Unsoul'd (12 page)

At...

Crap. I couldn't remember what she did for a living. As best I could tell, her job was to drive me to sexual insanity. She was very, very good at it. Is
that
why I'd cheated on Manda? Not that I'd convinced myself that I deserved it, but just to finally taste the thrill of that amazing body?

No. At least, not entirely. It was neither excuse. Not exclusively. No one thing.

I think, too, that part of it was that she had a boyfriend...and wanted me anyway. The idea that despite her taken status, I could still have her. The idea that she could still
be
had. That had an allure to it. A dark allure, true, but an allure nonetheless. Would I have wanted her any less had she been unattached? No, of course not. But the existence of her boyfriend and her willingness to cuckold him made her impossible to resist.

I should have felt guilt about Manda. We had been together for months. That had to mean something, right? I should have felt guilty about cuckolding James. (Why could I remember her boyfriend's name so easily?)

But I didn't.

I felt...

Satisfied.

Not merely in a sexual sense. I was satisfied with myself. As though I'd done something good or charitable or...

That didn't make any sense, but its nonsensicality didn't make it any less real.

Gym Girl's eyes fluttered open. For a moment, it seemed that they would slip closed again and she would drift back to sleep, but she caught sight of me and blinked several times, clearing her vision, then smiled.

"Good morning," she said in a voice that hinted at no guilt or reproach or regret.

Twenty-four hours previous, I would have stumbled and flailed for an appropriate response. But no longer.

"Getting better," I said smoothly, and ran a hand from her shoulder down to where the sheet bordered the small of her back.

She leaned over and kissed my chest, the closest part that she could reach from her position. I took that as a buy-sign, rolled her over, and was pleasantly surprised to find that we slid together as easily as we had the night before. Whereas that sex had been furious and giggly and drunkenly inflamed, the morning's was slow, relaxed, almost holily quiet.

When I withdrew from her, she sighed audibly, as though saying goodbye to a good friend.

We lay next to each other, newly drowsy, caught in the half-sleep, half-afterglow of early morning sex. It occurred to me to be responsible for at least
some
thing.

"Do you have to be ready for work at any particular time?" I asked her, then quickly added, "Not that I'm kicking you out or anything."

She checked the clock by the bed. "I don't have to leave yet."

"OK. Good." I stroked her shoulder. I felt so close to her in that moment. Closer, really, than even sex could account for. Maybe I was fooling myself. Maybe this was just a night's (and morning's) random sex to her. Maybe she cheated all the time and there was no significance in her cheating with me. But it was my first infidelity ever, and suddenly it loomed strangely important and milestone-ish in my psyche. I felt compelled to reveal things, to share, to open myself.

"Can I tell you something?" I asked her.

She stretched languorously, and for a brief moment I forgot the English language. "What?"

"I sold my soul to the devil." It was the sort of admission that should have been stuttered or stammered, but I uttered it with a complete lack of self-consciousness.

She grinned. "To get me into bed? I'm honored."

"No, no, not for that."

She rolled towards me. "Well, good. Because you didn't have to go that far. I'd hate to think of you walking around all soulless just because of me."

"I mean, don't get me wrong -- it would totally be worth selling my soul to get you into bed." She laughed appreciatively at that. "But I had already sold it."

"I hope it was worth it, whatever you sold it for," she said lightly. She was taking the whole idea with aplomb. I wondered briefly if people all over the world were selling their souls willy-nilly and talking about it. Was it a common occurrence and I was just unaware of it? Or maybe she was just exceptionally good at humoring me.

"Can we make this guy stand up again?" she asked, reaching under the sheet. "I have time for one more go-round and I don't want to waste it."

Normally, another attempt so soon would be impossible. But for Gym Girl, the impossible was merely another hurdle easily-leapt.

Wherein Fi Visits One Last Time Before the World Changes

After Gym Girl collected her clothes from the floor (an activity I enjoyed watching, causing as it did legs to tighten and flex, buttocks to twitch, and breasts to dangle most fetchingly) and dressed, she pecked me on the forehead and left me staring at the ceiling, reflecting on how easy and uncomplicated my inaugural infidelity had been. She had extracted no promises from me of future assignations, had made no imprecations towards my character, had claimed no duress, had indicated no sense of ownership or intention to reveal all to Manda or James.

"This was fun," she'd said. That was all.

Fun. I didn't know how to respond to that. It
had
been fun. A part of me had wondered if it would be more than just fun and more than just one night. But she said nothing either way, and I let her go before I could collect my thoughts enough to ask,
Is this going to happen again?

Did I want it to happen again? Yes, I realized. But maybe it was just meant to be a one-night stand. An emotional quickie. We'd been building to this for months and finally the pressure valve blew and for one night, steam erupted freely and without consequence. Now she was back to James. And I would have to go back to Manda.

If not for the deep, pleasant soreness of my cock and the neon-lit memories, it was as though it had never happened.

"And the smell," the devil said, sauntering into the bedroom with two already-opened Brooklyn Pale Ales. "The smell of sex. You guys really went at it. Good on ya." He handed over a beer.

I glared at him and at the beer. "It's morning."

"I'm sure there's a point in there somewhere, but it eludes me."

I took the beer. The bottle was cool and the beer felt more than tasted astonishingly refreshing going down, despite the early hour. The devil leaned against my dresser and stared at me in anticipation.

"Don't look at me like that. I know what I did. I'm a horrible person, right?"

"Not here to judge you." Still, that piercing gaze. Waiting for something.

"I don't even feel guilty," I admitted. "I guess I have you to thank for that. If 'thank' is the right way to think about it."

He shrugged.

