Oliver Benjamin
they’re not. Imagine if the same could be done for compassion.”
“Hot and cold running looove,” Ellie giggled.
“There’s an important distinction,” Morris maintained, “People
only need so much water and fire. But there’s no limit to how much
love they want. And the more love is shared, the less it’s worth. Go
ahead and increase the love in the world. There will still be envy and
greed. And Hellenic wars and Shakespearean murders. There will
probably be more.”
“It’s a nice idea, though,” Ellie beamed, “If only you could put
something in your coffee, something people could drink to help them
love more.”
Roy looked over at Ellie and met her smiling eyes.
“Oh, wait!” she called out suddenly, “How could we forget?” She
jumped out of the hot tub and ran dripping into the kitchen. When
she came back a moment later she held a bag of coffee beans in her
hand.
“It’s a sin to drink Sambuca without coffee beans in it,” she
admonished, placing one in each glass. “In the OdysseyHelen puts
an African drug in the wine to make them stop crying and feel happy.
Coffee does dry up tear ducts. And we all know how well it cures
sorrows.”
Bidden grinned. “Well, you’re wasting your dope on me, darling,
because right now I couldn’t be happier.” He raised his glass and
looked them both in the eye.
Roy had borrowed a pair of red trunks from his beefy boss, a pair
so enormous that he could have put them on by crawling through one
of the leg holes. They floated about him like blood from a slaughtered
shark. Meanwhile, Morris wore an unflatteringly tiny pair of Speedos
and his wife wore a tiny g-string bikini. All told, they might as well
have been nude.
Bidden, keen to immortalize the moment, broke out his camera.
He instructed his wife to go sit next to Roy while he set up the small
tripod and remote timer on the deck next to the tub. Ellie put her
arms around Roy’s neck and cuddled him. The sensation of her
slippery body against his aroused a woeful anguish. She kissed his
hairless cheek. They had grown close, closer in Roy’s reckoning than
he cared to admit. What a wonderful person, he grieved. What he
wouldn’t do. His flesh swelled and pushed its way upwards towards
the light. He was in the midst of an unlikely daydream when she
decided to playfully throw herself onto his lap.
65
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