【时间旅行者的妻子】16（在线收听）

Clare counts. I race around picking underwear and socks from the floor, collecting spoons and coffee cups from various horizontal surfaces and chucking them into the kitchen sink. As she says “Nine hundred and sixty-seven,” I remove the tie from her eyes. I have turned the sleeper-sofa into its daytime, sofa self, and I sit down on it. “Wine? Music? Candlelight?”　“Yes, please.”　I get up and light candles. When I’m finished I turn off the overhead light and the room is dancing with little lights and everything looks better. I put the roses in water, locate my corkscrew, extract the cork, and pour us each a glass of wine. After a moment’s thought I put on the EMI CD of my mother singing Schubert lieder and turn the volume low.　My apartment is basically a couch, an armchair, and about four thousand books.　“How lovely,” says Clare. She gets up and reseats herself on the sofa. I sit down next to her. There is a comfortable moment when we just sit there and look at each other. The candlelight flickers on Clare’s hair. She reaches over and touches my cheek. “It’s so good to see you. I was getting lonely.”　I draw her to me. We kiss. It’s a very.. .compatible kiss, a kiss born of long association, and I wonder just exactly what we’ve been doing in this meadow of Clare’s, but I push the thought away. Our lips part; usually at this point I would be considering how to work my way past various fortresses of clothing, but instead I lean back and stretch out on the sofa, bringing Clare along with me by gripping her under the arms and pulling; the velvet dress makes her slippery and she slithers into the space between my body and the back of the sofa like a velvet eel. She is facing me and I am propped up by the arm of the sofa. I can feel the length of her body pressing against mine through the thin fabric. Part of me is dying to go leaping and licking and diving in, but I’m exhausted and overwhelmed.　“Poor Henry.”