Coral kept her eyes on her wild cherry. "No, Anton," Coral said, her voice as guru grave as I'd ever heard it, "For me, a man's word is like something that has just died. Like skin shedding. But a man's voice, that's alive, like blood, like bleeding. So, I choose to read a man's voice, not his words."
I didn't say anything.
"It's simple, Anton; when straight men talk to me I read hunger in their voices. When you talk at me, I don't read hunger in your voice. I don't read hunger in gay guys' voices either, but no way are you gay. So I concluded you must be asexual."
That made me feel better.
In part.
I looked at my hand. Sure enough, blood was filling the holes I'd punched in my glove. "No, Coral, I'm not that inhuman . . . yet. I still hunger after . . . certain women. You don't hear hunger in my voice, because I've learned to detach from that drive, don't let it run my life."
Coral didn't say anything.
"Damned bugs," I said, taking a swat behind my ear. No, there were no bugs, but I'd feigned bugs so I could throw the damned fork into the bramble behind me. Holding my bleeding hand behind my back, I sought to lighten things. "See, Coral, I prefer to have the calm crew behind my eyes run my starship, not those craving pirates down in my pants."
"OK then," Coral said, her voice losing gravity, "let's do the healing exercise starship-to-starship. And this time, I swear, I'll just say no to pirates."
God, it's sexy how a girl just says no to pirates.
I panned the orchard. This orchard left to go. This work of living art Mother Nature had fine-crafted with her loving hand. And, oh, how hard I had worked the orchard myself; worked that slope up there into a flat. Worked my neck to see if a certain circle--swirled in the tall grass--wasn't experiencing closure due to a certain someones sweet bottom coming down on it.
I looked at someones leg.
And, oh, what a thing it was to have a thigh. No, the nature boy doesn't know thigh till he sits on a bale of hay, in an orchard left to go, feels the thigh of woman pressing his.
"Coral, don't you have to get to class?"
Coral stopped stirring her ponytail, looked at me.
Of course, I, the old soul, knew better than to look at her. Knew her knowing eyes were reading my eyes. But I looked at her anyway. And as I looked, I prayed.
For a groundskeeper, there are only the two calls to prayer. One, when he's about to break new ground. Two, when new love is about to break him.
"I have to get to class," Coral said.
****
Beautifully written, Mark! Keep it up.
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