Science fiction; Short stories; Time travel -- Fiction
"Magnetic. They're on all my clothes. Very simple." She parted her
tunic to the waist, then let it zip together.
"Clever," Tom remarked with a gulp. There seemed no limits to this
girl's naturalness.
"I see you're a button man," she said. "You actually believe it's
possible for a man and woman to love just each other?"
* * * * *
His chuckle was bitter. He was thinking of Elinore Murphy at
Tosker-Brown and a bit about cold-faced Miss Tosker herself. "I
sometimes wonder if it's possible for anyone to love anyone."
"You haven't met the right girls," she said.
"Girl," he corrected.
She grinned at him. "You'll make me think you really are a monogamist.
What group do you come from?"
"Let's not talk about that," he requested. He was willing to forego
knowing how she'd guessed he was from an art group, if he could be
spared talking about the Vacation Fellowships and those nervous little
cabins.
"My group's very nice on the whole," the girl said, "but at times they
can be nefandously exasperating. Jock's the worst, quietly guiding the
rest of us like an analyst. How I loathe that man! But Larry's almost
as bad, with his shame-faced bumptiousness, as if we'd all sneaked off
on a joyride to Venus. And there's Jokichi at the opposite extreme,
forever scared he won't distribute his affection equally, dividing it
up into mean little packets like candy for jealous children who would
scream if they got one chewy less. And then there's Sasha and Ernest--"
"Who are you talking about?" Tom asked.
"My husbands." She shook her head dolefully. "To find five more
difficult men would be positively Martian."
Tom's mind backtracked frantically, searching all conversations at
Tosker-Brown for gossip about cultists in the neighborhood. It found
nothing and embarked on a wider search. There were the Mormons (was
that the word that had sounded like Martian?) but it wasn't the Mormon
husbands who were plural. And then there was Oneida (weren't husbands
and wives both plural there?) but that was 19th century New England.
"Five husbands?" he repeated. She nodded. He went on, "Do you mean to
say five men have got you alone somewhere up here?"
"To be sure not," she replied. "There are my kwives."
"Kwives?"
"Co-wives," she said more slowly. "They can be fascinerously
exasperating, too."
* * * * *
Tom's mind did some more searching. "And yet you believe in monogamy?"
She smiled. "Only when I'm having tantrums. It was civilized of you to
agree with me."
"But I actually do believe in monogamy," he protested.
She gave his hand a little squeeze. "You are nice, but let's rush now.
I've finished my tantrum and I want you to meet my group. You can fresh
yourself with us."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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