“Yes, I want you. I want every woman, but I only want them for the right reasons, and hurting my father is not an appropriate reason to have sex.”
She touched my cheek with pampered fingernails, then ran her hand down my neck to my chest. “Any reason for doing it is the right reason.”
“I disagree with that attitude, Mrs. Prescott.”
Fingers fluttered across my stomach. “You’re trying to tell me you loved all seventy women you screwed.”
“I never said seventy, but however many it was, yes, I wanted to be closer to each one as an individual. I wanted to bring them joy.”
Her eyes snapped. “Bring me joy, Goddammit.”
I yelped. “You don’t want joy, you want revenge.”
“Revenge would bring me great joy.”
“It’s not the same thing. Let go of my crotch, Mrs. Prescott.”
She kneaded. “What’s my name?”
“Katrina.”
“I want to see it.” With her free hand she started digging at my jeans’ button and zipper.
“No. I don’t want to have sex with you.”
Suddenly, the fire left her. Katrina released me and slumped back onto the bench. She sniffled. “Why do you hate me so?”
“I don’t hate you, Katrina.”
“You’ve slept with seventy floozies in Carolina and you won’t sleep with me.”
“Some of them weren’t floozies.”
“Am I that ugly?”
I stepped toward her. “You aren’t ugly at all, you’re compact and pert, but the truth is I look at you as something of a mother figure. After all, you are married to my possible father.”
She was probably faking, but what with all the sweat, I couldn’t tell real tears from manipulation. “Skip will be so happy when he finds out you rejected me.”
“He doesn’t have to find out.”
“Skippy finds out everything. I’ll never matter to him because no one will ever again want me.”
She was a lot more appealing pretending to be vulnerable than she had been pretending to be invulnerable. The poor woman was one artificial layer over another all the way down to the core, where I imagined a little lost fetus the shape of that rubber thing in the center of a golf ball.
“Tell you what, Katrina. I really don’t want traditional sex with you, but maybe there’s another way to bring you joy.”
Her face lit. “How, honey?”
“Lean back against the wall.”
Katrina fingered the bumps on my head while I went to work. First impressions had been right; she talked through the entire orgasm.
After Katrina’s final yelp I drove down to the interstate and checked into the Ramada Inn to take a shower. Signed myself in as F. S. Fitzgerald. When you carry cash you can do that kind of stuff. I stretched my shirt, jeans, and boxers on the air-conditioning/heating vents and turned the fan to high. My clothes might smell, but at least they’d be dry and that was the best I could do. Shannon and Gus would notice if I bought a shirt and came home wearing something I didn’t go out in. The instinct to notice changes gives women a tremendous advantage over men.
After the shower I lay on the bed and watched Phil Donahue interview a Type A personality in a suit. Even with the sound off, I didn’t like the man. I rolled onto my back, covered my face with a pillow, and considered Katrina. Like most fireballs, she was insecure, and what she wanted wasn’t that hard to give—in fact, it was fun to give—but the relationship was deeply flawed: She didn’t like me and I didn’t particularly like her. So why should I go crawling around between her thighs when only yesterday I’d met someone good who could make a difference?
I’m sorry to say, Katrina wasn’t the first married woman who’d asked me to save her. My one God-given talent, besides Young Adult sports novels, is that I can meet any woman and tell precisely what she needs—lover, listener, friend, father, mentor, a lifelong commitment, a servant, meaningless orgasms, a confidante, or nothing whatsoever—but my God-given weakness is I feel a compulsion to fill needs wherever I find them, regardless of consequences.
Filling each need you come upon causes conflict. You can’t commit for life to every woman who needs a lifelong commitment in order to be whole. There’s too many of them; besides, when I tried with Wanda, it didn’t work. And you sure as hell shouldn’t give meaningless orgasms to one woman while hoping to be all of the above with another.
So—bottom line—Katrina had to go. No more sauna sex. She could cry about her low self-image till doomsday, I wasn’t going to build her up at the risk of losing something I wanted. For a change.
I checked out two hours after checking in. The desk clerk gave me a look, but I didn’t care. I had resolve.
A yellow Ford EXP with District of Columbia plates was parked next to the garage. It was probably Eugene the balding boy’s and I hadn’t noticed it when I left that morning. Sometimes I notice everything and other times I notice nothing at all. Lately the notice-nothing periods had been throwing off my balance.
Shannon, Eugene, and Gilia were sprawled in various postures around the parlor, hacking at the pumpkin mountain. Everyone seemed so cheerful and comfortable that at first I didn’t realize what was wrong with the picture.
I said, “Gilia.”
She looked up from carving molars in a jack-o’-lantern. “Hi, Sam.” She’d done the nose sidesaddle to look like Richard Nixon, or maybe it was the orange jowls. Something made the pumpkin a spitting image.
“Grab a knife and dig in,” Shannon said.
I dropped next to Gilia on a couch cushion they’d pulled onto the floor. Gilia smiled and handed me a pencil- thin X-Acto knife. “I like your family.”
“Have you been introduced?”
“We’re all buddies on this bus,” Eugene said. It rankled me some to think a stranger would consider Eugene part of my family. He sat in Caspar’s Lincoln rocker, which I’d never had the gall to sit in, slicing the tops off a pile of pumpkins on the coffee table. The kids had quite the efficient operation. Eugene circumcised and eviscerated, so to speak, and the girls created pumpkin personalities. The vegetable art was easy to separate. Gilia was into cubism —triangle eyes, rectangle mouths with squared-off teeth—while Shannon was sloppier. Her guys had noses all over heck and the eyes of a Picasso. Everybody was fast. Maybe a hundred heads crowded around the legs of Me Maw’s baby grand, with another fifty topped and scooped, waiting for surgery. A gross four-foot mound of slime and seeds rose from newspapers spread across my oak floor.
“The detective says you’re an immoral scumbag,” Shannon said.
I stabbed my pumpkin in its future eye hole. Slicing down, I tried to remember if Gilia mentioned the detective yesterday, or that information came from Katrina only.
“What detective?”
Gilia was watching me. “The one who showed up at Skip’s house last night and again this morning. They made me read his report because I rode around with you and everyone is afraid I’ll pick the wrong side. Ryan says he’ll box my ears if I ever speak to you again.”
Shannon was outraged. “Box your ears? Where did this guy find his word choice?”
“Nineteen fifty-two. When they showed me how terrible you are, I had to come and see myself.”
