"I'll be back in bed?"
"Yes.
She took fiercer hold of him. "Then I won't wake up," she said, "I'll stay with you until you wake up too."
"It's not as easy as that," he said. "I have a journey I have to take."
"Where to?"
"I don't know."
"Then why are you taking it? Why not just tell me where you're sleeping and I'll go find you?"
"I'm not sleeping, Phoebe."
"What do you mean?"
"This is me." He touched her face. "The real me. You're dreaming but I'm not. I'm here, mind and body."
She started to draw away from him, distressed. "That's not true," she said.
"It is. I walked through a door, and I was in another world."
"What door?" she demanded to know.
"On the mountain," he said.
Her face grew slack. She stared past him into the swaying fronds. "Then it's true," she said. "Quiddity's real."
"How do you know that name?"
"A woman I met... " Phoebe said, her tone and expression distracted.
"What woman?"
"Tesla... Tesia Bombeck. She's downstairs right now. i Lnought she was crazy@'
"Whoever she is," Joe said, "she isn't crazy. Things are weirder than either of us ever guessed, Phoebe."
She put her hands on his face, "I want to be with you," she said. "You are.
"No. Really be with you."
"I'm going to come back," Joe said, "sooner or later." He kissed her face. "Things are going to be all right."
"Tell me about the door, Joe," she said.
Instead, he kissed her again, and again, and now she opened her mouth to let his tongue between her lips, still speaking her thoughts at him.
"The door, Joe-"
"Don't go near it," he said, pressing his face against hers. "Just be here with me now. Be close with me. Oh God, Phoebe, I love you." He kissed her cheek and eyes, running his fingers up through her hair.
"I love you too," she said. "And I want us to be together more than anything. More than anything, Joe."
"We will be. We will be," he said. "I can't live without you, baby. I told you, didn't I?"
"Keep telling me. I need to know."
"I'll do better than tell you." He ran his hands down her shoulders, and round to touch her breasts. "Beautiful," he murmured. His left hand lingered there while his fight slid on down over her belly, between her legs. She raised her knees little. He ran his fingers back and forth over her sex.
She sighed, and leaned forward to kiss him. "I want to stay here," she said. "I want to sleep forever and just stay here with you."
He slid down her body now, kissing her along the way, her neck, her breasts, her belly, until he had his lips where his fingers had been, his tongue darting between. She opened her legs a little wider, and he took the signal of her abandon, pressing his palms against her knees to spread her still wider and burying his face in her groin.
The weeds seemed to sense the passion in their midst, and were excited by it. Their sinuous stems stroked her body with an eagerness all of their own, their silky pods nuzzling her. Four or five of them dallied around her face, like suitors awaiting an invitation to her mouth, while others ran up her spine and down between the cleft of her buttocks.
She started to let out little gasps of bliss, and reached out to left and fight of her to take handfuls of the weed. It responded to her attentions instantly, wrapping lengths of itself around her wrists and elbows to anchor her, and swaying against her body with fresh abandon, its strands, soft though they were, falling on her naked back like gentle whips, rousing her dreamed skin, her spirit skin, to new heights of sensation.
All the while Joe licked and probed below, and with each new wave of sensation that passed through her and over her, and spread out into the forest of weed around her, she felt the limits of her body dissolving, as though she and the waters and the weeds were no longer quite distinct. There was nothing unpleasant or distressing about this. Quite the reverse. The more she spread, the more of her there was to feel pleasure, her sensations flowing out into the stems and the pods and the swaying element in which she floated, then returning in waves to the soft vessel of her body, which in turn spread wider to accommodate the feelings, so that body and feelings kept on growing, each feeding off the other's advancement.
She looked up at the surface of the dream-sea, and at the dark shape of the boat above. There were figures working in the water up there, she saw, hacking at the weed to clear a path for the vessel. She wished she could coax them down to join the fun; to share what she was feeling and exuding; to watch them dissolve in the gfip of bliss, and have them open to her.
She felt a sliver of shame at these thoughts-moments ago this had been the most intimate of encounters between herself and Joe, now here she was, wanting to invite everyone in sight to join the party-but she couldn't help it. Her pleasure didn't belong to her. It couldn't be boxed, it couldn't be banked, it couldn't be traded or trafficked. It moved through her and disappeared, existing for the length of a shudder or a sigh, or a loving afternoon.
It was part of being alive, like tears and hunger; and given that her being was connected with everything else with the water and the weeds and the men on the boat abovewhat fight did she have to prevent pleasure radiating from her, giving itself freely?
With a great democracy of bliss founded in her head, she looked down at Joe through the swaying veil of stems that were caressing her face. Oh, but he was beautiful. The flesh of him, the bone of him; the bruise and blood of him He seemed to sense her scrutiny, and cast his gaze'up towards her. She smiled down upon him, feeling at that moment like some sea goddess in her temple while he, her worshipper, rose up from the darkness to eat and drink from her.
The stems had caught hold of him as they had her, she saw. they were wrapped around his limbs, and pressed against his back and buttocks with the same shamelessness as they pressed against her. She no longer sa I w any reason to ke@p them out. She relaxed her body and on the instant they floated into her, down her throat, up into her bowels, even pressing between her labia and Joe's lips to come into her by that route.
The surge of sensations almost undid her, literally. For a moment her body seemed to lose its coherence, shredding itself in pleasured layers, opening at every pore and letting the waters and all they contained rush into her, dissolving her dreamed bones.
Oh, but it was wonderful. Her parameters spread to contain all that swayed and surged around her. She was present in the waters, and in the stems and in the pods; she was rising towards the boat, she was plunging towards the darkness. She was embracing Joe as she never embraced him before, her consciousness surrounding him from all sides. She nuzzled at his ass in the form of pods, eager to enter him as she was entered; she bound his legs and arms, round and round, so tight she could feel the throb of his veins; she flowed across his back and against his chest, and against his groin too, where the water was murky with blood. He was plainly wounded, but not so badly that he couldn't be aroused. She could see and feel his rod, hard in his pants, wanting liberty.
If not for the memory of their previous couplings-the particulars of which would never leave her-she might have let her body dissolve completely. But the promise of having that intimacy again, even if it was just one more time, kept her from embracing dissolution.
Tomorrow maybe, or the day after, she'd let Phoebe go, and be unmade into everything. But before that happenedbefore her body slipped from her and went into the worldshe wanted to enjoy its particulars a little longer; wanted to take pleasure in knitting her substance with Joe's.
She pulled her arms free of the strands and reached down to take hold of his head. Again, he looked at her, but now his expression was so distracted she wasn't even certain he saw her. Then a smile appeared in his eyes and loosing himself from the eager weeds he climbed her body until they were face to face, mouth to mouth.