is she more lovely and at peace;
Her skin would glow a light unsnowlike warm.
She sleeps. Touched by the moon
And me.
He fell silent; still he would not look at her. Bashful. "Why, that's lovely, Gordon."
He turned at last. "You like it?"
"Certainly." Sherrine probed: "She must have been pretty."
"Who?"
"Your girlfriend. The one you wrote the poem to."
"She is. Very beautiful."
Aha! "Have you, ever recited for her?"
"Yeah-da. I did." Sherrine smiled broadly out the windshield. Gordon was caught on that cusp where he wanted to keep his love a deep, delicious secret and shout it to the world at the same time. She had been caught there once before. She and Jake. A long time ago, but she could remember the wonderful glow. With Bob it had been different fun, good times, a lot of laughs; but she had never glowed. "What did she say?"
"She said my poem was lovely."
"Well, that's a pretty tepid response to a love poem."
A long pause, then, "Ah. I had forgotten."
"Forgotten what?"
"You do not live in such close quarters as we do. You do not have to be so careful to avoid offense or to rub against your neighbor's feelings. So few of us, and still there has been murder, because we cannot escape from one another. One does not speak of love until one is sure."
"Then how can you ever be sure?"
He may have shrugged in the dark, but he did not answer. Sherrine returned
車買取 her attention to the road. She kept it at thirty and slowed for every shadow in the road. Some shadows were hard and rigid. Approaching bridges, she crawled.
Ten minutes or an hour later, something went click in her head.
Oh, no. He means me!
It had been obvious for some time that both Angels lusted after her. Lord knew why. Tall and skinny was the Angel ideal, but . . . Lust she could deal with. A little recreational workout; fun for everyone and no hard feelings. It was impossible to sit between two horny males-—three, counting Bob, who was in a perpetual state of rut without picking up the pheromones. She was more than a little horny herself.
But Gordon was not just horny. He was in love; and that she could not deal with; because . . .
Because Jake is still living there, somewhere in the back of my skull.
Oh, great. Now she had four men to deal with. Three live and present; one a ghost. An old rhyme capered through her thoughts. Its gude to be merry and wise. / It's gude to be honest and true; / It's gude to be off with the old love, / Before you are on with the new.
Was he asleep? Or studying her in the dark?
She said nothing; concentrated on her driving. He loves me? She craned her neck and looked in the large side-view mirror. A smaller Sherrine, distorted by the convex shape, stared back. He loves me? The truck had a lot of inertia; a lot of momentum.
Gordon said, "You are offended."
"No!" She paused; spoke again. "No, I'm not. I'm flattered. It has been a long time since anyone loved me."
Gordon seemed