The Job (19 page)

“Yeah,
I’m sure she’ll be fine,” I tell her. “In the years that I’ve known the two of
them, I’ve never even heard of Irene throwing up. If anything, they’re probably
headed upstairs to—so, cool party, huh?” I ask.

Jessica
eyes me, saying, “Yeah, I guess. You know, it’s so funny that you should be
here. I had no idea that Irene and Alec were married. The times that I’ve been
around her, she’s never actually mentioned having a husband. In fact, and don’t
tell anybody this, the last time we were at a bar, she picked up this guy,
and—I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” she says. “He’s your friend.”

“It’s
all right,” I chuckle. “They’re swingers.”

“Oh,”
Jessica says.

“Yeah,”
I smile. “Not really the kind of mental picture you want to have rattling
around in your brain, is it?”

“Not
really,” Jessica titters.

“So,
who’s your friend?” I ask.

“Oh,
that’s my sister, Kristin,” Jessica answers. “We’re actually supposed to be
meeting someone here.”

“Really?”
I ask. “Who are you looking for? I know most of the people here. I might be
able to help you out.”

“Oh,
I don’t think so,” she says. “It’s not really—I don’t know that I’d—”

“Let
me guess,” I interrupt. “It’s a guy.”

There’s
a strange apology on her face as she says, “Yeah.”

“All
right,” I tell her. “What’s his name? I’ll see if I can help you track him
down.”

“That’s
kind of the problem,” she says.

“Oh,
blind date?” I ask.

All
right, this way’s more fun than just coming clean.

“Something
like that,” she says. “Kristin gave me his number and we’ve kind of been
talking for a while.”

“What
kind of voice does he have?” I ask, really pushing my luck.

“I
don’t know,” she says. “We’ve never actually talked, talked.”

“What
do you mean?” I ask.

“Well,
I don’t know. It’s hard to explain,” she answers.

Really,
it’s just as simple as saying, “We’ve been texting for a few weeks now,” but I
certainly understand how this situation could make that difficult to convey.

“Well,”
I tell her, “your sister must know who he is if she’s the one that gave you his
number.”

“This
is awkward,” Jessica answers. “She got the number from Irene, but Kristin’s
never actually met the guy.”

“Ah,
psycho-stalker type then,” I ask with a smile.

“No,”
she says, “I will have you know that he is—well, I like talking to him, and I
think that’s about as much as you need to know about it.”

I
put my palms up, saying, “It’s all right. I was just joking. I’m sure he has a
relatively low body count.”

“Oh,
shut up,” she says, playfully hitting me on the arm.

“Well,
not knowing his name or anything about him, I really don’t know how much I can
help you,” I tell her.

“I
guess I could try texting him,” she says, “but Alec said he might not make it,
something about bad clams or something.”

“That
kind of sounds like something Alec could have omitted from the conversation,” I
tell her.

Even
though I was relatively certain that it was her, actually knowing it for a fact
and talking to her about myself in the third person has got me wanting to draw
this out as long as possible.

“I’m
going to send him a text,” she says. “If nothing else, at least I can find out
if he’s going to be able to make it tonight.”

She
pulls out her phone, and I’ve really got to get out of here. The jig is up if
she hears my phone go off right after she sends her message.

“Hey,
I’m going to go check on Irene,” I tell her.

“I
thought you—well, it sounded like you were implying that they were—you know
what?” she asks. “Never mind. It’s really none of my business.”

“No,”
I start, “it’s not that—”

She’s
texting at a rate that would be impressive if it weren’t so threatening, so I
just walk off, taking a right turn toward Alec and Irene’s bedroom.

I
get halfway down the hall, but stop as I hear the bed creaking.

It’s
never really made sense to me how she could go from looking like she was about
to refund to the conclusion that sex was what the doctor ordered, but it’s not
really something I spend much time thinking about.

I
pull out my phone and, as I go to turn the notification volume down, the text
comes through.

