“There, that’s better. Isn’t that better?”
“Hey, I can’t see to dial.”
“Why don’t you sit by me?”
“Where are they going? That’s my bedroom. Why’d they close the door?”
“George, they’re engaged.”
“Dibs on the couch.”
“Shove over you guys.”
“Okay. Quit your pushing.”
“All the good spots are taken,” Louise says.
“Did they just go into my bathroom together?”
“Maybe Bernadette had to go.”
“They’re running the shower.”
“I know, you don’t have clean towels. Maybe they could…” Louise giggles.
“What did you say?”
“Shh. Ruth and Charles.”
“We heard you, Lulu.”
“Well, mind your business then. You weren’t supposed to hear me. I was talking to George.”
“Don’t, Charles, you could hurt the baby!”
“Do you like that?” she whispers. “Does that feel good?”
“Yes,” George Mills says.
“Charlie, it could.”
“Hmnn. Hmmnn.”
“You’re shy, aren’t you? You don’t open your mouth when you kiss. Didn’t you ever french a girl, George?”
“I french.”
“Kch, kch. Take it easy, you want to cut off my air?”
Ruth, beside him on the sofa, touches his arm.
“What?”
“Shh. Listen.”
Louise giggles. “Ruth, that’s mean. They’re in love.”
“He’s not going to sit next to me in those sticky pants.”
“They’ve only been in there two minutes,” Charles says. “Boy, was he hot to trot!”
“He couldn’t help it,” Ruth says. “She’s been teasing him all evening.”
“Well he’s calmed down now all right, all right.”
“I swear,” Louise says, “wham bam. You men have no staying power.”
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t we have a contest?”
“A control contest,” Charles says.
“Everybody?” Louise asks.
“Sure. Tell those guys in there. Herb’s already out of it. Herb’s already lost.”
“Hey, you can’t go in there.”
“Bet?”
Charles gets up and walks to the bathroom door. He opens it. “We’re having a control contest. Herb’s out of it. On your mark, get set, go.” He leans his mouth against the bedroom door. “We’re having a control contest.”
“I thought Herb’s out of it. That he already lost.”
“Is Ellen Rose out of it?”
“Oh sure,” Ruth says. “With her fella already come? That’ll be the day, won’t it, Louise?”
“You should have seen it, George. She’s all lathered up. What a pair of tits on that Bernadette.”
“Charlie!”
“Well it’s true.”
“Nicer than mine?”
“No, not nicer than yours. Not nicer than yours at all. Just bigger,” Charles tells his wife.
“Only because she’s four months’ pregnant. It’s all milk.”
“You’re pregnant too. She doesn’t even show yet.”
“She shows in her titties.”
“Are we really having a control contest?” Ray shouts from the bathroom.
“Is it all right, George?”
“Why not? There’s no TV, I’m out of cocoa, I haven’t got a phonograph, and only one station on the radio works.”
“Sure,” Charles shouts back, laughing. “Come, I say come, as you are.” He turns to George. “Count ten to yourself and start moaning.”
“Charlie, that’s cheating.”
“No it’s not, it’s a joke. We’ll make monkeys out of them.” He moans, he purls. “Everybody,” he hisses.
“The water’s running. They can’t even hear us.”
“No fair you guys,” Charles calls. “Either turn off the shower or open the door. Hey,” he calls. “you guys in this or not? — Okay,” he whispers, “go.” In seconds he begins to moan again. He growls, he coos. He’s the very troubadour of sexual melody.
“How come you never sound this way in real life?” Ruth Oliver asks.
“Come on, come on,” Charles tells his wife. “Oh. Oh yeah,” he says less quietly. “I lose,” he cries. “I lose.”
“I guess we ought to humor him,” Ruth says. “Mnn,” she purrs, “mnn.”
Mary looked at him wide-eyed. “Is this true? Did this happen?”
“I’m in a state of grace,” George Mills said. “I don’t have to lie.”
Now Louise is chirping. Grace notes, diapasons, the aroused tropes of all dilate rapture.
“Louise?” the child said.
“All of them,” George Mills said. “Doting love solos, Miss. Arias of concupiscence. Choirs of asyncopatic, amatory, affricative, low-woodwind drone.”
“What a racket!” Mary said.
“Yelps, cries, askew pitch. All the strobic gutturals of heat.”
It’s quiet for a moment. Then, “This one’s finished,” Bernadette calls from the bathroom.
“Oh God,” Ellen Rose shrieks in George Mills’s bed, “me, me tooooo!”
“Go for it,” Charles urges.
And, in the dark, George Mills can just make out his leer, his wife Ruth’s. Louise is actually touching him now. His flies are in her fist. George’s left hand is under her dress, his fingers snagged in her garter belt, his palm hefting flesh, the hard little button at the top of the strap. “Don’t, you’ll tear it,” she says in his ear wetly. He introduces his fingers beneath the tough edges of her girdle. Where they are baffled by other textures. Elastic, the metal of fasteners, silk, hair, damp, curled as pica c’s. She squirms from his hand.
“Easy,” she says, “take it easy. Don’t hurt me.”
“It’s all this stuff,” he says, and tries to raise her dress, to pull it out from under her behind.
“No,” she says, “don’t,” and moves away from him. This is when he tries to pull her down, when his head falls into Ruth Oliver’s lap, thighs closed prim as pie. He feels a man’s hand at his ear. It’s Charles’. Mr. and Mrs. Oliver are holding hands across his face.
“Aw, he’s suffering,” Louise’s friend Ruth says. “Put him out of his misery, Lu.” And when Ruth’s friend Louise moves her body against him. When his nerves shiver, spasm, when he whimpers his release. Not trumpets, not brazen blares. No boomy bray of barking majesty, but whimper, whine, fret. An orgasm like a small complaint.
The door to Mills’s bathroom opens and Ray and Bernadette come into the living room. They are dressed. When Ray turns the light on in the hall George Mills can see that their hair isn’t even wet.
“Maybe we ought to go,” Charles says.
“What about the lovebirds?” Ray asks, indicating the closed door to Mills’s bedroom.
“Knock on it. Tell them maybe we ought to go.”
“Hey, break it up you guys,” Ray says into the woodwork. “Give it a rest.”
“How about that?” Herb says as he leads Ellen Rose into the living room. “It’s not even midnight. Want to play some strip poker? Where’s your cards, George?”
“Weren’t you mad?” Mary asked.
“What for? To be proved right? She was a virgin. She was only protecting herself. She was a virgin. She wasn’t in nature yet. None of them were.”
“Two of those girls were married. They were pregnant.”
“Yes,” George Mills said, “they were protecting the unborn. It was hygiene is all. Marriage like a sleepover, like a pajama party. If it helped the husbands for the wives to talk dirty, if it helped to be together, to make crank calls, if it helped to excite each other until they didn’t need excitement or protection either anymore, what harm did it do?”