"I'm going to."
"When?"
"As soon as I get good and ready."
"Are we going to sit here all night?"
In its own way, it reminded James of the equally un-brilliant
conversation between Janet and Tim on the homecoming after their first
date. He chuckled.
"What's so funny?"
"Nothing," he said in a slightly strained voice. "I'm thinking that here
we sit like a couple of kids that don't know what it's all about."
"Well," said Martha, "aren't we?"
"Yes," he said reluctantly, "I guess we are. But darn it, Martha, how
does a guy grow up? How does a guy learn these things?" His voice was
plaintive, it galled him to admit that for all of his knowledge and his
competence, he was still just a bit more than a child emotionally.
"I don't know," she said in a voice as plaintive as his. "I wouldn't know
where to look to find it. I've tried. All I know," she said with a
quickening voice, "is that somewhere between now and then I'll learn how
to toss talk back and forth the way they do."
"Yes," he said glumly.
"James," said Martha brightly, "we should be somewhat better than a pair
of kids who don't know what it's all about, shouldn't we?"
"That's what bothers me," he admitted. "We're neither of us stupid. Lord
knows we've plenty of education between us, but--"
"James, how did we get that education?"
"Through my father's machine."
"No, you don't understand. What I mean is that no matter how we got our
education, we had to learn, didn't we?"
"Why, yes. In a--"
"Now, let's not get involved in another philosophical argument. Let's run
this one right on through to the end. Why are we sitting here fumbling?
Because we haven't yet learned how to behave like adults."
"I suppose so. But it strikes me that anything should be--"
"James, for goodness' sake. Here we are, the two people in the whole
world who have studied everything we know together, and when we hit
something we can't study--you want to go home and kiss your old machine,"
she finished with a remarkable lack of serial logic. She laughed
nervously.
"What's so darned funny?" he demanded sourly.
"Oh," she said, "you're afraid to kiss me because you don't know how, and
I'm afraid to let you because I don't know how, and so we're talking away
a golden opportunity to find out. James," she said seriously, "if you
fumble a bit, I won't know the difference because I'm no smarter than you
are."
She leaned forward holding her face up, her lips puckered forward in
a tight little rosebud. She closed her eyes and waited. Gingerly and
hesitantly he leaned forward and met her lips with a pucker of his own.
It was a light contact, warm, and ended quickly with a characteristic
smack that seemed to echo through the silent house. It had all of the
emotional charge of a mother-in-law's peck, but it served its purpose
admirably. They both opened their eyes and looked at one another from
four inches of distance. Then they tried it again and their second was a
little longer and a little warmer and a little closer, and it ended with
less of the noise of opening a fruit jar.
Martha moved over close beside him and put her head on his shoulder;
James responded by putting an arm around her, and together they tried to
assemble themselves in the comfortably affectionate position seen in
movies and on television. It didn't quite work that way. There seemed to
be too many arms and legs and sharp corners for comfort, or when they
found a contortion that did not create interferences with limb or corner,
it was a strain on the spine or a twist in the neck. After a few minutes
of this coeducational wrestling they decided almost without effort to
return to the original routine of kissing. By more luck than good
management they succeeded in an embrace that placed no strain and which
met them almost face to face. They puckered again and made contact, then
pressure came and spread out the pair of tightly pursed rosebuds. Martha
moved once to get her nose free of his cheek for a breath of air.
At the rate they were going, they might have hit paydirt this time, but
just at the point where James should have relaxed to enjoy the long kiss
he began to worry: There is something planned and final about the quick
smacking kiss, but how does one gracefully terminate the long-term,
high-pressure jobs? So instead of enjoying himself, James planned and
discarded plans until he decided that the way he'd do it would be to
exert a short, heavy pressure and then cease with the same action as in
the quick-smack variety.
It worked fine, but as he opened his eyes to look at her, she was there
with her eyes still closed and her lips still ready. He took a deep
breath and plunged in again. Having determined how to start, James was
now going to experiment with endings.
They came up for air successfully again, and then spent some time
wriggling around into another position. The figure-fitting went easier
this time, after threshing around through three or four near-comforts
they came to rest in a pleasantly natural position and James Holden
became nervously aware of the fact that his right hand was cupped over
a soft roundness that filled his palm almost perfectly. He wondered
whether to remove it quickly to let her know that this intimacy wasn't
intentional; slowly so that (maybe, he hoped) she wouldn't realize that
it had been there; or to leave it there because it felt pleasant. While
he was wondering, Martha moved around because she could not twist her
neck all the way around like an owl, and she wanted to see him. The move
solved his problem but presented the equally great problem of how he
would try it again.
James allowed a small portion of his brain to think about this, and put
the rest of his mind at ease by kissing her again. Halfway through, he
felt warm moistness as her lips parted slightly, then the tip of her
tongue darted forward between his lips to quest against his tongue in a
caress so fleeting that it was withdrawn before he could react--and James
reacted by jerking his head back faster than if he had been clubbed in
the face. He was still tingling with the shock, a pleasant shock but none
the less a shock, when Martha giggled lightly.