Unless
Jessica followed me, which I feel pretty safe in saying she didn’t, there’s no
way she could hear the sound.

The
message reads, “Hey, I’m at the party. Just wanted to know if you were still
coming.”

Think, Eric, think.

I
have a couple of options here. I could send her a text in line with what Alec
had said and start sowing the seeds of distaste for that version of me, but
that doesn’t really seem like the right thing to do.

I
could tell her that I’m on my way to the party, but again I’d run into the
problem of either having to tell her that it’s been me the whole time, or “not
show up” and make her think that I’m a flake, but neither one of those options
really put me in any different a situation than I’m already in.

Finally,
I settle on what seems to be the best version of damage control available to me
at the moment, and I write, “Hey, sorry I’m late. I’ve had a bit of a family
thing and it’s taking me a bit longer to get out of here than I thought.”

There:
no bad clams, no “I’ll be right there,” just a plausible excuse that’s going to
let me tell her that I won’t be able to make it with little to no fallout.

Maybe
that’s the key. Maybe I just need to keep convincing her on both fronts that
I’m a standup guy then, when the moment’s right, I can tell her the truth about
everything and it’ll all come out perfectly.

That’s
exactly what I need to do: Just keep my plans vague enough that I never
actually have to act on any of them and I can just stay here in limbo while I
try to figure out just how much I like this woman.

I
know that I like her, but that’s about all I know at the moment. Well, and that
she constantly looks so good. Every inch of her.

My
phone chimes and I look down.

The
message reads, “Okay. Well, Kristin and I are going to be here for a while, so
just let me know when you’re here and we’ll meet up.”

“All
right,” I write back. “Hopefully I shouldn’t be much longer. I’d hate to miss the
chance to meet you.”

“Hey,
what are you doing?” Jessica asks just as I’m sending the text.

“Waiting
for the bathroom,” I tell her.

She
cocks her head to one side. “It’s upstairs.”

I
keep forgetting that she actually knows Irene.

Her
phone beeps and she checks it.

“Right,”
I tell her. “I must be thinking of my place.”

What
the hell kind of excuse was that?

“Oh
yeah, fuck me, baby!” Irene shouts from behind the closed door at the end of
the hall.

“Well,
okay,” Jessica says laughing.

“What
are you doing?” I ask.

“I
was going to give you and your—ahem—friends a little privacy,” she answers as
her eyes plead for me to let her leave the hallway.

“It’s
really not like that,” I tell her. “I just wanted to get a little bit of
privacy so I could make a phone call, but it sounds like this really isn’t the
best place to do that.”

“I
thought you said you were waiting for the bathroom,” she says.

“Yeah,
I guess
I
…” my brain utterly fails me right in this
moment where I need it the most. “To be honest, I don’t really know why I said
that. I guess I was just looking for a plausible excuse so you wouldn’t think I
was just back here to get an earful of whatever it is they do to each other in
there.”

“Next
time,” she says, “maybe just go for the ‘wanting to make a call’ thing first.
That might make it a lot more plausible.”

I’m
humiliated, but Jessica gives me a slight, but sincere smile.

“Why
did you come back here?” I ask as she turns again to leave the hallway.

“Oh,”
she says, “no reason.”

“Well,”
I tell her, “you seem to know this house as well as I do and, with what I
started to tell you about Irene’s post-keg-stand ritual, I think you knew what
you might be walking into if you came down this hallway.”

“No!
It’s not that, I was just—you know, I sent a text to that guy and, well, I
wanted to be able to hear it when he texted me back, that’s all,” she stammers.

“Uh
huh,” I tell her, “and I just wanted to come back here to find a bathroom.”

“I
thought you said you were here so you could make a phone call,” she retorts.

“You,
my dear, are blushing,” I tell her.

“Oh,
I am not,” she says, crossing her arms.

She
wasn’t blushing when I said that, but I didn’t really want to answer her
question and, in my experience, telling someone that they’re blushing is about
the quickest way to get them to blush.

