Mathilde’s ass and legs are soft and supple in our hands. Her muscles aren’t as hard as a boy’s. We take off our shirt and jeans and stand in front of her for a moment in our underwear. Our erection makes a lump right in front of us. Mathilde looks us over. She spends a long time caressing the scars that stripe our forearms.
“Did you cut yourself, Vanya?” she asks.
We don’t respond. Mathilde gets undressed. She’s not wearing a bra. She pulls down her cotton panties; an elastic thread sewn in a zigzag makes a kind of lace. The skin of her vagina is firm and seems to have a complicated texture inside. We touch the wet folds. Beneath our fingers, the walls seem both too loose and too tight. If we put a little pressure on it, the flesh sinks in. We don’t know how far we can go without hurting her. We pull out our wet fingers and let her take us in her mouth. By keeping our eyes open, we manage to last longer than the time before. Staring at the metal shelves helps to distract us from our pleasure. She doesn’t swallow the semen, using her panties to wipe it up before putting them back on. As the fabric dries, it will get crunchy. We know.
“You don’t say anything when you come.”
We don’t understand what she means. We put on our jeans and tell her we have to leave.
“Daniil!”
We had nearly reached the house on Grace Street, angry at finding ourselves alone in that disgusting alleyway. Mathilde repulses us. The boy comes out from the shadows just as we were about to go into the backyard. He smiles with his big teeth.
“It was her, then. Mathilde, eh? So did you manage to sleep with her?” asks Hendrick.
We don’t feel like explaining to him what happened. We open the gate, but the boy keeps trotting after us.
“I can sleep with you,” he declares.
We turn, cross our arms, and look at him. Hendrick just stands there, but he’s shaking a little. His hair has fallen in his eyes. He has a little nose, a big mouth, a skinny neck.
“Okay. Come on.”
We get out the bike and point to the seat. The little boy, his eyes lit with joy, takes his place behind us. We pedal standing up.
We head in the direction of the dog park and take the boy toward the woods. As we ride, Hendrick hangs onto our waist to keep his balance. Our abdominal muscles flex beneath his fingers with each push of the pedals. Our body is lithe. Hendrick closes his eyes to fully experience the embrace. The bike speeds on. The wind caresses his face and makes his hair blow back. He presses his cheek against our powerful back.
We lean the bike against a tree and signal with our head. We walk with our hands in our pockets. When we get to the thickest part of the woods, we stop.
“Do you know how to fuck?”
Hendrick lifts his eyes, nodding. He pulls down his pants and underwear, finding himself suddenly half naked in the cool of the little woods. We look distractedly at him, undoing our belt buckle and digging in our pockets.
Hendrick doesn’t cry out. He waits, holding onto his tree, until it’s over. We come quickly and Hendrick is released. When our hands let go of his hips, he falls to his knees. His eyes fill with tears.
We pull up our pants in silence.
Hendrick is sitting on his hip, like a girl, so as not to put any pressure on his ass. The condom filled with semen lays on the ground beside him. We offer to take him back on the bike. He refuses, but asks, “Does this mean we’re friends now?”
We shrug.
Resting on my right hip, I held my buttocks apart with my left hand to allow the esthetician to finish my bikini wax. The chemical smell of the green wax on the double boiler stressed me out before she had even begun. Stretched out on the narrow table, my body started to sweat in anticipation of the pain. It only took a few minutes to complete a Brazilian, but it felt like torture.
The treatment room was small and square, the fake leather table taking up most of the space. Lise, my aesthetician, had finished. She told me to take my time, and left. I was sitting on the table with my hands gripping the edge. I could feel the blood pulsing in my wrists. I looked down at my bare feet, and the big blue veins protruding from my white skin. Something trembled slowly inside me. Staring at nothing, I contemplated the void of my thoughts. I had had enough. Of everything.
My Burberry hung behind the door, the fabric sadly worn at the collar. I slid from the table and tackled getting dressed.
The girl at the reception desk wore a bun on top of her head and tattoos on both forearms. She was chummy, despite our obvious age difference. She stamped my loyalty card as I slid Lise’s tip into an envelope.
“You’re Vanya’s mother, right?” she asked, handing back my card.
I nodded.
“We go to the same college. He’s a friend of mine… well, really, he’s going out with my friend Mathilde,” she clarified.
I walked out of the clinic in a daze, my handbag dangling from my shoulder. Vanya had a girlfriend. So he was capable of connecting with people other than his brother. I had no time to pursue this train of thought. I raised a hand to hail a taxi. I was due at our doctor’s office in less than a half hour; I had to pick up the twins’ blood test results.
“Where are the boys?” asked the doctor, less jovial than usual.
An acidic smell hung in the room, a mix of cleaning products and sweat. I was going