"What do you want from me? I'm not going to tell you what it was like," I told him. "Besides, you were here for it."

"Only for the beginning. Once you people actually start going at it, I can't stand being around. All those noises and faces..." He shuddered. "I'm just waiting for you to thank me."

"For what?"

"For getting you off the ground, son! I got her wet and ready for you, man! Without me in your ear, your foreplay would have been a foregone disaster."

"Considering who and what you are, you're pretty needy."

The devil sulked.

"OK, OK, fine. Thank you. Thank you very much for helping me close the deal. I appreciate your fornicatory advice." I saluted him with my bottle.

"Fornicatory isn't a word, writer-man." He sounded sullen, but he was grinning.

"It is now. When I say it, it becomes a word."

"Good deal." He opened the window. "We should air this place out before she gets here."

"Before who gets here?" But I knew -- Manda. Shit!

And that's when my phone rang. It was Fi.

The devil raised an eyebrow and climbed out onto the fire escape.

"Can I come over?" Fi asked. "I know it's early and feel free to say no, but I really would like to come over and talk to you. So is that all right? You can totally say no."

"You can totally say no" is one of Fi's best tricks. She manages to speak the words with an intonation that conveys the precise opposite, somehow implying that only by dint of her
permission
could I actually say no, and since she was so generous in giving that permission, how could I possibly repay that magnanimity with a demurral?

"Sure, you can come over," I said, and scuttled around the room looking for my clothes.

"I've never seen that before," the devil commented from the fire escape.

"What's that?" I asked, slipping into my boxers.

"A man pussywhipped without any actual pussy involved."

"Get off my back."

"You fucked a prime piece of ass real estate last night and this morning," the devil said. "You've got this Manda woman who is more than happy to come over at the drop of your shorts and suck you within an inch of your life. Those two facts alone should prove to you that you can get laid. But you keep mooning after this crazy ex of yours--"

"Did you just say 'mooning?'" I buttoned up my shirt. "Did the
devil
, the lord of all evil, just use the word 'mooning?' Really?"

He poked his head into the apartment. "It's a perfectly acceptable and respectable word!" he yelled. "Don't go all writer on me and start editing my shit, man! I won't stand for that!"

I tilted my beer in his direction. "Shine on, you crazy demon thing, you. I'm not mooning after anyone."

"Then why the fuck are you cleaning up the apartment?"

I stopped in my tracks. He was right. After getting dressed, I'd started straightening things up, unconsciously preparing for Fi's arrival.

"Fuck that," I said out loud.

"Amen, brother!" He swigged long.

I dropped a dirty sock where I'd originally picked it up. The bed was a jumble of sheets, the pillows scattered everywhere. I'd leave it like that. Let Fi see it. Let her wonder about my sex life. Ha.

Soon, the buzzer sounded and Fi entered the apartment, clearly wearing the previous night's clothes, her hair a tangle, her expression despondent. She launched into her usual Fi-alogue:

"Hey, thanks for this, I really appreciate it. I know how ridic it is, but I just needed to talk and I figured you'd be willing to listen, maybe, and I'm such a bitch, right? I know, I know. You're cool to do this. Is that new?" She pointed to a painting that had once hung on a wall in the apartment we'd shared, then went on before I could answer. "You were probably asleep. Were you asleep? Did I wake you up?" She dropped her purse by the door.

"Uh, no."

"Can I have a glass of water? Would that be OK? You would not believe the night I had. Just fucking insane."

I thought of my own fucking insane night of insane fucking as I poured her a glass of water. Fi was still eminently fuckable, though in my post-Gym Girl glow, I could rationally admit that Gym Girl was hotter. Still, there was something about Fi...

"...started out at Club One," Fi was saying, gulping the water, "which is where shit
always
starts, you know me, right? So I met this guy there and we drank more tequila than any non-Mexican should drink. Is that racist?"

"I don't--"

"You won't tell anyone I said that, will you? I have a couple of Mexican clients now, and they would kill me if they thought I was a racist. Anyway, lots of tequila." She finished the water and handed the glass back to me. "Tequila led to whiskey which led to vodka and by then we were at, like, our fourth bar. Some neighborhood place over in Red Hook, I think, and then he mentions that he has a bottle of fucking absinthe back at his place. And I'm all like, 'I haven't had absinthe since I was in England,' and he's like, 'We have to rectify that.' And we went back to his place. And by the way, at this point I still don't know the guy's name and I don't think he knows mine, either, but I'm not sure. Isn't that horrible?"

I thought of Gym Girl --
Abby!
-- and shrugged.

"So we go back to his place and he actually did have a bottle of absinthe, which was sort of a surprise." By now she had wandered from the front door through the living room, nearing the bedroom.

The devil -- invisible to her, of course -- leaned into the apartment and whistled low and loud. "Someone's been rode hard and put away wet," he said. "If you get my drift." And dropped a salacious wink, just in case I didn't get it. Behind Fi, I waved furiously for him to go away, but he just shrugged and said, "If you've still got a stiffy for her, I'd forget about it right now. She's pumped full of another man's squishy."

"...keep ending up with these fucked-up guys," Fi was saying. "Not you, of course. I didn't mean to imply that." She turned at the bedroom door and leaned against the frame. "What's wrong with me, Randall? I'm cute, right? I'm smart, right? I have an awesome career and I'm really good at it, but I keep ending up with these fucking..." She growled in inchoate confusion.

"Was he married or something? Have a girlfriend? Was it bad absinthe?" I joked.

"No, no, none of that. The absinthe was really good shit and he was good with his hands and I was really digging him and then... God, what
is
it with guys!"