The First Bad Man

CHAPTER SEVEN

I described tapping into Phillip’s lust, his overwhelming appetites and aggressive explosions that convulsed through me. Ruth-Anne seemed unsurprised, as if I were late to my own party.

“Right. And perhaps we don’t even need to call it Phillip’s lust? Maybe it’s just lust.”

“Well, it’s not mine. These just aren’t the kinds of things I would think about, on my own, without him.”

“So you don’t find it arousing when she attacks you?”

“Everything she does to me, I pretend I’m doing to her, as Phillip.”

“I see. And how does Cheryl Glickman feel?”

“Me?”

“Yes, what do you feel?”

Me, I thought. Me. Me. Me. Nothing specific came to mind.

“Are you masturbating yourself to orgasm?”

I smiled at the floor. “Yes?”

“Are you asking me?”

“Yes. I am. But that’s just, you know, behind the scenes.”

Ruth-Anne nodded as if I had just said something very astute. Maybe I had. I wondered if I was her favorite patient, or at least the only one who could talk on her level.

“Can I ask you something that’s a little bit related to this?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Remember when you called yesterday, about my appointment with Dr. Broyard?”

Her face changed.

“Well, I’m not sure I should keep seeing him — it might feel funny now.”

“Funny how?”

“Not funny, more like uncomfortable. To see you in your receptionist role. And him. Now that I know.”

She stared at me for a long time and I wondered if I was her least-favorite patient.

“Well, it’s up to you,” she said finally. “But I believe you’ve missed the forty-eight-hour cancellation window.”

CLEE THOUGHT HER PINK BOXERS covered her but they didn’t. If she was sitting cross-legged I could see the edge of her dark blond pubic hair and sometimes more. One morning I saw a flash of labia, pink and hanging loose. Not the tidy, concealed meat that I had been imagining. With this new information Phillip had to go back and redo all the sex he had already done. He really wanted to see her anus, though he wouldn’t have called it that. I reread all his texts but didn’t find a word for it. I went with pucker. I’LL ADMIT IT, he might have written, I WANT TO RAM MY STIFF MEMBER INTO HER PUCKER.

When he was mentioned at work, usually in terms of fundraising, I felt a shiver of invisibility — not that I was him, but it was strange to hear him talked about so freely.

“Phil Bettelheim’s donation was on the smaller side this year,” said Jim, “but it’s only June, he might give again. Has anyone walked him through the high-risk outreach initiative?”

We hadn’t spoken since I gave him my blessing; I guessed he was busy actually doing all the things I was pretending he was. The thought gave me a sad ache, and even this ache was arousing. I felt so close to him. It could never be proven, but I suspected we were becoming stiff at the same time, possibly even ejaculating in unison, the way women’s menstrual periods sometimes become synchronized. I wondered where Clee was in her cycle.

“Cheryl.” I looked up. A face so like and unlike hers. “How’s my daughter? Is she behaving?”

“Oh yes,” I said, too quickly. “Absolutely.” Suzanne crossed her arms, waiting. She knew everything.

“Be honest. I know how she is.” She looked me dead in the eye.

“She watches a lot of TV,” I whispered.

Suzanne sighed. “She takes after Carl’s mother — not a ton up here.” She tapped her forehead. For an uncomfortable moment I felt almost protective of Clee.

“She’s more instinctual,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “But thank you. Carl and I are thinking of some way to repay you. Not — I don’t mean money.”

HER COWLIKE VACUOUSNESS DIDN’T REALLY bother me anymore. Or it didn’t matter — her personality was just a little piece of parsley decorating warm tawny haunches. Clee was bouncing up and down on Phillip’s stiff member every day, many times a day, and at first it seemed he would never get tired of creaming in her puss winged by the dark blond pubic hair. But now, ten days later, I had a problem. He wanted it just as much, even more, but it took longer and longer to get there — sometimes as many as thirty minutes. Sometimes never. I tried unusual positions, new locations. One fantasy involved Ruth-Anne observing the intercourse, admiring and applauding with clinical approval. It was so unlikely that it worked, for a short time. But the smallest thing could stymie Phillip’s release.

