Buzz Cut by James W. Hall

liking to do any of that with other women. He'd been in love a few times and each time was very different. Every instance seemed to have nothing to do with the ones before. Of course the women made it different. Each of them distinct, and Thorn kept changing as well. That must've been why the pleasure he felt with Rochelle, the melting away, the angles of stimulation, the exact weight and complexity of his feelings, all of it was mysterious and unfamiliar. The rhythms of their conversations, the silences, the grammar of their touch. New cadences, new junctures of flesh.
    Even with years of experience with other lovers, it was as though Thorn were starting fresh with her. All his education didn't help, made no difference whatever. Love, it seemed, was one of those things about which it was impossible to be wise.
    Rochelle had finished making curtains for the west windows and was working on the east ones now. White Spanish lace. Simple and elegant, tossed easily by the sea breezes. They gave the room a soft, sleepy feel. A room to nap in.
    He'd never had curtains before. No need, with a jungle of Florida hollies and seagrape, ironwood, gumbo limbo and strangler fig cloaking the perimeter of his property, any voyeurs would need a week of hard labor with a machete to get within peeping distance.
    "What's wrong, Thorn?"
    Rochelle's sewing needle was still, the machine humming before her. She was holding a hem of the white lace, poised to feed more of it through the guide. Rover was asleep, lying on his plaid mat near her feet. She wore an ankle-length dress in a blue paisley print, a scooping neckline that gave a generous view of sun-freckled flesh. A hippie costume making the rounds again. But underneath the dress, Thorn knew she wore black scalloped lace panties. A bra that was barely a whisper of fabric. That was Rochelle. A junk painting that the world saw, a sensuous masterpiece underneath. Scratch away that hippie dress, you found a woman who loved to rollick. A woman who'd refreshed Thorn's interest in the erotic, reminded him how to caper, how to laze away an afternoon, smooth his jagged brainwaves.
    "You're not smiling," she said. "What is it?"
    Thorn told her about Jaspers and her face softened. Oh, only that.
    "Well, I like them. I think they're beautiful. Much prettier than the flies you've done in the past."
    "You're not a fish."
    "No," she said. "Would you like me better if I were?"
    "I like you fine."
    "If I were a fish," she said, making a sly smile. "You could mount me. Hang me on the wall."
    "I don't mount fish."
    "Sorry," she said. And she looked at him a moment more as if trying to decode this new disposition. Something she hadn't seen before. It had only been a month, living like this.
    Thorn wished he could tell her how to deal with him, what to say to make this uneasiness disappear, but he didn't know himself.
    "You could mount me anyway," she said quietly.
    "I could," he said. "Yes, there's always that."
    He tried to smile but could feel it turn sickly on his lips. "It's okay, Rochelle."
    "Is this just a mood?"
    "Yeah, I guess it's that."
    "Well, then I get to have one too."
    "Fair enough." He felt his smile coming back. "We could take a gigantic mood swing together. Get seriously cranky, go out on the porch, shake our fists at the sky."
    Rochelle stood up, started over to him.
    There was a breeze stirring the curtains. When they bloused out, the room changed, waves of light trickling across the walls.
    He'd spent more hours in that room than any place on earth. Sitting at his fly-tying desk, he could hear the quiet ticking of the wood, knew all its creaks and groans and crackling as it weathered the years. He could tell the hour of the day by the shape of the shadows lying across the floor, could name the bird by the sound of its claws scratching across the wood shingles.
    But just then those curtains and the tricks they were playing with the light made him dizzy and confused. Giving him a breathless