Threesome

by Lawrence Block

  I chose to believe the former. We are nowheres near the bloody ocean.

  I think I ought to carry on in a different tone, once again addressing my remarks to that mythical reader out there instead of gossiping and kaffee-klatching with you two dizzy broads.

  But one thing first, one last peripheral remark. That night, you may recall, Priss, you and I simultaneously grabbed for each other the minute we crawled into the sack. And screwed each other’s eyes out. It was, you ought to remember, a particularly satisfying piece of ass all around. Now the reasons for this are not hard to figure out-each of us was excited over what you and Rhoda had gotten started with.

  But you didn’t know that I knew, Miss Mayflower. So how did you classify it at the time? One of my duty fucks to reimburse you for adultery in New York? Or one of my therapeutic fucks because I had done without all day?

  I awakened the next morning with an erection the approximate size and shape of the Chrysler Building. Priss was sleeping on her side, facing away from me, which is to say bottoming toward me. I looked at her bottom and waited for my erection to go away, which shows that even a hearty early riser is not too bright the instant he opens his eyes, because looking at Prissy’s heart-shaped behind doesn’t get rid of erections, it inspires them. I had a great urge to wake Sleeping Beauty with something better than a kiss.

  But I was a good boy, and controlled myself. Healthily impulsive sex is one thing and waking an habitual late riser at four-thirty in the ayem is another thing entirely. I went and took a quick shower-not even a cold shower, dig that for self-control-and swallowed reconstituted orange juice and infertile eggs and instant coffee-don’t we eat real anything any more?-and swallowed more instant coffee and smoked a couple of real cigarettes and went Out Back.

  I work much better if I don’t say word one to anyone from the moment I get out of bed until I stop for the day. Human contact rips out the circuits. If I had enough groovy people around me constantly, I’d never do any work at all. Conversely, if I lived on a mountaintop (a real mountaintop) with no one for company but the trees and the flowers, I would also kill myself, which is why the present work-and-life pattern is about the best compromise available.

  That morning the work started well enough. First I got after some cartoons which had been approved in rough form, a few of them okays that had come in yesterday’s mail, the rest ones I had gotten from Peggy when I saw her. Turning a rough into a finished piece of work is just craftsmanship and demands less in the way of creative energy than doing the rough in the first place, which is why I normally leave such chores for the later hours of the morning, or even tackle them after lunch. But this time I had a lot of them and wanted to get them out of the way and get paid for them. Getting paid for them is ultimately the most rewarding part of the game. I like to see my work in print, but if I miss out on this now and then I don’t fall down on the floor and gnaw the carpet. But if I don’t get paid, that’s something else again. Then I go berserk.

  So, I turned out a lot of roughs into smooths, so to speak, and then I did some new work, including a couple of my own ideas, a few things that gag-writers sent and that I liked well enough to try out, and a couple of tentative treatments of some of Marcia’s lines for My Shrink Says.

  Somewhere between nine and ten I realized that I had been sitting in one position, utterly motionless, my mind quite blank, for a good ten minutes. (Or a bad ten minutes, if you prefer.) I decided that this was either incipient catatonia or I was blocking. I put my pen down and walked out of the shed and into the fresh air. The sun was out and the day beautiful enough for me to notice how beautiful it was, and I don’t ordinarily notice. I said good morning to a couple of birds. Don’t ask what kind. We have bird books all over the house, bought them when we moved in, and I can look at any picture in any of the books and tell you without hesitation what kind of bird it is. I can even tell the warblers apart that way. But once those fucking birds are out of the book and sitting on a tree limb ten yards away, they all become utterly unrecognizable to me. I divide them mentally into four classes. All small ones are sparrows, all medium ones are robins, and all big ones flying high overhead are hawks. That comes to three classes. I had another one in mind when I started this shtick. What? Oh. All of the ones that sing all night long are mockingbirds. That’s it.

  So I said good morning to the birds-robins, all of them, whether they knew it or not-and I filled my lungs with fresh air, and I decided that at that very moment my wife and her roomie were in bed together. Call it a psychic flash.

  I turned toward the shed, and then I turned away from the shed, and then I said the hell with the shed. I started toward the back door of the overly charming Alpine hut, and then I said the hell with that as well, and I walked along the far side of the house until I came to Rhoda’s room.

  When your nearest neighbor is Smoky the Bear, you don’t go berserk about drawing shades. Rhoda’s window shade was not all the way up, but neither was it all the way down. I stood between a wisteria vine and a pussy willow bush (yes, honestly) and looked in the window, and was not at all surprised to see them both there.

  They were sort of between acts, I guess. Priss was lying on her back with her head on a pillow. Rhoda was sitting upright smoking a cigarette, one leg curled under her, the other extended. There is a Picasso blue period painting, I think of two acrobats, in which exactly the same positions and attitudes are held. I think it is interesting that I was aware of this, because in terms other than those of pure art this little tableau was driving me out of my tree.

