Chapters (29)
Shit, Desmond thought as he grudgingly took off his own shirt, I should have opted for the therapy session. Brian kicked off his shoes and stepped out of his pants. He had a smooth, pale body, tight and surprisingly muscular. He hesitated for a moment about the underpants, then seemed to decide to leave them on. Well, why not? If you were going to go to the trouble of buying aquamarine bikini briefs, you might as well show them off. He wondered who was going to end up laundering these things. Hopefully not Joyce. Brian sat back down on the bed with his legs spread. Desmond realized, looking down at this attractive and absurdly available body, that there was nothing he wanted to do with it. He felt panicked by the inevitability of what was about to happen, as if he was willingly boarding an airplane he knew was destined to crash.
“Nice abs,” Brian said in a husky voice.
It was a ridiculous attempt at a compliment. Not only that, there was something about the exercise-video nature of the word “abs” that put the last nail in the coffin of Desmond’s desire or whatever it was that had propelled him this far. It was too late to walk away from this, so he walked closer to the bed. Brian drew Desmond toward him and stuck his tongue into his belly button. From where he was standing, Desmond could see a scrap of view out the round window and an unfortunately larger scrap of his own reflection in the mirror over his bureau. If you eliminate all desire and passion from sex, the whole thing begins to look unfortunately similar to playing a slot machine: insert coin, pull lever, numbly hope for the jackpot to spew out. Goddamn Russell. He’d talked Desmond into all those years of monogamy, gotten him used to sex connected to emotion—to love, if you wanted to get specific—and then went out and broke the very vows he’d insisted upon.
Brian was moaning as he buried his face deeper into Desmond’s stomach. Obviously some kind of belly button obsession, which, given Joyce’s delicate condition, Desmond was not going to think about too seriously. Instead, he thought about Russell, about the infuriating possibility that he was engaged in something along these lines at this very minute. Except in his case, he was probably enjoying it. Conjuring up Russell’s name and the image of his face and body helped. Desmond looked at himself in the mirror again. Oh well, he thought, insert coin, pull lever, take your chances. It’s only a quarter.