If the River Was Whiskey Read Online Free PDF Page B

they’re called—isn’t that wild? These bugs bite you and then, after they’ve sucked on you awhile, they go potty next to the wound. When you scratch, it gets into your bloodstream, and anywhere from one to twenty years later you get a disease that’s like a cross between malaria and AIDS.”
    “And then you die,” I said.
    “And then you die.”
    Her voice had turned somber. She wasn’t grinning any longer. What could I say? I patted her hand and flashed a smile. “Yum,” I said, mugging for her. “What’s for dinner?”
    She served a cold cream-of-tofu-carrot soup and little lentil-paste sandwiches for an appetizer and a garlic soufflé with biologically controlled vegetables for the entrée. Then it was snifters of cognac, the big-screen TV, and a movie called
The Boy in the Bubble
, about a kid raised in a totally antiseptic environment because he was born without an immune system. No one could touch him. Even the slightest sneeze would have killedhim. Breda sniffled through the first half-hour, then pressed my hand and sobbed openly as the boy finally crawled out of the bubble, caught about thirty-seven different diseases, and died before the commercial break. “I’ve seen this movie six times now,” she said, fighting to control her voice, “and it gets to me every time. What a life,” she said, waving her snifter at the screen, “what a perfect life. Don’t you envy him?”
    I didn’t envy him. I envied the jade pendant that dangled between her breasts and I told her so.
    She might have giggled or gasped or lowered her eyes, but she didn’t. She gave me a long slow look, as if she were deciding something, and then she allowed herself to blush, the color suffusing her throat in a delicious mottle of pink and white. “Give me a minute,” she said mysteriously, and disappeared into the bathroom.
    I was electrified. This was it. Finally. After all the avowals, the pressed hands, the little jokes and routines, after all the miles driven, meals consumed, museums paced, and movies watched, we were finally, naturally, gracefully going to come together in the ultimate act of intimacy and love.
    I felt hot. There were beads of sweat on my forehead. I didn’t know whether to stand or sit. And then the lights dimmed, and there she was at the rheostat.
    She was still in her kimono, but her hair was pinned up more severely, wound in a tight coil to the crown of her head, as if she’d girded herself for battle. And she held something in her hand—a slim package, wrapped in plastic. It rustled as she crossed the room.
    “When you’re in love, you make love,” she said, easing down beside me on the rocklike settee, “—it’s only natural.” She handed me the package. “I don’t want to give you the wrong impression,” she said, her voice throaty and raw, “just because I’m careful and modest and because there’s so much, well, filth in the world, but I have my passionate side too. I do. And I love you. I think.”
    “Yes,” I said, groping for her, the package all but forgotten.
    We kissed. I rubbed the back of her neck, felt something strange, an odd sag and ripple, as if her skin had suddenly turned to Saran Wrap, and then she had her hand on my chest. “Wait,” she breathed, “the, the thing.”
    I sat up. “Thing?”
    The light was dim but I could see the blush invade her face now. She was sweet. Oh, she was sweet, my Little Em’ly, my Victorian princess. “It’s Swedish,” she said.
    I looked down at the package in my lap. It was a clear, skinlike sheet of plastic, folded up in its transparent package like a heavy-duty garbage bag. I held it up to her huge, trembling eyes. A crazy idea darted in and out of my head. No, I thought.
    “It’s the newest thing,” she said, the words coming in a rush, “the safest…I mean, nothing could possibly—”
    My face was hot. “No,” I said.
    “It’s a condom,” she said, tears starting up in her eyes, “my doctor got them for me