“Really?”
I ask. “So, why are you really here in the hallway?”

“Right
now, I’m here because you keep stopping me to talk to you,” she says.

“Oh
yeah!” Alec shouts in the bedroom and Jessica and I can’t stop ourselves from
laughing out loud.

“It
was the morbid curiosity, wasn’t it?” I ask her.

She
turns her head, but shifts her eyes back toward me. “Yeah,” she says. “I don’t
know. I guess it’s just been a while, and I wanted to try to convince myself
that it’s really not that big of a thing.”

“What
a weird justification,” I smile. “Do you want to place a bet?”

“A
bet?” she asks. “What are we betting on?”

“How
do I put this delicately?” I start. “I was thinking we could bet on who
finishes first.”

“Ten
bucks says it’s Alec,” Jessica says without any further encouragement.

It’s
a reasonable bet.

In
a regrettably large portion of sexual relationships, you can bet that the man’s
going to come first and most of the time, you’re going to be right.

What
Jessica doesn’t know is that Irene won’t
let
Alec come until she’s gotten hers at least twice.

I
take a moment to reflect on how unsettling it is that I know that, but today
wasn’t the first time that Irene and I have had a conversation after she’s
gotten a few drinks in her.

“Deal,”
I tell her and put my hand out to shake it.

“Wait,”
Jessica says. “You seem too confident.”

“What
do you mean?” I ask.

“I
made a bet and you’re just ready to go for it? No haggling, no pressing for
odds or anything. You obviously know something that I don’t,” she says. “He’s
one of those tantric guys who can have sex for hours, like Sting, isn’t he?”

“I
really don’t think that there are any similarities between Alec and Sting,” I
tell her. “I can promise you that to the best of my knowledge, Alec doesn’t
even know the definition of the word Tantra.”

Jessica
peers at me, but she slowly, cautiously extends her hand and shakes mine.

“How
are we going to tell who comes when?” she asks.

As
if she’d heard the question, Irene starts shouting, “Oh yeah, baby. I’m going
to come. Oh fuck! Oh, fuck! Oh, fu-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-uck!”

“I’d
say that’s a pretty good sign,” I laugh.

“Shit,”
Jessica says and reaches into her pocket.

“Double
or nothing says she goes again before he does,” I tell her.

“You’re
on,” she says, putting the cash back in her pocket.

This
really isn’t how I saw things going today, but it’s something.

“How
long do you think it’s going to take them?” she asks.

“I
have no idea,” I tell her.

She
pulls out her phone and starts writing a text, and it occurs to me that the
whole reason I came over here was to turn the volume down on my notifications,
something I didn’t quite get the chance to do.

“Who
are you texting?” I ask.

“My
sister,” she says. “If I’m going to sit here and listen to other people have
all the fun, I’m going to need a drink.”

“Fair
enough,” I laugh.

The
hornier part of me wants to suggest that we could always throw caution to the
wind and see if we can out-volume Irene and Alec, but the more rational part of
my brain insists that it might be a bit soon for such a declaration.

“Did
you get anything from your friend?” I ask.

“Yeah,”
Jessica answers. “He’s caught up with some family thing, but he’s still going
to try to make it.”

“Well,”
I tell her, “I hope he does.”

“What
are you guys doing?” the sister asks, coming around the corner, somehow
managing four sixteen-ounce plastic cups of beer.

“We
made a wager, and I’m trying to win my money back,” Jessica says. “Oh, Kristin,
this is Eric. Eric, this is Kristin, my sister.”

“Nice
to meet you,” Kristin says. “I’d shake hands, but they’re kind of full at the
moment.”

“Yeah,
let me help you with that,” I tell her. “How many am I taking?”

“All
of them,” Kristin sighs. “I’m hoping that at least one of them is for you,
otherwise, I think my sister might have just breezed past rude and entered lush
territory.”

“Two
are for him, two are for me,” Jessica explains.

