smile dimmed a bit before I answered. “Yes.”
“Geez. You sound thrilled. What’s the matter, he chews with his mouth open? What?”
I shrugged, studying the folders of work piled high on my desk. “No. He has very pleasant manners.”
“Uh-oh,” she said. “Very pleasant manners. An aesthetically pleasing penis. You’re regressing, girl, let me hear you say he’s a great fuck and fun to be with.”
There would be no resisting her. I knew that by now. Yet I gave in to Marcy not because she could be an insistent, nosy bitch, but because I’d never have admitted my thoughts out loud had she not pushed.
“I like him.”
“So what’s the problem?” She looked concerned. “That’s a good thing.”
I shrugged again. I had my reasons for not wanting to like him. For avoiding relationships. They were shitty and pathetic reasons, but I had them.
“You don’t have to marry him.”
“Heaven forbid,” I said, startled at the thought. “Good God, no.”
She held up her hands. “Just saying. What’s wrong with going out, having a good time, getting laid?”
“Nothing’s wrong with it. I just…” I shrugged. “It’s not really my thing.”
“Maybe you should rethink what your ‘thing’ is,” she advised, getting up. “’Cuz to be honest, honey, I don’t think it works so good for you.”
“Thanks for the advice,” I replied.
“Sarcasm,” Marcy said loftily, “is the defense of the guilty!”
With that, she swept from my office in a cloud of Obsession and left a sweating soda can to stain my desktop.
I had the bus ride home to think about what she’d said and what Dan had promised. No attachments. The idea was appealing, though ridiculous. People can’t just fuck. They can’t. One or the other gets caught up in emotion, someone gets hurt. We’re not meant to separate sex from love; there’s a reason why euphoria occurs in both situations. Sex and love nourish each other. You can argue it’s humanity’s way of establishing family groups and guaranteeing creation of the next generation, but the simple fact remains: the more often two people engage in sex, the more likely it is that one of them will fall in love.
How many times would it take, I wondered. I stared out my window at the streetlamps, counting them as I always did. The number never changed. I defined my life by numbers. What number of times would I take Dan inside my body before one of us felt that first pang of emotion?
And would I be able to stop if it were me?
It wasn’t that I’d never had a boyfriend or never been in love. I had been, once. A long time ago. Head over heels, madly, passionately, devastatingly in love with the boy I thought might be my knight in shining armor. Funny thing about that shining armor, by the way. It tarnishes pretty fast.
By the time I got home, I had determined I was not going to see him again. There could be no point in it. It was useless, a satisfaction of the body that could lead to nothing but dissatisfaction of the mind. I knew it without a doubt. I wouldn’t call him, I wouldn’t see him, I wouldn’t… wouldn’t…would not.
By the time I got home, my mother had called three times and left messages so long they’d filled up the tape on my machine. And I, unable to hate her, found myself even unable to ignore her. I listened to her tirade, and then I picked up the phone.
“Who’s this?” She sounded querulous. Old. I had to remind myself she was only in her early sixties and far from an invalid. “Ella?”
“It’s Elle, Mother. Please.”
“We’ve always called you Ella.”
Then she was off on her rant, and I didn’t bother correcting her again.
“Are you listening to me?”
As if I had a choice. “Yes, Mother.”
She gave a low snort into the phone. “When are you coming home for a visit?”
“I’m very busy at work. You know that. I told you.”
I listened with half an ear while I drew water into the teakettle and took out a microwave meal from the freezer. I grabbed one plate. One glass. One fork. Set one place at my table, which was big enough to seat four but never had. I didn’t have dinner parties.
“I want you to take me to the cemetery, Ella. Daddy can’t do it, he’s not able to make the drive.”
The fork clattered against the plate. “Mother, I told you before. No.”
There was, incredibly, a long silence in which I heard nothing but the sound of her breathing. “Elspeth Kavanagh,” she said at last. “The least you can do is put a rose on his grave once in a while. He was your brother. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Ella? He was your brother, and he loved you.”
The kettle screamed, saving me from the effort. With shaking hands I turned off the gas and poured the water into my mug. It slopped, stinging my hands. I hissed in pain.
“What’s wrong?”
“I burned myself on some hot water.”
And she was off again, with the best way to treat burns, and how I should have someone there to make sure I did it right, and someone there to take care of me. Because so obviously I couldn’t care for myself. I ended the call as fast as I could. I looked at the tea, the food, the single plate.
“I know who he was,” I said aloud to the empty room.
Dan answered the door with tousled hair and sleep in his eyes, which widened at the sight of me. It was the black vinyl raincoat and the stiletto shoes. The red lipstick and black eyeliner. I knew what I looked like. A parody of a teenage boy’s wank fantasies.
I closed the door behind me. “Hi.”
Dan smiled. “This is a surprise.”
It is immensely satisfying to watch a man get hard at the sight of you. He wore flannel sleep pants, slung low on his hips. They tented admirably when I slid open the coat to reveal the little I wore beneath.
“How about this?”
He blinked, his gaze taking me in, toes to thighs to hips to breasts to throat to mouth and at last, to my eyes. He stared at me. My breath caught, my bold act more act than bold. For an instant I thought he’d fail me. That he’d ask me to sit down, offer me a drink. But only for a moment, because he gave me exactly what I wanted with his next words.
“Take it off.”
I dropped the coat to the floor. I wore black thigh-high stockings and matching black lace bra and panties. Clothes from the back of my drawer I hadn’t worn in ages. Power clothes, to make me feel sexy. They worked. Watching
