Getting Off

the heat had been cooked into the food, not spooned on top of it.

It was almost eight when she got home, and she steeled herself to walk in to the smell of a home-cooked meal, and a housemate who wanted a reprise of the previous evening. But she encountered neither; there’d been no cooking since last night’s dinner, and no car in the garage.

There was leftover coffee and she reheated a cup and drank it at the kitchen table while she read that month’s Vanity Fair. She’d almost finished the coffee when she heard the garage door ascend, and she stayed where she was until she heard Rita and a man in conversation. She rose quickly, scooped up her cup and the magazine, and was in her room with the door closed before the two of them had cleared the threshold.

“Kimmie? Are you awake?”

No one, not even a devout Crystal Methodist, could have been more thoroughly awake. But did she have to admit it? If she just kept silent—

“Kimmie?”

If she kept silent, Rita would walk right in.

“I’m awake,” she said. “But kind of drifty.”

“He’s gone. I sent him home.”

Oh? Were you with someone? I never would have guessed.

“I suppose you heard us.”

“Just barely.”

“He was a guy who hit on me a couple of times. I was never interested. But after last night — well, let’s just say I was in the mood.”

No kidding.

“Kimmie, you’re half asleep. We’ll talk at breakfast.”

Footsteps receded. Rita’s door opened and closed.

And she lay in bed, waiting for daybreak.

A toasted English muffin and a cup of coffee. And Rita, wearing a belted housecoat, with her own English muffin and her own cup of coffee, and a full report.

“We fucked on the couch,” she said. “He’s going bald, and he could stand to lose a few pounds, but he was okay otherwise. Nice circumcised dick, medium in size. We didn’t do anything you couldn’t find in the Kama Sutra, but it was interesting enough. I mean, I came a lot.”

“I know.”

“That was on purpose. The noise, I mean. I knew you could hear, and the idea of you hearing made it a lot more exciting. You know what I was wishing?”

“What?”

“That you could sneak in and watch.”

“Would you have liked that?”

“Are you kidding? I’d have loved it.”

“It never even occurred to me.”

“I didn’t think it would. Or that you’d do it, even if you thought of it. You know what was going on in my head the whole time? Absolutely the whole time? How hot it would be when I told you all about it.”

“Really.”

“How’s that for weird? I mean, it’s like normal to think about fucking while you masturbate, but having fantasies of masturbating while somebody’s got his dick in you?”

“But I can see how it could happen.”

“So you don’t think I’m weird?”

“Oh, you’re plenty weird, Rita. But not in a bad way.”

“I’ll settle for that. And I could probably say the same about you.”

“Moi?”

“You and that guy who smelled.”

“Yeah, I can see where you could call me weird for that one.”

“I might have done it myself,” Rita said, “but I’d have wanted to kill him afterward.”

Oh, sweetie, if you only knew—

“Oops,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’ve got an appointment I’ll be lucky to get to on time.”

“You want me to drive you?”

“No, I’ll be fine with the bike. But I was thinking maybe tonight—”

“We’re on the same page. But I’m not gonna bother cooking. You up for it if I order a pizza?

“Sure. And I don’t know when I’ll be home, so don’t order it until I get here.”

“And this time I’ll buy the wine. How do you say what we had, Nooey San George’s?”

“Close enough.”

“And don’t worry that this is going to make us lesbians. I mean, that was a guy I was on the couch with, you know?”

“I don’t know if I’m ready for this,” she said. “the thing is, I still get a lot of pleasure out of it.”

“Acting out?”

“Right. I realize I’m compulsive about it, and it’s almost as if I don’t have any choice, but, you know, it feels good.”

“Of course it does,” he said. “And you may not be ready to stop. It always felt good to me, too.”

“It did?”

“But less so,” he said, “toward the end. That’s not why I stopped, I stopped because sexual compulsivity was making my life unmanageable, but the pleasure did drop off as time went on. Even at the moment of release I’d find myself thinking about the next time. And, of course, regretting everything that was regrettable about the present moment.”

She told him she guessed she could relate to that.

She’d met him in the parking lot at a quarter to twelve, wearing jeans and a modest top, with a capacious shoulder bag on her arm. She’d locked her bike to the cyclone fence and joined him in the front seat of the Subaru. And now they were on their way to the meeting in Redmond, and conversation was no problem, because all she had to do was get it started and he’d carry the ball, telling her chunks of his story of sin and redemption. It would have been more interesting if he’d gone into detail, but as she already knew, not going into detail was part of the SCA program, because God forbid any of them should get any pleasure out of anything for the rest of their miserable lives.

“Here we are,” he said, eventually, and waited to make a left turn into a church parking lot. There were a handful of cars all clustered at the front of the lot, and nothing but a van farther back.

She said, “Graham? Could we stop for a minute? There’s something I need to say.” He braked, and she said, “Maybe if you could pull up, oh, near that van? Like, away from all these cars?”

He drove to the rear of the lot, swung the Subaru around and pulled up next to the van. That vehicle’s side bore the name of the church, and the injunction to get right with God.

Now you tell me.

She unbuckled her seat belt, slipped her right hand into her shoulder bag. He kept his own seat belt fastened, she noted with approval, so he’d be safely buckled up during the hazardous five-mile-an-hour return trip to a parking spot with his SCA buddies.

“There’s this thing they do in AA,” she said. “According to what I’ve read. Like, sometimes when they’re taking a man to his first meeting, or to a rehab, they give him one final drink on the way. So he won’t go into withdrawal. So what I was wondering—”

Oh, the look on his face!

“I guess that’s a no, huh?”

“Kim—”

“Oh, c’mon,” she said. “That was a joke, for God’s sake! But what I really do need to do is I have to tell you why I came on so strong.”

“Believe me, Kim, I understand. I’ve been there myself. The idea of taking no for an answer—”

“That’s only part of it. See, I’ve got this list. There are only four names on it, and you’re one of them.”