by Lydia Netzer
“Rivers aren’t circles.”
“Yes, I know, but this is a supercollider. It’s only called the Euphrates because we already have a Tigris. It’s metaphor. Like poetry is. Like music. Sing it. The Euphrates!” He sang.
She was glaring intently at the place where he’d gestured, and he could see her mentally calculating.
“It’s eighty-seven kilometers,” he said. “The beams intersect in six places, with six different detectors. I’m sorry, five. They’re waiting for one more. I think you have it in your lab. It might be attached to a figure-eight-shaped device at the moment, but I’m sure it can be fitted to the river.”
“The river,” said Irene slowly.
George put his arm more securely around her. He started to say something: “I’m so—” But he stopped. They stood there together silently for several minutes. It was as if his entire life had led up to that point and she had been there the whole time, just quiet. She fit so perfectly into his arm, and there was no bumping of hip bones or awkward dangling of arms. She was exactly the perfect size.
“Since our mothers were astrologers, I have to ask you, what’s your sign?”
“Scorpio,” she murmured without hesitation.
“Really?” he said. “Me too. What day?”
“The eleventh.”
“What?” he said. “That’s my birthday, too!”
He spun her around to face him, holding her now by both arms.
“You know what? I have to go,” she said. She sprang away from him and marched back to the patio door, threw it open, and went inside. He chased her.
He caught up to her next to the elevator, mashing on the DOWN button with an angry little finger.
“We can be birthday buddies! Let’s do a joint party. Let’s see, what could the theme be? I know—nebulas! You could dress like the reflection nebula, you know, all shimmery, and I could go as a horse head.”
Irene stared at the crease in the elevator door. After pursing her lips together for a few seconds, waiting for the elevator car to come, she spat out, “I’m leaving.”
George laughed. “I see that. Making the elevator come usually leads to leaving.”
There was a ding, and the doors slid open. Irene turned to look at him. “Well, bye,” she said. She slipped into the elevator and began to mash the CLOSE DOOR button. But George followed her in.
“I’m leaving, too,” he explained.
As the digital numbers descended 10, 9, 8, 7 … she finally spoke: “How old are you?”
George said, “Twenty-nine.”
“You are not,” said Irene.
“Yeah, I am,” said George. “Are you?”
He felt his stomach contract. He actually felt nervous. “Move,” said his stomach. “Move, move, move. Act, act, act.” At the first floor, Irene raced him to her car.
“But if we were born on the same day,” he said, rushing along behind her, “then Irene, we’re not just birthday buddies. Don’t you get it? This is why we know the same poetry. This is why we know the same songs.”
“I don’t know those songs. I don’t like that poetry. Don’t be weird,” said Irene.
She had her car door unlocked when she was ten cars away. It beeped and blinked at her, and George skipped ahead, getting between her and the door before she could reach for the handle.
“Toledo General? Toledo General? Come on, were you born at Toledo General?”
“I’m sure not. No, I don’t—”
“Then where?” said George. “Where? We’re twin souls, Irene! Twin souls.”
His back was against her car and he was braced there, against it; she could not open it. She came toward him, as if she might attack him or climb him or shout at him. But then she pressed her body up against the front of him and put one hand across his mouth.
“I don’t want you to go home,” he said through her hand. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop talking, but—”
“George, shut up,” she said. She put her hand behind his neck and kissed him. He stood up from the car, and she came up with him, his hands under her butt, lifting her, catching her to him, and she clung now, her hands around his shoulders, mouth still touching, now opening, a small soft tongue brushing against his lips. He felt her mouth touch his, causing a long, slow, swell of happiness that started from where the rough denim of her jeans pressed against his khakis, continuing up to where her hips lay against his belt, her breasts pressing against his chest, and all of her warmth and anger spilling out of her like a fountain. Her fingernails were in his hair when she pulled her face back.
He spoke first. “OK, forget whatever I was just saying. I have nothing else to say.”
