Inside a Silver Box Read Online Free PDF Page B

said.
    She smiled at the joke and then felt that angry chill again. It was, she thought, like the Silver Box looked before abandoning the dead black man’s body and going off to search his circuits for something gone wrong.
    *   *   *
    T HEY FELL ASLEEP early in the single beds set side by side.
    Lorraine tossed and turned, dreaming that she was a corpse whose only life festered at the core of its being. She was, even in her sleep, being revivified, experiencing the pain and ecstasy of life.
    Ronnie’s dream was an even heartbeat resounding through a dark sleeping world. The constant pulse lulled the already sleeping man until it skipped once and he was suddenly awake, lying in the dark hotel room.
    “Are you up, Ronnie?”
    “Yeah. How did you know?”
    “I just woke up too.”
    “That was crazy, right?” he said.
    “Waking up at the same time?”
    “Naw, that Claude guy, Silver Box thing.”
    “It’s like it was God or something.”
    “Yeah, but…”
    “But what?” Lorraine asked.
    “But it’s like he was a big kid thinkin’ that some little bugs like us was his friends.”
    “Yeah,” she said.
    He heard her moving restlessly under the blankets. “I mean we can’t even tell nobody,” Ronnie said, “even if we wanted to, because there really ain’t no proof except for our eyes and you lookin’ like you got a tan. I lost some weight, but anybody could do that.”
    “They wouldn’t believe us.”
    “I don’t believe it.”
    “Come over here,” Lorraine said.
    Ronnie got out of the bed and lay down next to his victim and newfound friend. He wanted to give her sexually what he’d already done through the conduit of the Silver Box, but his flesh would not respond.
    After a few loveless kisses and an unfruitful embrace, he fell away from her and said, “Sorry.”
    “That’s all right,” Lorraine whispered, and she wrapped her thighs around him, rubbing her sex against his leg.
    Ronnie put an arm around her and held tight.
    “That’s it,” she moaned. “Hold me tight, baby. Don’t let go.”
    She pushed and twisted harder and harder, biting his chest and shoulder. At one point, she moved up and loomed over him, groaning loudly and pressing down hard with her pubis.
    “Give it to me, motherfucker,” she cried. “Give it to me!”
    There was something gratifying for Ronnie in Lorraine’s orgasm. He tried to remember ever making a woman cry out with passion like that before.
    After a long straining silence, she slumped down next to him.
    “Lorraine?”
    “What?”
    “Are you mad that I couldn’t get hard?”
    “I’m mad at you,” she said, taking the opportunity of his question to express what she was trying not to feel. “In a way, I hate you for what you did. But then it’s like I know you’re a part of me and, and I don’t know how I feel.”
    “But you don’t mind that I couldn’t fuck?”
    “Not at all. Does it bother you that I’m so pushy?”
    “Uh-uh. Do you?”
    “Do I what?”
    “Do you think you’re like, um, mad at me and love me at the same time?”
    “Part of me hates you.” She realized the weight of these words as she spoke them. “I don’t know about feeling love anymore. But I do know that you are in my heart and that means more than anything—even if I don’t want it to.”
    Upon hearing her declaration, Ronnie fell back into the dream of a heart beating while he slept inside.
    *   *   *
    W HEN THE DOOR banged open, Ronnie jerked up quickly.
    “Hands where we came see ’em!” a cop in full battle gear shouted.
    He and his three similarly clad comrades were toting shotguns and moving quickly but with caution.
    The old Ronnie put up his hands from his seated position in the bed.
    “Who the fuck are you guys?” Lorraine spat. “What are you doing in our room?”
    “Lorraine Fell?” the lead cop asked.
    “Yes?”
    “We traced your credit card here. There’s a bulletin out on you and a warrant out for Ronald Bottoms’s