Threesome

away from me.

Do we all do that? Do we expect the people in our lives to exist only when they are in our presence? To have no hidden thoughts, to keep their lives entirely above the surface? Perhaps I tend to do this, perhaps everybody does it.

You know what else, damn it? I can almost come just reading that scene with you and Marcia. It bothered me, it still bothers the hell out of me, but it also turns me on in a way that I do not normally get turned on by written things.

Do you still see Marcia? You don’t have to tell me. I wish I knew how I really and truly feel about her.

I would like to suck her cunt and scratch her eyes out.

HARRY

Why not scratch her cunt and suck her eyes out?

PRISS

God damn it, please don’t do that again. It’s like that Henny Youngman joke. That his wife is so neat that he gets up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and when he comes back, the bed’s made.

I stopped at the end of a paragraph to go fix myself a cup of coffee, and you went in and read what I wrote and wrote a cute little line of your own, and it’s funny, there’s no argument there, but I don’t like it. I really don’t. This isn’t a conversation where you can make fun of me and put me down and get laughs that way. I don’t mind being Gracie Allen some of the time, but I want to write my chapter and get it the way I want it without having my thoughts pushed out of place.

I’m really pissed off. (Which is a ridiculous expression. What does it mean? Pissed off. The opposite of pissed on, I suppose. Next question?)

I’ve lost track of what I was going to say-about Marcia, about people existing independently. Whatever it was probably wasn’t all that important. Priscilla, who is not as scatterbrained as she seems, is still the most scatterbrained of our company, isn’t she? So it’s unlikely that she would have anything truly deep to contribute. She can advance the plot line a little, she’s good enough for that, but we wouldn’t want to waste anything thought- provoking on her, would we?

Sorry. I’m being bitchy, and I don’t like it either.

I am by inclination a late sleeper, and usually do not even know when Harry gets out of bed. Somewhere along the line I’ll roll over and know that I’m alone in bed, and will roll over again and pull the blanket of sleep back over me, and emerge yawning a couple of hours later.

This particular Wednesday morning I was awake before he was, which was as frustrating as it was unheard of. He never set alarms but slept until some inner alarm woke him, and this could happen any time at all in those hours before dawn. I opened my eyes and looked at the clock, and it was a quarter to five. He might wake up at any moment, or he might sleep another hour and a half, and until he did get up and get out I had to lie there in agonizing anticipation.

(I keep overwriting. I have these purple expressions. How does one avoid that? Agonizing anticipation, for Christ’s sake. I don’t talk like that. Why do I write like that?)

After ten endless minutes of agonizing anticipation, I decided to hurry things along. I grunted in my sleep, making a variety of unpleasant noises. Hairy slept through them. I rolled over then, and bumped into him, jostling him a good one. Then I rolled back again and returned to mock-sleep while he yawned and stretched and bestirred himself.

I listened to the shower, then heard him dressing. It is interesting to watch someone who does not know he is being observed. I watched Harry get dressed, peeping carefully at him from the bed. He had a tie on and knotted before infuriatingly deciding that it was not at all the tie he wanted to wear. I wanted him to hurry-he was spending minutes tying his tie that I could be spending in Rhoda’s bed.

But at the same time, and I remember this very well, although I don’t think I’ve thought of it since that morning, at the same time I had a very strong yen for this man. I wanted him to get the hell out, I wanted him to go into New York to lay whoever it was he laid in New York, I wanted to be with Rhoda, but I also wanted to call him back to bed and suck his beautiful cock and pet his balls and have him fuck me into a coma.

(Writing dirty turns me on. I don’t suppose that’s surprising, or rare. But it certainly is nice.)

I did not call him back to bed, or do any of those fine things to him. Before he left he bent over to kiss me lightly on the cheek, and I thought, Priss, you total bitch, this is your man and you love him and what is the matter with you that you have to do this thing with Rho? Because I had never made it with anyone other than Harry since I met him. No real urge to. I would see men whom I found attractive, and I might speculate about them, throwing them a quick fuck in the province of my mind. And a couple of times-but far less often than you seem to think, Harry-I would bring one of these men mentally into our bed, and cheat in the mind while having Harry in the flesh.

But anyway I had never gone and done anything, and I was going to, and I wondered how I could do this to Harry. And I answered myself, in the same figurative breath, that I wasn’t doing anything to Harry by what I did with Rhoda. That the two things had nothing to do with one another.

Not that it made much difference what I told myself, because I was going to do the same thing anyway.

It seemed forever before I heard the Chevy coughing its way to life and taking off down the road. I was certain at one point that Harry had left without my hearing the car, and I almost got up then, but a few moments later I did hear the car and got up and went into the bathroom and showered.

And did things like putting perfume all over my breasts and thighs. Provocative Priss-puss indeed.

I wore no clothes to Rhoda’s room. I padded naked down the hallway and opened her door slowly, silently. She was asleep, the bedclothing a wicked tangle around her body. She had always been a rather hectic sleeper, I now remembered, given to thrashing about and wrestling with demonic blankets and bedsheets, even crying out in fear. I remembered nights in college when her night-terror woke me, and I held her in my arms and calmed her back to sleep.

She slept peacefully enough now. I walked softly to her bedside and knelt down beside her, and ten years went away as if they had never happened at all. We were nineteen again, and young and fresh and juicily alive, and I loved this auburn-haired, ripe-breasted angel.

I took the covers off, peeled them carefully back. She stirred but did not awaken. She was sleeping on her stomach, her legs very slightly bent at the knees, her bottom as slightly raised. I placed the palms of my hands lightly on her buttocks. I could not seem to catch my breath. There was not air enough in the world for me.

I got in bed with her. I lay down beside her and let my body touch hers. I felt afloat.

She made a small distant sound, and stirred again. I ran one hand from the nape of her neck to the base of her spine. She spoke my name.

I said, in a whisper, “Don’t say anything. Pretend to be asleep. I want to do everything.”

I petted her back and bottom and the backs of her thighs for a long time. Girls feel different from men, they’re so much softer and there’s more warmth in their skin. They are in many ways nicer to touch, I think. I lay on top of her and rubbed my breasts against her back. I squirmed around and put my cheek, which felt feverish, against her bottom, which was soft and smooth and deliciously cool.

I tickled her little asshole with my fingertip, and felt the muscle flex involuntarily. I ran the finger back across the demilitarized zone separating anus and vagina and dipped it into her. She was hot and wet, and I worked my finger inside her and she got hotter and wetter.

I took my finger out and sniffed it, and licked her taste from it.

I recognized the taste. Proust indeed, cookie crumbs indeed, but it is true, you don’t forget sensations. I recognized the scent and taste, not as a generalized taste of girl-I had, after all, had tastes of myself in the intervening years, had tasted myself on Harry’s mouth when he would kiss me after having first eaten me, for