• Custom-written just for you, or choose from among our many demos.
• Blame laid, guilty consciences eased, more.
And on it went, with my evening number and suggested hours, but of course I realized I’d have to be flexible. Emergencies do come up.
“That’s morbid,” said Megan. “But I admire your ability to find a niche.”
“Most people need help just writing a resumé,” I said, and she nodded, remembering. I’d helped her write one two weeks after I’d moved in.
And for all the days of soul-searching, I actually felt good about this. It could prove to be a valuable service, one less thing to worry about at a really shitty time. Making money off the misery of others? I didn’t think of it as selling out. I preferred to think of it as buying in. I’d been there, could relate.
Eagles do fly higher than vultures, but at least they both get off the ground. After that, what really matters?
Megan and I curled into the couch, and then each other, and we talked until the phone started to ring, and once it started, I wondered if it would ever ever stop.
Heartsick
i. need
The wet spot is still on the bed when they retreat, come first light of morning, or sooner. After she sees the last of their backs out the door there is plenty of room in the bed, but still she sleeps atop the wet spot. Cool beneath her, sticky to the touch. Beneath her hip sometimes, other times her back … perhaps even her shoulders, depending on earlier acrobatics.
Awake and dreaming, tracing fingers through that dewy patch, their mingled fluids — mostly his, the ever interchangeable he — and she brings its musk scent to her nose. Then dips her nose to the source itself, breathe deeply now, as if to swim in their communal pool. Or duck beneath and drown.
The wet spot is still fresh when they leave.
But Stefan is different.
Connie, awake and dreaming, all nude and half covered by the rumpled sheet. The visible breast is small, firm, pointed. Her hair still crimped and now in stiff clumps, last night’s mist having lost its hold like so much surrendered self-control. And will she cry? No, no more, at least that’s one benefit of lowered expectations.
Two can play the game, gender being no barrier, affirmative action and equality: I can be just as callous as you, bastard, and if we were at your place instead, you couldn’t keep me from that door. Just you try.
Sure. Sure.
Just try, once, just … once?
Connie smiles dimly at the ceiling with lips that recall the press of another’s. Oh, the places she’s put her tongue. In retrospect it’s probably best she never sees them by true daylight; the night adds so much more mystique. In the dark, anything can dwell, any promise hold a core of truth.
Fan above, blades of wood and cane, slow circles for a draft to cool moonlit sweat, flesh on flesh, ghost white on silver. And if this ceiling could talk, what 3AM murmurs might it have learned, parrot-fashion?
i don’t usually do this, really i don’t … but it was your eyes i think
don’t you hate that smoke smell, so do i, isn’t this better?
your hands, i love the way your hands feel, i need them here
i love to give head
i’ll do anything you want
need them here too
okay? okay?
walk your dog now? i thought you said earlier you didn’t have any pets
Sometimes these exchanges seem as rehearsed as they are spontaneous, and probably this is so. Identical players memorizing identical scripts of hunger and desperation and pathological fears of loneliness, endlessly played out by new pairings of performers. On interchangeable stages.
But Stefan is different.
Endeavoring to persevere, Connie has tried pursuit, a follow-up of the heart once the ice of loins has been broken. Pop-psych gurus, “Don’t be afraid, men are flattered when the woman takes the initiative,” and now she has a whole shelf filled with pastel paperbacks she’d just love to cram down the throat of the next self-appointed expert. Here you go, digest this and see how it correlates with actualities out there, see if you can look me in the face then.
And then…?
…maybe I’ll buy your book anyway. It can’t hurt. Can it?
Taking the initiative, she knows all about that. Connie knows romance. Knows her heart and her soul, knows that fairy tales really can be hammered out of them with enough force.
The catered lunch at Andy’s office, address right there via Tuesday night’s exchange of business cards — are you surprised? she asked, flushing with obvious pleasure, and yes, oh yes he most certainly was, then had a question of his own, and her face began to crumble like a broken mask. connie. connie martin? we met … the other night, we … um… Standing unprotected in a strange office she’d never seen before, and how brutal the air suddenly felt in her throat, on her eyes, peripherally aware of the caterer in his white jacket, starting to squirm and shuffle his feet and refusing to look up any more. She supposed it was his idea of discreet pity. Share her embarrassment and maybe he gets a bigger tip.
Overpriced luncheon, trout almandine, taken home in the world’s most humiliating doggy bag. White wine half-drunk in the taxi, one batch of leftovers eaten in front of evening TV news and quickly thrown up into the toilet, the other shoved to the back of the fridge until it grew blue mold. So much for romance.
She’s far wiser these days. Lapsing occasionally, still that hunger for another, deeper, voice to reassure her of beauty, of desirability, even if it is calculated for short-term goal attainment. But overall, preferring to stick with the certainty of lowered expectations and its attendant sure thing. That guarantee of no abrupt abandonment.
Stefan has brought that much into her life, at least.
ii. desire
Connie knows she’ll not get back to sleep, not now. With barely an hour left before the alarm and shower and curling iron and work, it’s hardly worth the effort.
She rises, doesn’t bother with the robe hooked on the back of her bedroom door. Carpet soft beneath her feet, and then she’s in the hallway, varnished wood suddenly and pleasantly cool. She lies naked out here some mornings, stretches herself along the bare hallway floor like a scrawny cat in a windowsill. Ever the sensualist, tender skin soaking the night’s chill from rigid floorboards. Although this summer she doesn’t do it nearly so much as she used to.
Not since Stefan. Aesthetically, he and the morning floor have so much in common.
Down the hall to the second story’s other bedroom, she’s known all along she would be coming here this morning. That gentle ache inside, something left untouched earlier, some hollow unfilled. Some flower ignored.
Stefan waits on the bed, flat on his back, as always, and she draws down the sheet that modestly covers him. Never speaking in moments like this. With her eyes there is no need, and he has long since lost the ability. He’s limited to the occasional soft, low grunt. She’ll speak to him afterward, when it’s more meaningful. He will appreciate it more then, she’s sure of it.
Connie slides into bed with him, draws alongside as her eyes close with waking dreams. Letting fingers become her eyes, taking in his smooth lines, muscled curves. His flesh warm in places, cool in others, always comforting because he’s there, going nowhere. Stefan has time for her. At last, she is someone’s priority. Connie finger-traces him from toes to knees, knees to waist, waist to chest, chest to eyes. Kissing him in the wake of her fingertips, and if there is any common denominator in the miracle of this particular male physique, it is that everywhere he is so very very hard. Like a man of marble. It’s not unarousing. Alien, yet familiar.