Choke

Chapter 39

IT'S DARK AND STARTING TO RAIN when I get to the church, and Nico's waiting for me in the parking lot. She's struggling around inside her coat, and for a moment one sleeve hangs empty, then she snakes her arm back inside it. Nico reaches her fingers inside the cuff of her other sleeve and pulls out something lacy and white.

"Hold on to this for me," she says and hands me a warm fistful of lace and elastic.

It's her bra.

"Just for a couple hours," she says. "I'm not wearing any pockets." She's smiling with one corner of her mouth, her top teeth biting a little on her bottom lip. Her eyes sparkle with rain and streetlight.

Not taking her stuff, I tell her, I can't. Not anymore.

Nico shrugs, and tucks the bra back inside the sleeve of her coat. All the sexaholics have gone inside already, to Room 234. The hallways are empty with shiny waxed linoleum and bulletin boards on the walls. Church news and kids' art projects posted everywhere. Finger-painting pictures of Jesus and the apostles. Jesus and Mary Magdalen.

Heading for Room 234, I'm a step ahead of Nico when she grabs the back of my belt and pulls me over against a bulletin board.

The way my gut aches, the bloating and cramps, when she pulls on my belt, the pain makes me belch acid up the back of my throat. My back against the wall, she slips her leg between mine and lifts her arms around my head. Her breasts wedged warm and soft between us, Nico's mouth fits over mine, and we're both breathing her perfume. Her tongue's more in my mouth than in hers. Her leg's rubbing not my erection, but my impacted bowel.

The cramping could mean colorectal cancer. It could mean acute appendicitis. Hyperparathyroidism. Adrenal insufficiency.

See also: Intestinal obstruction.

See also: Colorectal foreign bodies.

Cigarette smoking. Fingernail biting. It used to be my cure for everything was sex, but with Nico swimming against me, I just can't.

Nico says, "Okay, we'll find a different place."

She steps back, and I bend double with the ache in my guts and stumble down to

Room 234 with Nico hissing behind me.

"No," she's hissing.

Inside Room 234, the group leader's saying, "We're going to work on the fourth step tonight."

"Not in there," Nice's saying until we're standing in the open doorway being looked at by the crowd of people sitting around a big, low table stained with paint and lumpy with dried paste. The chairs are little plastic scoops so low everybody's knees jut up in front of them. These people just stare at us. These men and women. Urban legends. These sexaholics.

The group leader says, "Is there anybody here still working on their fourth step?"

Nico slides against me and whispers into my ear, she whispers, "If you go in there, in with all those losers," Nico says, "I'm never getting with you again."

See also: Leeza.

See also: Tanya.

And I come around the table to drop myself into a plastic chair.

With everybody watching, I say, "Hello. I'm Victor."

Looking into Nico's eyes, I say, "My name is Victor Mancini, and I'm a sexaholic."

And I say how I've been stuck on my fourth step for what seems like forever.

The feeling is less like an ending than just another starting point.

And still leaning in the doorway, not just eye juice but tears, rolling black mascara tears, burst out of Nico's eyes, and she smears them away with her hand. Nico says, she shouts, "Well, I'm not!" And out of the sleeve of her coat, her bra drops on the floor.

Nodding at her, I say, "And this is Nico."

And Nico says, "You people can all get fucked." She snatches up her bra and she's gone.

It's then everybody says, Hello Victor.

And the group leader says, "Okay."

He says, "As I was saying, the best place to find insight is to remember where you lost your virginity...."