Evelyn watched herself, too, wishing for even more distance from her body so she could photograph the three of them. She remembered wanting this, her two lovers together, but that memory felt distant, as if it belonged to someone else. But who would that be? Her, and yet not her. As she watched Hal and Rebecca together, she could recall wanting to eat experience, inhale it, and pictured her past self with each of them. But now these memories frightened her. She put down the camera to rub her palms together, still feeling the sharp slaps they’d given Rebecca’s ass back at home, slaps to her as well as from her, like fire on her hands. She didn’t need any more pictures.
She wanted to be alone with Hal, to kiss him, to hold him, to guide the Herald into herself instead of Rebecca. She wanted Rebecca to vanish. Is this love, she wondered, this act of exclusion? She had always imagined love expanding to include everyone, every experience, but never this contraction to a couple, rotating through the universe together yet always somehow pulling on each other, never completely satisfied, stuck in a claustrophobic sort of balance.
Meanwhile she felt bound to play her part. What was wrong, she decided, was Rebecca, who seemed to be dividing instead of connecting, Rebecca who was not letting her in now to share the Herald, Rebecca who would keep going unless Evelyn pushed her aside. Rebecca was ignoring Evelyn in favour of doing things two by two instead of three.
Hal was amazed at how good Rebecca’s frog actually felt, how warm and smooth yet with a bit of roughness to those ruby eyes that sent the Herald over the top before He knew what hit Him. Rebecca drank hungrily — well, he thought, she must be, late as it was and no real dinner.
She lay down beside him and whispered in his ear, “See? It’s a gentle frog.” She gave one last delicate lap to the Herald, who rolled away, satisfied.
Hal didn’t want to say he’d feared the frog would slice him open, because the Herald, who wasn’t such a coward, had welcomed the frog, as if the two of them belonged together. Hal wanted to be included in his own triangulation of Herald, frog, Hal.
Since they seemed to be going in pairs, Evelyn cleared her throat to remind them it was her turn. Of course sex is exclusion when you have to wait in line. Her fantasy had been about something beyond waiting your turn.
Hal raised his hands to her shoulders. “You’re tense,” he said, with a tone of surprise.
“Yes,” Evelyn agreed, thinking, Who wouldn’t be after watching your boyfriend make it with your lover right in front of you. But then she remembered a former self, who would have wanted this experience. Perhaps what was wrong with this scene was her own reluctance.
She let Hal rub her shoulders while she lay on her back with her head in his lap, the Herald limp beneath her cheek. Great, she thought. My turn and he’s dead.
But that was exactly the problem: this wasn’t supposed to be about turns, and it was up to her to change the action. With one foot she nudged Rebecca, who had picked up the camera. “No pictures,” she whispered.
Rebecca looked puzzled.
“I want the three of us together,” said Evelyn.
“A picture of the three of us?”
“No, the real three.”
Her mind moved quickly. Intercourse wouldn’t do because clearly that would only work for two. Hal’s hands moved to her breasts, fingers circling the nipples until they hardened, helped by Evelyn’s own remembrance of Rebecca’s ass, whipped pink and glowing. She rubbed her foot on Rebecca’s hand until Rebecca finally bent her head to Evelyn’s clit, moving her jewel tongue over and around it.
“Turn around,” Evelyn whispered. “I want to see if your ass is still pink.”
“It can’t still be.” Rebecca laughed as she turned and straddled Evelyn, never taking her tongue away.
Evelyn reached a hand to Rebecca’s ass, stroking one cheek, then the other, enjoying the smooth, loose texture like a pudding, like a risen souffle, looking almost like something rich she could plunge her hands into, except here she couldn’t because flesh was resistant; unlike baked concoctions of milk and egg, it was alive. She put a finger in Rebecca’s creamy cunt, then two, then three, pressing her thumb to the button of the clit. Rebecca’s tongue froze, the jewelled frog resting on Evelyn’s own swollen gem for a moment before resuming its circumrotation.
Evelyn rolled her head over the Herald, who was gradually rising again. She lifted herself, reaching for Him with her free hand, but this was awkward and made her neck ache. She closed her thighs on Rebecca’s head.
“Rearrangement!” she called. With three people someone had to give orders.
Rebecca and Evelyn disentangled themselves and sat up. We need a map, thought Evelyn, and suddenly laughed out loud.
“What?” asked Hal, his hands empty at his side.
“All right, I’ll direct this shot. But no camera,” Evelyn warned Rebecca, who appeared to be reaching for it again. “Now, let’s get into, like, a circle.” She was improvising, but she didn’t want them to suspect because she understood that what she was enjoying most about this evening was the sense of being in charge. Under her control, nothing bad would dare happen. “A triangle in a circle. Rebecca, on your knees behind me. I love that frog so I wanted you to press it into my cunt. And I’ll be on my knees behind Hal. And then Hal. .” She arranged him so that he lay on his side with one hand on Rebecca’s mound. Now Evelyn could take the Herald between her lips, but could give no more orders. She concentrated on sucking while simultaneously feeling Rebecca’s jewelled tongue nudge her clit-button, then dip to the buttonhole.
She was amazed this was working. Every once in awhile Rebecca would suck in her breath and pull out her tongue, which meant Hal was doing his part. She could hear them all breathing in unison, incredibly, unbelievably coordinated, three bodies moving as one. She wondered if this could happen with five people, six, an infinite orgy, the whole world coming at once in a giant circle, one orgasm that would end war, poverty, starvation; human meanness forever wiped from the globe.
Hal felt Evelyn’s mouth, firm and warm on the Herald she knew so well, and realized he’d never properly introduced him to Rebecca, not by name. The Herald hadn’t seemed to think that was important so neither did Hal, who was now at one with his Herald, moving slightly in Evelyn’s eager mouth. He pulled his finger from Rebecca’s cunt and sniffed its strange sweet scent, something like an oatmeal cookie, a yeasty vanilla. Evelyn, he reflected, was more smoky, earthy; he remembered sitting outside by his grill, smoking a salmon while thinking of her. He ran his fingers from Rebecca’s clit down to the opening and back, finally sliding in four fingers, moving them in and out while his palm pressed her mound in a rhythm to match the motion of Evelyn’s tongue, reflecting how the part and the whole of him were also pulsating rhythmically together.
Hal came first, the Herald squirting deep into Evelyn’s throat, and while she swallowed she felt a rush of warmth across her stomach as her own contractions began, exactly like Hal’s but with nothing coming out except the liquids already swimming between her thighs. Rebecca still kept up the rhythm of their former joint breathing until with one large exhalation, she stopped, collapsing on top of Evelyn, who waited for her to start breathing again.
“Well,” Evelyn said. She wanted to give linguistic form to their success, but she couldn’t get her tongue to move. She thought that she had, finally, learned something, though she wasn’t sure what. That three could be as good as a pair? That it was perfectly fair for Hal to have two orgasms because the first had been for the Herald, the other for him? She lay between Hal and Rebecca, holding their hands. “Reach over me and hold each other’s hands, too,” she said, adding, “please,” so as not to appear to be ordering them around. But when they did clasp hands, she realized this was a circle, not a triad. It was an enclosed, fluid shape, without angles, that could function with many, or just two. The circle drifted, the circle slept as one.