the world, a
shimmering jewel in a hundred amazingly iridescent shades of blue and green.
For six days, Nora and Travis and Einstein hiked in the Eldorado, Tahoe, and
Toiyabe National Forests, vast primeval tracts of pine, spruce, and fir. They
rented a boat and went on the lake, exploring paradisiacal coves and graceful
bays. They went sunning and swimming, and Einstein took to the water with the
enthusiasm indigenous to his breed.
Sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the late afternoon, more often at night,
Nora and Travis made love. She was surprised by her carnal appetite. She could
not get enough of him.
“I love your mind and your heart,” she told him, “but, God help me, I love your
body almost as much! Am I depraved?”
“Good heavens, no. You’re just a young, healthy woman. In fact, given the life
you’ve led, you’re emotionally healthier than you’ve any right to be. Really,
Nora, you stagger me.”
“I’d like to straddle you instead.”
“Maybe you are depraved,” he said, and laughed.
Early on the serenely blue morning of Friday the twentieth, they left Tahoe and