Imhotep by Jerry Dubs

and innocent.  He had to
consciously keep himself from reaching out and touching her.
    Later
over coffee, as he looked at her green eyes, so alive and full of interest, he
blurted out that he thought she was beautiful.
    “I
know,” she answered, smiling into her coffee cup.
    He was
taken aback by her confidence and smugness.
    His
face showed it and she laughed, a series of light musical notes that he wanted
to hear over and over again.
    “No,
no, I don’t know that I’m beautiful.  Well, maybe,” she grinned at
him.  “But I know you think so.”
    She
sipped her coffee, her eyes on him, deciding how open she should be.
    “Tim,”
she said, setting down her cup and reaching over to place her hand over
his.  Her touch thrilled him and he wanted to turn over her hand and trace
its contours with his fingertips.
    “Tim,
you should never, ever play poker.  Your face doesn’t hide anything. 
When we were in the park, I would have run away from you if my friends hadn’t
told me, over and over, that you’re not really a pervert.”
    She
laughed again at his confused expression.
    “Oh my
god.  You are going to be so much fun.”
    He
knew he was blushing now.  Her words suggested that they would see each
other again.
    “Here,”
she tugged at his hand and placed it on her neck; at the very spot he had
stared at earlier.
    He
felt the tender thickness of the hair as it emerged from her skin and then how
it grew softer and willowy until it seemed to merge with the air.  He
brushed her skin gently, realizing how thin the boundary was between her body
and his, how the surfaces of their skins, sliding softly along each other, were
really no boundary at all.
    “My
god, that’s electric,” she said turning her neck into his hand.
    Reluctantly
he slid his hand away. “They told you I’m not a pervert?” he asked.  “How
did that come up?”
    She laughed
again.  “They were telling me that you’re an artist and then, Jeanne, I
think it was, said, ‘Oh yeah, don’t worry if he really, really looks at
you.  He’s not a pervert.’ ”
    “Thanks,
Jeanne,” Tim said.
    “They
all really like you, Tim.  And they were right.”
    “I’m
not a pervert?”
    “I
don’t know, yet,” she said, grinning.  “I mean you do really study
things.  You know you felt the texture of the napkin when we sat down,
don’t you?  And when we got our coffee, you held the cup up to your face,
closed your eyes and took a long, slow breath of its aroma.  When people
come in, you don’t just glance at them, you really look at them as if you're
trying to memorize them.
    “And,
to be honest, I kind of like the way you look at me.  It’s not exactly
naked hunger, but it’s certainly intense.  You seem able to control
yourself in public, although I’m not sure I will be able to the way you just
touched me.”
    “Will
be able?”
    “Yes,”
she said.  “I think you’re about to ask me out on a real date.”
     
     
    T im realized as he chewed the cinnamon roll
that it was a little easier to think of her now.  The love he would always
feel for her seemed to be pushing at the pain that had overwhelmed him earlier
up on the plateau.  For the first time, he thought it might be possible
one day to remember her without pain.
     
     
    T he sweet taste of the roll was something
Ahmes had never imagined.  What other things did the gods have that he had
never imagined?
    This
god seemed very different from the two who had arrived earlier.  But then
people were different, he thought, the gods would be different, too.  He
had always pictured them in a vague way as strong, powerful, fearless; as hard
as the stone in the tombs.
    But
this god looked and felt like any other person.  He did seem different
when he looked at things because he seemed to drink them in and to see past
them.  And at other times, like now, he seemed to have left his
body.  Perhaps his body was here in Kemet and at the same time his ka was
in