Chapter 15…

“It’s loud,” Amelia says.

It’s not exactly a bar that Sheila takes us to. It’s a club, rather large but not crowded. Loud music. Well, we’re here, and the seven of us take to a table. Sheila moves her body, erotically, to the music, but Amelia jounces, she’s somewhere else. Tasha looks uncomfortable; she’s never been one for clubs and loud music. From our table, we can look down on the dance floor, look up onto the dance level above us. There are some people gyrating away. A waiter comes by, in a tuxedo no less, and takes our order — most of us have mixed drinks, except Lisa, who sticks with wine.

The drinks come and we drink and try to talk, but it’s hard over the music: we have to repeat our words and shout.

“Hey, Leonard,” Amelia says.

“Yeah?”

“Wanna dance with me?” she asks.

“Sure.”

*****

So I’m dancing with her, and yes, I’m a little drunk, but that helps the matter all the more. There are bodies around us and I can fell their heat. I wish I could tune into Amelia, disregard the other dancers and pick up on her heat, her mind, her past, and her UFOs. There’s something about her I can’t place, something odd and distant, and yet when I look at her, her eyes closed, arms up, her body moving almost spasmodically, a if ritually, to the sounds pounding, about us, she seems like any other woman out to have a few drinks and a good time, not the person I heard tell the story of two men and the despair of disconnection. I wonder if strangers in this club look at us and think we are a couple, if they try to make quick judgments on our past and future and muse: Oh, there’s a couple. I’m misguided, however, as we all know that strangers, as we ourselves are strangers to others, never give most people much thought.

I’m lost. At some point we go back to the table and I finish my drink. Tasha and I have a brief exchange — her small eyes under that dark hair — and then I’m back on the dance floor, this time with Sheila, and I’m surprised because I don’t know how I got here, but there I am, again.

We’re dancing closer, Sheila and I, compared to the dance I had with Amelia. Sheila is taller than Amelia, and fuller about the body, and she emits a different air, a sexual air, and the undeniable smell of attraction; or, at least, a perfume that turns me on. I start to wish I hadn’t had so much to drink. In the switch from a fast to a slow song by the club’s DJ, I excuse myself to go to the bathroom.

I don’t realize, at first, that Sheila has followed me in.

The men’s room is empty except for a guy at a urinal. There’s a tap on my shoulder, I turn, almost scared, for who’d tap me here? — and see Sheila. She puts a hand on my chest, hard, pushes me toward a stall, impels me in, joins me, closes the door, locks it. She smiles.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Don’t be dumb,” she says, reaching into the pocket of her blazer.

“We’re in the men’s room,” I say softly.

“You can’t be that goofy,” she says.

I’m not. I’ve seen women in men’s rooms plenty of times, but when I was younger, at concerts, and clubs, when women would come in with a man, go to the stall to do coke and other things— And how stupid I am, yes, as I see Sheila bring out a vial of cocaine from her pocket: small, perfect, something I’ve seen before, like the night between Tasha, Veronica, and I.

“Want some?” she asks.

I don’t know what to say. What do you say to an attractive woman face to face with you in a toilet stall, smelling pretty and sexy, and offering you drugs, touching your leg….

“I stopped doing that stuff many years ago,” I say.

“I’m no addict,” she says, “I just like a toot now and then. Is there anything wrong with that, Leeeeeeonard?”

“No.”

“You wouldn’t hate me if I did some then?” she asks.

“No,” I say.

She does two short blasts, one in each nostril, and when I see that look on her face, it’s the past all over again, and I have the desire for some myself. I do a blast, just a short, small one, that’s all, and I feel bad at first — What the hell am I doing? — but the feeling and numbness get to me and Sheila and I look at each other and we realize where we are and what we’re doing and there’s no denying it, there’s no getting around it, we know what’s going to happen next, and it does. Frantically, like creatures out of control, we kiss, tongues like two gladiators in battle. Our hands all over — hers under my shirt, me reaching into her skirt. There’s no time to play with here.

“I want you,” she murmurs, her warm breath to my face. I pull at her panties under her bunched-up skirt, feel her round and fleshy ass. I fall back on the toilet stall as Sheila takes my cock out. My hand briefly brushes across her sex and I feel its heat and wetness and from the light smell that reaches my nostrils I know she is more than ready. She sits on me, slides me into her, her red hair falling over my face. I realize I could be with anyone, that I am with a woman I don’t even know, and we’re having unsafe sex, and neither of us care, but I close my eyes, I block out the smell of the men’s room and the sound of music in the club, and she could be any of the lovers I have had in my past. She could be Tasha, she could be Veronica.

I remember the look on Tasha’s face as she watched me make love to Veronica. It was not a look of lust, or shock, but numb indifference, as if what she was seeing wasn’t really there. She was lying on the bed next to us, and when I was done, Veronica was not; she wanted Tasha, so she kissed her, and Tasha just lay back on the bed, the same stoned look in her eyes, as Veronica made love to her with her mouth.

I remember the excitement of it, the pleasure at seeing the popular male fantasy come true, of being in bed with two women, and how I ignored the fact that while Tasha seemed to like the idea at first, that when it really began to happen she became distant, yet did not say anything to stop it from going further. Thinking of this makes me fuck Sheila harder, thrusting up as she thrusts down, so that our flesh smacks together loudly, my hands digging into her hips. I am filled with both lust and anger; the lust of memory and the moment, the anger of mistakes and the stupidity, including the stupidity of fucking my ex-wife’s friend in a public toilet. It doesn’t matter now.

I open her blazer, hands across her silk blouse, feel the lace bra underneath. I begin to unbutton her blouse, but instead move my hands to her ass, feeling the meat there, as we continue to fuck, energetically, drunkenly, slightly coked-up. How sleazy, I think, how perfect, for my life couldn’t be anything otherwise. I remember what Tasha said to me after that night: “How would you feel if you watched another man fuck me? Or more than one man?” And I remember what I did feel: jealousy, rage, wondering if she would go out and have sex with someone just to “get back” at me — as she did, eventually, with Slater.

Sheila is coming; she puts a hand to her mouth but that doesn’t muffle the sound too well, and I start to fuck her harder, and soon I reach my own orgasm, and we slow down, catch our breaths. She moves away from me, almost timidly, brushing the red hair from her face. She pulls her panties up first, then buttons her blouse and blazer, and straightens her skirt. I zip up my pants and stand. “Well,” she says softly, kissing me lightly on the lips. “We better get out of here. Discreetly, if possible.”

It won’t be possible. We leave the stall trying to look nonchalant, which is dumb. There are three men at urinals, and one in the stall next to where we were, and another coming in just as we go out. We quickly leave the men’s room and return to the lights and music.

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