  Rhoda held her cigarette to Prissy’s lips. Prissy puffed on it. Rhoda took the cigarette back again, put it in her own mouth, and put her hand between Priss’ legs and put a finger or two up Prissy’s cunt. She fingered her idly in this fashion until Priss lifted her head enough to get her mouth on one of Rhoda’s tits. I don’t remember which one. You see one, you’ve seen ’em both.

  And here I was, Munro Leaf’s watchbird. Here is a watchbird watching two lesbians. Here is a watchbird watching YOU. Were YOU a lesbian last month?

  If not, what are you waiting for?

  I don’t know what I was waiting for. I waited for it a long time, whatever it was, and I stood there watching them do divine things to each other with a feeling of excitement and delight that was not exclusively sexual. Or maybe it was. There is a way to put this, if I can find it, because I do know what I mean, but if no one else does, I will have failed to get the point across.

  Let’s try again. I was very pleased with what I was seeing. I was very delighted with it, and in an altruistic way. I thought that this was a great thing the two of them were doing, sure to please them both, and I was happy for them and proud of them for thinking of it. And I was proud of each of them, too, for being able to attract and satisfy such a perfect partner.

  It’s remarkable, I suppose, that neither of them happened to look up and catch a glimpse of me. It’s not only remarkable. It’s also a damned good thing, because we would have had an epidemic of coronary occlusion, I think. I don’t suppose I spent all that much time at the window. Five or ten minutes. Probably no more than that.

  I stopped watching before they got to the end of that particular paragraph, turned from them in mid-sentence, brushed against the pussy willow bush-a great name for a girl, Pussy Willow-and went back Out Back to the shed.

  I picked up a pen and started drawing. I did the sketch three times until I got it just the way I wanted it. Then I sat there listening to bird calls until noon-all bird calls sound alike-at which time I generally appeared for lunch. I did not want to appear for lunch until I was expected to appear for lunch, or I might interrupt them while they were having each other for breakfast.

  During lunch I excused myself to go to the toilet, and on the way back from the toilet I let myself into Rhoda’s room and left the drawing on her pillow.

  RHODA

  I think we all knew what was going on. I think we all knew that we knew. It was all in the air, li
ke static electricity in a dry room, and we were shuffling our feet on the carpet and getting ready to touch each other.

  That morning, while Harry was doing his Watchbird number sheltered by the pussy willow, Priss and I were conscientiously doing precisely what we had decided a day ago not to do. We were Taking Risks. We were Being Less Than Cool. We were making it, not on a Wednesday with Harry in New York, but on a Thursday with Harry Out Back in his shed.

  Hard to say just whose idea it was. Probably mine. I had heard them screwing, and while they were normally noisy enough about it, that night they were truly loud; I got the impression that they had moved to the country because their sex life was too high in volume to be conducted within city limits. I lay there listening to the two of them and wanting them both, and woke up no longer listening to them but still wanting them.

  I got up after Harry and before Priss. I wrapped up in a robe of hers-my bathrobes were all still somewhere out West, none had found its way into the one suitcase I brought along. I went into the kitchen and had breakfast and made a pot of real coffee. Priss always made real coffee sooner or later, but had instant coffee first at breakfast. Quel dreary-the only time I really care about coffee is first thing in the morning, and that’s the one time it’s hard to get a cup around here that tastes half decent. (Other than that, it’s a great hotel.) So I fixed my own coffee, I did, and I magnanimously poured a cup of it and carried it and a glass of orange juice to Priss’ room. I held the coffee cup so that the fumes wafted under her nose.

  She opened her eyes and said, “Owr worgle breel.”

  I handed her the cup, but she didn’t reach for it. I held it and she sipped at it.

  “Rowrbazzle,” she said.

  “Good morning.”

  “Erghh.” She sipped more coffee, yawned, reached out and fumbled at the bedside table. She was reaching for her cigarettes, but in the process of getting them she knocked the alarm clock onto the floor.

  “I always do that,” she said. “You would think I would learn but I don’t seem to.”

  “Your one imperfection.”

  “That and my excess of modesty. This is the best coffee I’ve had in ages. Did you make it extra strength or something, or is it just the delight of breakfast in bed?”

  “It’s real coffee.”

  “At this hour? That’s almost sinful. Oh, orange juice, too. You know, some day I’m going to start buying oranges and having freshly squeezed juice every morning.”

  “Beautiful.”

  “But I’ll never do it. I would have to be awake for hours before I could bring myself to squeeze an orange, and who in the hell wants to drink orange juice at five in the afternoon?”

  “You used to like screwdrivers at school.”

  “Some of the things I liked then I’ve lost my taste for.”

  “But not all of them.”

  “Yes, too true. Don’t look at me like that.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “Damn you, Rho, you can get me hot with your eyes. It’s the most fantastic thing. I feel absolutely naked.”

  “Well, you absolutely are. Do you think that might have something to do with it?”

  “Maybe. Just think, in six more days it’ll be Wednesday again.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We’re not going to wait, are we?”

  “Noway.”

  “I suppose Harry’s Out Back?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He just about never comes in before noon.”

  “I know.”

  “What time is it?”

  “About nine.”

  “He could come in, though.”

  I took off my robe.

  “Oh, you devil. Why did you have to do that?”

