Ferris is suddenly assailed by a flood of erotic memories. The way it started, for instance: Vince invites him for dinner. Ferris is between relationships, so he comes alone, dressed in bluejeans and shirt and tie, bringing a bottle of wine and flowers – they were chrysanthemums, so it would have been autumn. Ferris always keeps his seasons straight that way.
He’s expecting a family dinner, to yap with the kid, and leave early. When he arrives there are only the two of them. Bobby is staying with an aunt.
At the dinner table the conversation rolls around to sex. Vince is doing the talking. Ferris isn’t saying much, and Ava is impersonating the Mona Lisa, watching them both with an amused expression on her beautiful face. The flashpoint is sexual jealousy which Ferris uncomfortably admits to feeling. Who doesn’t?
“I don’t,” Vince claims. “I’ve never felt a twinge of it.”
“I don’t believe you,” Ferris says.
Vince grins. “That’s just your threatened sexuality talking,” he answers. “Ava can fuck with whoever she wants. So long as she experiences pleasure, I do too.”
“I suppose you sit on your hands and watch.”
“Sometimes.” Vince answers as if it were a completely mundane matter of fact. “But usually not for long.”
Ferris eyes Ava, imagining her moaning and bucking in a stranger’s embrace while Vince calmly watches. It’s an arousing image, but one that makes his spine contract. It’s Ferris’s exgirlfriend making it with her new man, and Ferris is being forced to watch – or is it Vince watching him and his ex?
Across the table, Ava unbuttons her blouse. She’s not wearing a brassiere. She begins to fondle her nipples. They’re inverted, and as Ferris stares, they grow erect beneath her fingers. Vince is watching her too, saying something Ferris doesn’t follow. He sounds like a television game show host. With an effort, Ferris focuses on what he’s saying.
“Well,” Ferris hears Vince saying, “why don’t you show Ferris what I’m talking about?”
Ava murmurs an “Uhhmm” that is neither concurrence nor question, and stands up, sloughing off her blouse as she does so. She walks around the table, slips to her knees in front of Ferris, and begins to unzip his fly, nuzzling his crotch as she does it. Woodenly, Ferris helps her, undoing his belt and freeing his erect penis from his jeans. She inhales it expertly. Within seconds he’s on the verge of coming, and she senses it. She pulls back, holding the head between two fingers, and looks up at him.
“Oh, no you don’t,” she says.
She leads him to the couch, where she slips off her skirt and sinks back against the material. She’s not wearing panties. Ferris crouches between her thighs and lifts her legs over his shoulders. He tried to give her head, but she isn’t very interested. She grabs his hair and looks into his eyes, the same amused look on her face.
“I want you inside me,” she said. It’s an order.
It’s like a pornographic movie to Ferris, and he has to remind himself that this is really happening. He looks over at Vince, who is still sitting at the dinner table with an I-told-you-so smirk on his face. Ferris tries to slow down, to think of other things as he strips off his clothes, but it’s impossible. His sense of irony has deserted him, and for the first time he can remember, there is no part of him standing aside, watching and analyzing. Vince is the watcher, here.
For a while, anyway. Ferris glimpses Vince removing his clothes, and as he kneels in front of Ava again, Vince moves past him to sit on the arm of the couch, his erection bobbing against her face. She slurps it hungrily as Ferris penetrates her.
Ferris comes in a few strokes, and in a state that is about equal parts tumescence and culture shock he watches his first live blowjob. At a distance of less than two feet, it goes on too long and it looks awkward. Eventually Vince pulls away, and as if Ferris isn’t there, he pulls Ava off the couch onto the rug and mounts her.
Ferris does not quite know what to do, so he covers his confusion with a feigned empiricism. He lies on the rug beside them, watching Ava’s face as they fuck. It’s easier to watch her than him, somehow, or it. She remains composed and conscious, taking his hand and pulling it in to fondle her nipples as Vince pumps away, lost in his own groaning, grunting ecstasy. He takes what seems like forever to have an orgasm, and through most of it Ava’s eyes are locked on Ferris, beads of sweat rolling off her forehead and neck, her hand rhythmically gripping his wrist as Vince’s thrusts pound into her. When Vince finally does come it sounds and looks like he’s dying. Ferris is half convinced that he and Vince are from a different species. But he doesn’t get to think that one through. Ava reaches over, grabs his hair and pulls him to her. He kisses her lips, licks the sweat from her face. Behind him he feels Vince running his tongue along his spine. He closes his eyes.
Ava comes out of the kitchen with a teapot and three mugs on a tray. Vince follows with small cream and sugar jugs in matching ceramics, and some spoons. She slides the tray onto the coffee table, and Ferris realizes that she’s left the vase back in the kitchen.
“That’s milk there,” she says, motioning at the cream jug. “I trust that will be fine.”
The way she says it lets Ferris know she’s not interested in the answer.
“Milk’s fine,” he says.
Vince eases his big body into the chair across from the couch, and Ava pulls one of the wooden chairs from the table and sits down opposite him, beside Vince.
“What do you think?” Vince asks, leaning over to pour the tea.
Ferris isn’t sure what he’s referring to, then realizes that he’s being asked his opinion about the cottage.
“It looks pretty good,” he says. “But very different, no? The old place was…”
“Bigger,” Ava intervenes. “There’s just the two of us, you know. And we live very quietly.”
“I’ll show you the workshop later,” Vince adds. “You’ll like it.”
“You did all this yourself?”
“We did it,” Ava says, emphasizing the “we”.
Ferris can’t quite stifle a smile. The Vince he knew would have cut off both thumbs before a quarter of this got completed. “You mean, you did it.”
“I took a carpentry course, actually,” Ava answers, a dry smile crossing her face momentarily.
Vince hands Ferris a mug of tea, with milk and sugar already in it. Not the kind of detail he’d have expected Vince to remember, but he does. And Ferris doesn’t point it out. Instead, he recognizes that this is the most formal the three of them have ever been with one another, and the tension is exquisite. On the tail of that thought rides another: We want this to be over, all three of us. In our different ways.
Ferris doesn’t know where to begin. Nothing new in that, Ferris muses. Well, there were always interminable awkwardnesses to this. How can you have casual conversation with a married couple immediately after you’ve had sex with them? You can’t talk about the weather, because there isn’t any. The world disappears, replaced by one’s own overdrawn senses. You place your fingers in front of your nostrils and there is her scent, yours, and a third. There is a drop of come on your leg. Whose is it?
Then there were the other, trickier questions that Ferris couldn’t quite ask: What is this for? Why Ferris and not someone else? Where is this supposed to lead?
If Vince had answers to those questions, he didn’t offer them. He travelled in Ava’s erotic wake, revelling in the foam of her mysterious agenda like a dolphin in the backwash of a ship. For Ava, there didn’t seem to be any questions. She was inside, and of, the events, and one event simply led to the next.