“Catch.” Over his shoulder he tossed a sheer, long-sleeved beige blouse with dahlia ruffles, a blue denim miniskirt, and a floppy hat whose brim flamed nasturtiums—all from the early 1980s. He rose and turned to Helen, who wasn’t there.
“Anybody home?” he called, scratching the black stubble he’d decided to let grow—sideburns, no mustache, clipped horseshoe beard starting from the corners of his lips—better to ally himself with the City Different’s peace activists.
Helen advanced from the bathroom in lime-green slippers and white terrycloth robe.
She glanced at his dangling penis. “You think this is going to work?”
“I do.” But he wished he’d tweezed out the hairs on the shaft first; squirming at the sting often jump-started an erection. He squeezed his right eye tight—pain from last night’s two hours in the den transferring figures from clients’ tax workbooks into his laptop was assaulting his temple.
Moving to the bed, Helen plopped the felt hat onto her brown spikes of hair while he pushed his fists through the lawn-daisied sleeves of the man’s shirt.
She had draped her robe over the hamper and was trying to snap the skirt tight when, right leg thrust into mustard-colored slacks, Chuck exclaimed, “No!”
“No?”
His penis swelled. “You wear the boy’s. I’ll wear the girl’s.” Though pain clawed its way down into his tongue, imaging the change unleashed a grin.
“What are you saying?”
“No one can see us—the kids’ llamas, maybe. Get me a bra. I’ll go find breasts.” Yanking the pant leg free by its belled bottom and stripping off the shirt, he trotted across the room through the door along the heated, yard-square flagstones, down the hall past his den and Mark and Melodie’s rooms and then into the kitchen, erection waving like a bowsprit.
From the cutting-board island came the odor of mangoes ripening in a yellow bowl Helen had fired in December. Wait; yesterday she said she found beefsteak tomatoes at Whole Foods for hamburgers tonight and salsa later.
He approached the refrigerator that dominated the maple-clad wall. A thousand dollars misspent to incise on it tiled macaws and halved papayas. Each tile bulged at a different slant; two looked about to tumble down. Hauling the door open, he spotted the tomatoes in their see-through bag. He reached in and rolled out two. What the hell was he about to do?
By the time he’d returned to the bedroom, the blood slamming his right eye had retreated like the blood from his penis—though when he saw Helen, it rose again. She sat at the bottom of the comforter, straight-arming the mattress to brace herself, a white lace bra slung over one knee. A small-billed cap slanted across her forehead. Her breasts plumped the buttoned green polyester shirt; the bells of her slacks pooled against the rug. She’d left the snap undone.
“Look,” he smiled.
“Charles, those were for dinner. Do you really enjoy seeing me like this?”
“It’s strange, but I do.”
Advancing, goose bumps icing the back of his neck, he pushed the tomatoes against the black hairs on his nipples and turned. “See if they fit.” Facing her, he waited for her fingers to snake around and press the cotton against the red fruit. The stub end of one bit his flesh. Their chill made him flinch, but what had become a full erection took charge. He stroked it while his left hand squeezed his testicles. “Hook me up.”
Her fingers pulled the tomatoes tight; the catch clicked behind him.
He threw on the blouse and stepped into the miniskirt.
“How do I look?” From behind her he snatched the felt hat with its appliquéd nasturtiums, set it on his head, and adjusted its slant. “You’re sexy. Why are you staring like you just swallowed a lizard?”
“I’ve . . .” She clutched her throat where it wrinkled, just under her chin. “I’ve never seen you with an erection like that.”
He grinned, milking the shaft. A pearl of lubricant perched atop the glans. “How do you want me to go in?”
“I don’t think I do.” She faced him in the wool cap with a black button popping from its top while her left hand kept the men’s slacks from collapsing. Her tongue circled her chapped lips. “I think what I want is to get out of these clothes and make us some breakfast. Pancakes with blueberries, I think. Are you hungry, Charles?”
“I am!” He lunged for her, knocking her cap sidewise, his own floppy hat sailing into her face as she pitched backward and he toppled onto her, smashing the tomatoes. Seeds and juice squished through the bra’s lace to stain his blouse and squirted red rivulets across the comforter’s jack-in-the-pulpits. Their hearts pummeled each other while the teeth along her undone zipper rasped the skin of his erection.
She batted the hat from her face. Her breath seared his neck, making the stubble prickle. “Get off me,” she choked.
Drenched and gasping, he slithered to his knees. A gob of pulp cooled his forehead. His forearms pressed the comforter as he watched her rise.
She ran a palm across her eyes and stared at the red goo that smeared it. Gripping the waistband of the slacks, she grabbed her robe and hobbled along the blue, now crimson Zuni carpet into the bathroom.
When he heard the shower’s splash, he pried off the miniskirt and lowered his buttocks onto the heap of clothes, leaning against the footboard, stenciled with the outlines of Toggenburg goats and shipped from Vermont with the headboard. He took his tumid penis and, setting his jaw, began to pump, squashed tomatoes bouncing against his chest. After a dozen strokes he groaned, arching his back to the onrush of semen that spurted into the green ruffles scalloping his wrist.
He waited for the tingle in his thighs to subside as the sounds of shower water stopped. With his forefinger he swiped a dollop of semen off his knee and licked the sweet pungency, blinking at the concrete slab’s crack. He began to figure the cost of having it repaired. Three thousand dollars easy—the edges were crumbling. Three thousand? More like ten to jackhammer the concrete into chunks and replace the tubing. Plus a call to his lawyer to initiate a lawsuit.
He was reaching to undo the bra when Helen marched from the bathroom in her robe. Hair sleeked back and glistening, she stared at him but said nothing until she turned away.
“Twenty minutes if you want to eat.”
“I’ll catch something near the office.” He wondered if she heard. All he wanted was to wander the lawn with the llamas, bask with them under the drifting clouds, whistle off flies.
Palms cupping the bra’s soaked cotton, he blew out air and trudged to the bathroom where he dropped bra and the tomatoes into the sink.
Five minutes down from upper Camino de Cruz Blanca, natty in a mohair turtleneck and hip-hugger black denims, Chuck mouthed the last of a poppy-seed bagel. He aimed for the driveway skirting his office at Palace and Otero, a renovated adobe perched on a mound garnished with hollyhocks to honor his mother. She had died three years before, following a head-on collision at Cerrillos and St. Michael’s with a young woman high on heroin.
