“What do you mean, what do I mean?”
“I mean, I’m assuming these were kids from your school, or what?”
“No, Bob, I told you, the boys at school were so awful. I couldn’t think of them in that way at all.”
“Then who were they?”
“Just some guys.”
Bob’s entire body stiffened in the bed. His eyes were shut up tight and Connie, lying on her side, chin resting in her palm, watched him. “I’m not going to talk about it if you’re going to make it into a big deal.”
“I’m not. It’s not. It feels like it is but I know it’s not.”
“It’s not for me,” said Connie.
“Right,” said Bob. “I understand.” He knew it wasn’t in his personal interest, but he couldn’t help himself and had to ask for details of the events. Nothing graphic, he clarified, just the soft pencil sketch; Connie agreed to give him what he thought he wanted. “Guy number one,” she said, “a carpenter replacing the tread on the stairwell to the basement. He was in his early forties, sleepy, friendly, big belly, divorced. That my father would leave us alone together should give you an idea of the man’s looks and status. This was not Gary Cooper, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“Weeks before I’d made up my mind to get the whole business over with, and that the next time I had the chance, I’d take it. Well, here it was. So I put on some lipstick and brought the guy a piece of toast, which I watched him eat, and after, I asked, ‘How was the toast?’ ‘Very good,’ he said. I asked him if he was attracted to me and he put on his glasses and squinted. ‘Sure,’ he said. I asked him if he wanted to come to my room and he looked at his watch.” Connie winked luxuriously. “He was sweet, actually. I mean, he wasn’t a pig or anything, and he was physically clean, which was nice. But the act itself was pretty sad. After, he stood at the foot of my bed, staring at the walls of my room. He had this huge, fleshy back with love handles, but a tiny little ruby-red ass, like a ten-year-old boy who’d just been spanked. And there he was, looking at my diploma, my drawings of ponies and fairies, and he said, ‘I shouldn’t have done this.’ He got dressed and I put on my robe and walked him to the door. We shook hands, and he said, a second time, ‘I shouldn’t have done this.’ I never saw him again. Not that I was hoping to. And that was guy number one.
“Guy number two was the manager at the supermarket. He’d been chatty with me since the tenth grade. After I came of age and graduated, he started flirting in a sort of reckless way. And I had the feeling he knew I’d done it, right, with the carpenter. Not knew-knew, but knew on the caveman level, and that was interesting to me. I noticed he was wearing a ring and said ‘I can see you’re married,’ and he told me, ‘But barely, barely.’ That made me laugh. And I figured, I already did it the once, what’s the difference? I guess I was hoping it would be more fulfilling than the first time in terms of, you know, the physical sensations. But it was exactly the same as with the carpenter.”
Bob said, “And where did this happen?”
“With the supermarket guy?”
“Yes.”
“At the supermarket.”
“Where in the supermarket?”
“Romeo had a cot in his office. I call him Romeo because that was his name — that was the name on his name tag. And it looked like he was living in that office of his, so maybe he was telling the truth about being barely married.”
Bob said, “What about the third guy.”
“The third guy was a cop.”
Bob held up his hand. He had heard enough and wished to hear no more. And he had no defense besides immaturity but he behaved with petulance that night, seized by jealousy, an emotion he’d hardly known before, but that now possessed him entirely. Connie placated him for a time, as much as she cared to, but soon she’d had enough of it and fell asleep. When Bob finally slept himself, his dreams were cuckold narratives, and he woke up with his upper body falling fully out of the bed. Connie still was sleeping; as Bob watched her face, he recognized the smallness of his behaviors and took hold of his emotions, waking Connie up to apologize to her. She welcomed him back with congratulations and assurances of her uncommon affections for him in particular, and again they succumbed to friendly tradition and again it was expedient but Bob told her he would soon become an expert love-maker and Connie said that she was certain it was so and that she was supportive of every manner of self-improvement.
Days later, and Bob and Connie were riding a bus together. They had no destination but were riding to ride, Connie attempting to show Bob what it was she liked about public transportation. In this she failed, or perhaps the failure was Bob’s, but he never managed to achieve even a minor affection for the bus-riding act, which isn’t to say he wasn’t enjoying himself at this particular moment. By now they were immersed in their affinity for one another and their future was open before them. It was a time of sterling certitude and grand plans, a kingdom coming into focus through the lens of a telescope, and they were riding in silence across the southwest quadrant of the city, holding hands and gazing out the window in the dreamy way lovers sometimes did and do. Bob noticed an Italian eatery called Three Guys Pizza; he pointed and told Connie, “Look, there’s your favorite restaurant.” Connie read the sign and turned to Bob and was about to give voice to her response when the man across the aisle, a ruddy duffer in a tweed cap and London Fog trench coat, leaned over and asked Connie, “Excuse me miss, did I hear correctly that you’re a fan of the pizzeria we just passed?” Bob said, “Oh, she’s a very passionate fan of that pizzeria, sir. You should hear all the things she has to say about Three Guys.” The duffer was impressed; he shook his head smartly to the side and issued a brief, sharp outbreath. Dinging the bell, he stood to exit. “I live nearby, you see,” he explained. “And I love a good recommendation. Citizen to citizen, like in the animal kingdom — birds telling other birds what’s coming their way, from one treetop to the next.” The man flung up his tall collar, cinched his belt, and was away. Bob turned to Connie to communicate his surprise at the unexpected poetry of the moment. She still was watching Bob, not in a friendly or unfriendly way, but levelly. She had been holding on to her response during the duffer’s interruption; now she passed it off for Bob to hold: “It’s four guys including you, sweetheart. Four guys and counting.”
ONE NIGHT, AFTER STAYING TOO LATE AT HIS APARTMENT, AND AFTER having drunk two too many fruit jars of wine, Bob laid himself out on Ethan’s itchy green couch and made to pass his night there. He’d been asleep some hours when there came a knock at the door. Ethan crossed the room in his underwear to answer; he led a heavily perfumed female figure through the darkness and back into his bedroom. According to the noises made by the visitor, their communications were successful on a scale Bob could not fathom; which is to say that he truly did not understand what was going on in that room. He stared at the ceiling and waited for the noises to end. He smoked a cigarette, then lit a second off the first. When the duo at last achieved finale and completion, the noiselessness was so sudden and total, it was to Bob a noise in itself, and there came from somewhere deep in the building a round of applause, neighbors of Ethan’s who were likely used to such sounds emanating from the apartment. In the morning Bob had a headache fashioned by the wine but also confusion, envy. He brewed a pot of coffee and sat at the kitchen table, waiting for Ethan and the woman to emerge from the bedroom, but then Ethan entered by the front door, alone, and with a pink box of pastries under his arm. “Good morning!” he said.