Something Happened

That might hurt her feelings too.

I would have to overcompensate with pleasantries and consideration: I might even have to lay her again, just because I'm a real nice guy. That's happened before too. (Or I might tell her my wife is undergoing tests for cancer and win some pity for myself that way. I've done that before also.) It's why I don't like to get involved with girls in the same office anymore. They're there. (If only she worked somewhere else. I could use her often these days. But then I might not have her.) She would have Red Parker to contend with. (I've already told him I was thinking of laying her. He's already told me he's thinking of following me.) He hurts his women sometimes; he hits them now. He'll get in trouble. The fu

"Come on in buddy," he invited convivially, and started to move from the bed. "I'll go eat."

Both naked girls waited for me with blank, phlegmatic smiles. The white one had a sore on her jaw that looked bleached with calamine lotion. I left.

I have stopped using Red Parker's apartment in the city and no longer go to his noisy cocktail parties there on the chance of striking it lucky with one of the large number of girls he is still able to persuade to attend. (I have made out well more times than I can remember with girls I've met through Red. I met Pe

"I'll fuck like a racehorse in a room like this," she glories, a vibrant strumpet lying eager for more as soon as I'm ready to supply it. "Don't I?"

"Ride, racehorse."

"You jockey me."

"Or I'll whip you some more."

"Do what you want, darling."

"Stop talking so much."

"Put me in a bed in a hotel like this and I feel I can fuck the whole world."

"Put your knees up."

"Oh, good. God. Goodness gracious, deary me,"

My damned dumb wife still can't remember to put her knees up after all these years — and she feels she is ready to fuck the whole world.

I wonder what I would feel like if my wife ever did come home smelling of another man's semen. I think I would die a sudden, shriveling death inside. (Would it excite me?) I would wither and curl up inside my skin and spend the rest of my dull, spiritless life hiding my dead, small self inside a head and torso now many sizes too large. I would pray my wife and children would let me keep it secret. (I'm not sure what other men's semen smells like, unless it smells like my own. I'd guess it smells of sweat and hair. I've caught the scent of sweat and hair on my wife a hundred times when she's not had time to wash and change before I plant my perfunctory kiss on her cheek, but it's only sweat and hair, I think.) She does not guess what I'm thinking as my eyes examine her critically these days. (It would not excite me.) It would fill me with saddest resignation and lifelong self-disgust. Judgment will have been rendered against me by her and someone else behind another closed door I did not know was even there, and the judgment will be irreversible. I hope it will not be with someone crass and repellent like Andy Kagle or Red Parker. I would not want their hands or fluids on her. (Someone like Green might be better for me.) Sometimes on my train ride home from work — I even have trouble sleeping when commuting — I have the clairvoyant certainty I am going to catch her that very day within the next forty-five minutes, and just that way: by a stain. She'll hurry into the house after I do, di

"I love my wife, but, oh, you kid."

I am not as big a shot as she and the children think I am (but must not let them find that out). I have horrendous visions of her being felt up greedily on packed subway trains, and enjoying it, and my wife doesn't even have to ride the subway trains. Pe

"I knew it was either that or phlegm," Pe

I can't.

I miss my mother, sister, and brother more and more often lately and regret we did not remain closer as a family when we were all still together. On balmy evenings in spring and summer, my mother would send down to the drugstore for a container of bulk ice cream, and we would eat it together. She let me get it when I grew big enough to go. We liked strawberry best of all, and it was good. Sometimes we had strawberry mixed with vanilla.