***The final act in this short play. 0_o
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“Does he sleep through the night?” he asked her, whispering after they’d put the infant to bed in his own crib as they watched him drop off and she shrugged, “He’s getting there,” she said, “He manages to more often than not now.”
It had come to his mind a few times during the day, but Kerry still wasn’t really prepared for the way that she followed him to the bedroom and took her clothing off to stand before him.
He felt his jaw falling open. It wasn’t a thought which came to him, but at that point, Kerry’s notion of the paradigm of feminine loveliness rose to where the bar was set right then. He hadn’t been prepared at all for this. With her rather conservative style of clothes on – and he guessed that there had been a reason that she was so, … well-covered in her dark slacks and her cloak, though it had really suited the weather that day, he supposed.
He liked what he was looking at, but for all of what she’d said to him, they were strangers and this wasn’t a whorehouse.
He almost winced as that thought hit him. Other than the strictest western connotation in that she was or she wasn't, the whole concept didn’t apply to her at all.
She saw his glance at her breasts for just an instant. “They were very slight bits of nothing by themselves,” she said, “I lost my baby early in the third trimester and I was given implants to even get them to this small size afterward. I hope that they might be sufficient for you. I think that western men like much larger breasts, many Orientals like this now as well.”
Kerry shook his head, “I’m not shopping for melons today. I’m just on my ass over you walking in here and dropping your clothes and then standing there like that – as if I was a …
Well, I’m not, ok? I’m just, … really confused, I guess.”
She stepped forward to where he sat on the edge of the bed, trying to offer a little smile, “I know you must be confused and even for me, it is different, but think of what I said if you can. I am offering something to you, Kerry. I am trying, I guess, to offer you a life with your son and a woman who wants to live a life with you – a real, regular, life. I think that this is a little different, but it is still the same thing that any woman offers to the man she chooses, just all at once, because I am used to having men look at my body. I don’t mind, I am trying my best to show you what I am.
You might see it as trying to tempt you and in a very small way, I guess that I am, but really, I am trying to show you my honesty here. This is me,” she said with a little wave of her hand,” This is what I am, and I suppose that it is what I can offer to you. The difference is my hope that it is enough for you and that I am not offering a man my services for a night or two. This is what I offer in exchange for a life with you.”
His eye caught something on her left forearm that he’d thought that he’d seen earlier in the restautrant and something different a little higher up that went to her shoulder and disappeared. She saw his glance and she nodded, “Something that my last patron had done to me. The dark pattern on my lower arm is new and is only just finishing its healing. I had it done to ruin the message of the other one.”
She turned around and Kerry gasped. What he’d seen on her arm were tails. Three scaled tails which wound themselves together and went up her arm to her shoulder and then - now that he could see the rest – went right down the length of her back, though mostly to the left side of her spine. They were three very serpentine and almost eel-like dragons ending with their heads not far above the line of her buttocks.
“Whoa, … “he sighed, “Is there a meaning to that?”
She nodded, “Another thing I had no say in. I suppose that it means something to old and very powerful criminal businessmen, though I doubt that it means anything at all to the younger ones of today. My sleeve is to ruin it since I can’t remove the big one. I may want to add something else on my back to remove the message, but I haven’t decided yet.
May I please sleep with you tonight?”
“You really were serious,” he observed, and then he smiled, “Well we’ll see just how long this lasts. I probably snore and fart in my sleep.”
“You do not understand,” she said quietly, “I don’t know if it will ever happen, but I have a hope that you might love me one day. That’s really what I want out of this for myself. You can use me for tonight if you wish. I only ask that I be allowed to hold you.”
It still twisted his brain. He told her to sit next to him on the edge of the bed and she did.
“Look, Kumiko,” he said, “I can’t understand this part. You’re really quite beautiful. The word doesn’t even do you justice. I don’t get what you’re doing here at all. I mean, you could just go to a government office and walk out like 20 minutes later with all the government support that you’d ever need to start a life with him. What do you want to do this for? For that matter, why are you always a little meek and subservient to me?”
She sighed, “It isn't about money. It’s either this or we just return to being undesired details for someone to remove quietly. For me personally, I guess that I would want what I was never supposed to have or even want to have. I want a child, but I can never have my own. With you, he would be my own. He would be ours together. I don’t know if I can explain it any better than that. But I also cannot express how much of a desire that is for me – to want what any other woman can have.
And,” she looked down; clearly struggling now – which boggled Kerry’s mind right there because it wasn’t that she was there next to him naked and feeling self-conscious, though he could see that it played a small part.
“And I might be able to have a fine husband in you, Kerry. You are very attractive to most women and you’re beyond really attractive to me.”
She almost lost it then as she struggled to hold in a sob as she sat with her head down and her face hidden in her hair to whisper something which he found actually hurt him to hear, now that he knew her a little bit.
“I would do anything for a life like that. What almost any other woman can have – I would do anything for even the hope of it.”
“Please get into the bed,” he smiled quietly, “Nobody’s going to be using anybody. I think that you’ve been used enough, Kumiko.”
“Don’t you like me?” she asked, and Kerry was stunned.
“I’m getting it, Kumiko,” he said, “I’m getting it, as slow as I am, but I need a little time. None of this was on my agenda when I got out of bed this morning. I’m not angry and wanting to turf you out anymore, am I? If you try to see this from my side, I’m about to get into a bed with a beautiful stranger under circumstances that neither one of us might have chosen easily.
I’m not the kind of man who can just look at a lovely naked woman and drool a little, rub my hands together and nod like an idiot, though I may not be much better than that on my worst day.
I will tell you one thing, though. I think that your desire to be held is a good way to help us get over everything and I find that I’m more than prepared to do that for us both. I suppose that I can piss and moan over all of this, but I’ve been alone with my thoughts for a good long while now and I find that by myself, I’m not much good for company.
