Yes, it turns out, yes he would, and they bump, and fumble, and unzip, and she is gumdrops everywhere, yet stately as a statue, planetary in her breadth, a contour map of some snowy land where he has never been; not since Ruth has he had a woman this big. Naked, she makes him naked, even kneeling to unlace his shoes, and then kneeling to him in the pose of Jill to Skeeter, so he has glided across a gulf, and stands where last night he stared. He gently unlinks her, lowers her to the floor, and tastes a salty swamp between her legs. Her thighs part easily, she grows wet readily, she is sadly unclumsy at this, she has indeed been to bed with many men. In the knowing way she handles his prick he feels their presences, feels himself competing, is put off, goes soft. She leaves off and comes up and presses the gumdrop of her tongue between his lips. Puddled on the floor, they keep knocking skulls and ankle bones on the furniture legs. The puppy, hearing their commotion, thinks they want to play and thrusts his cold nose and scrabbling paws among their sensitive flesh; his fern-furry busy bustlingness tickles and hurts. This third animal among them re-excites Rabbit; observing this, Peggy leads him down her hall, the dark crease between her buttocks snapping tick-tock with her walk. Holding her rumpled dress in front of her like a pad, she pauses at the boys’ door, listens, and nods. Her hair has gone loose. The puppy for a while whimpers at their door and claws the floor as if to dig there; then he is eclipsed by the inflammation of their senses and falls silent beneath the thunder of their blood. Harry is afraid with this unknown woman, of timing her wrong, but she tells him, “One sec.” Him inside her, she does something imperceptible, relaxing and tensing the muscles of her vagina, and announces breathily “Now.” She comes one beat ahead of him, a cool solid thump of a come that lets him hit home without fear of hurting her: a fuck innocent of madness. Then slides in that embarrassment of afterwards—of returning discriminations, of the other re-emerging from the muddle, of sorting out what was hers and what was yours. He hides his face in the hot cave at the side of her neck. “Thank you.”

“Thank you yourself,” Peggy Fosnacht says, and, what he doesn’t especially like, grabs his bottom to give her one more deep thrust before he softens. Both Jill and Janice too ladylike for that. Still, he is at home.

Until she says, “Would you mind rolling off? You’re squeezing the breath out of me.”

“Am I so heavy?”

“After a while.”

“Actually, I better go.”

“Why? It’s only midnight.”

“I’m worried about what they’re doing back at the house.”

“Nelson’s here. The others, what do you care?”

“I don’t know. I care.”

“Well they don’t care about you and you’re in bed with someone who does.”