"Nina Kiriki Hoffman - Salvage Efforts" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Nina Kiriki)

NINA KIRIKI HOFFMAN

SALVAGE EFFORTS

"I'M GOING TO CHANGE INTO my overalls now," I said, heading for the bedroom.

When you're married to a god, you have to watch what you say.

"What an intriguing idea," he said. He pointed at me.

The next instant I lay on the ground, flatter than I was comfortable being,
without the power of vision, and incapable of independent motion. My sense of
touch had changed. I was aware of myself as a multitude of threads interwoven,
with acres of thready skin.

When he picked me up and put me on, I sensed him as a series of textures and
varying temperatures, moisture differences and body oils and sweat, skin and
hair and heat. There was an excitation in just lying against him -- perhaps the
presence of his god power. I could tell as I touched him that he wore no other
clothes than me. Half of me lay against much of him, conscious of many
differences in his finite acre; and half of me lay open to the air, which was
different from one height to the next, full of touches/ tastes I normally didn't
perceive at all.

Even while I gave myself up to all these strange and wonderful sensations, to
this new relationship with my husband that involved an intimacy we had never
shared before, in my core (wherever that was in this body) anger grew, starting
as a sullen ember of heat, flaring higher as minutes passed and I remained in
this shape without having been asked, without the power to ask to change back.

Had I known before I married the man that he was a god, I would have thought
longer and harder about my answer to his proposal.

Though I couldn't move, I was conscious of motion; I knew my husband walked and
sat with me wrapped around him. We went somewhere in the car: I could feel the
vinyl upholstery slick against parts of me, though at first I didn't know what
it was.

This wasn't nice, wearing me in public as though I were slave or adornment.
Where was he wearing me? Who would see us? What was my husband saying about it?
Usually I liked his sense of humor -- when I could hear it to appreciate it. He
had a mean streak, though.

From reading myths, one gets the feeling this is a chronic problem with gods.

Perhaps he was even now telling someone the truth about me. I wouldn't put it
past him. None of his beer buddies would believe it, but my husband would laugh,
knowing he had handed over an unruly secret that, if believed, could hurt both