'Sure.'
He mixed her a Comfort and Seven-Up, then poured a melted stick of butter over the popcorn.
'That's going to put a lot of cholesterol in your bloodstream,' she said, leaning in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. She sipped her drink. 'Hey, I
'Sure you do. Keep it a secret and you'll always be one up.'
He salted the popcorn.
'That cholesterol clogs up your heart,' she said. 'The passageways for the blood get smaller and smaller and then one day . . . graaag!' She clutched dramatically at her bosom and spilled some of her drink on her sweater.
'I metabolize it all away,' he told her, and went through the doorway. He brushed her breast (primly bra-ed, by the feel) on the way by. It felt a way Mary's breast hadn't felt in years. It was maybe not such a good way to think.
She ate most of the popcorn.
She started to yawn during the eleven o'clock news, which was mostly about the energy crisis and the White House tapes.
'Go on upstairs,' he said. 'Go to bed.'
She gave him a look.
He said, 'We're going to get along good if you stop looking like somebody goosed you every time the word 'bed' comes up. The primary purpose of the Great American Bed is sleeping, not intercoursing.'
That made her smile.
'You don't even want to turn down the sheets?'
'You're a big girl.'
She looked at him calmly. 'You can come up with me if you want,' she said. 'I decided that an hour ago.'
'No . . . but you don't have any idea how attractive the invitation is. I've only slept with three women in my entire life, and the first two were so long ago I can hardly remember them. Before I was married.'
'Are you kidding?'
'Not at all.'
'Listen, it wouldn't be just because you gave me a ride or let me sleep over or anything like that. Or the money you offered.'
'It's good of you to say that,' he said, and got up. 'You better go up now.' But she didn't follow his suit. 'You ought to know why you're not doing it.' 'I should?'
'Yes. If you do things and can't explain them-like you said-that might be okay because they still get done. But if you decide not to, you ought to know why.'
'All right,' he said. He nodded toward the dining room, where the money still lay in the silver dish. 'It's the money. You're too young to be off whoring.'
'I won't take it,' she said promptly.
'I know you won't. That's why I won't. I want you to take it.'
'Because everybody isn't as nice as you?'
'That's right.' He looked at her challengingly.
She shook her head in an exasperated way and stood up. 'All right. But you're a bourgeois, you know that?'
'Yes.'
She came over and kissed him on the mouth. It was exciting. He could smell her, and the smell was nice. He was almost instantly hard.
'Go on,' he said.
'If you reconsider during the night-'
'I won't.' He watched her go to the stairs, her feet bare. 'Hey?'
She turned, her eyebrows raised.
'What's your name?'
'Olivia, if it matters. Stupid, isn't it? Like Olivia DeHaviland.'
'No, it's okay. I like it. Night, Olivia.'
'Night. '
She went up. He heard the light click on, the way he had always heard it when Mary went up before him. If he listened closely, he might be able to hear the quietly maddening sound of her sweater against her skin as she pulled it over her head, or the snap of the catch that held her jeans nipped in to her waist . . .'
Using the Space Command module, he turned on the TV.
His penis was still fully erect, uncomfortable. It bulged against the crotch of his pants, what Mary had sometimes called the rock of ages and sometimes the snake-that-turned-to-stone in their younger days, when bed
