New Low Price for Butterfly

An Excerpt From BUTTERFLY

It could have been any island in any green sea in the world. A white villa stood at the top of a sheer cliff, overlooking aquamarine depths and crashing waves. An eighty-foot yacht rode at anchor, its crew in smart uniforms keeping the boat ready for the whim of the man and woman up on the cliff. There was an exotic swimming pool behind the white villa; a woman swam in it, reveling in the pure air and silence of her retreat. A feast had been set out under a gently flapping canopy: bowls of iced caviar, chilled lobster and crab, fruit frosted in sugar, cheeses imported from all over the globe, four kinds of wine standing in coolers. No one waited in attendance. The two lovers wanted to be alone.
She got out of the marble pool, climbing up the curved white steps and going between two Corinthian pillars to where chaise lounges covered in plush velour towels waited in the sun.

She moved languidly. She felt hot and sweet and ready for sex.
She didn’t remove her bathing suit. He would do that for her. Instead she stretched out in the heat and settled her eyes upon the television set that stood in the shade of the striped canopy. It was on. It was always on. She was waiting for something.

A moment later he emerged from the house, the shimmering water of the pool reflected in the lenses of his Ray-Bans. His long white bathrobe was open; he was naked underneath. She gazed at him as he walked slowly toward her. He was tall and lithe, with sinewy muscles and strong thighs; he walked with the stride of an Olympic gold medalist.

He came alongside her chaise lounge. She reached up with a lazy hand. The waves of heat rising mirage-like from the white walls of the villa seemed to melt her bones. She stirred on the thick towel, relishing the sensation of its creamy plush pile against her bare skin.

He knelt beside her. She felt strong hands lightly touch her legs. He toyed with the string of her bathing suit. He kissed the inside of her thighs.
But when his hand traveled up, his fingers exploring beneath the Spandex, she suddenly stopped him.

He looked at her, trying to read her expression behind her enormous sunglasses. He saw that her gaze was fixed on the television set.
He looked at the screen. And here it was at last, the thing she had been waiting for – a news broadcast from the other side of the earth, via satellite.
It was showing two funerals. One was in Houston, the other in Beverly Hills. Funerals important enough to be broadcast globally.

She put her hand gently on his head, and stroked him almost absentmindedly as she stared at the solemn processions – one backdropped by California palm trees with people arriving in stretch limos, the hearse white because they were burying a woman; the other beneath a hard Texas sun, attended by men in Stetsons who lifted the coffin of a man from the black hearse. For the moment, she wasn’t on this craggy remote island and about to experience a sublime sexual idyll. She was back …. back there, at the beginning of the incredible road that had terminated at last in the two funerals taking place on the same day, fifteen hundred miles apart ….

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