Kelly rolled her eyes and said she’d been there, more than once. Eduardo wanted to hear a little more about Benjamin, but Olga turned her attention to Sims, sizing him up with a playful expression. She had a cute, slightly doughy face that she spiced up with dramatic eye shadow and long fake lashes.
“What about you, Doctor? What’s your professional opinion?”
“About threeways?” Sims made a slow motorboat noise with his lips. “You’re asking the wrong guy. I’m married with six-year-old twins. These days it’s pretty much a miracle if I get a two-way.”
Olga laughed and touched her glass to his. “You’re funny.”
Sims figured they’d move on to a different subject, but they were just getting started. Kelly said she’d had her first threesome back in high school, when she got seduced by a couple whose toddler she was babysitting, which meant that she actually got paid for it. Olga claimed that she’d once started making out with her dental hygienist right in the middle of a cleaning, and that the dentist eventually wandered in and joined the fun. Sims kept saying, Come on, that didn’t happen, but what did he know? Just because he’d washed up on a sexual desert island, that didn’t mean everybody else was stranded, too, doomed to a lifelong diet of coconuts. Some people were living it up on the party boat, enjoying the big buffet.
“You did one together, right?” Eduardo asked.
“Oh, God.” Kelly hid her face in her hands. “That was a disaster.”
“You were fine,” Olga said. “It was totally my fault.”
“She got the giggles,” Kelly told Sims. “And then I got them, too, and we just couldn’t go through with it. The guy got so mad.”
“Who was he?” Sims wanted to know.
Kelly shrugged, like the guy was just an extra in their movie. “Some asshole we met on vacation. Really full of himself.”
“It’s weird,” Olga observed. “I thought it would be nice, ’cause we know each other so well. But when push came to shove, it was like, Yeah, she’s my best friend, but there is no way I’m gonna eat her pussy.”
“Your loss,” Kelly said, and they all laughed.
Sims’s phone buzzed, delivering yet another text from his wife asking when he planned on coming home. Soon, he responded for the third time, grateful for the elasticity of the word, the way it renewed its promise with each passing moment, even as the thought of actually going home grew more and more oppressive. He could picture his arrival, the humiliating interrogation at the door, the way he’d have to account for his whereabouts and grovel for forgiveness, like a teenager who’d broken curfew. It was just too boring to contemplate, such a soul-killing exercise, and it made him wonder if Jackie felt as trapped as he did, as if they’d been cast in a bad play they’d never even auditioned for.
EDUARDO LEFT around ten-thirty, but Sims stuck around to polish off the pitcher. Even in retrospect, he found it hard to blame himself for what happened next. He wasn’t flirting with either of his new friends — not even with Olga, who was sitting so close, her knee bumping companionably against his beneath the table — nor did he possess even the remotest hope of getting laid. He was just happy to be there, killing time, postponing the inevitable return to real life. And he certainly wasn’t making a sexual overture when he stood up and announced that he was off to the men’s room.
“Want some company?” Olga asked.
“Excuse me?” Sims was pretty drunk by then and wasn’t sure he’d heard right.
Olga held his gaze. “I asked if you wanted some company.”
“In the men’s room?”
“Not this again,” Kelly groaned. “What is it with you?”
“I’m curious,” Olga explained. “I just want to see what’s it like in there.”
“It’s really not that great,” Sims assured her.
“All right.” Olga held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “If it makes you uncomfortable…”
He heard the taunt in her voice, the junior high challenge to his manhood.
“I don’t mind,” he said. “You want to go, let’s go.”
“You sure? I wouldn’t want to put you in an awkward position…”
“It’s a free country,” Sims told her. “You can do whatever you want.”
Olga flashed a victorious grin at Kelly as she slid out of the booth. Even in heels Olga was tiny, at least six inches shorter than Sims, but he felt like a little boy as she took him by the hand and led him through the deserted restaurant. They turned down a narrow hallway alongside the kitchen and stopped in front of a door marked GENTLEMEN. Sims pushed it open and stepped inside, with Olga following close behind. To his great relief, he saw that it was empty.
“Welcome.” He gestured at their humble surroundings — the side-by-side sink and urinal, the lone stall with its swinging door, the overflowing trash can, the dingy tile floor. In the eternal contest between piss and disinfectant, the smell of piss had a slight edge. “I wasn’t expecting visitors.”
“It’s lovely,” she observed. “If I had a men’s room, it would look just like this.”
“I’m glad you like it.” Sims smiled uncertainly. “But if you don’t mind, I kinda have to use the facilities.”
“Go right ahead,” she told him. “I’m just a fly on the wall.”
He could have ducked into the stall, but the dare, as he understood it, required him to use the urinal. He was just drunk enough not to be embarrassed as he unzipped and made the necessary adjustments, turning his body at a slight angle to preserve his modesty. Once he was under way, he glanced over his shoulder and saw Olga standing against the wall beside the hand dryer, watching him with friendly, non-prurient interest. It was a strangely intimate moment, and Sims could feel himself blushing as he turned around and finished his business. Neither of them said a word as he washed and dried his hands, then followed her out of the restroom.
Kelly was gone when they returned to the table. Sims left a tip, then walked Olga out to her car, a Mini Cooper parked at the dark end of the lot. They kissed for a few seconds, and then he bent her over the hood, tugged her panties out of the way, and fucked her from behind, clutching a fistful of her dark hair to steady himself. They didn’t have a condom, so he pulled out; she turned around and knelt uncomplainingly on the gravel, smiling up at him like a suitor about to pop the question.
Sims experienced a powerful moment of euphoria in the run-up to his orgasm — it was almost as if his soul had levitated from his body — but it passed too quickly and he returned to himself with a thud, as if he’d fallen from the sky. He thought suddenly of Jackie — Oh, shit! — and then of Heather, standing in front of her daughter’s coffin. Really fucking awesome, Dr. Sims. When he came, it felt like a rush of sorrow, as if he were pumping molten sadness into Olga’s mouth, though she later remarked that it tasted pretty good, a little sweeter than average.
SIMS REALIZED pretty quickly that the music he wanted to play required an electric guitar. Money was tight — he was paying the condo rent on top of his jumbo mortgage — so he focused on used equipment, checking Craigslist every day, making frequent visits to Rosedale Discount Music and the Guitar Center at the mall, hoping to stumble on a bargain. He came across a few decent instruments in his price range, but nothing that was anywhere near as good as the candy-apple Stratocaster he’d owned back in high school.