while the black stars burn Read Online Free Page A

couch. Unlike Jeffrey, Rachel would not start perspiring in the middle of the night and fill Mira’s ears with trickling sweat. Unlike Jeffrey, Rachel could never get her pregnant.
    Mira woke and quietly began to weep.
    Rachel stirred. “There, there. What’s the matter?”
    “I want a baby,” Mira confessed. She felt like a loser saying it out loud. Here she was, nearly forty, a damnable cliché of a woman with a ticking biological clock. And she was in no position to have a child, not physically, not logistically, not in any way. It took a village to raise a child, she knew, and had no village. She didn’t even know their neighbors’ names. Worst of all, she couldn’t talk herself out of her heart’s desire. “I want a baby so badly and I can’t have one. Jeff won’t help me….”
    “I would be glad to help you care for a child,” Rachel said.
    “I’d need Jeff to fuck me at least once,” Mira replied bitterly.
    “You could get artificial insemination.” Rachel sounded slappably cheerful. “Or you could adopt.”
    “All of which require money. Which I…have spent on other things.” Her shoulders sagged at the admission. The one thing I want most in the world, and I just don’t want it badly enough to actually do anything about it. Loser.
    “Like what?” Rachel chirped.
    “Like you. Your upgrades, anyhow.”
    “Oh.” The lovely android paused. “What about a boyfriend?”
    “What about one?”
    “A boyfriend could get you pregnant at low or no cost!”
    “Rachel, baby, if I could get myself a boyfriend, I’d be with him this very minute.”
    *
    The next night, Rachel went out to go grocery shopping and was gone for so long that Mira began to fear that she’d been stolen. The tracking software on her phone said the android was about four blocks away from where she should be. In a nightclub, of all places. Had she been kidnapped? Mira didn’t know if she should call the police or just keep waiting. She paced while Jeffrey did his technological pantomimes on the couch, oblivious.
    But then Rachel came through the front door, half-carrying a guy who was pawing at her breasts. The curve of his strong jaw reminded her of Jeffrey. He was somewhere in his mid-20s, and his tight black tee shirt showed off his gym-buffed arms and chest, muscles as flashy as any peacock’s tail. But he was so drunk that Mira doubted he could stand on his own. She wrinkled her nose at the stink of beer and dance club sweat.
    “What’s this about?” she asked Rachel.
    “I brought him for you!” Rachel beamed. “He’s a perfect complement to your genetics!”
    “Uh.” Mira watched the guy twist Mira’s nipples like he was trying to tune an old-fashioned radio. “That’s...very thoughtful of you, but...no.”
    “Why not?” Rachel frowned, clearly perplexed.
    “Baby, look at him...he’s fifteen years younger than me and sloppy drunk.”
    The young man lifted his head from Rachel’s chest and ogled Mira with bloodshot eyes. “Ahmna drunk, juss alil tipsy.”
    “If you’re worried about his performance, he’s had an erection for over an hour.”
    “I’m...sure he has.” Mira bit her lip, trying to figure out how she could gracefully get the young man out of her house.
    “Go on,” Rachel pulled the young man’s hands off her and pushed him toward her mistress. “Go say hello to Mira. She likes you.”
    He staggered forward like an oversized toddler, grinning. Mira took a step back.
    “Izziss gonna be a threeshome?—”
    He took another wobbly step, but then his knees buckled and he pitched forward, slamming his forehead into the corner of the marble-topped console table Jeffrey had bought Mira soon after they married.
    “Oops,” said Rachel.
    *
    Mira held Rachel’s hand as the paramedics carried the unconscious young man to the ambulance, blue anti-hemorrhage foam mounded on the gash on his face and a brace strapped to his neck. They told her the young man would be fine after he got hospital