Clee’s foot smell. Before it was the least of my problems; now it was a real turnoff. Phillip sometimes put plastic bags on her feet, trapping in the smell with rubber bands just so he could become stiff.

Cream in my puss, she begged. In me! In me! her puss whined, through aching mushy lips.

Not until you get your feet taken care of, he barked. I know a chromotherapist who specializes in this, best on the west side. Tell him I sent you.

I waited for a neutral moment to bring it up, then I plopped down on the arm of the couch. She was slurping ramen from a cup.

“Good stuff?” She stopped eating and frowned distrustfully. We hadn’t exchanged unscripted dialogue since Kate’s visit. “First of all: peace. Okay?”

She furrowed her brow and looked at the V my fingers were making. I had no idea what I was doing.

“Okay,” I continued. “We live together, we are sometimes… physically close?” My voice rose to a question here; it was an insane thing to say given that I plowed her many times a day as Phillip. But I meant the fight scenarios. She nodded, putting her soup down. She was listening with an almost disconcerting level of attentiveness. I fingered the Post-it in my back pocket.

“Look, I don’t want to be too forward here, or say something that you’re going to take offense to.” Clee shook her head like No, no, I won’t be offended.

“I can speak candidly, then?”

She actually laughed, and her mouth broke into a smile, a real smile. I’d never seen that before. Her teeth were huge.

“I’ve been hoping that you would,” she said, now pressing her lips together as if there was an ocean of other smiles and more laughter on the other side and she was trying to hold it back for just a few more seconds. She nodded for me to go ahead, to say it.

My hand had been waiting for its cue and I watched with a distant horror as it came forward with the Post-it. She peeled it off my palm and studied Dr. Broyard’s address and the date of my appointment with soft, quizzical eyes. Thursday, June 19, tomorrow. There was nothing to do but continue with the plan.

“The situation with your feet — the odor, I mean—”

I’d never seen a face change shape like that. It dropped: every feature fell. I hurried on.

“My friend Phillip swears by Dr. Broyard for athlete’s foot. When you get there, tell the receptionist I sent you — I’m giving you my appointment.” I pointed at the paper.

Now her face was red, about to explode. Her eyes were watering. Then she took a breath and all at once she was perfectly calm. More than calm — blank.

THE LAST THING I EXPECTED was that she would go. But Friday morning there was a sundrop crystal hanging from the lock on the bathroom window and a tiny glass bottle next to her toothbrush. WHITE. Was that even a color? But I could see it just looking at the back of her blond head; she was subtly but utterly different. It was impossible to put a name on it. Not happier or sadder or less foul-smelling. Just whiter. Paler. I couldn’t wait for therapy; Ruth-Anne had actually seen her now. Which maybe was the whole point.

I leaned back in the leather couch. “So. What did you think of Clee?”

“She seemed young.”

I nodded encouragingly. Ideally she would say “shapely” or “curvaceous” in a clinically approving way. But Ruth-Anne seemed finished with her appraisal.

“Would you say she’s what you pictured?”

“More or less, yes.”

“Any man would become stiff looking at her, right?” I had hoped I would be brave enough to use one of Phillip’s words in front of Ruth-Anne, and I was. It was working; my groin felt warm and full of cream. As soon as I got home I would use the Ruth-Anne — watching fantasy.

Suddenly Ruth-Anne stood up.

“No,” she barked, slapping her hands together violently. “Stop immediately.”

My blood went cold. “What? What?”

She crossed her arms, walked once around her chair, then sat again.

“Not okay. Not okay to do with me. Okay with Phillip, okay with a janitor, or a fireman or a waiter. Not okay with me.”

She was talking to me like I didn’t understand English. I felt like a gorilla. My finger went to my eye; maybe she had made me cry. No, she hadn’t.

