relationship,” Jesse said.
“Why can’t it just be sex?” Abby
said.
As she talked she raised her head and leaned it on her elbow; her naked body was damp with the recent effort.
She seemed not to notice that she was naked. Jenn, who had always flaunted her tightly clothed body, seemed oddly ill at ease when her clothes were off… at least with him.
“I don’t know,” Jesse said.
“Wasn’t that what this was? A good time was had by all?”
“Yes.”
“So how does that fit with your theory?”
“We don’t have a relationship.”
“That’s cold, Jesse.”
“I didn’t mean to be,” he said.
“No, I don’t think you did,”
Abby said.
“I’m just saying we don’t come
to bed with any arguments to finish, you know?”
“So the key to perfect happi.?ss is
wham-bamthankyou-ma‘ am?”
“Well, I don’t think I was saying
that,” Jesse said.
“Oh?”
Jesse was silent for a time. He did not normally spend much time thinking about matters like this, and with her lawyer’s mind she had raced ahead of him.
“I think Jenn didn’t have sex for ,the
pleasure of the sex,” he said. “I think she did it to start a romance or keep one going or because she was in a marriage and it was like her responsibility to have sx, you know?”
“Didn’t she like it?” Abby said.
“I don’t think she disliked it, except
maybe at the end, with me. But I don’t think the question of liking or disliking really has much to do with sex for Jenn.
It’s like an instrument of policy, if you follow what I’m saying.”
“Yes,” she said.
“When we were feeling good, sex was what we did to prevent us from not feeling good. When we were feeling bad, sex was the way we said we were mad.”
“That’s pretty thoughtful for a guy who recently kicked Jo Jo Genest in the balls.”
“I know. I’m a little surprised
myself.”
“Still, it would be depressing to think that the longer the relationship, the worse the sex.”
“Maybe we need to research it,” Jesse
said, “develop a relationship and see what happens.”
“Day at a time,” she said.
“Easy does it,” he said.
They both laughed.
“Both been to meetings, I guess,” Abby
said.
“I had a little trouble acknowledging a higher power.”
Jesse said.
“I don’t know you very well,”
Abby said. “But why am I not surprised.”
glass-cased boat models, in his office at the bank, with the door closed, Hasty Hathaway counted the stacks of small hills that Jo Jo took from the suitcases on the floor beside the table.
“People dbn’t realize,” Hathaway
said, “how troublesome cash is to deal with.‘
