Chapter 21

"Do you want to find a nice restaurant, for lunch, before you go home?"

"No, Paul. I just want to go home. You've re-stocked our supply of Healthy Choice dinners, haven't you?"

"Oh, yeah. I had cleaned you out, long ago. And I've found some other good microwave thingies, too. South Park Diet, or some-such thing. They're a little more calorically challenged, maybe, but, ummm-ummm good!"

"South Park, huh? Are you certain it's not, maybe, 'South Beach Diet?'"

"Could be. It's South-something. I'm sure glad to have you back home!"

"D'joo clean the house?"

"Did I, personally, clean your house? No. But I have friends in high places. Not for the first time, I enlisted the resources of the Silverthorn family. Your mother knew the names of a few available housekeeping mavens."

"Only a Mafia family would have more connections than mine," Lois said.

"Your smile is back," Paul said.

"Doesn't hurt as much, either. Smiling."

"I love you."

"You've said that to me before."

"Yes. But usually it was in the heat of passion. Hell, a man will say anything, when he's horizontal. This is the first time, I think, that I've said it with my braces still on."

"I'm never going to be... I'm never going to look like I did, before."

"Me neither. At least you can still play third base."

"Arnie said there would still be scars. Even after all the surgeries."

"You already look wonderful! And did you really think it was all about your looks?"

"You never cared about my looks? Is that what you're telling me?"

"No. Hell no! The first time I ever saw you, I sprung one, like -- Boom! Good thing I was covered with a blanket at the time!... And it sure as hell wasn't e. e. cummings that got me up!"

Lois smiled. Her smile was less self-conscious now. She'd been permitted to spend lots of mirror-time in the hospital. Dr. Falkenberg had been right: She was going to be pleased, and relieved, at how far she could come back.

Paul touched her face, gently pushing back her hair -- hair only partially grown back from having been shaved off entirely, following the accident. "You're back," he said. "The follow-up surgeries will help, but they're not essential. You're already back."

"The scars will still be there. Arnie told me..."

"Yeah. Arnie told you. What the fuck does Arnie know? He's nothing but a world-renowned plastic fucking surgeon. Big deal! Let me have the floor, Baby. I'm telling you, that you're back. I love you. I love your scars. If Arnie removes any more of them, I am going to miss them when they're gone!"

"They're not going to... make me less... desirable, to you?"

"You want to stop the car? I'll do you, right here!"

She laughed. "I'm starting to cry again," she said. "Maybe I will have to pull over. But if I do pull over, please don't 'do me.' We're on Old York Road, here. Nobody gets 'done' on Old York Road!"

"Stop crying, and get this vehicle to Lois Silverthorn's house, as quickly as possible!"

It had been a long, long time since they had been together. Longer than when Paul had gone back to Kentucky, to wait out Lois' bar review course with his parents in Pikeville.

The last time they had been together here -- at Lois' house, in Lois' bed, had been the night before Paul's move to Nutley, New Jersey, back in August. Seven months. Something like that. They'd had their relatively glamorous nights at the Algonquin, and their noisy couplings on Paul's rental furniture in Nutley, with both of them imagining Cindy Pooler, on the other side of that thin wall, listening.

But this. This felt like home. Paul was home.

More importantly, Lois, too, was home.

The braces came off. The wrappings came off. The lotion was applied, just like always. To all three appendages.

They didn't all quite get equal time.

Paul, however, wanted this one to be about Lois. He thought she looked more than just attentive, during her familiar lotion-applying foreplay. He thought she looked relieved. He figured she was relieved that his erection was as convincing as it ever had been, there in her hands.

One thing about being a guy. You can't fake it. Either you've got a boner, or you don't.

Paul had bona fide bone.

Like Lois, Paul had, earlier, engaged in a straightforward question-and-answer session, one-on-one with the good Doctor Falkenberg.

Lois' family members, probably, were assuming that Lois and Paul were planning to resume having sex, after all these months. Arnie Falkenberg didn't have to assume anything. He knew.

Paul had wanted to know everything. Could he kiss her face? The burns? Could he touch them? Would it hurt anything? Would it hurt Lois? Could he cause an infection? Could he disturb something?

"They just call it 'plastic surgery, ' Son," the doctor had said. "She's not really made of plastic. You just show her you love her. I don't think anything you do can hurt her, and even if you do hurt her, I doubt she'll notice."

There were procedures -- salves and liquid solutions -- that would assure no possibility of infection arising out of contact with her wounds. Falkenberg described these to Paul, and urged their use, "in lieu of cigarette-smoking -- afterward."

"But 'after' will be fine," the doctor told him. "Go ahead and kiss her -- anywhere you wish -- before."

Lois was somewhat uneasy about Paul's kisses, his loving caresses of both sides of her face and her neck.

He didn't have to kiss her wounded face to prove that he still loved her. And what if it caused an infection, or something?

"Paul, maybe you shouldn't -- kiss me, or touch me -- there."

"Doc said it was OK," he said, nuzzling her neck.

"Arnie?"

"Yeah."

"He told you it was OK to kiss me -- where the burns were?"

"Yeah."

"He just -- volunteered that information to you?"

"No. I asked him."

"You asked him?"

Paul stopped nuzzling. "Yeah. So? I wanted to know, is all. He said it was plastic surgery, but that you weren't made of plastic. He said I should go for it."

"He said you should 'go for it?'"

"Well. Not in those exact words, no. But he said, basically, 'Don't worry. Be happy!'"

"I talked to him, too," Lois said. "But I just asked him if it was OK to have intercourse."

"Is that what we're going to have?" Paul asked.

"Well, I certainly hope so! What did you have in mind?"

"I was kinda hoping we were just gonna fuck," he said.

They did. Several times. 'Turned out they were still good at it.

For perhaps the first time in their history together, Paul did the post-coital honors. He got up, still naked, and reattached his prosthetics. It was a new experience