There Are Doors

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“Do you believe in love?” he asked her. “Yes,” Lara replied. “And I hate it.”

He did not know what to say. It all stuck in his throat, everything he had planned that afternoon walking home from the store.

“We use it, you see,” she told him. “My women and I. We must.”

He nodded. “Women do use love, of course. But so do men, and men usually use it worse. Don’t you think that only proves it’s real? If it wasn’t, nobody could use it.” The brandy had gone to his head; by the time he had finished speaking, he was no longer quite sure what they had been talking about.

“It’s real, all right,” Lara told him. “But I am not a woman.”

“A girl—” He was groping.

So was she, a hand in his pajamas.

“A lady.” His glass was at his lips. He took it from her hand and drank.

“ … and then the men die. Always. She holds his sperm, saves it, and bears his children, one after another for the rest of her life. Perhaps three children. Perhaps three dozen.”

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