The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (best romance novels of all time TXT) 📗

he moved the way he did, long strides as he reached the table? Had he smiled at her like that? Maybe she’d constructed false memories of him, fake angles.

‘Here.’

‘I’m not drinking that,’ Amelia said, pointing at the glass full of green goo Elías was offering her.

‘It’s just vegetables, an egg and hot sauce,’ he told her.

Amelia took a sip. It was terrible, as she’d expected, and she quickly handed Elías the glass back. He chuckled and brushed a limp strand of hair away from her face.

‘Did it help at all?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I tried.’

She placed the glass on the table and walked around the living room, looking at the blank walls.

‘You have no photos at all, no decorations.’

She didn’t mind. Her room – could she even call it hers when she shared it with her niece? – was littered with scraps of her past. She knew it too well, every crack on the wall, every spring on the bed. It reminded her of who she was and who she’d never been. Elías’s apartment was a soothing blank slate, a pale cocoon.

One might molt and transform here.

‘I don’t know if I’m going to stay long. Besides, I don’t take photos anymore,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

‘Grew out of it, I suppose.’

But not, perhaps, out of her. Amelia allowed herself to be flattered by that thought and smiled at him.

He slid next to her, slid across that fine line she was trying to draw between affection and desire. There was that irresponsible wild feeling in her gut, all youthful need. Amelia had not felt young in ages. She was about fifty-five in her head, but he reminded her of her awkward teenage years, things she’d forgotten. It was exciting. She thought she’d lost that, that she’d outgrown it. Even if this was just horrid déjà vu, it felt like something. It was pleasant to remember she was twenty-five, that she wasn’t that old, that it wasn’t all over.

Her hair smelled like tobacco and she guessed her makeup was a bit of a mess, smudged mascara and only the faintest trace of lipstick, but he wasn’t complaining. She supposed it might be part of the appeal.

Slumming it, Elías style.

She truly did not know what he was getting out of this. Best not to dig too deeply. Best to just fall into bed with him.

*

His arm was over his eyes when he spoke, shielding himself from a stray, persistent ray of light peeking through the curtains.

‘Do you really still think about going to Mars?’ he asked.

On Mars, they would be cold. His breath would rise like a plume. They’d huddle under furs. They’d fight space pirates and save the world. Well… not on the real Mars. On the Mars of that black-and-white flick she’d watched.

‘Is it that shocking?’ she replied.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I think you loved that planet more than you loved me.’

‘You can’t be jealous of a hunk of rock.’

‘I was.’

‘Planets keep to their orbits,’ she said tersely.

He looked at her and she thought this was going to end quickly. That he wouldn’t put up with recriminations, exclamations. The amusement might be over already. She headed to the shower. But when she came out of the bathroom, he grabbed her hand.

She reached home at quarter past seven to a very furious sister, but fortunately Marta had somewhere to be and she did not have time to quiz Amelia about her whereabouts. Once the door to the apartment slammed shut, Amelia sat on the couch next to her nieces. The TV was on and an announcer was laughing.

MARS, SCENE 3

EXT. MARS BASE – NIGHT

SPACE EXPLORER, holding future goggles, spots marauders near the outpost. She hurries back to alert her father and THE HERO about this. It must be the SPACE PIRATES who have come to ransack the outpost and steal THE SCIENTIST’s invention.

There is a discussion about how to hold them off. Montage of preparations, then a battle. Despite THE HERO’s best efforts, the outpost is overrun and the SPACE PIRATES break through the defenses. The survivors are surrounded by bad guys, but THE HERO has managed to escape.

ENTER EVIL SPACE QUEEN. Maximum sexiness in a dress that does its utmost best to show tits. She taunts the good guys and demands THE SCIENTIST hand over the gizmo he’s been working on, which will give SPACE QUEEN incredible powers, yadda-yadda. THE SCIENTIST refuses, but SPACE QUEEN thinks some time in a torture chamber will change his mind.

SPACE QUEEN decrees THE SPACE EXPLORER will be wed to her brother, who doubles as the EVIL HENCHMAN, therefore ensuring absolute control of the planet. Three exclamation points.

THE SPACE EXPLORER – the girl, this is nothing but a girl, diminutive and frail – faints. SPACE QUEEN’s evil laughter.

7

‘The biggest problem, of course, was that Nahum kept changing things,’ Lucía said. Her turban was silver that day. It looked like she had wrapped tinfoil around her head. And yet, Lucía managed to appear regal as she sat on the couch, with a few pages from her memoir on her lap.

She offered Amelia the bowl with pomegranate seeds and Amelia took a couple. ‘He was an insomniac, so he’d wake up in the middle of the night, find a problem with the shooting script, jot down some notes. Then he phoned the writer at around 3 a.m. and the writer would promise he’d make changes. Which he did. But then, Nahum couldn’t sleep again, and so on and so forth.

‘He was on drugs. I was so young I couldn’t even tell if this was a normal shoot or not. Convent-educated girl. A friend of a friend of my father was the one who got me my first audition and it all happened quickly, easily. A fluke.’

Lucía frowned, her eyes little, tiny polished beads staring at Amelia. She was a Coatlicue, an angry, withered, Earth Mother goddess, her forked tongue about to fly out of her mouth and demand blood. Amelia’s mother had been hard too. She watched over Amelia like a hawk