Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 3 - Venus Besieged by Andrews, Austin

with her, wrapping my entire body around her and kissing her breasts.
She slid her hands down my buttocks, and my skin, all of it from head to toe,
became damp, clammy, ridiculously hot, like my personal thermostat had been
struck by lightning and suffered a meltdown. "You are definitely going
through the change, but the good news is you soon won't have to worry about
bears," Callie said impishly.
    "My
God!" I rolled away from her and she picked up a pillow and made an
elaborate mock gesture of fanning me, telling me I needed to take something for
the hot flashes.
    "I'm
not taking estrogen—which is made from horse urine—in order to stop sweating
like a horse."
    "You
are inordinately stubborn," she said, no condemnation in her voice.
"I'll get you something homeopathic. It's either that or we'll be making
love only in our minds.. .a cerebral affair after all."
    I
moaned in despair, then asked if she would mind turning on the overhead fan.
The cool air whipped across the vast Sahara once known as my body as I refuted
the fact that I might be going through the change and Callie educated me on why
my symptoms were changelike.
    "If
you're right," I said despondently, "then God has played a cruel
trick on women, making them bleed for decades, then sweat for years, and
finally allowing them to go dry. Proving, of course, that God is a man."
    "With
a warped sense of humor. And the change could make you a little cranky."
    "How
will we know? I'm cranky by nature. Menopausal could make me postal."
    Rocked
in her arms, I felt the moisture between our bodies evaporate into one another
until our colognes smelled like neither of us and both of us in a mixture of
exotic oils and sensual hormones that kept my heart beating fast, even though I
had been pulled from the race.
    "I
wonder what makes a woman decide her life's work is cleaning up roadside-park
facilities," I mused, thinking of Fern.
    "She
seems happy." Callie kissed my shoulder.
    "I
wonder why I had to be a screenwriter. I would have made a wonderful field
general or rodeo cowboy or even a priest... I would have been a great
priest."
    Callie
chuckled, I was certain, over the direction my mind could take when relaxed.
"You would have been a terrible priest."
    "Not
true. It's theater, and I would have packed the house every Sunday. My first
official act as a priest would be to get rid of hell as a destination, as in
'Go to hell.' Or 'It was hell on earth,' which sounds like a suburb. I would
ask the pope to replace the word hell in all religious texts with the
word shopping, which still has an element of hell to it. If you sinned,
you would go to Wal-Mart. Twice, and you would go to Target. If you committed a
really evil crime, you would have to go to that huge mall in Minneapolis, lose
your car, and never get out."
    "I
love you," Callie said, smiling at me. "You know more than you know
you know."
    "When
will I know I know it?" I teased her.
    "When
you open your third eye."
    "Don't
tell me about that, I can't take it." I put a pillow over my head and
could still hear Callie laughing, and soon she began to make love to me, slowly,
deliberately, every move making me want her more.
    "I
don't want to be a priest. I don't think they get to do this," I said,
resting my cheek on her pelvis and hugging her hips to me.
    "Oh,
honey, for an ex-cop, you are so naive."

Chapter
Six
    “We
were curled up on the bed, my arm around Callie's shoulder, cozier than I'd
felt in weeks, when I flipped on the ancient black-and-white TV on the rickety
table in the corner of the bedroom, mostly curious to see if it could get
reception. A recap of the news featured the story about the mall construction
site.
    A
bouncy, young news anchor, with a voice like Minnie Mouse, waxed on about the
incredible run of bad luck that the construction company had endured,
elaborating on how the Native Americans on the job recognized signs they should
not be building the mall on this particular piece of ground because it