Withheld, she was left with an itch she couldn’t scratch. Even now, after God knows how many orgasms, after she’d finished herself off with the vibrator, its surface still dewy with Rita’s juices, even now she found it maddening, infuriating, that she’d found a Graham Weider who’d become immune to her powers. Was he going to be on her list forever?
Oh, for Christ’s sake.
The answer came to her in a flash. With it she felt an emotional release none of the evening’s orgasms had managed to provide, and she drifted off and slept like a baby.
THIRTEEN
“Graham? It’s Kim. Please don’t hang up.”
A silence. Then, “All right.”
“First of all, I want to apologize. I don’t know what got into me yesterday.”
“That’s all right.”
“No,” she said, “it’s not all right. It was completely inappropriate and wholly unwarranted. I was disrespectful to you and made a fool of myself in the process.”
“I’ve had plenty of apologies to make,” he said. “So it’s not hard for me to accept yours, Kim.”
“Thank you.” She drew a breath. “Those apologies,” she said. “Would they be in connection with those meetings you’ve been going to?”
“It’s a 12-Step program,” he said, “and yes, making amends is very much a part of the program.”
“You told me the name of it, but I—”
“Sexual Compulsives Anonymous.”
“Right, SCA. Funny how I can’t seem to remember the name. Or maybe it’s not so funny after all.”
He waited, and she let the silence stretch.
Then she said, “My life’s not working so well these days.”
“I see.”
“Not just these days. For quite a while now. What was the term you used? ‘Acting out’? It seems like all I’m ever doing is acting out, or trying to, or thinking about it.”
“I understand, Kim. I’ve been there.”
“Can anyone go to these meetings? Or do you have to be a member?”
“Would you like to come to a meeting?”
“Would I like to? Probably about as much as I’d like to have root canal. But it’s that or lose the tooth. Graham, it’s not a question of would I like to. I think it’s something I have to do.”
“Hold on a minute. Okay, let’s see. There’s a meeting in downtown Seattle this afternoon, but I’ll be busy. If you don’t mind going by yourself—”
“I think I’d be more comfortable if you went with me.”
“Well, let me see. How’s lunch time tomorrow? There’s a 12:30 meeting I sometimes go to in downtown Redmond near Marymoor Park. I could meet you there and we could walk in together.”
“I’m not sure I could find it. And on a bike—”
“No, that’s too far by bicycle. Maybe—”
“Graham? Suppose I come to where you work? I could meet you in the parking lot. At twelve? Or maybe a little earlier, so you can tell me a little about it before we actually walk in?”
She stayed out all day, ate dinner by herself at an Indian restaurant that served bland food dumbed down for the Western palate. She got the waiter to bring her hot sauce, and that helped, but she’d have been happier if the heat had been cooked into the food, not spooned on top of it.
It was almost eight when she got home, and she steeled herself to walk in to the smell of a home-cooked meal, and a housemate who wanted a reprise of the previous evening. But she encountered neither; there’d been no cooking since last night’s dinner, and no car in the garage.
There was leftover coffee and she reheated a cup and drank it at the kitchen table while she read that month’s Vanity Fair. She’d almost finished the coffee when she heard the garage door ascend, and she stayed where she was until she heard Rita and a man in conversation. She rose quickly, scooped up her cup and the magazine, and was in her room with the door closed before the two of them had cleared the threshold.
“Kimmie? Are you awake?”
No one, not even a devout Crystal Methodist, could have been more thoroughly awake. But did she have to admit it? If she just kept silent—
“Kimmie?”
If she kept silent, Rita would walk right in.
“I’m awake,” she said. “But kind of drifty.”
“He’s gone. I sent him home.”
Oh? Were you with someone? I never would have guessed.
“I suppose you heard us.”
“Just barely.”
“He was a guy who hit on me a couple of times. I was never interested. But after last night — well, let’s just say I was in the mood.”
No kidding.
“Kimmie, you’re half asleep. We’ll talk at breakfast.”
Footsteps receded. Rita’s door opened and closed.
And she lay in bed, waiting for daybreak.
A toasted English muffin and a cup of coffee. And Rita, wearing a belted housecoat, with her own English muffin and her own cup of coffee, and a full report.
“We fucked on the couch,” she said. “He’s going bald, and he could stand to lose a few pounds, but he was okay otherwise. Nice circumcised dick, medium in size. We didn’t do anything you couldn’t find in the Kama Sutra, but it was interesting enough. I mean, I came a lot.”
“I know.”
“That was on purpose. The noise, I mean. I knew you could hear, and the idea of you hearing made it a lot more exciting. You know what I was wishing?”
“What?”
“That you could sneak in and watch.”
“Would you have liked that?”
“Are you kidding? I’d have loved it.”
“It never even occurred to me.”
“I didn’t think it would. Or that you’d do it, even if you thought of it. You know what was going on in my head the whole time? Absolutely the whole time? How hot it would be when I told you all about it.”
“Really.”
“How’s that for weird? I mean, it’s like normal to think about fucking while you masturbate, but having fantasies of masturbating while somebody’s got his dick in you?”
“But I can see how it could happen.”
“So you don’t think I’m weird?”
“Oh, you’re plenty weird, Rita. But not in a bad way.”
“I’ll settle for that. And I could probably say the same about you.”
“Moi?”
“You and that guy who smelled.”
“Yeah, I can see where you could call me weird for that one.”
“I might have done it myself,” Rita said, “but I’d have wanted to kill him afterward.”
Oh, sweetie, if you only knew—
“Oops,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’ve got an appointment I’ll be lucky to get to on time.”
“You want me to drive you?”
“No, I’ll be fine with the bike. But I was thinking maybe tonight—”
“We’re on the same page. But I’m not gonna bother cooking. You up for it if I order a pizza?
“Sure. And I don’t know when I’ll be home, so don’t order it until I get here.”
“And this time I’ll buy the wine. How do you say what we had, Nooey San George’s?”
“Close enough.”
“And don’t worry that this is going to make us lesbians. I mean, that was a guy I was on the couch with, you know?”
“I don’t know if I’m ready for this,” she said. “the thing is, I still get a lot of pleasure out of it.”
“Acting out?”
“Right. I realize I’m compulsive about it, and it’s almost as if I don’t have any choice, but, you know, it feels good.”
“Of course it does,” he said. “And you may not be ready to stop. It always felt good to me, too.”
“It did?”
“But less so,” he said, “toward the end. That’s not why I stopped, I stopped because sexual compulsivity was making my life unmanageable, but the pleasure did drop off as time went on. Even at the moment of release I’d find myself thinking about the next time. And, of course, regretting everything that was regrettable about the present moment.”