OCR Text |
Show 203 "I guess I'm doing something right?" she asked. "Don't stop," he said. "He plays a banjo," she said, not stopping. "Some of the mathematicians and physicists at work have formed a l i t t l e folk singing group. They get together during lunch hours with their l i t t l e guitars and banjos and brown bags in one of the offices and do Kingston Trio songs with equations on the blackboard. It's kind of dreary but he loves i t . Here, I can't do this if you keep sinking into the couch. Get down on the floor." He demurred once, then got up and followed her around the coffee table and lay down on the carpet, his elbows spread l i k e wings. He rested his chin on his laced fingers to watch the vestibule to the bedroom. She hiked up her dress and knelt, straddling his legs. " I f he comes out we'll t e ll him I'm giving you a r t i f i c i a l respiration," she said. With her small,amazingly strong hands, she kneaded and brought peace to his weary intercostals. She attacked his shoulder blades again with a good s o l id foundation under him this time and they knew the bliss of a thumb pressed into hidden places. She traveled to his neck for the part of his trapezius she had missed the first time, and for good measure his splenius c a p i t i s , and then began the mystic descent down the regions of his spine. "I don't mean to bore you with his l i f e story," she said, leaning her whole weight onto his t h i r d and fourth thoracic vertebrae and s t i r r i n g with the ball of her f i s t . "But you did ask." Streaks of yellow pain flashed at the back of his eyes as he imagined those two vertebrae separating and occluding. Tiny needles danced out from the pressure point, under deep layers of muscle, and dropped down both sides of his ribcage where they gradually quieted just short of his pectorals and waited for the next wave. Each assault came as a surprise. She moved down the width of a small f i st |