I was trying to be nice, trying not to want her. The night’s debacle had left me charged. Why was her arm skin so soft? We were here together in this perfect glimpse of unreal time in a fancy hotel, and I wanted to keep it that way. I looked at her and she yawned, which made her shiver so her tits shuddered. “I’m going to bed.” She was so beautiful our whole life threatened to devolve into my headless worship of her hot beauty. My dick, of course, was hard. Not like that egg-yolk dick from earlier today. It now lay in my pants like a stunned fish. I loved her so much I couldn’t think. I loved her because I was horny. I was horny because I was sad, because the night had been awful, because it was almost over. I thought back to that shocked look on Bob’s face during my toast, the crowd laughing all around him.

“I thought we might go down to the beach,” I said. She looked in her makeup bag and got out some pills. She threw them down dry and pulled out her sleep mask from her makeup bag. She shook the strap out.

“I love you,” I said. I asked her if she wanted to take her top off. She put the mask on her head. The sound of my voice was deep and nasal, the way it had been when it carried across the crowd, amplified, when it shook the crowd.

“O.K.,” she said. She pulled my hand off her arm. “Don’t touch me.”

“That’s it?”

“You’re wired about your toast. You feel like you put one over on Bob, don’t ask me why.” She lay back on top of the bedspread and pulled her eye mask down. Her panties were whisper-weight, see-through orange lace. I put my nose next to her foot and sniffed it. I pictured giving it to her as she bit me and seizured and sobbed, loving it. I felt so released after all that worrying—so overjoyed. I pictured ramming that wine bottle up Bob’s ass, breaking off the shattered stem while he’s whooping and screaming. I pictured Richard Nixon getting shot, red wine splashing, trying to hold the lapels of his suit closed as he fell. I saw Bill Clinton, floating in space, docking headfirst into the space station. She lifted the edge of her mask and looked at me for a long moment with one eye. “If you want to do it,” she said, “go ahead.”

I thought for a second. Something about it seemed wrong. “Forget it.” She pulled the mask back down and moved her nose once and was gone.