Dark Rivers of the Heart

person's sweat, I can't stand that, it sickens me."
        "Fluids," he said with revulsion, "how can there be anything sexy about another person's fluids, exchanging fluids?"
        With growing excitement, pulling him into a hallway, Eve said, "Fluids, my God, doesn't it make you want to die, just die, with all the fluids that have to be involved, so much that's wet. They all want to lick and suck my breasts, all that saliva, it's so hideous, and shoving their tongues in my mouth-"
        "Spittle!" he said, grimacing.
        "What's so erotic about swapping spit, for God's sake?"
        They had reached the threshold of her bedroom. He stopped her on the brink of the paradise that they were about to create together.
        "If I ever kiss you," he promised, "it'll be a dry kiss, as dry as paper, dry as sand."
        Eve was shaking with excitement.
        "No tongue," he swore. "Even the lips mustn't be moist."
        "And never lips to lips-"
        "-because then even in a dry kiss-"
        "-we'd be swapping-"
        "-breath for breath-"
        "-and there's moisture in breath-"
        "-vapors from the lungs," he said.
        With a gladdening of his heart almost too sweet to endure, Roy knew that this splendid woman was, indeed, more like him than he ever could have hoped when he first stepped out of that elevator and saw her.
        They were two voices in harmony, two hearts beating in unison, two souls soaring to the same song, emphatically simpatico.
        "No man has ever been in this bedroom," she said, leading him across the threshold. "Only you. Only you."
        The portion of the walls immediately to the left and right of the bed, as well as the area of the ceiling directly above it, was mirrored.
        Otherwise, the walls and ceiling were upholstered with midnight-blue satin the precise shade of the carpet. A single chair stood in a corner, upholstered in silvery silk. The two windows were covered with polished-nickel blinds.
        The bed was sleek and modern, with radius footboard, bookcase headboard, tall flanking cabinets, and a light bridge; it was finished with several coats of high-gloss, midnight-blue lacquer in which glimmered silvery speckles like stars. Above the headboard was another mirror. Instead of a bedspread, she had a silver-fox fur throw-"Just fake fur," she assured him when he expressed concern about the rights of helpless animals-which was the most lustrous and luxurious thing he had ever seen.
        Here was the glamour for which Roy had yearned.
        The computerized lighting was voice-activated. It offered six distinct moods through clever combinations of strategically placed halogen pin spots (with a variety of colored lenses), mirror-framing neon in three colors (that could be displayed singly or two or three at a time), and imaginative applications of fiber optics. Furthermore, each mood could be subtly adjusted by a voice-activated rheostat that responded to the commands "up" and "down."
        When Eve touched a button on the headboard, the tambour doors on the tall bed-flanking cabinets hummed up, out of sight. Shelves were revealed, laden with bottles of lotions and scented oils, ten or twelve rubber phalluses in various sizes and colors, and a collection of battery-powered and hand-operated sex toys that were bewildering in their design and complexity.
        Eve switched on a CD player with a hundred-disc carousel and set it for random play. "It's loaded with everything from Rod Stewart to Metallica, Elton John, Garth Brooks, the Beatles, the Bee Gees, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, screaming'jay Hawkins, James Brown and the Famous Flames, and Bach's Goldberg Variations. Somehow it's more exciting when there's so many different kinds of music and when you never know what will be playing next."
        After taking off his topcoat but not his suit jacket, Roy Miro moved the upholstered chair out of the corner. He positioned it to one side of the bed, near the footboard, to ensure a glorious view yet to avoid, as much as possible, casting his reflections in the mirrors and spoiling the multitudinous images of her perfection.
        He sat in the chair and smiled.
        She stood beside the bed, fully clothed, while Elton John sang about healing hands. "This is like a dream. To be here, doing exactly what I like to do, but with someone who can appreciate me-"
        "I appreciate you, I do."
        "-who