number of orgasms. And was that passion simulated? Were those orgasms counterfeit?”
“ What a subtle mind you have,” said the doctor. “That’s what bothered her, you know. That’s what led her to tell me the story. In the parking lot, with his foul breath in her face and his body upon and within her, all she felt was revulsion. Her response was a triumph of an acting ability she had never dreamed she possessed, in or out of bed.
“ He never doubted the sincerity of her response. He thought he had indeed turned her on. But he hadn’t-she had turned herself on, and the experience, while profoundly disgusting to her on one level, was undeniably exciting on another.”
“ Awful and wonderful,” murmured the policeman.
“ Later, when she weighed her options, she knew that she would have to repeat her performance if she were to seek her own revenge. And the idea was at once distasteful and appealing. She had sex with him that second time, in her own apartment, in her own bed, and if anything she loathed him more than before. But it was not difficult to pretend to be aroused, and in fact she found she was genuinely aroused, though far more by her own performance and her own plans than by anything he was doing to her.”
“ And did she fake that orgasm, too?” the soldier wondered.
“ I can’t answer that,” the doctor said, “because she didn’t know herself. Where does performance leave off and reality begin? Perhaps she faked that orgasm, but faked it with her own being, so that he was not the only one taken in by her performance.” The doctor shrugged. “From that point on, however, her response was unequivocal. She looked forward to his visits. She was excited by their lovemaking, if it’s not too perverse to call it that. She was excited by him, and her excitement grew even as her hatred for him deepened. By the time she killed him, her sole regret was that she would no longer have him as a sexual partner.”
“ But that didn’t stop her.”
“ No,” the doctor said. “No, she wanted the pleasure of his death more than the pleasure of his embrace. But afterward she was appalled by what she’d done, and even more by what she’d become. Had she turned into a monster herself?”
“ And had she?”
The doctor shook his head. “No, not at all. She did not find herself ruled by her passions, nor did an element of sadism become a lasting part of her sexual nature. It was not long before a boyfriend came into her life, and their relationship and others that were to follow were entirely normal.”
“ So she was unchanged by the experience?”
“ Is one ever entirely unchanged by any experience? And could anyone remain unchanged by such an extraordinary experience? That said, no surface change was evident. Oh, sex was a little more satisfying than it had been in the past, and she was a bit less inhibited, and a bit more eager to try new acts and postures.”
They fell silent, and the room grew very still indeed. The fire had burned down to coals, and had long since ceased to crackle. The silence stretched out.
And then it was broken by the fifth man in the room.
“That’s very interesting,” said the old man from his chair by the fireside.
The four cardplayers exchanged glances. “You’re awake,” the priest said. “I hope we didn’t disturb you.”
“ You didn’t disturb me,” said the old man, his voice like dry leaves in the wind, thin and wispy, yet oddly penetrating for all that. “I fear I may have disturbed you, by breaking wind from time to time.”
The doctor colored. “I was impolite enough to remark upon it,”: he said, “and for that I apologize. We had no idea you were awake.”
“ When one has reached my considerable age,” the old man said, “one is never entirely asleep, and never entirely awake, either. One dozes through the days. But is that state of being the exclusive property of the aged? All my long life, I sometimes think, I have never been entirely awake or entirely asleep. Consciousness is somewhere between the two, and so is unconsciousness.”
“ Food for thought,” the soldier said.
“ But thinner gruel than the food for thought you four have provided. Lust!”
“ Our topic,” the priest said, “and it did set the stories rolling.”
“ How I lusted,” said the old man. “How I longed for women. Yearned for them, burned for them. Of course those days of longing are long gone now. Now I sit by the fire, warming my old bones, neither awake nor asleep. I don’t long for women. I don’t long for anything.”
“ Well,” the policeman said.
“ But I remember them,” the old man said.
“ The women.”
“ The women, and how I felt about them, and what I did with them. I remember the ones I had, and there’s not one I regret having. And I remember the ones I wanted and didn’t have, and I regret every one of those lost chances.”
“ We most regret what we’ve left undone,” said the priest. “Even the sins we left uncommitted. It’s a mystery.”
“ In high school,” the old man said, “there was a girl named Peggy Singer. How I longed for her! How she starred in my schoolboy fantasies! She was my partner for a minute or two at a school dance, before another wretched boy cut in. I couldn’t possibly remember the clean smell of her skin, or the way she felt in my arms. But it seems to me that I do.”
The doctor nodded, at a memory of his own.
“After graduation,” the old man said, “I lost track of her entirely. Never learned what became of her. Never forgot her, either. And now my life is nearing its end, and when I add up the plusses and minuses, they cancel each other out until I’m left with one irreconcilable fact. God help me, I never got to fuck Peggy Singer.”
“ Ah,” the soldier said, and the policeman let out a sigh
“ Women,” the old man said. “I remember what I did with them, and what I wanted to do, and what I hardly dared to dream of doing. And I remember how it felt, and the urgency of my desire. I remember how important it all was to me. But do you know what I don’t remember, what I can’t understand?”
They waited.
“ I can’t understand what was so important about it,” the old man said. “Why did it matter so? Why? I’ve never understood that.”
He paused, and the silence stretched as they waited for him to say more. Then the sound of his breathing deepened, and a snore came from the chair beside the fireplace.
“ He’s sleeping,” the priest said.
“ Or not,” said the doctor. “Neither asleep nor awake, even as you and I.”
“ Well,” said the policeman.
“Does anyone remember who’s deal it is?” the soldier wondered, gathering the cards.
No one did. “You go ahead, Soldier,” said the doctor, and the soldier shuffled and dealt, and the game resumed.
And the old man went on dozing by the fire.