“Really? Because you had so much to say, thirty seconds ago.”
“I was stupid then. I can’t even remember what I was thinking about.”
He went in for another kiss, but she turned her head to the side.
“You can put me down,” she said quietly. He set her back on the sidewalk. She put her hand on the car door again.
“Let’s get a grip here, George,” she said.
“No,” he said. “Marry me.”
It was all he could do to keep his hands from plunging in between the buttons of her little button-down shirt, shedding it from her, putting his mouth over her collar bone, her breast, her hip bone, yanking off her pants.
“We have obligations,” she was saying. “It’s probably not even legal for us to date. We could get fired.”
“What?” he asked. “Do I have a job? I feel like I’m one-minute old.”
“You need to understand something.” Irene put her hands up to her face, covering her eyes. George remembered that her mother had just died. And here he was, being the asshole. How could he make her cry?
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll stop. I’ll go away.”
“No,” she said, and she took her hands down and showed him that she was laughing.
“What is going on?” he said, almost laughing, too. “Are you going nuts on me?”
“I want to have sex with you,” she said, laughing to the point she was crying, and then wiping away the tears. She punched him in the chest. “Sex! I want to have sex!”
“Good!” said George. “That is super good because I want to do that, too!”
“No, you don’t understand,” she said, sniffing and pulling herself together, wiping her eyes. “I mean I want to have sex like in my vagina.” She pointed at his zipper. “That going in there,” and she pointed at her crotch. This sent her off into another gale of laughter.
“That’s great, because that’s exactly how sex is done. Exactly that way.” He was confused a little by her behavior, but in his mind the fact that she was talking and pointing at his crotch was enough to distract him from analysis.
“This is going to be OK, Irene,” he said. “This is going to be great.”
“I don’t normally feel like this,” said Irene. “I don’t. This is weird.”
George put his arms around her again, so in love with the feeling of her against him, as if they were two pieces of a two-piece puzzle, and they just wanted to make the picture work.
“We need to go to a place,” said George. “I know the place.”
“What kind of place?” she said.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s a good kind of place. It’s a nightclub for astronomers. You’ll feel right at home.”
15
They decided to do it at Bernice’s house. That way she would be the most comfortable, Sally pointed out.
“I’ll need at least a shot,” said Bernice. “I don’t think anyone here would begrudge me a shot. Would they?”
The girls sat in the living room on the wood-frame love seat that was hung, charmingly, from the ceiling. A thick braided rug took up half the floor in a room stuffed with antiques and furniture that Bernice’s father had made long ago. Her mother had wanted a porch swing she could use all year. So this was it. It hadn’t worked out for her father, making that porch swi
ng. He had still ended up alone.
“Maybe we should do it on the kitchen table,” said Bernice. There was a large wasp’s nest there currently, defunct and used as a centerpiece, augmented visually with several tiny quilted muslin rabbits.
“This is not an operation,” said Sally. “We do not need a table.”
“It’s an insemination. Same thing,” said Bernice.
Bernice made a show of retrieving two ice cubes from the fridge and placing them in a short glass, going to her father’s bar, which was now her bar. She pulled out the whiskey and poured it into the glass. She took a swig, grimaced, lifted the wasp’s nest with the other hand and set it on the counter.
“Right here,” she said, patting the table. She swept the quilted rabbits onto the floor.
The table was the kind made from a crosscut of a tree. Its surface was irregular.
“No,” said Sally. “Come on, don’t be so nervous. It’s just sex. We’ll do it in your bed.”
“Not in my bed. Not upstairs,” said Bernice, draining her glass. “I don’t want that thing going upstairs.”
“What, Ray’s dick?” She teased. “His love wand? His trouser pickle?”
“Ray’s anything. Ray.”
Bernice refilled her glass.
“Don’t get drunk,” said Sally. “Probably inhibits—”
“What, inhibits the egg from opening its legs for a suitable sperm? I would think the opposite would be true.”