“I don’t want to be a part of it.” Her voice was a little softer now; she gestured toward the window. “There’s a whole world of people you can use, but not me. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “Sorry.”

MY EMBARRASSMENT SHADED THE REST of the morning. I tried to involve a pair of her thong underwear but it only made things worse, my fingers became clumsy and pruned as Phillip pounded away. We gave up. I tried to work. I took a shower. Because of Clee’s long hairs the drain had gradually become clogged to the point that the water filled the stall like a tub and I had to hurry to finish before it overflowed. Clee came home and put on her labia-revealing boxer shorts. I was furious and the bathroom was a mess and I was always stiff but could no longer achieve cream.

I called the plumber. Hurry, I said. We are completely clogged up over here. He was a chubby Latino man with no chin and eyes that grew sluggish at the sight of the juggy woman on the couch. I couldn’t even wait; I gestured toward the shower as I hurried to my room. “Knock when you’re done.” It was better than Ruth-Anne; it was like the first time with Phillip. The plumber’s eyes were wide with amazement when she entered the bathroom with her shirt off. He wasn’t sure at first, he didn’t want to get in trouble. But she begged and tugged at the wide, matronly front of his pants. In the end he was not as polite as he seemed. No sirree. He had quite a bit of pent-up rage, possibly from racial injustice and immigration issues, and he worked through all of it. Then he fixed the drain and to test it they did mutual soaping. The repair was two hundred dollars. I showed Clee the mesh hair-catcher and how to empty it; she looked right past me. Was she still mad about the foot thing? I didn’t have time to wonder; there was suddenly so much to do.

A thin, nerdy lad I saw in Whole Foods: Clee followed him out to his car, begged him to let her hold his stiff member for one to two minutes. An Indian father who politely asked me directions with his shy wife in tow: Clee rubbed her puss all over his body and forced stiffness out of him, he was whining in ecstasy when his wife walked in. Too nervous to say anything, she waited silently until her husband creamed on Clee’s jugs. Old grandfathers who hadn’t had sex in years, virginal teenage boys named Colin, homeless men riddled with hepatitis. And then every man I had ever known. All my teachers K through twelve and college, my first landlord, all my male relatives, my dentist, my father, George Washington so hard his wig slipped off. I tried to work Phillip in here and there, for example, inviting him to enter her from behind while I was an old man in her mouth — but this was just out of guilt, it didn’t really add anything. Perhaps we were both sowing our wild oats. Or maybe Kirsten, being real, outweighed my hordes of imaginary men. Mostly I was too busy for guilt; there was almost no time that I wasn’t rubbing myself. The postman delivered a box and before I could open it Clee had to unzip his government-issued pants; I helped him push his little nub into her. The penises were getting more abstract and unlikely — I couldn’t rein them in. Some were slightly pronged, some pointed and willowy at the end like a wild yam, or serrated like a fleshy pinecone. I took the box into the kitchen and opened it with a butter knife. What could it be, what could it be? Right as I pushed my hand through the flaps I realized, with horror, what it was. Rick’s snails. One hundred of them, all with their butts high in the air. They crawled upon broken pieces of each other, watery yellow guts smeared on brown shells. The inside of the box was thickly encrusted with layers of snails moving over each other, hundreds of blindly reaching antennae, and the smell — a rotten tang. My phone was ringing.

“Hello?”

“Cheryl, it’s Carl calling from the cell phone store. I’m testing out a phone. Free call! How do I sound?”

“You sound very clear.”

“No noise? No echo?”

“No.”

“Let’s try the speakerphone function. Say something.”

“Speakerphone. Speakerphone.” A snail was on my hand; I knocked it back into the box.

“Yep, that works. It’s a nice little phone.”

“Should I hang up?”

“I don’t want you to feel like I just called to test the phone.”

“It’s okay.”

“Hang on, lemme ask this guy if we can talk a little longer.”

