"James Patrick Kelly - Bernardo's House" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

although lots of it was too adult for her. She just didn't get Henry James or Brenda Bop or Alain Resnais.
But she liked Jane Austen and Renoir and Buster Keaton and Billie Holliday and Petchara Songsee and
the 2017 Red Sox. She loved to read about houses. But there was nothing in her archive after 2038 and
she was awake twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year.

What if Bernardo was dead? After all, he'd had the heart attack, just a couple of months before he left.
Obviously, if he had died, that would be the end of her. Some new owner would wipe her memory and
swap in a new body and sell all her furniture. Except Bernardo always said that she was his most
precious secret. That no one else in all the world knew about her. About them. In which case she'd wait
for him for yearsтАФdecadesтАФuntil her fuel cells were depleted and her consciousness flickered and went
dark. The house started to hum some of Bernardo's favorites to push the thought away. He liked the
romantics. Chopin and Mendelssohn. Hmm-hm, hm-hm-hm-hm-hm! тАЬThe Wedding MarchтАЭ from A
Midsummer's Night Dream.

No, she wasn't bored.

Not really.

Or angry, either.

She spent her days thinking about him, not in any methodical way, but as if he had been shattered into a
thousand pieces and she was trying to put him back together. She imagined this must be what dreaming
was like, although, of course, she couldn't dream because she wasn't real. She was just a house. She
thought of the stubble on his chin scratching her breasts and the scar on his chest and the time he laughed
at something she said and the way his neck muscles corded when he was angry. She had come to realize
that it was always a mistake to ask him about the outside. Always. But he enjoyed his bromeliads and his
music helped him forget his troubles at the hospital, whatever they were, and he loved her. He was
always asking her to read to him. He would sit for hours, staring up at the clouds on the ceiling, listening
to her. She liked that better than sex, although having sex with him always aroused her. It was part of her
design. His foreplay was gentle and teasing. He would nip at her ear with his lips, trace her eyebrows
with his finger. Although he was a big man, he had a feather touch. Once he had his penis in her, though,
it was more like a game than the lovemaking she had read about in books. He would tease herтАФstop
and then go very fast. He liked blindfolds and straps and honeypins. Sometimes he'd actually roll off one
side of the bed, stroll to the other and come at her again, laughing. She wondered if the real people he
had sex with enjoyed being with him.

One thing that puzzled her was why he was so shy about the words. He always said vagina and anus,
intercourse and fellatio. Of course, she knew all the other words; they were in the books she read when
he wasn't around. Once, when he had just started to undress her, she asked if he wanted her to suck his
cock. He looked as if he wanted to slap her. тАЬDon't you ever say that to me again,тАЭ he said. тАЬThere's
enough filth in the real world. It has to be different here."

She decided that was a very romantic thing for him to say to...

And suddenly a year had passed. The house could not say where it had gone, exactly. A whole year,
misplaced. How careless! She must do something or else it would happen again. Even though she was
perfect for him, she had to make some changes. She decided to rearrange furniture.

Her concrete coffee table was too heavy for her to budge so she dragged her two elephant cushions from
the playroom and tipped them against it. The ensemble formed a charming little courtyard. She pulled all