Biased

"I know the best kept secrets in the arts world," I told her proudly.1

"You are crazy," she told me.2

"Wait till you hear what they are. Then you can decide for yourself," I answered, not allowing her to get up from my lap.3

"I have to go to the little girls' room," she moaned against my neck.4

"Promise to come back?"5

"Promise to still be here?" She rushed away from me slapping out of way my cheeky hand and returned just a few moments later jumping straight back into my lap. Jumping, not sitting, squashing some things there. I did not complain, she amply compensated with other... things. Then she guided my hand back to wherever it was earlier on doing whatever it was doing earlier on, sighing contentedly into my shoulder. "Ok, now you can tell me."6

"Promise not to laugh?"7

"What is it, promises day? Ok, promise."8

"Ok, fine. You know of La Gioconda, right? Well, she actually has... green eyes." I almost felt her internal muscles contracting in that supreme effort invested by a body to prevent itself from laughing before failing to do so. She did not fail, though I guess it cost her a year of life keeping her graveyard countenance. "Leonardo painted over the green, to keep her identity secret. She was his lover." I added triumphantly. I think her muscles contracted a bit more.9

"You are so biased..." she finally managed to say and bit into my shoulder, the convulsions of her body certainly not those of suppressed laughter... well... I think so. I waited till she stopped squirming, before dropping my second bomb.10

"Juliet was originally a redhead. This detail was ordered erased with no trace by queen Victoria, since she was biased against the Irish..."11

"But the characters were Italian... and I still think you are biased..." she countered.12

"But Bill was English..." I counter countered with infallible logic. She returned her teeth to her favorite biting spot on my shoulder, deepening the crescent shaped marks on my flesh, while her legs tapped a curious sequence on the floor. I was surprised she takes private dancing lessons without telling me. "Flamenco?" I asked smugly, knowledgeable. The stifled bellow down her throat got me worried for a few moments, but the bubbles escaping her nose allowed me to relax, she was still breathing, thank God. "I have one more, baby..."13

"No... or I die..." was what she was trying to say, I guess, such a curious statement come to think of it... her teeth grinding my shoulder's bone by now. I won't disgust you with what her fingers were doing...14

"Venus of Milo..."15

"Yes?..." ...despair...16

"Her missing arms were freckled..."17

The first two didn't make her laugh, why this one? A piece of flesh dressed in a piece of shirt abandoned my shoulder to wander away in her mouth, and I could not hold her as she abandoned her fingers business and fell off my lap straight to the floor, banging her head on the wooden tiles. It would have stopped anyone dead in their tracks, not her. She kept rolling and laughing rolling and laughing from one end of the floor to the other and then back, banging her head intohe furniture and this just drawing additional attacks of hysteria... I was lost, what was it so funny that I said which got her into this unforeseen attack? I tried to raise my finger to get her attention but she just freaked further out the moment she saw it. Women... oh, the mystery of you, I thought philosophically and went for a pee. Then saw Ben Hur, Gone With the Wind, and Rocky I, II, and III before she started calming down. It was about twenty minutes into Rocky IV that she finally succeeded to get off the floor, hiccupping madly, blue bruises all over the visible parts of her body, then crawled into my lap curling like a cat and started licking my fingers. I was afraid she simply "lost it" so I let her do as she wished. I was still at a loss myself, working hard on recuperating.18

"You..." she tried, working hard on recovering leftovers of self respect and sanity, and twenty five minutes further into Rocky IV finally managing to control her giggle attacks and utter a clear... "You are so biased..." before resuming the unending hiccupping."... not to mention plain crazy..." she added just as the movie trailer started showing.19

"I wonder who of us is the crazier..." I answered carefully, reviewing in my mind the chromatographic tests ran secretly with smuggled equipment on the Gioconda, and deciding there was nothing wrong with them. "You don't want to know how I know?"20

She moved into licking my neck, on the way up to my lips, and did not seem to have heard the question. Her eyes were closed, and the purring sound was probably... mine.21

"And kill the romance? You do are crazy to think I would want to know." The licking stopped but not so the purring as she started unbuttoning my shirt. "I know another best kept secret in the world of the arts, and you may call it the fourth, and I wonder if I should tell you of it."22

This was too much, challenging my hardly found (and loftily paid for) information, challenging my intellectual curiosity, challenging my integrity...23

"You better do or there is no sex tonight for you..." I made my idle threat.24

"An idle threat and you know it..." she moved to the zipper now... "but I am good hearted. I will let you into it. After all it is only fair after you shared your..." for a moment I thought I will have to watch Ben Hur and Gone With the Wind and etc again, but she did succeed this time to control both hiccup and hysteria and looked me straight into the eyes. Her hand, so close to its target, did not continue its perilous journey, holding me in an insupportable double moment of suspense. "Your art is only about... me - green, red, and freckled." She smiled. I was floored. How the hell... "...do I know? Oh, so simple. You see, because you love me. And I know it."25

"You are so biased..." I dared.26

"And you're a damn plagiarist..." were the last words I understood coherently, as her hand resumed her journey and I was left to wonder inconclusively about all the nonsense they are teaching of birds and bees and apples... after all nobody seemed to know that Eve's real name was... "...don't say it..." she whispered, and after that nothing else mattered anyway.27