a teenager he could never bring himself to solicit a prostitute, no matter how much he wanted to, no matter how many of them he would see walking the streets downtown. He wonders what about him has changed, how it was that he picked up the telephone earlier today and dialed this stranger’s number. “Are there options?” Nick asks. “Is it up to me what we do?”
“You’re the customer,” My-Duyen says.
“I guess I’m not sure how we’re supposed to begin here.”
“Let’s try a different angle. What are you into?”
“Anything, I suppose. I mean, within reason.”
My-Duyen laughs, as though his answer were the punch line of a joke. She rests a hand on the small of his back. “How about this. You undress and get under the covers, and I’ll take it from there. We’ll skip the massage, OK?”
“Yeah,” Nick says. “Good.” He never expected a massage, and finds it unusual that she maintains the pretext of her yellow-pages ad. He takes off his clothes and slides into the bed, watching as My-Duyen shimmies out of her dress. Naked before him, she pulls the comforter down to his knees, the sheet domed over his crotch. Then she pulls the sheet down too, and his swollen penis is exposed. It looks bruised, as if it’s been slapped around or stepped on, the shaft a rash-like red, the head darkened to a purplish hue.
My-Duyen’s breasts hang sublimely from her body. Between her thighs is a vertical strip of pubic hair, the skin shaved clean around it. She lies down next to him, her leg brushing his, and suddenly Nick feels as if his insides are being liquified in a blender. It’s the same way he’s felt roaming the aisles at Big Al’s, an adult bookstore on Broadway, where he goes several times a week to flip through the pages of Orient XXXpress or Kung Pao Pussy or Filipino Fuck, surveying the glossy images before rushing to the Burger King across the street, slipping into the men’s room, and masturbating in a stall defaced by graffiti and glory holes, sometimes evacuating his bowels just after he comes.
“Asian Sensation,” he says, the words tumbling accidentally from his mouth.
“What?”
“That’s what you called yourself. Over the phone.”
“Oh, right.” She props herself on an elbow, flattens her hand across his stomach in a tender sort of way. Looking down at his erection, she seems to think for a moment, then says, “Tell me you love me, Jack.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Just say it.” Her voice quivers. She lowers her face. “For me.”
What reason could she have for asking him to say such a thing? Is she putting on some kind of act, he wonders, a show of emotion meant to heighten his excitement? “I’m not sure I understand,” Nick says.
She still isn’t looking at him. “Three simple words,” she says, nuzzling up to him like a cat, curling her warm body into the crook of his arm.
“It’s my first time,” he tells her, trying to change the subject, though he isn’t sure why he’s chosen this, of all things, to say. Under normal circumstances he keeps his virginity a secret, hiding it from the world as he might some sordid deed from his past. “I’m a virgin,” he says.
“I figured as much. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” She reaches down and takes hold of his erection. “Pretend I’m your girlfriend and we do it all the time. Pretend you’re going to fuck me,” My-Duyen says, “because you love me.”
Nick’s heart leaps. His lust for her sharpens to a point, and he feels another prick of anxiety at the back of his throat. He’s been getting it since childhood, this tiny remonstrative prick, anytime his actions have threatened to further diminish his self-regard.
“Please,” she says. “It’s a thing I have.” She kisses his chest now, once, twice, three times. He can feel himself bulging in her hand, conforming to it. “I need you to say it.”
“OK,” he whispers, trying his best to keep from coming. “I love you.”
He stayed until the restaurant closed, then walked Annie home to her apartment in North Beach, fifteen blocks away. In Nick’s back pocket was the short letter he had written to Ricky, the coaster creased into a half-moon beneath his billfold.
“Why don’t you come up,” she said as they approached her building. She shrugged her shoulders, a breeze riffling the ends of her hair. “It’s only eleven. I could use a glass of wine.”
“Great,” said Nick, excited by the invitation: Annie had never asked him up to her apartment before.
It was warm and spacious, a one-bedroom with high ceilings and a recessed balcony. Against one of the walls stood what appeared to be an arts-and-crafts project of some sort. Two yellow pipe cleaners sprouted like antennae from a white Styrofoam ball the size of a desktop globe. As on a tee, the ball sat atop a Quaker Oats container that rose like a little silo from the inside of an orange Nike shoe box.
“Mi casa,” Annie said with a sweep of her hand. She took off her hat, her coat, hung them on a hook beside the door. “Welcome.”
“Nice place.”
“Rent control and tips,” she said. “How else could I survive in this city?”
Nick nodded at the arts-and-crafts project. “Interesting furniture.”
“Ricky’s first sculpture. ‘Evolution,’ he calls it.” She clicked her tongue. “I’ve been meaning to get rid of that thing for a while now.”
Nick had always assumed that Ricky’s medium was either plaster or ceramic, not cardboard or Styrofoam. He looked the sculpture up and down, tapping his chin. Then their eyes met and they both broke into laughter.
“Fine,” Annie said. “So he’s not the best sculptor in the world.”
She opened a bottle of merlot, poured them each a glass as they settled in next to one another on her small leather couch. The cushions were dry as saddles, faded to a light coffee-brown, and creaked whenever he made the slightest adjustment of his legs. They were talking about the letter to Ricky when Nick noticed the Atari 2600 on the bottom shelf of her television stand.
“Read it to me,” she said, nosing the wine. “It was sweet of you to write it.”
She had been busy closing up the bar, and Nick hadn’t had a chance to show her the letter. But he could tell that he had managed to charm her, that she had taken as some kind of gallantry his juvenile wish to make her ex-boyfriend jealous. He thought about kissing her, which he hadn’t tried to do in a couple of weeks. Not yet, he imagined Annie saying. It isn’t the right time. “You’re into video games?” he asked, pointing to the Atari.
“Kind of,” she said. “I don’t know. I bought that thing at a garage sale in Berkeley. It made me nostalgic. They threw in a bunch of cartridges for free.”
“Let’s play something,” Nick said. “What do you have?”
“First the letter. Get it out.”
“Only if you promise to send it.” He sipped his wine. “I hope I didn’t write
