I’m feeling aroused.

There’s no getting away from it.

I concentrate on smoking. The last drag burns my lips. I crush the butt against the ground, then do it again and again, making sure the thing is properly extinguished.

This is who I am. I am someone who takes the necessary precautions around combustible materials.

I am aroused.

It’s like an elephant in the corner of your sitting room. Teetering on the top of your television set. You can’t just ignore something like that.

I am not someone who is prone to random bouts of arousal. There is a time and a place for such things. My sex life is...well, it’s my own business really. Mine and Brendan’s. We have our routine. Routine sounds bad. What I mean is, it’s pleasant. Yes, it is. And no, perhaps it is not as spontaneous as it once was, but that’s only to be expected, surely? After all these years. And it’s fairly...well, noiseless I suppose. We got into that habit when the girls were little, and habits are hard to break. But I enjoy the intimacy of it. How familiar we are with each other.

I must be high because how else would I come up with the plan to ring Brendan and initiate phone sex.

It’s too late to ring Brendan.

And I’ve never initiated phone sex.

Or actual sex, come to think of it. I always leave it to Brendan.

I don’t think about any of these things. I am too busy being aroused. It’s a stampeding sort of arousal. Allows little opportunity to consider anything else.

I pick up my phone and ring Brendan. It rings and rings, then goes on to voice mail. I dial again. This time it rings four times, then Brendan’s voice, sluggish and hoarse, the way it gets when he’s been asleep.

“Hello, handsome,” I say.

“Who’s this?”

“It’s me,” I say in a slightly breathy voice.

“Terry?”

“Yes. Terry.”

“I rang you earlier.”

“That’s why I’m phoning you back.”

“At this hour?”

“Do you want to know what I’m wearing?”

A fumbling sound. Then, “Jesus, Terry, it’s after midnight.”

“And something sexy’s lurking in the dark,” I sing.

“It’s evil,” he says.

“What?”

“Something evil’s lurking in the dark.”

“Oh. Right. No, but, what I’m saying is...something sexy is lurking in the dark.”

“Are you drunk?”

“No!” I don’t tell him I might be stoned. I think I am. I feel most unlike myself.

Brendan says nothing. I hear him struggle into a sitting position on his side of the bed and I imagine my side of the bed, flat and empty, and something jolts through my body and I don’t know what it is but I’m worried that it might be relief. That I’m in a French château instead of lying on my side of the bed.

“Why are you calling, Terry?” Brendan asks, and his voice is tired and I am glad I can’t smell his breath which already will have acquired a stale intestinal smell and I feel bad, thinking that thought, and I’d love to hang up. No, I’d love to never have rung in the first place. But it’s too late now so I plunge on.