I listened to him ask if there was a time limit on the free call. An aggressive-sounding man said, “Talk all day if you want to.” Clee was on her knees and my hand was back down my pants before I even knew what happened. It smarted; whatever was on my fingers from the snails was stinging my privates. Just an aggressive voice wasn’t enough, though — she couldn’t suck a voice. Carl was standing by to watch but I couldn’t pull the picture together. Clee shuffled around the store on her knees, mouth open like a fish’s.

“We can talk all day!” Carl said.

Clee was making a beeline for her father. No, no, I thought. Not him. But my fingers were already accelerating, zeroing in.

“How’s tricks? How’s Clee doing?”

Clee latched on to him just as he said her name. Needless to say, he was shocked.

“She’s doing great.” It was hard not to sound breathless. “She loves her job.”

Shocked but not displeased. There was something that felt very right about this, wrong of course, but right. He put his hand on the back of her familiar head and pushed down a few times, helping her find the right rhythm.

“I’m coming down on Friday — how about I take you two out for a fancy dinner?”

Everyone else in the cell phone store was transfixed; someone whispered something about the law but the man with the aggressive voice pointed out that the law’s hands were tied because no nudity was involved. He was right — the bottom of Carl’s dress shirt parted around his member and was stuck to Clee’s lips, so each time she pulled her head away this curtain came with her. Forward and back, forward and back. Carl suddenly made a warrior noise to indicate he was about to shoot. He had wanted to last longer but his paternal pride had engulfed him.

“That would be great,” I said fervently.

“I’ll pick out a nice place,” he said. And then he creamed, not into his daughter’s mouth, which really would be against the law, but up inside his own shirt. Clee’s hand was under there, discreetly milking out the last drops. A flood of nausea and sadness washed over me. I missed Phillip’s familiar member. Where was I now and where was he? The snails were everywhere. Not only underfoot and glued to the kitchen walls, but all over the rest of the house. They weren’t the slow kind. One was procreating asexually on a lampshade. I watched two disappear under the couch. Was this the bottom or would my problem get worse? It was a problem. I had a problem.

SOMETHING LIKE THIS HAD HAPPENED to me once before. When I was nine a well-meaning uncle sent me a birthday card. It wasn’t really an appropriate card for a young girl; a group of rough-looking birds in rakish hats were playing cards with cigars in their beaks. It said something I can’t remember, but on the inside was a phrase like a virus or a self-replicating parasite waiting for a host. When I opened the card it flew out, gripping my brain with merciless talons: “Birds of a feather flock together.” It couldn’t be said just once, only repeated and repeated and repeated. Birdsofafeatherflocktogether, birdsofafeatherflocktogether. Ten million times a day: at school, at home, in the bath, there was no way to hide from it. It receded only as long as I was distracted; at any given moment a bird or flock of birds or a cigar or playing card or anything could bring it on. Birdsofafeatherflocktogetherbirdsofafeatherflocktogether. I wondered how I would live a full and normal life, how would I get married, have kids, hold a job with this handicap. I was under this spell, on and off, for a full year. Then, quite unknowingly, the same uncle sent a card for my tenth birthday. This one had a Norman Rockwell painting of a girl covering her eyes on the front. It read: “Another year older? I can’t bear to see!” And then on the inside: “Because what’s happening to you, is happening to me.” It worked like a gunshot. Each time a flock of grimy birds began to descend, I incanted What’shappeningtoyouishappeningtome and they immediately dispersed. The uncle is dead, but the card is still on my dresser. It hasn’t failed me once.

“Until now,” I finished gravely, leaning forward on the leather couch. “It doesn’t work on this new spell.”

Ruth-Anne nodded compassionately. We were moving past my inappropriate behavior in last week’s session.

“So we need an antidote,” she said. “A corrective, like the card, for this particular spell. But not What’shappeningtoyouishappeningtome, it’s too short.”

“That’s what I thought, that it might be too short.”

“You need something that will take a little time.”

