“Do you want to have sex?”

Silence.

“I’m kind of asleep,” he said finally.

She turned so that she was facing him.

“Jake and Yvette are having sex,” she said.

“It’s a mitzvah,” he said.

“No, it’s not,” she said. He seemed to be sleeping again, or pretending to. She felt a gut-punch of homesickness, the worst she’d felt since summer camp.

“Marlon,” she said. “Let me suck your cock.”

There was a long pause during which she regretted saying it, but would not allow herself to take it back.

“Now?” he said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Don’t you want that?”

Silence.

“I really need to sleep,” Marlon said.

“Come on,” she said. She made her voice an octave higher, slowed it to a sluggish drawl. “Wouldn’t that be nice for you? I bet it would.”

She put her hand on his leg.

“You don’t have to do that,” he mumbled.

She turned this over in her head. It was incredible, she concluded, the number of ways one could be condescended to.

“I don’t have to do anything, actually,” she said.

She turned away from him and edged herself closer to Jake and Yvette.

“There?” Jake said.

“Yeah,” said Yvette. “More.”

“Like that?”

“Yeah.”

She listened as things progressed, not terribly discreet to begin with, and becoming less so. She contemplated reaching out and touching them, grabbing Yvette’s foot, digging her nail down Jake’s spine. Once, in college, she’d come home from a bar and playfully launched herself into her roommate Patricia’s bed, only to discover that she’d interrupted a delicate, first-time session with the boy who would, much later, become Patricia’s husband. She’d pretended ignorance for an extra couple of seconds, enough time to absorb their warmth and embarrassment, and then fled the room. She’d taken refuge in the bed of a boy down the hall, but she’d made it absolutely clear: she was only there to sleep.

She lay awake until the frantic muffled conclusion of Jake and Yvette’s activity, and then listened as their breathing slowed and became regular. She had just drifted off again when there was a whisper in her ear.

“… and I’m actually pretty sorry about that,” Yvette was saying.

“Sure, okay,” Leslie said.

“I just think it’s important to follow certain paths that present themselves,” Yvette said. “That way I have fewer regrets and want to kill myself less often.”

Leslie didn’t say anything. Yvette seemed to believe that the world had infinite patience with her. Maybe it had so far; maybe it did. Leslie was not the world, though. And it had gotten late.

“I don’t think Jake is exceptional, if you were feeling some kind of anxiety about that,” Yvette said.

“Thanks,” Leslie said.

There was a long silence. It seemed possible that Yvette had fallen asleep. Leslie hoped this was the case.