The Many Deaths of Samish 3.1
20 January 2008“Are you sure you’ll be alright, kiddo?”
Lara had been calling Sam “kiddo” for as long as he could remember – which, frankly, wasn’t very long. Of course, he couldn’t get away with calling her Ma’am or Mama or even Cradle-Robber in return, even if she was ten years older than him. Ten-ish, anyway. She’d never tell him. Her skin was smooth, her breasts perky, her hair bright and shiny; all thanks to a regimen of prescribed hormones and copious exercise, but there was something in her eyes – maybe something a little hollow, a little less vital – that gave her away.
He watched her from across the room; she was polished and trim in her skirt suit, hair in a tight black bun, make-up done in her typical airport “don’t fuck with me” style that she claimed kept her out of the security lines. She hovered busily over theclamshell suitcases open on her bed, humming while she buzzed from one to the other, tucking in a skirt there, shoes here in the pocket, irons and makeup in the train case. Yet her eyes kept flicking back to him. She’d packed for a hundred business trips (and that was just in the space of Sam’s short memory) but this time she hesitated.
Sam slouched cross-legged in a bowl-chair near the door. He didn’t venture too far into her room, her “Den of Iniquity”, unless she had some plan for him on her bed. He’d been there last night, wrapped up in a sheet of gauzy spider web while she’d … well, drained him of his fluids. So to speak. As tired as he felt, she seemed more vibrant, more alive this morning.