We tried to think of a longish antidote.

“What songs do you know? ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’? Do you know that?”

“I really can’t sing. I can’t hold a tune,” I said.

“I don’t think that’s a problem, you just have to know the words. ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’?”

I bleated out “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

“What do you think?”

“Well…” I didn’t want to disparage her idea. “I’m not sure I want to sing ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ all day.”

“Of course you don’t. That’ll drive you crazier than the blow jobs. What’s a song you love? Is there a song you love?”

There was a song. A girl in college played it all the time; I was always hoping to hear it on the radio.

“I’m not sure I can sing it.”

“But you know the words?”

“Yes.”

“Just say them. Chant it.”

I felt hot and cold. I was shaking. I put my hand on my forehead and began.

“Will you stay in our Lovers’ Story?”

It sounded terrible.

“It’s by David Bowie.”

Ruth-Anne nodded encouragingly.

“If you stay you won’t be sorry

“’Cause weeeee believe in youuuu”

I kept gasping; the air wasn’t going in and out of my throat in the regular way.

“Soon you’ll grow so take a chance

“With a couple of Kooks

“Hung up on romaaaancing”

“That’s all I know.”

“How do you feel?”

“Well, I know the tune wasn’t right, but I think maybe I captured some of the energy of the song.”

“I mean about Clee.”

“Oh.”

“You got a little break.”

“I guess I did.”

The next morning I rose early, awaiting my first chance to test the song. I took a shower, gingerly. The spell kept its distance. I dressed and waved to Rick — he was looking at the snails with distress.

“Good morning!” I stepped outside with a hearty mug of tea.

“This situation is out of control.”

“Yes, I know. I ordered too many.”

“I will deal with four of them. That is the number of snails I am prepared to supervise. I don’t have the training to care for a herd.”

“Perhaps you can call them? Round them up?”

“Call them? How?”

“A snail whistle?”

The words were hardly out of my mouth when Clee began sucking on the tiny snail whistle between Rick’s legs. He was shocked and so forth, etc.

“Rick, I’m going to sing a song now.”

“I don’t think that will work. They have no ears.”

“Will you stay in our Lovers’ Story…” Rick politely lowered his eyes. He’d seen crazier things living on the streets. “If you stay you won’t be sorry, ’cause weee belieeeve in you.”

It sort of worked. It wasn’t like saying abracadabra to make a rabbit disappear, poof. It was like saying abracadabra billions of times, saying it for years, until the rabbit died of old age, and then continuing to say it until the rabbit had completely decomposed and been absorbed into the earth, poof. It took dedication, which I had when I first woke up — but my resolve decayed with the day. Faced with the option of singing or rubbing her warm puss through her jeans, I always decided tomorrow was the day to begin.

CARL WAS WEARING DRESSY LOAFERS that clicked on the sidewalk like tap shoes. There was some confusion about who should sit in the front seat — me, because I was older, or Clee, because she was the daughter. I sat in the back. We drove in silence.

The wine tasted off to Carl; he asked for another bottle.

“That’s why they let you try it,” he said. “They want you to be happy.”

Clee seemed bored but I knew her well enough to know this was just a look. Like me, she was wondering why we were here. What didn’t look bored were her nipples; they sat upright, attentive in a stretchy green tube dress. It was very hard to hum the song and make polite conversation at the same time.

Carl showed me his new cell phone and I felt a little sick. What if he was here because I had summoned him, given him an overwhelming and inappropriate desire to see his daughter? But he wasn’t looking at her. He took a long sip of wine, watching me over the rim of the glass.

“How many years have we known you, Cheryl?”

“Twenty-three.”

“That’s a lot of years. A lot of commitment, a lot of trust.”

When he said trust he gestured to Clee; she was wide-eyed and chewing on a hangnail. He knew. Kristof had told him about the old videos I had borrowed. He had figured out the rest. Bruises. The missing pummel suit.

“I think you know what I’m about to say.”

