Getting Off

“You said it would be a threesome with an interval.”

“And I thought he was a pretty nice guy, even if he wouldn’t go down on me. Did he go down on you?”

“He didn’t want to.”

“But he did, didn’t he?”

“Well, see, he did want to, really. He wanted to do you, too, but he had this fidelity issue. Once I got him to see that he was my proxy bridegroom Sidney, not some lucky girl’s fiance, well, he got into the spirit of things.”

“That is so great. And he’s dead, and you killed him.”

“Yeah.”

“I guess I’m crazy, because on the one hand I liked him a little, and at the same time I’m really glad you killed him. That’s weird, isn’t it?”

“I think so,” she said. “But I’m not sure I’m the best person to say what’s weird and what isn’t.”

And, a little later:

“I know you can drive, but I bet you don’t have a car. What I could do, I could drive down and pick you up.”

“I’ll take the train.”

“Are you sure? I swear I don’t mind driving.”

“Amtrak takes a little over five hours and costs all of sixty-five dollars. I’ll get to watch the scenery, and I won’t have to worry about keeping my hands off the driver.”

“You already checked this out.”

“Yes.”

“You were planning on coming.”

“Or leaving you alone forever, depending on what you wanted.”

“Well, you know what I want.”

“It sounds like we both want the same thing.”

“Oh, God.”

“Tomorrow,” she said. “There are a couple of things I have to do. Pack my stuff, tell my boss to find someone else to sell plangent coffee.”

“Plangent?”

“Long story. There’s a train at two in the afternoon, gets to Seattle at a quarter after seven.”

“I’ll be there.”

“I could take a cab.”

“Yeah, right. Or maybe my bike’s still there where you left it. You never know.”

“It still bothers me about the bike. Just abandoning it like that.”

“Well, get over it,” Rita said. “I’ll be there when your train gets in. And Kimmie? I love you.”

Her morning appointment took longer than she’d thought. She’d packed first and stopped en route at the Bean Bag to pick up her pay and tell Will she was leaving, then found her way to the salon. She’d found their ad in the local alternative newspaper, and the operator wore spike heels and a lot of leather; if she wasn’t a dominatrix, she needed a new agent.

She had one more stop to make after the Leather Girl finished with her, but it didn’t take long. When she left her suitcase was heavier, but not too heavy, and she wound up catching her train with ten minutes to spare. She grabbed a window seat, plopped her bag onto the aisle seat beside her, and hoped no one would make her move it. A lot of people got on in Portland, but they all walked past her bag and found seats somewhere else, and the seat beside hers remained empty all the way to Seattle.

For five hours her mind kept offering up objections, telling her that she was crazy, that she and Rita were partners in a folie a deux. There was a rock album with that name, and it meant a shared delusion, and wasn’t that what was going on? A few hours together months and months ago, a whole bunch of deliberately erotic telephone conversations, and only one in which she’d actually let this great love of her life get a glimmer of who she really was.

She remembered a joke she’d overheard in the Daiquiri Dock:

Q: What does a lesbian bring on a second date?

A: A U-Haul.

She laid a hand on the bag next to her. Not a U-Haul, but it held everything she owned in the world, so it amounted to pretty much the same thing.

Half an hour north of Portland she started wishing she’d put her bag in the overhead rack. Someone might be sitting next to her now, some jabbering biddy with pictures of her drooling grandchildren, some gormless college boy who’d ask her a million questions, then dart off to abuse himself in the restroom. One way or another she’d be stuck with a companion who’d bore her to tears — and wouldn’t that be better than having to listen to her own wretched mind?

No way it was going to work out. Like, what were the odds?

Slim and slimmer, she thought. There was a fair chance they wouldn’t even go to bed, because Rita could turn out to be far more adventurous over the phone than she was prepared to be in person. And even if they did, and even if it was great, then what?

In a day or a week or not much more than that, she’d be getting on another train. Or a bus, or an airplane, but whatever it was it’d have the state of Washington in the rear-view mirror, and that’s where it would stay for the rest of her life.

And then, of course, there’d be no more phone calls. For so long now she’d lived for those calls, coming alive during those moments on the phone in a way she never did the rest of the time. Not when she was fucking, not when she was killing, and certainly not when she was marking time.

Sitting on the edge of her bed in some ill-furnished room. Talking, listening.

God, she thought, remembering. Riverdale, talking on the phone while she rode off to orgasm on the still- rigid penis of the late Peter Fuhrmann. It was incredibly hot, and it damn well had to be or it would have been disgusting. Yet what she’d focused on throughout was not so much the dick inside her as the woman on the other end of the phone.

Along with the phone calls, she’d be giving up the fantasy. Because that had sustained her even before she and Rita had begun speculating about the possibility of sharing sexual moments face to face. The idea that the two of them could, well, be a couple, that they could actually love each other, that together they could create, well, a life.

Hey, we tried, sweetie. And we’ll stay in touch, okay? You know, on the phone. And who knows, maybe we’ll get together again in person sometime. You never know, do you?

Except sometimes you knew. It would either work or it wouldn’t, and if it didn’t then it didn’t matter what lies they told each other, because they would both know it was over.

And then what? Where would she go, and what would she do, and why should she even bother?

She glared at her suitcase. Say something, she told it. Are you just going to fucking sit there in silence?

“Let me give you a hand with that.”

It wasn’t the suitcase that broke the silence, but the tall young man across the aisle. She’d noticed him once or twice since he’d boarded in Portland, and had noticed him noticing her. Briefly, she’d allowed herself to speculate on what might have happened if she weren’t on her way to Rita, but the fantasy never got anyplace because her mind had quickly gone back to spinning its wheels, telling her everything that was sure to go wrong in Kirkland.

Now they were slowing as they entered the Seattle station, and he’d taken hold of her suitcase before she could tell him thanks but no thanks.

“I can manage it,” she said. “Really I can.”

He smiled, showing good teeth. “Of course you can,” he said, “but why should you? This way you can allow me to feel manly and useful, and save your strength for the hug you’re going to give your husband.”

Interesting. He knew she wasn’t married, could not have failed to note the absence of a ring on her finger.

Well, she could hold up her end of the conversation. “No husband,” she said.