The Passion Play Read Online Free PDF Page B

dreams.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER THREE
     
    This was a crazy idea. Inspired by another lonely night in a dead-silent house.
    It had seemed rational to test herself, to find the limits of her courage in this most minor way: could she form a connection with a man – a stranger – and be casual about it? Mainstream promiscuity. Not love. Just sex, as Caroline said.  A release for her body. Perhaps even find her own sperm donor, once she had the results of the tests back. Was it even possible for her?
    She could have turned on her own music or the radio to kill the sound of solitude, or phoned a friend. Stayed locked up in her safe little box at home, not venturing out.
    This was not fun.
    What passed for music here was grindingly loud. It had her hunched over at the bar as if the beat were a physical weight. She resisted the urge to cover her ears. Four times now she had been approached – what she would have judged as a wild success by anyone's standards –– and for all she knew those men were sterling guys with wonderful characters, and terrifically attractive.
    How she was supposed to discern that was a mystery, at this volume, in the semi-darkness.
    She tried with the first of them. Really tried. He had a great smile, all straight white teeth lit up unnaturally in the ultra-violet strobe. It looked so macabre. She felt her own smile become a fixed grimace, and her shaking head in response to everything he said – because she could not hear him – had apparently discouraged him. After awhile he shrugged and sidled back into the crowd.
    The next man was short. Really short. She hated to be shallow but she lived for years around a pack of football players and a giant of a husband. As long as conversation was impossible it was all down to what he looked like, and she could not ignore his height. She was certain he was smaller than her. She gave him a kind smile and shook her head with more purpose.
    Number three repelled because his eyes slid over her body when he thought she was not looking: hungry and acquisitive. For all she had come thinking this might be the night of her first one-night-stand – a vague, dim flicker of possibility but one she admitted, buying condoms on her way here – it was not going to happen with this guy. Ew no. Just . . . no.
    He got no smile at all. Just a flat out refusal and a hard stare after she caught that assessing gaze sizing up her assets.
    Number four was still with her, putting up with her hunching and wincing about the sound and her refusal to let him buy her a second sticky-sweet drink – a dialog carried out in hand gestures. Now he suggested they dance.
    This might not be the ideal club, but since she was here she was going to jump all the hurdles and get them out of the way. Dressing up, going out, finding a place with a queue to indicate popularity, getting inside and looking available. Handling advances by strange men and now dancing. If she got really wild maybe she would try a kiss and a grope on the dance floor.
    She had missed kissing. Dan was a good kisser when he put his mind to it. Which he hadn't in-
    She was not thinking about him. Tonight was all about her and – currently – the big, beefy guy with the sheepish smile and a way of ducking his head she found quite appealing. He was clean shaved and had a decent pair of lips on him.
    She nodded 'yes' about the dancing, and slid off the bar stool. He was quick to take her hand in his vaguely moist one and tug her after him. She followed in his wake, squeezing between squirming bodies, a sensation that was unexpectedly stimulating. Alien as the experience was, she felt alive under the onslaught: painful eardrums and wriggling people and the prospect of a kiss from a stranger. How many years since a night had so many unusual events packed into it? Too long. She found herself grinning, and tried to sink into the music, to find some way to enjoy the beat of it like everyone