  “I was beginning to feel overdressed.”

  “We agreed to wait until Wednesday.”

  “I could die of frustration by then. I heard you fucking last night.”

  “Oh, you actually heard us?”

  “Of course I heard you. I was alive and in Massachusetts. Which means I heard you.”

  “I guess I may have gotten carried away.”

  “You should have been carried away. By white-coated men. I want to get in bed with you.”

  “Not in this bed.”

  “Why not?”

  “This is the bed Harry and I sleep together in.”

  “I figured that out all by myself, doll.”

  “Well, uh, I don’t know.”

  “Actually that part of it appeals to me.”

  “Really? For God’s sake, why?”

  “I’m strange. Oh, how nice, there’s dried come all over the sheet. Not entirely dried, either. This is really turning me on. Come here.”

  “Oh.”

  “Wow.”

  “I guess we’re not going to wait until Wednesday.”

  “It’s always Wednesday. In the hot pants of the soul it is always three o’clock in the Wednesday.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I know.”

  “I love you, Rhoda. Oh, God.”

  “Ah, Priss.”

  “But we can’t be in this bed. No, serious.”

  “Why?”

  “If Harry does come into the house he could walk in here.”

  “But he doesn’t come in before noon.”

  “Who knows that he never will? Once in a great while he gets hung-up or runs out of cigarettes or decides he’ll die if he doesn’t have another cup of coffee. But if he comes into the house and we’re in your room with the door shut he won’t know we’re both in there, he’ll just think I’m on the toilet somewhere or in the basement feeding clothes to the washing machine.”

  “So that it doesn’t starve?”

  “Of course. Sometimes I think of every household appliance as just another mouth to feed. Another thing-”

  “Shut up and kiss me.”

  “Mmmm. I always thought I hated making love in the morning but it seems I was wrong. Another thing is I’m sure if you stay here you’ll shed like a puppy dog. Curly auburn hairs in our bed might be something of a tip-off.”

  “Uh-huh. So if I should flutter my lashes at you and say, ‘My place or yours, dahhhling?’ the answer would be-”

  “Your place, dahhhling.”

  “Right on.”

  At lunch I knew something was up. Of course the speculative glances I was getting from Harry didn’t necessarily mean he knew anything. They might simply be his way of telling me that he still couldn’t wait to get me in bed.

  I couldn’t wait either. But I was a little afraid of what one relationship might do to the other.

  All of this damned concealment! That morning we had worked to make sure that Harry wouldn’t find out about what we were doing, and I was already thinking about what I would do with Harry and how I would keep it from Priss. In retrospect, it’s hard to believe we cared so much about such stupid secrecy, especially since in a chamber of our minds each of us wanted it out in the open, needed it to be out in the open.

  After lunch, perhaps an hour or two after lunch, I drifted back into my room. I think to change a garment or something. I don’t entirely remember why. Whatever it was, I know that I did it and was on the way out without noticing the bit of art work Harry had left for me, when some vibration caught me at the door and something made me look back and see, out of the corner of my eye, a piece of paper on top of my pillow.

  (Parenthetical observation: Once I saw a movie called The Counterfeit Traitor, with William Holden and Lilli Palmer. World War Twice, and he’s a Swede spying for the allies, and she’s his German girlfriend, a Good German, and she’s helping the allied cause too, and she sees the damage done to her city by an allied air raid, which she feels she helped bring about, and she’s consumed with guilt and everything, and she’s also a Catholic, so she carries her guilt to the nearest church and dumps it onto some poor priest. And when she’s finished her confession and waiting to hear what her penance is, the curtain is dra
wn and the “priest” is revealed in an SS uniform.

  (The look on Lilli Palmer’s face must have been identical to the look on mine when I picked up that fucking piece of paper.

  (End of parenthetical observation.)

  The drawing, which I still own, and would not part with for the world, was far more precisely detailed than Harry’s work generally is, yet the style was unmistakably his. There was a girl who was a slight caricature of Priss, the teeth a bit more prominent than hers, the eyes somewhat more hyperthyroid. There was another girl who was a slight caricature of me, the breasts oversized, mouth fuller, and so on. The girl who looked like me had a tongue shaped like a penis, and was in the process of inserting it into the girl who looked like Priss, and while all of this was going on, a man’s face, a slight caricature of the artist as a young voyeur, loomed in a window over the bed and leered down at the two girls.

  The caption read, “What do they know about love uptown?” That’s an old and not very funny joke, and if you don’t already know it you’re not going to read it here, because it’s a bore. But it does fit the circumstances well enough.

  I stood there looking at this and trembling, literally trembling, and then after I don’t know how long I realized that not only was I trembling, which was understandable enough, but that my underpants were sopping, and not because I had peed in them, which would have also been understandable enough, but because I was flowing like a river, my cunt was swimming, and that, it seemed to me, was not understandable at all.

  Priss invited me shopping that afternoon. I said I was in the middle of a book and I thought I would stretch out and finish it. She went shopping. I smoked three cigarettes one after the other. Then I went out to the shed.

  Harry was working on a cartoon. He looked up and our eyes locked.