Disclaimer: Only the plot is mine.
Claire was best in the flickering light of a movie theater, her face turned away from mine, our hands following their own course downward. She fumbled her way from the top button of my shirt collar to my skirt, parting its damp folds with her hands. She coaxed me, with whispers, with small noises, as if she were a begging dog out of the road. Our eyes never left the screen.
We were ageless when we met in the dining car of the 999. I rember waiting after Tetsuro had finished his steak and went back to our car. As Claire turned around, I broke off a piece of her hair, and kissed it tenderly.
The next time I saw her, she had cut it off with the conductor's shears. Her shorne hair fell to the floor of the space-train, shattering as it left her.
"Do you like old movies Maetel?" She asked, one hand following the line of her cropped hair along the dome of her head, the other hooked into the clasp of my belt.
"I don't know," I told her, arms pressed up against my chest, my hip slung out, leaning onto the wall's cool metal surface.
All I knew was that I wanted to press closer to her than I thought was possible, that my clothes felt to small in her presence and my skin itched with an ardent, heated rash as if I were allergic to my clothes, it's soft weight against my breasts, the skirt falling in even, pleated lines over my thighs.
In the balcony of the Old Tower Theater on some small planet, next to an adroid repair shop, catty-corner from a traditional tea house on a crisp afternoon, she showed me 'Notorious'. Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Brazil, 1946. An Earth movie. The theater swelled with the odor of mildewed carpets, moth-worn upholstery. The ancient hinges on the seat bottoms whined as they yeilded to our weight. My hands wrapped around some iced drink, my mouth poised on the edge of a straw, we sat in the balcony and abandoned our bags to the dark recesses of the littered floor.
Even before the opening titles finished, she moved her thigh up against mine, let her left hand fall across my knee. With her right, she caressed my mouth, ran a shining clear thumb over my chin. Her fingertips rested in the small dip at the base of my neck. Our eyes darting across the lighted screen, her hands traveled to the rounded collar of my blouse. The small buttons, pearlized, caught in the screens dim light, glowed through her fingers.
One button at a time, she moved my blouse out of the way, whispering in the darkness "Please, please, please." Her mouth, hovering above mine, that even, repeated tone on her breath, the words barely audible, over and over as she said it to Ingrid Bergman, to Cary Grant, to the half-empty theater.
She found her way from the flat disk around my nipple to its rising tip, ran her middle finger along each artificial rib. Her hand paused at the white edge of my underpants. Then, traveling the circumference of the elastic waistband, she played along that edge until she got the courage to pull me to her. One arm around my shoulders, guiding me over, she settled me between her thighs, my back curving into her chest. Our eyes fixed on Ingrid Bergman's full mouth, her hand slid down farther, squirrling in between the elastic and the untraveled skin below.
When she entered me, I gasped her name, "Claire..." The couple in front of us stirred, the man, his brush cut tickling his girlfriend's cheek, turned around, squinted back into the shadowy darkness. Shr put one finger in, then pulled it out, returned with two fingers. She pulled out again. I followed her fingers down as they left me. She returned with three, stretching the untried synth muscles, her thumb on the outer rim.
I had almost forgotten the wetness. I never knew my new body could create it, never felt such a rush of it. I filled her palm with it, spilled over, rivering into the narrow line between my buttocks, pooling on the cracked, vinyl seat. Her seat gone damp, wrinkling under us, she added and subtracted her fingers into me. Three, two, one. One, two, three. Working faster, she matched her rhythm to the increasing speed of my breath. All the while her small whisper continued, lick a ticking clock at my ear, "Please, warm, please, Maetel, please."
Her thumb traveled to my synthetic clitoris, running over that elongated spot with a flickering exactitude. I arched into her hands, my breath came hard. Then, a catch in my throat; for one long moment I could not breathe. I felt something buzz around me, something almost tangible, a cloud hovering over me, waiting to descend. As Ingrid Bergman leaned over to the airplane's small window, her lips parting, the Brazilian landscape opening out beneath her, it fell and I came.
It's five years later, it's seven, it's ten, and still when I walk into a theater I walk into her. My body tingles. The air, close around me, opens up to her form. The worn wood of the seat arms hardens into the edge of her crystal biceps. Already her thigh presses against mine. Already she is descending on me, her mouth at my ear, her hand between my legs, the fingers adding and subtracting into me. One two three. Three two one. I arch my back, spread my legs wider. There, in the high corner of the balcony, the safety bar cutting the screen in half, dividing Ingrid Bergman in half, I remembered the mottled and flickering light on my lover's crystal skin, Ingrid Bergman floating out of the screen, her mouth on the lip of my mind, the edge of that clear abdomen, that narrow ribbon of glass-like flesh, like a road, a rope, a signal light flashing, flickering in the half empty darkness.