say it.”
“I almost told him I was pregnant.”
“You’re pregnant?”
“No. But it would’ve made him suffer. This way he just gets to walk away.”
She finished her drink in three gulps. Then swung her legs off me and stood up.
“You ready for another one?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“I’m going to make a stiff one.”
“The night’s young.”
She actually smiled. “Yes, McCain, and so are we.”
She poured about half a glass full of sour mash, ran a silver slip of tap water into it, added a couple ice cubes from the fridge, and then came back, bringing those wonderful long legs with her.
When they were once again inhabiting my lap, she said, “Tonight’s the night we sleep together, McCain.”
“Probably not.”
“C’mon, McCain, I’ve got to sleep with you tonight.”
“Because he’s sleeping with her tonight.”
“No, because I want to sleep with you.”
“You like me. I like you. We’re friends. That part’s true. But the reason you want to sleep with me is because of her.”
“Well, maybe part of the reason.”
“Most of the reason.”
“Maybe fifty percent of the reason,” she said.
“Maybe eighty percent of the reason.”
“Maybe fifty-five percent of the reason.”
We listened to Oscar Brown, Jr.
“Boy, this drink’s really getting to me,” she said.
“That’s probably more booze than you’ve had in your entire life-right there in that one drink.
Nobody says you’ve got to drink it.”
She set it down on the coffee table.
“Wow. I’m woozy.”
She laid her head back against the arm of the couch. Closed her eyes.
“Would you dance with me?” she said.
“I thought you were woozy.”
“I’m all right now.”
“You’re a dancer, huh?”
“Not really. I mean, I used to dance with my sister sometimes when we watched “American Bandstand.” And I danced in high school the few times the boys would ask me. They wanted to slow-dance with girls with big breasts so that let me out.” Pause. “I want you to hold me, McCain, I really need you to hold me, and dancing’s a good way to do that.”
“How about some Nat King Cole?”
“Perfect. I need to go to the bathroom first, though.”
I had an album of ballads by Cole. It was Mathis or Cole or Darin when I wanted ballads. Hearing Bobby Rydell ruin a Jerome Kern song wasn’t something I dealt with very well.
I heard the glass smashing in the bathroom and a terrible thought filled my mind. The jagged glass from the Skippy peanut-butter jar I kept my toothbrush in-ripping across her wrists.
I lunged for the door.
She’d been emotional, after all-suicidally so.
The door swung open and there she was.
“Dammit, I broke your glass, McCain. You had it sitting right on the edge of the sink and I thought it wouldn’t fall off. But you had some kind of greasy stuff all over it.”
“Hair oil. I probably picked the glass up after I put the hair oil on.
Greasy kid stuff, as they say in the ads.”
“Hair oil, then. Anyway, when I picked it up, it slid right through my fingers. Get me a dustpan and a broom and I’ll clean it up.”
She fixed me with a sharp eye. “And it wasn’t because I was drinking, either.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Yeah, but it’s what you were thinking.”
“Guilty as charged, I guess.”
She looked so bedraggled and exasperated just then, her hair sort of mussed and her face damp from the heat and her clothes a little mussed, she just looked so damned sweet and lost and sad and nice and girly and true and just plain wonderful that I leaned forward and touched my lips to hers.
I forced my eager arms to stay put.
I said, “I’ll get the broom and the dustpan.”
A few minutes later, we were dancing.
“This is nice,” she said.
“It sure is.”
We were listening to “Lost April” and it was great, dancing there in the living-room of my apartment. I turned the light off. A quarter moon hung in a pane of glass and a coyote cried in growing flower-scented darkness. This was kind of a medical procedure for both of us. A healing, if you will. It had been way too long since I’d held a woman and way too long since this particular woman had been held by a man she trusted. It wouldn’t last long-dawn would turn us back into our real selves-but for now we were shadowshapes and nothing more.
“Is it all right if I kiss your neck, McCain? Because if I don’t I’ll start crying about you-know-who.”
“Well, in that case, because it involves you-know-who, I guess I don’t have much choice do I?”
One tiny little peck on my neck and I set a land speed record for getting an erection.
We got tighter.
I thought of Groucho’s old gag line, “If I held you any tighter, I’d be behind you.”
And then we were kissing. And I do mean kissing.
And thrusting. And rubbing. And stroking. And kissing and thrusting even harder. And then rubbing and stroking even harder.
“I want to if you want to,” I said.
“Well, I want to if you want to,” she said.
All this said in great swooping gasps on both our parts.
And then we started dancing at a slight eastward angle, toward the bed.
I could see over her shoulders into the bedroom.
Tasha, Crystal, and Tess seemed to sense what was about to happen.
They jumped off the bed as if it were a sinking ocean liner.
And then we reached the bed and then-“Thanks,” she said when we were all finished.
“Are you crazy. Thank you!”
“I’m not that great a lover, McCain.”
“Well, neither am I.”
“You were pretty good.”
“Well, look who’s talking. You were pretty good yourself.”
“At least we’re being honest.”
“Honesty is always the best policy.” I guess that’s the myth of Stranger Sex. The fury of it is great but sex is actually better -at least for me-af you’ve been together a few times. Get to know what to do, what not to do, when to do it, when not to… need I go on?
But I was already wondering if we hadn’t been a mite hasty about being perfectly honest about our first
