It’s funny, lying there, letting him fuck me like that. Well, maybe not funny, exactly, but different. He looks down from time to time, studying my mouth, but mostly he just grunts and sighs and pushes on. At one point, he asks me to turn over, to try it that way, but I resist and tell him I like looking at him, so eventually he closes his eyes and gets on with it. Near the end, his body tensing, I wonder if he used to fuck her like this, my mother. I saw them once, doing it, I mean, but I was really too young to recall much. And did he fuck that first woman he left us for this way? Or the second wife? Who knows? Not me, I was only six. I’m still wondering this as I pull my blazer back on, run a hand through my hair, and kiss his cheek. We lock eyes again, I give him a last chance, but nothing; he’s too busy with those socks of his. Oh, he does check the corridor for me, though. That was nice. Opens the door a few inches, a towel around his heavy waist, and then out I go.

I turn only once, when I reach the safety of the ice machine, but a nod is all we muster. No need for a hallway promise, an exchange of business cards, some half-forgotten e-mail address. No. Just a smile and that’s enough. It’s kind of far away, but I’d swear he opens his mouth again to speak. He stops, though, stops himself, probably catching another woman’s name on his tongue. My mom’s? Someone else’s? Doesn’t matter. Anyway, it was good to see him again. Really, it was.

Time-Share

He stands there, dripping, with his head tipped down a bit. Just a bit, but hoping that this slight tilting forward of his eyes will prove that he is sorry. Very sorry. Repentant.

“Say that again,” she says, after studying him. Watching.

“What, about before?”

“Yes, that. Please.”

“Well, see, we, ummm …” He creeps forward cautiously with this next thought. True, she seems less hysterical now, ready to listen, but who knows? “… the two of us had actually met before.”

“Before?”

“I mean, before we met.” He thinks about this for a moment, about the genesis of the thing. “From before we, that is you and I, knew one another.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. We went to the same college and …”

“Oh. So … you were in school together?”

“No, no, not together. It was in Kansas, but not overlapping or anything. No, we actually ran into each other in the city one time, during this coed softball game of alumni in Central Park.”

“Quaint.”

“Which is kind of funny …”

“Why? Why is that funny?”

“Well, it’s, you know … Manhattan.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And that’s where we went to school, too. Manhattan, I mean. In Kansas. Because Kansas State is in …”