Sally began to move around the downstairs, pushing her hands into chairs and the cushions of the small sofa, testing surfaces. She moved into the dining room.
“After tonight you can’t drink anyway,” she called. “Pregnant, and all. I don’t drink.”
“Bullshit, I’m drinking right up until I see that positive test. If I even see it. Which I probably won’t.”
Sally stopped. “This is perfect,” she said. She was standing in the office, and when Bernice came through the foyer to see what she was talking about, she saw that Sally was sitting on the Victorian fainting couch, which had once been one of her mother’s prize possessions. When acquired, it had been upholstered in horsehair, but her mother had redone it in red corduroy, with gold upholstery tacks.
“It squeaks,” said Bernice.
“I didn’t think you drank that much anyway, that it would be such a big deal to give it up,” said Sally.
“I don’t,” said Bernice. “But why is this perfect? This of all things?”
“Because of the elevation,” Sally explained. She lay down with her head at the foot of the fainting couch and her feet on the headrest. It was a gentle slope up, and when she scooted up until her ass was just at the edge of the top, it was about waist high.
“This is the best way to get knocked up,” Sally said. “Because of gravity!”
She demonstrated by holding her knees, and her jeans stretched tight over her crotch. She pointed to the X where the seams met. “See, the sperm just sinks happily down right into the egg; it’s not even work! It’s just falling—that’s not even hard.”
Bernice raised her eyebrows.
“You don’t want him sweating away on top of you, do you?” Sally asked. “This way, he can just stand up.”
There was a knock at the side door. On the way through to let her caller in, Bernice did another quick shot of whiskey. Then just one more for safety.
*
Though Sally’s arrangement was scientifically sound, Bernice was too short. With her ass scooted to the high end of the fainting couch, her head was upside down, and it was hard to stay up there, hard to smile with the blood all rushing to her head.
“This is stupid,” Ray said. “Let’s flip her around.”
Ray had been presented by Dean and selected by Sally based on his astrological pedigree, his willingness to have sex with a girl casually, forsaking any resulting child, and his geographical accessibility. Basically, Ray was chosen because his driver’s license said he was born on the right day, he was kind of an asshole, and he was around. While this made the perfect sperm donor for Sally’s agenda, it made a rather lousy sex partner for Bernice’s first foray into heterosexual intercourse. By the time he had been at the seduction for five minutes, Bernice was in tears, Ray was sulking, and nothing had even come close to being inserted into anything else.
Bernice lay on the fainting couch, head on the headrest. She was wearing a short skirt with an elastic waist, which was pushed up over her hips, and her dingy pubic triangle was huddled there between her pale legs, exposed. She was also wearing a turtleneck, a cardigan, and a linen scarf. It’s chilly in Toledo in March.
“I think I know what’s wrong,” said Sally suddenly. “Ray, can you give us a minute? Like, go smoke on the back porch or something. OK?”
Ray sighed and rolled his eyes and pulled his jeans back up, snapped them shut, and slouched off to have a cigarette outside.
“I’m sorry,” said Bernice. “I’m sorry that I can’t do it.”
“Wait,” said Sally, tugging Bernice’s skirt back down and patting it into place. She sat down on the edge of the couch and took Bernice’s hand. It was almost like being in a hospital bed. Bernice had almost died of being penetrated by a stranger. Sally was visiting her.
“I have to ask you something now, we never really talked about,” said Sally.
Now Bernice felt a flutter in her lungs, and the tears rolled again.
“Are you a virgin? Because, that can make it hard. I understand if you are, I mean, I think it’s totally cool, but you really should have told me.”
“I’m not,” said Bernice.
Sally was gazing down at her, seeming so kind, looking so thoughtful.
“There’s a membrane, you know, it’s—”
“I’m not a virgin!” Bernice snapped. How many fingers, how many vibrators, how many dildos ripping up through her? Not a virgin.