His face was stern. My chest heaved.

“Suzanne wanted to be here too, by the way. So this comes from both of us.” He raised his spoon in the air. “Cheryl, would you do us the great honor of joining the board?”

Clee shut her eyes for a moment, recovering. Carl watched a redness sweep over my face; luckily the rash wasn’t subtitled or waving any explanatory signs. I bowed my head.

“Carl and Suzanne and Nakako and Jim and Phillip can be on the board alone,” I began, “they are the best at being on the board, I am joining them even though I’m not much help, because I’m not good at being on the board.”

Carl dinged each of my shoulders with a spoon, not something we did in the office and probably not done in Japan either. Then he raised his glass.

“To Cheryl.”

Clee raised her glass, and maybe it was just our shared relief but I suddenly felt almost tender toward her. I hadn’t really considered her recently, apart from trying to mentally push tubers and polyps into her vagina or mouth. How was she doing these days? The wine was quite strong; its vapors expanded behind my forehead. Carl refilled my glass.

“Phil Bettelheim is stepping down. So we had an opening to fill.”

My face didn’t change, I made sure of that.

“But there’s no hard feelings. He made a major donation when he left.”

I smiled at my napkin. Of course the point of being on the board was to be near him, but taking his place was interesting too. Almost better. For the first time I understood cigars and the urge to light one up and lean back.

Clee and I had both ordered the Mandarin beef; mine was placed in front of me at an ordinary speed but Clee’s was lowered in slow motion. I looked up at the waiter’s long, red gullet as he swallowed drily. It had been a little while since I’d seen this kind of thing happen in reality and suddenly it didn’t seem like such a fantastic idea for her to hold this man’s stiff member for one to two minutes. Especially since Phillip’s was right there, swelling under the table. I shot the waiter a look to let him know she was spoken for; he hurried off.

Three minutes later he was back to ask how everything was. He used the question to lick Clee’s jugs with his doglike eyes.

“That waiter was way out of line,” I said after he left. This accidentally came out in a low, brusque voice, Phillip’s voice. It was a subtle thing; Carl didn’t notice. But Clee cocked her head, blinking. She shot her hand into the air, signaling the waiter.

“I think there’s something wrong with my chair.”

“Oh no,” he said, stricken.

“Yeah, I think it’s snagged my dress.” She stood up and the waiter examined the chair.

“I don’t see anything, but let me get a new chair.”

“Are you sure? Is there a snag on my dress?”

The waiter paused and then cautiously leaned down and studied Clee’s derriere.

She turned and smirked at him and his sly goatee came to the fore; their energies interlocked like a handshake, an agreement to have intercourse very soon.

“I’m Keith,” he said.

“Hi, Keith.”

I put my glass down with a bang and Keith and Clee exchanged looks of pretend fear. He thought I was her mother. He didn’t have enough experience to guess I might be stiff and shaking with violence. How shocked he would be when I bent her over the dinner table, pushed up her dress, and jimmied my member into her tight pucker. I’d thrust with both hands high in the air, showing everyone in the restaurant, including the chefs and sous-chefs and busboys and waiters, showing all of them I was not her mother.

With each course they grew more comfortable with each other’s bodies. He recited the dessert selections while giving her a shoulder massage.

“Do you know him?” Carl asked, confused.

“His name’s Keith,” she said.

But when Keith followed Clee out the door and asked for her number she said, “Why don’t you give me yours?”

She was silent on the ride home.

And the moment I shut the front door, she grabbed my hair and jerked my head back. A silly gasping noise escaped me. No scenario; she was fighting the old way. It took a moment to reorganize — to switch places with her and become Phillip. He shoved her against the wall. Yes. It had been a while since we’d given it any gusto; this was just the release I needed. She deserved it for her loose behavior. She slapped my breasts around, something she had never done before and not part of any simulation I had watched. It took a lot of concentration to experience what hitting hers would feel like. Maybe because of this I had an aggressive or manly facial expression, I don’t know. I don’t know what she saw.