I
hand her two cups and offer one of mine to Kristin.

“That’s
all right,” Kristin says. “I’m more of a liquor or daiquiri girl.”

“Oh
my god, baby, that feels so fucking
good
!” Irene
shouts from inside the bedroom down the hall.

Kristin
looks back at her sister, saying, “Tell me again what you two are doing here?”

“We
made a bet on the
sexcapades
going on in the next
room,” Jessica explains. “I’m down one orgasm, but I’m feeling really confident
about the next one.”

“You’re
betting on who gets off first?” Kristin asks. “I want in. What are the stakes?”

“Well,”
Jessica says, “it’s a ten-dollar buy in. I say that Alec blows his load next,
but Eric here thinks that Irene’s got another one coming before that happens.”

“All
right then,” Kristin says, “ten bucks on Irene hitting number two before Alec
gets his first.”

Jessica
looks at me and I can’t not smile at her. She asks, “Why am I getting the
feeling that the two of you know something that I don’t?”

“When
I first met Irene, she was always complaining about how Alec couldn’t hold his
pudding—”

“Oh,
good lord, is there any way we can call it something else?” Jessica interrupts.

“Fine,”
Kristin says. She starts over, “When Irene and I first met,
she
told me that Alec had a bit of trouble staying in the game. I told her to start
edging him.”

“Edging?”
Jessica asks.

“Yeah,”
Kristin continues. “It’s when a person gets close to having an orgasm, but
before that final moment, they ease back and let the feeling dissipate. Once I
convinced her that Alec would be more than okay with having sex longer, she
implemented the two-bump rule.”

“The
two bump rule?” Jessica asks.

“I
guess that’s their word for climax,” Kristin says. “It just means that she
doesn’t let him toss the dice until she’s gotten at least two.”

“You
cheated me!” Jessica accuses me.

“Oh,
I did not,” I retort, although I have no rationale behind the defense.

“And
you,” she says, turning to her sister. “You just jumped right in there, didn’t
you? Well, this sucks,” she concludes and takes an impressively long drink of
beer.

A
few more minutes go by and, other than the continued sounds of bedsprings
creaking and the occasional appeal to a deity, there’s no sign of who’s going
to go first.

What
has happened, however, is that we’ve attracted quite the crowd of eager
gambling
enthusiasts.
They’re split almost completely
down the middle between those who know about the two-bump rule—all of whom are
betting that Irene’s got another one coming before Alec—and those who are only
betting based on the stereotype who are betting that Alec’s going to blow at
any minute.

On
top of that, we’ve all created a drinking game where the men drink every time
Alec says, “fuck” and the women all drink whenever Irene says, “baby.”

It
doesn’t take long for pretty much everyone in the now-crowded hallway to cop a
buzz.

What’s
most surprising is that this group, made up of at least a dozen people, all of
whom—Jessica’s sister excluded—are drinking and betting, manage to stay quiet
enough that we don’t reveal our presence to Alec and Irene.

Alec
tells Irene that she feels, “so fucking great,” so I, along with the rest of
the men in the hallway, take a drink, and I don’t know if it’s the alcohol or
the close attention being paid to the copulation down the hall, but I could
swear that Jessica is giving me the eye.

“Having
fun?” I ask her quietly.

She
takes a quick drink and nods her head.

The
moment of truth arrives as we can hear both Alex and Irene breathing and
moaning with increasing volume.

The
hallway goes silent.

All
eyes are focused on the door through which none of us can see, but all of us
have a vested interest.

“Oh
my god, oh my god,” Irene pants, and I’m wondering what happens if they come at
the same time.

“Oh
fuck,” Alec says (and I drink.) “Oh my god.”

The
creaking of the bedsprings increases in frequency and everyone in the hallway,
myself included, starts leaning in the direction of the door, hoping to be the
first to make out the sound that means victory or defeat.

“Oh,
I’m going to come,” Irene says and a grin covers my face. “I’m almost there!”