“Really?” said Sally, her voice changing, suddenly gossipy. “Who did you sleep with? I’m trying to think—”
“Get him back in here,” Bernice growled. “I’m ready.”
“Are you sure?”
“Ray!” Bernice called. “We’re done talking!”
Ray came in, flicking his cigarette butt into the darkness. He pulled his jeans open again and his heavy hands pushed Bernice’s skirt up around her hips again. He kneeled over her and began to push himself around on her, grabbing his dick around its base and pushing it into the side of her thighs, first one and then the other.
Sally had moved up to a spot beside Bernice’s head and was chastely looking out the window, but she snuck a look back and said flatly, “Ray, that’s all you’ve got? Seriously?”
“Shut up,” Ray grunted. “Open up her legs. I can’t get anywhere.”
Bernice pulled her knees up and put her legs on each side of Ray’s, and he began to press his half-soft dick against her pubic hair. It was soft against soft.
“Again I say, Ray, is that it?” Sally questioned.
“I gotta see something, come on,” complained Ray. “She’s buttoned up like a nun!”
“Take your clothes off, Bernice,” Sally sighed.
Ray pulled back, and Bernice sat up to take off her scarf, her cardigan, and her turtleneck, which left some static crackles on her dreadlocks, and only her little bra around her chest.
Ray nodded appreciatively and said, “Good, that’s better. But when are you getting naked, Sally? I mean, let’s get this party started.”
Bernice glared at Sally. “What did you tell him?”
“I’m sorry!” Sally said. “I might have told him it was a twofer! I mean, I knew I wanted to stay in the room with you, right? So it’s kinda a twofer?”
Ray stood up and kicked off his jeans, pulled off his sweatshirt. His underwear sagged around his hips, and then he pulled that off, too, and was completely naked. He had a stocky body and a smooth chest, like a wrestler or a shot-putter. He pointed at Sally. “Your turn?” he said. Sally pulled off her top and droppe
d it on the floor.
“Sorry,” she said to Bernice. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“Thanks,” said Ray sarcastically. His face was nice enough, but it was a face that kind of said, “I don’t give a shit.”
“Oooh, baby,” cooed Sally, her mouth making an oval kiss shape. “Give it to her. Give her what you’ve got.”
Sally sat back down next to Bernice and held her hand. Bernice tried to relax her legs as Ray’s hand began to probe around. She focused on the curve of Sally’s tit, the one that was nearest her. The warm roundness of it, the nipple so pale it was almost translucent. She could imagine reaching out to that perfect skin, tracing a circle around it. But when Ray reached out with his other hand to touch it, Sally slapped his hand, hard.
“No,” she said sharply. “You’re a bad man. No touching!” But it seemed to have the opposite effect that she intended.
“I’m getting somewhere, now I’m getting somewhere,” he said, letting his breath out with a groan. Bernice could feel him now pressing up against her. She closed her eyes. She tried to think of every girl she’d ever let explore down there, every set of teeth that scraped across her lips, every fingertip that went inside, every tongue like velvet. She felt Ray’s finger prying.
“Oh, come on,” said Ray, “She’s dry as a bone. Is this some kind of joke?”
“I’m OK,” said Bernice, eyes still closed. “I’m OK.” She reached her hand down to separate herself, try to make the way for him easier.
“You know what helps me sometimes,” Sally whispered to Bernice, close to her face. She realized Sally was kneeling on the ground next to the couch. “Is when Dean sucks on my breast, when he’s inside me. It’s crazy good, right?”
“OK,” said Bernice. She felt Sally’s hand unclip her bra in the center, and those feathery fingers push it to the side, slipping across her nipple. Her eyes were shut tight. She would not open them.
“Come on, Ray,” said Sally. “Do it. Here it is. Suck on her.”
Bernice felt his body move, his chest lay low against hers, the heat of him.
“I can’t, Sal. She’s too short. I can’t reach my face down to it and still keep my stick in her.”