“What are you doing?” she said, stepping back.

“Nothing.”

She took a few heavy breaths. “You’re thinking shit stuff.”

“No I’m not,” I said quickly.

“Yes you were. You were shitting on me. Shitting on my face or something.”

While I totally wasn’t, in general terms I guessed I was. I guessed I had been shitting on her unceasingly for the last month. She was waiting for me to say something — to explain, to defend myself.

“It wasn’t”—I was loath to say the word—“shit.”

“Shit, piss, cum, whatever. It was all over my—” She gestured to her face, hair, bosom. “Right? Am I right?”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She looked utterly betrayed, as betrayed as the most betrayed person in Shakespeare.

“I thought you, of all people, would”—her voice dropped to a whisper—“know how to be nice.”

“I’m really sorry.”

“Do you know how many times this has happened to me?” She pointed to her face as if she was actually covered in something.

I thought of different numbers — seventy-three, forty-nine, fifty.

“Always,” she said. “This always happens.”

She turned away, and because she had no room of her own she went into the bathroom, locking the door behind her.

The map of the world detached from the wall and slid noisily to the floor. I hung it back up slowly. Her feelings. I had hurt them. She had feelings and I had hurt them. I stared at the bathroom door, one hand against the wall to steady myself.

RUTH-ANNE SAID TO JUST stick with it. To not worry if the song was working or not working — just sing it. I’d have a few chaste and hopeful days, but something always pulled me down again. Once I began dreaming Clee was in Phillip’s shower, mutual soaping, and when I woke up I pretended I was still asleep while I creamed. Another time I shoved his stiff member into her mouth for a second just to prove I was the boss of me and I could do it once without falling back under the spell, but it turned out I was not the boss of me, the spell was, and doing it once meant doing it fifteen more times over the next two days, swiftly followed by a bog of shame. And she knew — now she could somehow tell when I had recently creamed on her. She talked with Kate on the phone about how much more money she needed to get her own place; it wasn’t much.

Sometimes I could only mumble, “Will you stay in our Lovers’ Story?” but it worked best if I really gave it my all, belting it out with full deep breaths, either mentally or in my car at full volume, “If you stay you won’t be sorry!” If she wasn’t home, I did it with some tai chi — like movements that seemed to bring the practice into my consciousness more deeply. Some work was being done on the sewer lines out front; they sawed the pavement with a deafening screech, and each time their yellow vehicle backed up it had to beep, beep, beep, beep. It took incredible concentration to mentally sing and maintain the rhythm of the song against the opposing rhythm of the beeps. I sang over the beeps three days in a row, five to seven hours a day, before finally marching out of the house. The yellow machine was quite formidable up close; its claw dwarfed me. And the man it belonged to, its master, was proportional to the claw. He was drinking Gatorade in big gulps; his head was tilted back and sweat was running down the sides of his enormous, meaty face. This was exactly the sort of man whose member I loved for Clee to suck.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Do you know how much backing up you’ll be doing today? I live in that house. The beeping is very loud.”

“A lot.” He looked behind himself. “Yeah, a lot of backing up today.”

A cool breeze moved past and I knew how nice that must feel on his sweaty face, but that was all. I didn’t know how anything else would feel to him.

“Sorry for the noise,” he added.

“Don’t be,” I said. “I appreciate everything you’re doing.”

He straightened up a little and I waited to see if his embarrassed dignity, so ripe with potential, would stir Clee. But no, nothing — the spell was broken. I had sung the song hard enough and often enough: now I never had to sing it again. I walked back to the house, noticing the neighbor’s orange tree for the first time. It almost didn’t look real. I breathed in the citrus, the ocean, the smog — I could smell everything. And see everything. My breath caught in my throat. I dropped down to the curb, bludgeoned by the vision of a middle-aged woman who couldn’t keep her hands off herself. Cars passed, some fast, some slowing down to stare and wonder.